I was playing with OS X this morning and stumbled on a really nice feature: With a Finder window active, pressing Command-` will bring up a sheet where you can type in a pathname (in Unix format: '/Users/kfox/Documents/' and hit return and it'll switch the window to that directory. What's more it also has nifty auto-completion features to make it even easier.

This is going to be one of my most oft-used shortcuts. I'd include a screen shot, but I'd have to get out and boot up my laptop, and I'm a little busy today. Maybe tonight, or maybe Benjy will do it when he reads this. (nudge ;-)

Tuesday I had to drop by Em's place in Hayward before going to work, to pick up my backpack. I drove down early to pick it up, with just enough time to get to the Hayward Amtrak station to catch my train down to Sunnyvale.

Driving up to A Street from Santa Clara, I couldn't turn right onto the overpass to go over the tracks, because police had blocked A Street right there, so I went down another half-mile, crossed the tracks, and came back up, getting to the station with a couple minutes to spare. Looking at the overpass, about 100 yards from the station, I saw an overturned van, rammed into the fencing protecting cars from falling over the overpass's edge. That explained why the overpass was closed.

Yesterday morning I again drove to the Hayward station to catch the train (but that's another story I'll probably write later), and driving on the overpass, I sadly notice no less than 30 boquets and wreathes on the smaller of the two areas of mangled fencing.

Here's the story. Tragic.

Before anyone else humbles me by letting me know, Metacookie is down until tomorrow. Seems that someone forgot to pay his domain name renewal fees...

Okay, so in the same vein as the Bathroom Cellphone story, but much more concise, here is today's Yahoo! bathroom episode:

I go to the restroom, take the far, handicapped-sized stall because stall #2 was taken, and this stall (#4) gives the appropriate 'one-stall buffer zone.'

All goes fine, I unlatch the door, go to the sink, and a Yahoo! janitorial guy goes into the stall I just vacated. I thought he was just observing the buffer zone rule too strictly, as he could have used stall #1 or #3, and buffer zone rules don't apply when it means that you'd have to actually wait to use a stall.

Before I'm done washing my hands, he walks back out of the stall, tosses something substantial into the trash, and leaves. I dry off my hands, and before tossing my paper towels in the selfsame trash, I take a peek, and it's the half-used (half unused? Which one would be the optimist in this case?) toilet paper roll from my stall.

Is there something I should know?

I have discovered the elusive, oft-denied A-List of the blogging world. The current A-List (compliments of Google).

This is so cool and creepy. Google knows who I know.

To wrap things up, after learning of the Minolta price mixup and placing three orders, I sat and watched as Amazon blew away the orders, including legit non-camera items in the orders.

It was fascinating to read the voluminous Metafilter thread on the topic, noting that everyone was on the bandwagon until the moment Amazon pulled the item, and suddenly the morality discussion began. Seems the moralists were too busy buying cameras to gripe, but the sour grapes of missed opportunity caused latecomers to question ethics.

My favorite part, the one that made this all worthwhile, was this exchange between two MeFi users:

• "Astounding. I can't take a moral argument seriously from any of you who jumped at the opportunity to take advantage of an honest mistake. I don't want to hear ever again about greedy corporations or crooked politicians. You people just showed that you're willing to turn a blind eye when it is to your benefit. How does that make you any different from those you rail against?"

• "We have cameras."

So after hearing no explanation from Amazon for five days, I got an email apologizing for the price mixup, and offering a $10 gift certificate for my trouble. It was quickly followed by two more, one for each cancelled order.

So less than I had hoped, more than I deserved, and enough to get a free copy of Shrek, for which I don't mind it being delayed a few days. I don't feel too bad, considering how much Amazon's stock climbed today.

Kudos to How Stuff Works for a timely, useful, and informative article about Digital Satellite Radio (aka XM-band radio).

Just like the net is starting to move from the ever-weakening advertising model into subscription services (Salon, Yahoo! and Slashdot are prime examples), mainstream media is following suit. HBO is a purveyor of fine serial content instead of just movies, people pay monthly fees to ditch commercials via TiVo, and streaming ad-free audio in your car is available now, and will probably be everywhere in the next 18 months, with low hardware costs, designed to lure you into the $9.95 monthly fees.

Anyhow, an interesting article. Hope you enjoy it, and that your Thanksgivings are going well!

The FDA today approved a contraceptive patch. A patch a week for three weeks, then one week off.

Sounds like life is imitating tech. I wonder if they'll release patches to stop recently discovered viruses or worms. Still, a patch that prevents the spawning of child processes is really pretty cool.

Okay, so I really just wrote this post to help the story make it to the top of blogdex.

I will be everywhere next week, and again during Christmas.

Please allow me to explain.

When I make friends, I form close ties. I'm not so good at being a casual friend. With a few rare exceptions, I'm either in or I'm out. When I'm in, I care a lot about the person. They're in my heart and my thoughts, and it's as though I carry a piece of myself around with them (yes, that's what I mean, not vice-versa).

Now there are absolutely times in peoples lives when they need time and space (and not just Einstein). For whatever reason, they need to shun communication for a spell and, whether you have everything, a little, or nothing to do with it, you-the-friend feel the loss.

Intent isn't even the issue. To get to the point alluded to in this post's title: I feel the loss, the separation, and the lessening of myself whenever those distal parts of me, riding around in the hearts and bodies of friends, head their separate ways, exploding across the country, one piece to Chicago, another down the California coast, another to Phoenix, while I gain distance from even those who stay here, as I jet down to Los Angeles, and then Las Vegas (travelling first to 'the angels' and then to 'the fertile valleys'.) Back to the point, I often don't feel quite like myself when I'm away.

Along the same lines, it's extra-hard when people go away and don't realize they have some of you in them. You don't get visiting rights, and you can't get it back. All you can do is try to grow a new piece of you to replace the old. Maybe this is how people grow when they travel. They leave bits behind, grow more to fill in the missing pieces, and return to find those pieces are still there, recombining to make an even bigger whole.

Or is that blood-doping. I always confuse the two.