I feel like most people are raised under the excessively naive belief that “There is no safe way to drive while under the influence. Even one drink can make you an unsafe driver.” There’s probably several good reasons for this: unsupervised teen socializing, suburban sprawl, and an unrealistic legal drinking age, but I digress.

The quote above comes from the top of the Alcohol Impairment Chart that came with my license renewal today. But for whatever reason, the California DMV didn’t stop there. They included a series of charts for seven weight ranges that factor in the number of drinks consumed and the number of hours since your first drink. Find the right point on the chart and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what your blood alcohol concentration (BAC) will be.

What I like about this approach is that it’s honest and informative, rather than FUD. And my first thought was, “I’ve gotta turn this into HTML.” So I did.

Select your weight range:90 to 109 lbs.110 to 129 lbs.130 to 149 lbs.150 to 169 lbs.170 to 189 lbs.190 to 209 lbs.210 lbs. and above

The California DMV says, “[This chart has] been constructed so that fewer than 5 persons in 100 will exceed these limits when drinking the stated amounts on an empty stomach.”

“One drink” is a 1 ½-ounce shot of 80-proof liquor (even if mixed with non-alcoholic drinks), a 5-ounce glass of 12% wine, or a 12-ounce glass of 5% beer. These “one drink” equivalents change if you are drinking ale, malt liquors, fortified wines, port, brandy, different proof liquor, or if you are drinking on an empty stomach, are tired, sick, upset, or have taken medicines or drugs.

For more info, click here.

This was a fun one to write. What if you wanted to start over again? Just wipe the slate clean and start blogging without any baggage. Well, that’s actually hard to do unless you’re comfortable using the MySQL command line client (or phpMyAdmin).

So I whipped up a little plugin that does just that, and no more. Install it, activate it, and you’re just a single click away from blogging salvation (or is it purgatory?). In other words, this plugin gives you the power to delete all your blog posts from the database in one fell swoop. You can also use it to delete categories, comments, links, and custom fields, as well as users and blog settings. Here’s a screenshot:

Instructions

1. Download Suicide v2.0 from the WordPress.org Plugin Directory (or from me here)
2. Unzip the file and upload the suicide folder to your wp-content/plugins/ directory
3. Activate the plugin
4. Go to Tools > Suicide (and contemplate your blogging fate)

Note: by default, this plugin will delete all content associated with your blog except users and settings. That way you’re left with a functional, though effectively empty blog. Consider backing up your blog before “committing Suicide”. I assume no liability for data loss suffered through the use of this plugin. Use at your own risk!

In all seriousness, you might want to use this plugin if you recently imported your posts into WordPress from another blogging platform but something went horribly wrong (or you were considering importing your Haloscan comments) and you want to start the import process over.

Update: If you want more nuanced control over what particular records get deleted, say based on date or some other criteria, check out my SQL Executioner plugin. It allows you to send any SQL query/command to your WordPress database. If you don’t know SQL, no worries, just leave a comment with what you want, and I (or someone else) will respond with a query you can try.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome. If you’re interested in contributing to the code behind Suicide, it’s hosted on GitHub.

Like half the world, I’ve got an AOL Instant Messenger account, but I never use AIM to access it, because I don’t want AIM to crude up my computer with icons and ads and DLLs.

So I use the ad-free, open source, and featureful GAIM instant messaging client (now called Pidgin), partly because I like knowing that I’m chatting privately with OTR encryption.

But I’ve been wanting to change my password. And my contact email address while I’m at it. After a little Googling, I discover that all of AOL’s online help docs seem to imply that this can only be done through the AIM client. Err.

So I go through the trouble of downloading and installing AIM, select My AIM > Edit Options > Change Password, and what does it do? It launches Firefox and takes me to a freaking website! Why couldn’t they just have pointed me there in the first place?!

So in case anyone on the intarweb ever wants to change their AIM password or contact email, here’s the URL of the website in order to do so: https://my.screenname.aol.com/

Update: to all the people who’ve left comments saying you don’t have access to/don’t remember the email address associated with your account, you don’t remember the password associated with your account, and you don’t remember the answer to the security question, you are “up shit creek without a paddle” so to speak. Because at this point there is no way you can validate that the screen name you’re claiming is yours is actually yours. Your best bet? Create a new account. They’re free.

Update: Before leaving a comment on this post, please realize that I do not support BitPim nor am I one of the BitPim developers. I simply downloaded and installed BitPim in order to download photos off of my cellphone. If you are looking for information on BitPim support for your particular cellphone model, please consult the BitPim Help Page rather than leaving a comment here. Good luck!

Sprint offers optional wireless internet service called PCS Vision. For an additional $15 a month, you get unlimited Sprint TV, picture mail, video mail, email, instant messaging, and web access. None of which I really want—except the ability to move the photos I take to my computer. Without the Vision service, it costs 2¢ for every kilobyte transfered off the phone.

Let’s do the math. Average file size of a 640×480 pixel jpeg: 55KB. Cost per photo uploaded: $1.10! A buck to take a crappy cellphone picture!? I mean, I’d pay $5 a month if I could configure Sprint to upload the pictures directly to my WordPress blog, but that’s unlikely any time soon.

I just want to get the photos off my phone, and I don’t want to pay Sprint in order to do so.

First thing I need is a cable. Don’t expect to find that in any Sprint store. After a little Googling around, I discovered that my Samsung SPH-A840 phone (aka the PM-A840) accepts a Samsung USB Data Cable (PCB113BBEB). I got mine from WirelessGround.com for $15 (including shipping). Just arrived today.

Of course it came with no software or drivers. I found some some drivers online, but these were only intended to turn my cell phone into a wireless modem. Handy, but I really just want to copy my photos to my laptop. Ain’t no way I’m paying $70 for DataPilot. This should just work! Update: Mike left a comment to say that actually the drivers are necessary for BitPim to communicate with the phone. And he offered what will hopefully be a more permanent link to the download them. Thanks Mike!

In the end, it was an almost year old article from Microsoft (of all places) called Camera phone options that pointed me to BitPim, a free, open source cell phone syncing application. It had trouble downloading my phone book entries, but no problem downloading my photos!

Yay, I win!

How to download cameraphone photos using BitPim

1. Start BitPim with your cellphone attached to your laptop
2. Goto Data > Get Phone Data …
3. Check the “Wallpaper” checkbox and click OK
4. BitPim will start downloading your photos (on some occasions BitPim has crashed here, so usually I just unplug my phone, restart BitPim, and start over)
5. In Windows, the photos should be downloaded to a folder called “camera” under “My Documents\bitpim\bitpim.db_blobs”.

Back in October I was leaving Dawn’s house and heading home through Sebastopol when I was pulled over. For speeding.

Two things about this were infuriating. Anyone who spends any time in Sebastopol knows the town is a big speed trap. The speed limit tends to drop suddenly in 15mph chunks, and for a town of 8,000, there are an obscene number of traffic cops on patrol. At the time I was pulled over, I had been actively looking for the posted limit, expecting it to drop any moment to a sluggish 20.

Secondly, I wasn’t speeding. Or at least I wasn’t speeding as much as the officer said I was: 48 in a 30. I was probably going 35. And after he cited me I’m pretty sure he followed me all the way out of Sebastopol. Like the nefarious drug runner that I am.

A week later I got my official citation in the mail, asking me to pay a $186 fine!!! Or if I wanted, I could supersize my citation with a day of traffic school for the bargain price of $219—which would wipe my record clean so as to avoid any unsightly increases in my insurance premium. And they make it SO easy to pay—their polite way of offering to sweep this whole unpleasantness under the rug.

Nothing raises my ire more than a bureaucracy set up to put people in a position where they feel powerless to resist authority. It’s like an allergy I’ve always had. My gut response: “I’ll take your unpleasantness and raise you 2.” What the hell, I’ll go to court to contest this.

So in December, I went to traffic court and requested a trial by written declaration. Basically this means I wouldn’t have to show up in court and talk to a judge, I’d just write an essay and send it in. 19 years of formal education, and I can definitely write an essay. Plus I have to admit I got a sadistic shiver of delight when I learned the issuing officer would be notified I was contesting the ticket so that he could respond. “Have fun with that extra paperwork po-po.”

So in January I turned in my Declaration of Facts, a riveting full-page, single-spaced description of my account of the events of that night, along with a full page annotated map, both of which I put together the day before it was due. 19 years of formal education and I still wait till the night before something’s due.

Well today the verdict arrived in the mail: NOT GUILTY! Case dismissed. Hell fucking yeah! I’m ecstatic. That means I save $219, my insurance stays the same, I don’t have to go to traffic school, and I get the satisfaction of beating the system and sticking it to the man.

Take that man. Consider yourself stuck.