Adding and keeping a paste event for Sencha’s Extjs 4.x’s HtmlEditor.

In Sencha’s Extjs 4.x, they redid the entire HtmlEditor class vs. version 3.x. We needed to grab information off the clipboard before Ext and make custom changes. For Extjs 3.x, that was as simple as adding a listener to the iframe body. This is what several people on varying websites on the Internet suggested as the fix, and this worked for the older version. But on the newer version, the paste event was either ignored or would simply just quite working after a short amount of time. More searching the Internet found that no one had suggestions for fixing the issue in Extjs 4.x (and probably newer).

When the paste event did work, the pasted text would be edited by our custom code and inserted into the editor. Then, mysteriously, unedited text was also entered, which appeared as a double paste. Along with our custom paste methods not working after a short period time, this double edit issue confused many a developer.

Allowing anyone access to the user’s clipboard is a security issue. Browsers have allowed sandboxing the clipboard content, but Mozilla’s Firefox developers did not, at least not until recently. The only surefire cross-browser solution was to use the aging and outgoing Flash. We can not use Flash for our customer’s code. Several developers for HTML editors have solved this by ‘tricking’ the browser. The solution was to have a hidden field and a visual field. The hidden field would grab the pasted html, manipulate it, then sync that edited text with the visual field. This works great. But we needed access to the unedited text straight from the clipboard to do our own custom editing.

The two parts of an HTML editor are a textArea and an iframe. We added our event to the iframe’s body, as the several places on the web suggested. And this was the mistake when working with Extjs 4.x. The newer version loosly couples the textArea and the iframe to an parent object, whereas the older version more tightly coupled the two. Remember this.

Example of the textArea and the iframe:

<textarea id="ext-comp-1284-inputCmp-textareaEl" 
 class="x-hidden" autocomplete="off" tabindex="-1" 
 name="comments" style="height: 46px;">
</textarea>
<iframe id="ext-comp-1284-inputCmp-iframeEl" 
 class="x-htmleditor-iframe" frameborder="0" 
 src="about:blank" name="ext-gen1439" 
 style="width: 100%; 
 height: 46px;">
<!DOCTYPE html>
 <html>
  <head>
   <body style="font-size: 12px; 
   font-family: tahoma,arial,verdana,sans-serif; 
   background-image: none; background-repeat: 
   repeat; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); 
   color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-attachment: fixed; 
   cursor: text;">
  </html>
</iframe>

The other issue we had was the double insert. After some searching, I came across a site that said we needed to stop the paste event when we did our custom editing. This was easy. I added Ext.EventManager.preventDefault(e), Ext’s built in version of preventDefault(). ‘e’ is the event being passed into our method, which is our specific ‘paste’ event. PreventDefault stops the propagation of the event. Adding it solved the double insert. So we were having only one insert, instead of two. Yay!

Snippet of the onPaste method called by the ‘paste’ listener:

onPaste : function(e, elem) {
    var text = "";
    Ext.EventManager.preventDefault(e);

    if(Ext.isIE) {

But, we still had the issue of after some time, our paste event was being ignored. While searching the web for a solution, I came across another person that had a similar issue. They were hiding a form so that when the user needed it, it would appear, then when done it would hide. This makes showing forms or other objects easy as the html doesn’t need to be rebuilt every time. In some code, that’s a speed increase. As a user, that is nice to have a page load immediately instead of waiting those few precious seconds.

The answer to this issue was that losely coupled hidden objects are garbage collected by the browser. Bingo! Remember that losely coupled hidden field for HTML editors? It was being garbage collected, hence why our event was being ignored after some time. After some more searching and being fairly familiar with Ext’s HtmlEditor.js file (after all, I searched over it time and time again looking for reasons why something was removing our ‘paste’ listener). I found the solution. Instead of adding the listener to the iframe, as was done in the older Extjs version, we add it to the parent via Ext.EventManager.on(doc, { paste : fn}) where ‘doc’ is a reference back to the parent document of the editor, and ‘fn’ is the function we pass in to do our custom editing. Previously we used el.addListener(‘paste’, this.onPaste, this), where el is this.getEditorBody(), which is the iframe’s .

As part of the ‘constructor’ function, add this to the config:

listeners: {
    initialize: function () {
        var doc = me.getDoc();
        var fn = Ext.Function.bind(me.onPaste, me);
        Ext.EventManager.on(doc, {
            paste : fn
        });
    }
}

Now we have the ability to manipulate text before adding it to the editor. We used preventDefault() to stop the paste event from bubbling, and added a listener to the document, rather than to it’s iframe’s body.

Adding Icon Labels to Openlayers with KML styles

I’ve been working on a project that uses OpenLayers, KML, Extjs4, GeoExt, and a few other libraries.  On this project, customers would like to use a map to track assets.  They want to see a specific icon for a type of asset with a label below the icon.  What we found was that OpenLayers doesn’t support KML styles along with OpenLayers styleMap on a Vector layer.

Searching online turned up a handful of individuals with the same issue, but no solution. Here is how I solved it:

Problematic Code example:
Setup a styleMap: 

var styleMap = new OpenLayers.StyleMap({'default':{
    label : "${name}",
    fontColor: "#000000",
    fontSize: "11px",
    labelAlign: "center",
    pointRadius: 2,
    labelXOffset : -16,
    labelYOffset : 0,
    labelSelect: true
}});

Setup to get and parse KML: 


var myKmlFormat = new OpenLayers.Format.KML({
    internalProjection: sphericalMercatorProj,
    externalProjection: mapProj,
    extractStyles: true,
    extractAttributes: true,
    maxDepth: 2
});

Finally, setup the vector layer: 


var layer = new OpenLayers.Layer.Vector("KML", {
    projection: latLonProj,
    strategies: [new OpenLayers.Strategy.Fixed()],
    protocol: new OpenLayers.Protocol.HTTP({
    url: myKmlUrl,
    format: myKmlForma 
    }),
    styleMap: kmlStyleMap,
    eventListeners: { 'loadend': kmlLoaded },
    renderers: renderer
});

The KML: 

 <document>
 <name>Geolocation Case: 17564</name>
  <style id="style1">
   <iconstyle>
    <icon>
     <href>http://127.0.0.1:8000/static/images/pointicon.png</href>
    </Icon>
   </IconStyle>
  </style>
  <placemark>
   <name>My Point</name>
    <point>
     <coordinates>-81.522832781,-3.33918759741,0.0</coordinates>
    </point>
    <lookat>
     <longitude>-81.522832781</longitude>
     <latitude>-3.33918759741</latitude>
    </lookat>
   <styleurl>#style1</styleurl>
  </placemark>
</document>

Google Earth will use the Placemark Name as the label, OpenLayers does not.  The line “extractStyles: true,” in the OpenLayers KML section tells OpenLayers to parse the styles in the KML.  Setting it to false tells OpenLayers to ignore the style sections of the KML.

When this boolean is set to true, OpenLayers.Format.KML ignores manually added styleMap, such as the line “styleMap: kmlStyleMap”.  So if your wanting a label on your placemark, it won’t happen.  It is an ‘or’, not an ‘and’.  This is a bug in OpenLayers in my opinion.

So, how do you get around this issue and add a label?  Well, read on.

Here is the Solution Code:

First off, don’t create a styleMap and add it to the Vector constructor.  Add a listener to the layer:

layer.events.on({
  loadend : this.addLabel
});

Now, go through each icon (feature) and give the style a label, an offset, and anything else your label may need. 

addLabel : function(event) {
    var features = event.object.features;

    for (var i = 0, len = features.length; i < len; i++) {
        var style = features[i]['style'];
        var attributes = features[i]['attributes'];
        if (!Ext.isEmpty(style) && !Ext.isEmpty(attributes)){
            style.label = attributes.name;
            style.labelYOffset = -16;
            style.fontSize = '11px';
            style.fontColor = '#000000';
            style.labelSelect = true;
        }
    }
    event.object.redraw();
}

The icons on the map should now have labels.

Projected Bill Organizer/planner

I have always had a hard time remembering just about everything, including, when to pay my bills.  First, my wife and I tried using a calendar.  As bills came in, their due date was posted on the calendar.  But, then we’d forget to send the bill off days ahead so the bill arrived on time.  So, we decided to put it on the calendar 7 days ahead (or, whatever the average time bills took to go through our postal system).  This failed also. We’d forget to write something down.

Next, we bought a little desktop organizer.  The bills would be set in their due dates, and as we were paid, we’d pay all the bills due before the next pay period.  This actually worked quite well.  This system became the foundation upon the eventual spreadsheet software I wrote.  But, this system had some flaws.  Our house is small and cluttered.  We had nowhere to put this bulky organizer. 

Then, I setup a spreadsheet system in Excel, but being the Linux user I am, this required a virtual machine to run Windows.  I then imported my spreadsheet to Google Docs Spreadsheet.  Which worked fine, but I needed a little bit more control than the complicated spreadsheet formulas could give.  My formulas where getting so long and out of control, I had to decipher them a month later.

I looked into different languages that worked with Google Docs. Well, that sounds easy, until you realize, Google changed the API about every 3-4 months for different languages, such as Python and Java.  So, I settled on Javascript.  I’ve been writing Javascript professionally for some time, but I knew Javascript had one big flaw that would haunt me, especially Googles restricted version.

Javascript does a very poor job with time.  Time seems like an easy concept, until you start digging into it.  I didn’t need to become a physicist, I just wanted to manipulate time in my algorithms for forecasting due dates.  Sounds easy, until midnight on a day that time changes, and Google’s servers are in some unknown location (the “cloud”).

After a week of pounding my head against the wall because of this very important shortcoming of Javascript (still, to this day, professionally I face the Javascript time issue.  Many libraries exist to help with this failure, but they cannot be used on Google Docs), I decided to find alternative avenues.

I started searching for Open Source Software that would meet my needs.  While the choices are abundant, none of them really did what I want.  Most financial software track paid expenses to help decided future forecasts, but were more complex than I needed.  I don’t need to track every dollar I spend, I just want a reminder so that I can pay my bills on time.  If such a software exists, I couldn’t find it.

I had been writing some software in Python for some time.  I love the powerful, yet simple Pythonic way of developing.  Though, I do miss my curly brackets.  So, I set out to find a Python friendly spreadsheet.  I found pySpread, but that software had errors everywhere.  It failed miserably.  It’s a fine piece of code to show the power of Python, but just didn’t work for me too well.

Next, I looked at Open Office’s spreadsheet.  To write external methods for it was even more complicated than inline methods.  I also find Open Office to be poor software.  I have used it since Star Office and over the years grew less and less interested in it.  While I’m not a fan of Microsoft, I do have to say they have taken a lot of time to understand their customer needs and applied that to their Office product.  I prefer to use MS Office over any Open Source option.

Finally, I found Gnumeric.  A simple spread sheet that interfaced with full Python.  I could write my methods, build a small interface for Gnumeric and was good to go.  I translated my Javascript methods over (which were translated from my Excel spreadsheet formulas).  Within a few hours, I had my planner going.  Over the next couple of months, I refined my methods and interfaces.  I have used this for over a year with great success.

The spreadsheet knows when bills are due and shows the amount due under the best payday.  I just go into my banks bill pay area and setup the bills on that columns payday.  As I setup the bills, I marked them with some highlight color, such as orange.  When I noticed the bank paid the bill, I would then mark the bill green.  When all bills in that payday column were paid, I marked that entire column green. 

As stated above, this has successfully worked for over a year.  Not one late payment.  But now, I have the bug.  How can I make this better?  Well, now, that’s the next article.

Whisker Menu for XFCE exemplifies poor usability of today’s desktop menu systems.

The other day I was looking at new Linux distributions on DistroWatch.com.  I came across this offshoot of Arch called Manjaro.  Use of XFCE as the desktop really caught my eye.  I have been using Xubuntu since Canonical decided to release Unity.  I do not like unity.  Then the Gnome developers made some decisions with which I don’t agree (read Ignorant Guru’s blog…use Google).

I have been quite happy with XFCE.  I liked it in the early days, but something always seemed amiss and eventually, I would slide back to my usage of KDE.  Then, KDE4 happened.  I was not happy.  I still can’t stand to use it for long.  My opinion is that the desktop is a place to hold stuff like my real desk.  I don’t need it to do fancy things, just hold my stuff.

I don’t spend hours looking at backgrounds, although I do like XFCE’s ability to put a different background on each monitor, and I do change them often.  I don’t like icons on my desktop.  I have to close a window or many to get back to the desktop.  I prefer to have my icons either in the menu, or as I have my own setup, Cairo Dock, which sits on my main monitor on the left.

Now all of that is out of the way, I’ll get back to the reason for this blog.  Actually, I have two reasons.  First, today’s developers have no idea how to make intuitive software.  Don’t get mad at me, I’m a developer and see the direction of many softwares forcing users to click many times to do small tasks.  User’s should not have to refer to a help document to use the desktop.  The second part of this first reason is workflow, which brings me to Whisker Menu for XFCE.

A desktop should not force the user to work hard.  The Whisker Menu does just that, makes the user work harder.  Main menu’s for desktops are usually on the left side of the desk.  Mac OS was once on the right, but is now on the left.  Windows is on the left. Default Gnome is on the left.  Default KDE is on the left.  Left is where we usually find the default main menu for desktops.

The Whisker Menu, when opened, puts all the main sections on the right side of the menu popup, instead of above or below as most other menu sections are.  This causes the user to move the courser to the up and right to find the section they wish to open, instead of the natural up or down from the “open” main menu button.

Then the user must choose their software on the left of the menu sections.  So now the user has had to make a ‘7’ mouse motion to get their software, which opens centered to the right of the menu.  The user must now move the mouse in the opposite direction, again.  These may seem like small ‘extra’ steps, but subconsciously, the user gets fatigued.

The Whisker Menu’s current (default) setup would be perfect for a right sided menu, but fails for a left sided menu system.  The developer seemed to go out of their way to make this menu ‘different’.  A good ‘fix’ would be to move the menu sections to above the menu button, and the software choices to the right, when the menu is on the left, and as it is now when the menu is on the right side of the desktop.

Having the Whisker menu flow correctly, the user would have a more natural flow from menu button to menu section to software choice to the opened software’s GUI.  The first thing I did in Manjaro was remove the Whisker menu and install the default XFCE menu.  Flow was much better.

Another gripe I have of several of the menu’s today, from Microsoft, the Whisker Menu, etc. Is forcing the user to view the menu in a reserved amount of space, causing the user to scroll.  A better choice is to show all options and let the user use their eyes to look down all the choices.  But instead this reserved menu space is small, so the user must look down the menu, scroll, look back at the menu top, then look down the menu again, then repeat this process over and over until the end of the menu choices.  A long list will get tiresome.

A user should not be forced by software to work so hard to complete simple tasks.  The purpose of the desktop is as a place to view things, such as email, web pages, code in an IDE, etc.  Getting to that point should not exhaust the user.

Aftermath: check your chock blocks.

Rambling thoughts about the aftermath of the accident.  Don’t try this at home.

Three weeks after the accident.  I’ve seen a pain specialist that injected steroids and numbing agent into the trap muscle at the base of my skull, that was nearly two weeks after the accident.  Up to that time, I was having severe headaches, afterwards, my headaches have been less severe and less often.  The force of rolling my head into my chest, while not breaking bones, did strain my muscles and sprain my ligaments, basically, the same injury as whiplash.

During week three, I started physical therapy and have to go twice a week for the next four weeks, including this week.  The first visit wasn’t bad, I managed to get a wider angle of movement from the session, although, looking to my right is still painful enough I can’t drive much.  I can drive short distances alright, but can’t drive in too much traffic that requires a lot of looking around.

The pain is a cross like shape across my shoulders and from the mid-back of my head down to the bottom of my shoulder blades.  In the first two weeks, the doctor prescribed hydrocodone and Flexeril, which didn’t seem to take away much pain, but did put me to sleep.  At least while asleep on these meds, I didn’t feel the pain.

A while back I went to the doctor for bursitis in my shoulder and was prescribed Tramadol, an opiate (synthetic, I believe).  It requires a pill every 4-6 hours as needed.  I was looking for some Tylenol in the medicine cabinet when I ran across this prescription (not outdated, just not used).  I did some Google searching and found it was for medium to severe pain, so I decided to take some for my neck.  After 3 pills in about 14 hours, I felt very motion sick, but the pain was 80% gone.  Less pain was nice, the motion sickness was not.  So, I didn’t take any more for a few days.  I decided to take some before bed, maybe it would help me sleep, and I wouldn’t be sick from motion while I’m sleeping.

The Tramadol helped mostly with sleeping, I did sleep a bit longer and woke up with less pain.  But after a while of being up, the pain is returning…but at least I slept a bit better.

I don’t sleep many hours in a row.  I can’t sleep laying down, I have to be in a reclined position, which means creating some form of support on the couch end so I can sleep there.  I sleep about 2-3 hours before I need to re-position myself.

Each day doesn’t seem to be better than the last, but looking back, I have gotten better each week.

If someone sprains an ankle, they can use crutches to get around. If someone sprains a wrist, they can use a sling.  Both of these keep that person off those muscles as they heal.  Neck muscles don’t get that luxury, so after brief periods of time, I have to go rest my head and neck.  Like writing in this blog, I write some, I rest some, rinse and repeat.

I’ve injured myself before, twice I’ve nearly taken off fingers, the same two fingers.  That took time to heal, but I could do a lot of work without those two fingers.  I can’t say the same about an injured neck muscle.

Well, more pain means I’ve lost my train of thought, so until next time, check your chock blocks.

Conversing with Death, a.k.a. The Reaper.

Sometimes we get so laid back in life we forget how easy life can leave us.  One stupid mistake.  One time not thinking actions all the way through.  One time, that is all.  Here is the tale of my stupid mistake. (On a side note: I was a mechanic in the U.S. Army for 9 years.  I know safety under vehicles.  But ‘stupid’ chose this day to come out and play).

On the week of July 15, I received a package in the mail.  It was the electronic parts for the transmission in my 1996 Dodge Ram 2500 with a Cummins Turbo Diesel.  The transmission had been shifting incorrectly.  Once in gear, it was fine, but sometimes, it would forget which gear it needed.  A Google search identified the issue as a bad Governor Solenoid (yeah, he’s an important political figure).  Forum posts suggested also replacing the pressure sensor too.  It’s right next to the solenoid.  I checked online and for the price of buying these two parts locally, I purchased a kit online with pan gaskets, filters, as well as the 4th gear shift solenoid, torque converter lockup solenoid pack.  The kit also contained a couple of other parts that I wasn’t planning on using, but still, the price was right.

I had planned all week to put these parts into the tranny.  I looked at many forum posts and YouTube videos and the task looked simple enough.  On Saturday morning, the day my family was all to come up and celebrate my eldest son’s birthday (he had turned 13 during the week), I set out in the morning to tear down the lower end of the transmission.

I moved my truck so that it crossed my driveway.  On the inside of the drive, the lawn has somewhat of a sharp hill.  I put the front tires on this hillside.  The ‘valley’ of the hillside and the driveway created enough space under the truck to work without lifting the truck.  I placed a concrete block under one of the rear tires.  At this point, I would usually get in the truck and place it in neutral to check the block works.  But not this day.  I wasn’t planning on removing anything that would allow the truck to move.

Once I was inside, I removed the section holding the governor solenoid and pressure sensor.  That was easy.  I looked at the wiring harness for the 4th/torque converter lockup pack, and the wire went toward the top of the transmission…sigh, more research to replace that part.  Granted, I could have replaced the two bad parts now and been finished…but, no, I moved forward.

So, now I went into the house, cleaned up a little, then set out on another Google search to find out how to remove that wire harness.  Luckly, the same shop that sold me the parts, also had a video on YouTube.  The guy in the video showed removing the valvebody to get to the screw holding the wire harness in place.  He did his work on his transmission on a workbench, so I missed a key point in his video.  the valvebody contained a rod that holds the transmission’s parking sprag.  I went outside, and removed the bolts and some other parts so that the valve body would come loose.

If ever in your life, you notice you’ve just made a big mistake, like leaning just a bit too far in a chair, and the feeling as it tips over; or the feeling when that heavy object leaves your hands and falls toward your feet; or the feeling when you pull out at a green light and notice the large semi bearing down on you from right, while failing to yield to the red light.  That feeling.  That is the feeling I had when I heard the parking sprag let loose.

I did have the concrete block under the rear wheel, but it did not stop the truck.  The truck began to roll.  I did not have enough time to roll out from under the truck.  The only direction I could be was to stay under the truck.  My body was almost parallel with the frame of the truck.

A full sized Dodge truck with a Cummins engine weighs around the 7000lbs area.  My whole 240lbs body was not about to stop the momentum of this truck, even as it slowly rolled.  I tried to no avail.  I felt the lower control arm push my head.  It forced my head into my chest.  I tried to call out, but my wind pipe had already been closed.  The though then ran through my head, “So, this is how I die…”

All went black.

Seconds, minutes, hours went by, I don’t know.  Time did not exist.

Then, as if waking from a deep sleep from some dream world, I turn my head, my body to try to figure out what is happening to me.  Nothing was familiar.  “Where am I?”  “What is holding me down?”  Slowly the dark figure of the truck’s frame came into focus.  I slowly realize I am under something.  I reach out to grab something to get me away from this place.  My hand slaps against the side of the truck.  Then I hear a voice.  I did not recognize the voice.  I could not identify the source of the voice.  My mind still hazy from the dream.  I hear it say, “Are you alright?”.
I call out, “No, help me.”
“Where are you?”
My consciousness finally caught up to reality, “I’m over here, under the driver’s side.”
I hear footsteps, “How can I help?”
“Grab my arms and pull me out”
The person grabs ahold of my oily black arms and pulls…I am free.  I am still in some dreamstate in which I was never under the truck.  I stood as blood rushed down my face into my eye.

I don’t remember saying any more to the soul that pulled me from danger.  I barely remember his face.

I rushed into the house and called for my wife.  The look of shock and horror of her face will never be forgotten.  I got me a towel for my head.  My body was covered in the crimson red of transmission fluid…or was it blood.

Moments later, a team of first responders came in as I sat in this very chair from which I write this.   They braced my neck, placed me on a stretcher and wisped me off to the hospital.  I was safe.  I was alive.

I do not remember my time under the truck.  But the truck rolled about ten feet with me under it.  But during this time, I had a conversation with Death.  Apparently, we had a good chat and saw that this was not my time.

At the end of the day, my son had a good birthday party.  I came home from the hospital without a broken bone, no internal injuries, only scars of my battle.

Why did I write this?  I dunno.  Maybe someone will someday read it and take that extra step to make sure their tires are chocked (metaphorically speaking).

I should post more often.

Yep, I should.  I should run down the list here.  I’ve had the Prius for a year now.  I love it, still.  When I trade the Prius in, I’ve thought about getting the Lexus hybrid or going full on to a Tesla electric vehicle.  I hope that Tesla keeps going strong.  For more information about Tesla, Google.

The distro: well, with a real full time job, I just haven’t had time to do anything with the idea.  Every once in a while, I do some research.  But, I believe the pot is full, so I really don’t put forth the effort.

The tornado: we’re approaching the anniversary.  Much work has been done in Joplin.  The area is less naked now, but still a lot is missing.  My coworker, whose house was destroyed by the tornado, moved to Pennsylvania.  We still work together, just online now.

Python: still really into Python.  I really love this language.  I’ve moved a lot of my code over to GitHub.  Some code I use for scripting stuff I do at work.  Other things are a bit more useful for others.  My recent project is making a GUI frontend for inxi, inxi-gui.  Yep, a lot of thought went into the name.  So far, I have a Tkinter(tk) version and a PySide (QT) version.  The PySide version is not as advanced as the Tkinter version.  Both are a learning experience. 

For a real job, I develop web applications in Javascript and Java.  We use ReST, SOAP, and a variety of other acronyms.  We use Extjs for our Javascript framework.  It’s a nice framework.  I can’t say I enjoy Java a lot, but at least it’s fairly straight forward.  Groovy is so much nicer.  It’s what happens when a Python drinks some Java, while wearing Perls, and other fun stuff. 

Oh, the chickens.  They are laying like mad.  Nearly 20 eggs per day from the flock.  They make great pets.  They don’t require much of you.  They don’t lick your face, after licking their junk.  They don’t cough up furballs around the house.  But, they don’t potty train well.  The roosters like to announce when they believe everyone should wakeup.  

Well, I think I’ll keep this post short.  I’m going to try to post once a week and discuss something I learned for the week.  Last week, it was KML and OpenLayers. Go Chickens!

Why I chose a Prius…V

In the US, the Prius owners have a stigma attached.  Many seem to believe the drivers believe they are better than everyone else because ‘they are saving the environment’.  Even though many ‘studies’ show that the Prius isn’t any more environmentally friendly than other cars when materials are considered.  I’ll get back to this stigma later.  For now, I’ll tell you why I chose to buy and drive a Prius, and why I love to drive my Prius, and why it’s now my favorite vehicle.

Just over a year ago, our area was hit hard with a snow storm which dumped about ten inches of snow.  Even though that amount is not out of norm for this area, the past years have been less than generous on snowfall.  The ally behind our house had become packed with about six inches of hard snow.  My wife and I had worked a few days shoveling the drive so that we could leave.  The roads where clear, but our U-shaped driveway was not and our little 91′ Honda Accord couldn’t move very far.

Finally, after clearing the drive and a few days ‘land locked’ to our house, we were free!  So we loaded the kids into the car and went to buy some fresh food.  Later that evening, we came home and I decided to back down from the upper drive from the ally to the back door of the house just so we could easily unload the groceries.  This is when we found out how packed the snow in the ally actually became.  The car high centered.  After about an hour of breaking the packed snow and shoveling, we finally managed to move the car.

The next day, the sun came out and melted a lot of the snow.  We still had a few bags of ice melt from a few years back and used it to try to clear the ally of the packed snow.  We also applied some to the other end of the driveway and onto the road.  This end of the drive was more difficult to leave from as it leads uphill in one direction and a very steep downhill slope in the other.  The ally exits to the road on it’s peak and the road itself is the top of a hill.  Other roads have less of a slope than the road out front.  So if we leave the ally, we have better roads to choose from, with less chance of sliding.

Anyhow, we once again left.  This time, with a mission, a mission to ditch the Honda for something that offered better snow driving options.  Either an AWD (All Wheel Drive) or a Four-Wheel drive vehicle would do.

After a little looking, we settled on a vehicle that I would later hate and swear to never buy from its manufacturer again.  We found a 2010 AWD Kia Sportage.  The vehicle appeared to be in great shape, ran well, drove decently, and could maneuver over the snow quite well.  We were happy, for a bit.

A couple of months later, we received rain and it helped us discover the first flaw.  The windshield leaked.  Not just a couple of drops, but to the point the passenger seat was soaked with water.  Any time we had rain, no one wanted to ride shotgun.  I guess a shower was too soon for the month.

We took the Sportage back to the dealer.  They called us back and said the windshield was not covered under warranty, even the extra warranty we had purchased.  Their reason, the windshield was ‘obviously not original’.  Really?  They could tell it was obvious now, but before, when they supposedly inspected the vehicle before delivery, it wasn’t so obvious?

The shop foreman showed me the windshield marking.  It was a PAW and not a Kia windshield.  And right he was.  It was obvious it wasn’t an original Kia windshield.  Obviously, two month later, that is. They refused to fix the windshield.  My wife and I talked to a lawyer and he confirmed that it wasn’t covered by the warranty because it was replaced within it’s first year of life and not OEM.  Nothing we could do.

We found a place that wouldn’t charge a lot to repair the windshield seal.  But they could not find the leak.  Ugh!

Next, the transmission started to leak about a pint every oil change.  The vehicle was just over one year old and had fluid leaking also.  A few other minor issues popped up.  On top of the poor service we received from the Kia dealer and the quality issues and that the Sportage never did any better than 18 mpg, we had enough.  I started looking for a quality built vehicle.  Our last Toyota (well, Toyota built Geo Prizm) had over 258,000 miles on it when we sold it.  We only sold it because it was high mileage.

We decided on a Toyota or, perhaps, a Honda.  We also decided we needed to double our fuel mileage.  We also needed room for five passengers.  To get the nearly 36 mpg, we could choose from several small models; the Honda Civic or Accord, or the Toyota Corolla or Camry.  The Civic and Corolla were too crowded and offered little cargo space.  We do a bit of hauling and needed the cargo space.

The Accord and Camry offered the interior room, but barely would make 30 mpg.  If we were left with the small car choice, why not find something that offered great fuel economy.  I have owned a couple of Volkswagen Rabbits with diesel engines, so I ventured to looks at the Volkswagen lineup.  The fuel economy is great, but difference in price for diesel ate into the savings offered by the high mileage diesel engine.  Volkswagen has also had a few issues with quality over the years.  But they were still on the list.

So, to get the fuel mileage we required, we were left with VW diesel, Golf, Passat, or Jetta; Toyota Corolla or maybe even the Scion xB; or the Honda Civic.  About this time, I started getting interested in hybrid vehicles.  Honda and Toyota have offered hybrid vehicles for some years and many flaws should have been fixed by now, or one would believe.  Upon more investigation, Honda seemed to have battery issues and their fix was a firmware update for their computers, which historically cost owners 10mpg.  This put the Honda hybrids on the same level as gas powered Civics.  A no-go for me.

Therefore, Honda was eliminated from the list.  I started comparing prices of Toyota Prius vs VW diesel offerings.  The difference in TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) wasn’t much.  The Toyota quality won.  Thus, VW was removed from the list.  I would still own a VW diesel, I just wasn’t wanting one for our primary family vehicle.

Although Honda and Volkswagen make great vehicles, some of the flaws or prices just didn’t jive with what I wanted as a primary vehicle.  Don’t discount these two companies.

At this point, you may be thinking, “Why not American built?”  Does ‘assembled’ in the USA really mean much anymore?  Most components are made over seas.  But the biggest issue I have with American Auto is their quality.  I have been a hobbyist mechanic for over 20 years and served 9 years in the Army as a mechanic.  Very few USA autos cross the 100,000 mile marker with seating material that is as good as day one, like Toyota.  Much of the American autos have interior quality issues.  But the most damning is the metal used in engines.  Toyota has worked with metallurgists to create material that lasts in engines, even when abused.  American auto manufacturers are still looking to increase that profit margin and compete with Asian autos.  Their metal technologies in their engines suffered greatly.  The engines just don’t last.  And don’t get me started on the terrible reputation Ford has with front wheel drive transmissions.  Since the Tempo and Taurus…Really, Ford?

Anyhow, I decided on a Toyota.  I started looking at the Prius.  I read articles and blogs and data on the Prius and I was quite surprised to see the height of owner satisfaction.  The only downside, cargo room.  While the Prius offered more than others, it still did not offer a lot.

I also started looking at the Toyota Camry hybrid, but the batteries took away about 1/3 of the trunk space, so it was quickly marked off the list.  Then I found a new model of Prius, the V.  For 2012 model year, Toyota released a wagon version of the Prius.  The wagon was slightly taller, slightly wider, slightly longer and because of the liftback, it offered more cargo space.  More than even our Kia.

So, I set out to find the right one.  One day, while watching TV, I saw a commercial for TrueCar.com. Well, I despise commercials as much as the next guy, but I thought why not.  The worst that could happen is I don’t get a great quote on price.  I entered the options I wanted, and TrueCar showed me a car that was over $2000 off sticker and even emailed a dealership.  But, the dealership was nearly 200 miles away.  So I printed off the quote and went to my local dealer.

The local dealer had a model quite similar to the TrueCar quote, but was asking sticker price.  They would not budge on price at all.  Do I blame them?  Of course not, the Prius on their lot I looked at was just sold.  It still had the plastic on the car and interior.  This dealership was selling the V wagon as soon as the delivery truck left.  So, for the $2000 in savings, my wife and I packed up for the weekend and had ourselves a romantic Valentines weekend vacation and headed the 200 miles north for the quoted deal.

The vacation was a blast.  But we are here to talk about the Prius V.  We arrived at the dealership, Adams Toyota in Lees Summit, Missouri, soon after they opened and the salesman I had been in contact with via email took us out to the car.  We drove it around and put about 5 miles on the odometer.  I loved it.  The ride, while slightly sporty (hard) was also quite gentile.  Almost as good at the Cadillac Deville we owned.

To my surprise, this was no wimpy car.  The car would launch from a stop just like a Corolla.  We later found out it can actually spin its tires from a stop if in power mode.  This blog won’t be about all the features of the Prius V, those can be read about on many other websites, like Toyota’s for instance.

We bought the car.  But one curiosity during the test drive didn’t make sense to me.  We had a quote for the base model.  The only option I wanted was remote start so that on cold mornings, the car would be warm.  We later found out that the remote start will also run the A/C for hot days, yay!

The oddity was this car had navigation, which was standard on the top two models and not available to the base model.  So I took a second look at the sticker.  Wow! To my surprise, not only did we get $2000 in savings compared to the local dealer, but we just bought the middle model line.  The Prius V has three models.  The Prius V two, three, and five.  Ours was a three.  Yeah, I should have noticed before actually purchasing the car, but at least this was a pleasant surprise.  And not a leaky window.

The Prius V three MSRP is nearly $800 more than the base model two.  I guess this is to cover the cost of the navigation system.  Therefore, not only did we save $2000 over the base model MSRP (local dealers price), we basically got the navigation system free.  I have to say, this started out much better than owning the Kia.

Now we’ve owned the Prius for nearly 2 months have put nearly 4000 miles on the odometer.  We aren’t quite getting the quoted 40mpg quoted by Toyota, but we do drive around in hilly country.  We are averaging about 37.8mpg mixed city and highway.  I try to use electric mode as much as possible in town.  The power of the hybrid system is astonishing.

The access ramp onto the local state highway is slightly inclined.  Our Cadillac could hit about 85 at the top of the ramp with a small V8 gas engine.  The Prius can hit about 75 at the top of the ramp, which is enough to merge into traffic easily.  As I stated earlier, at a stop with power mode engaged, the car can spin its wheels.

I also setup a spreadsheet to compare the total monthly cost of the Kia vs the Prius.  Because we purchased extended maintenance (basically pre-paid maintenance), and because insurance was slightly more, we end up paying $100 more a month to own the Prius vs the Sportage.   But if we take into account resale value at the end of the loan term, the Prius most likely will be twice the value.  Also, the Kia was on a 6 year loan while the Prius is on a 5 year loan, which also adds some to the total monthly cost.

I didn’t set out to buy a Prius to save the environment, I just wanted to save a few dollars at the pump. I wanted something reliable.  I wanted something that would have some value at the end of the loan term.  While other vehicles lower costs would be overall lower costs, I really wouldn’t want any of them for the Prius.  

Since I’ve been gone…

Wow, didn’t think I ignored this thing that long.  Well, recently, my community suffered a huge loss.  On May 22, 2011 at 5:41, the 8th deadliest tornado went through and wiped out 1/3 of Joplin, Missouri.  Nearly 140 people lost their lives, many sacrificing their own trying save others. All reported missing have been found.  Eight-thousand (8,000) structures were destroyed, several more damaged.  The tornado was rated an EF5, was half to one mile wide and traveled through six miles of city. 

A co-worker’s house was destroyed in the process.  Luckily, he was not home that day.  Other co-workers live out of town, but had their churches or family’s homes damaged.  While a tragic loss of live and a huge amount of devastation, the community of people, both local and from all over the United States, coming together to help was astounding to me.  In all my life, I have never seen a coming together like this from humanity.

I was saddened by the loss, but rejuvenated by the coming together.   A local radio station (Zimmer Radio) owns several channels.  They shut off all music and advertising for 9 days while they helped coordinate volunteers, services offered (many for free to victims, volunteers, and civil service helping out), announce numbers where people could be reached.  They also devoted their Facebook page to help.  That had to have been one of the greatest humanitarian things done during this tragedy.

Churches drove through the neighborhoods offering food and water to anyone, whether volunteers, people helping friends and family dig through the rubble for personal items, and civil service.  Businesses opened their doors to the homeless. 

I still have trouble putting into words how I felt and appreciated everyone’s help.  While I was not directly effected by the tragedy, the devastating tornado touched  down just minutes after my family and I had left town.  It wiped out several businesses we had just visited.  Only those minutes separated our (as well as hundreds of others) life and death.  Only moments separated our lives and Death’s rickety carriage.

My soul mourns the loss, my geeky mind keeps calculating the moments, my heart was lifted by the humanity afterward.

I’ll close this blog for now, and return to the geek in me and post some more geeky stuff.

Birth of a new Distro, Part 2: The experiment, Jet-Fu

As stated in a previous post, dependencies are getting out of hand.  I like to try out different Linux distributions in Virtualbox.  Even some of the so called ‘lite’ versions seem to take up over 1GB of hard drive space.  Some distributions try to stay ultra lean, like Puppy, DSL, Tinycore, etc.  But they all seem to be so minimalistic that only root user is available, or only a finite number of packages can be installed.  But, as in the case of DSL, are just outdated.

(As a side note, the current version of Puppy, 5.x, is now based on Ubuntu.  I have a Pupplet based on the 4.x series installed on an old Dell laptop with a 166mhz Pentium processor.  It runs terrific.  But the latest Puppy seems to carry the “extra’s” brought over from Ubuntu.  It seems slow and sluggish.  In my  experience, I would not attempt to used the latest Puppy version on hardware older than a Pentium 3.  And, don’t take that statement as a bash against Ubuntu.  I have Ubuntu 10.04 installed on my home and work PCs.  Ok, now back to the topic)

While testing Tinycore, I found even it is not immune from the bite of Dependency Overload (DO, see this post: http://wsrogers.blogspot.com/2010/07/birth-of-new-linux-distro-part-1.html ).  I figured Tinycore would make for a great base for a minimalist server.  A simple LAMP server should not need all the bloat.  While installing MySQL, one of the listed dependencies was PHP5.  Now, installing PHP 5 was on my todo list, but should not be a requirement to install MySQL.  It is not listed as a dependency on the MySQL site, nor on many other distributions.  This was ‘bad’ number 2.  The first ‘bad’ was the way Tinycore mounts new packages.  Because of it’s method, only a limited number of packages could ever be installed.

A big plus is the user is able to create other users besides root.  Another plus, the whole release is around 10MB.  I recommend Tinycore for anyone looking for a small distribution to use as a base.  The size includes a window manager.  For about 6MB, Tinycore’s team also offer Microcore, an X-less version.  Because this blog is not a review of Tiny/Microcore, I will not write an elaborate review, but after trying it out, I am impressed and will give it 3.5 stars out of 5.  Since my need is based on over use of dependencies, I had to remove one star, the other half is for it’s rough edges.  But it’s fairly new and I see that it’s being actively developed.  But this rating is because the distribution failed to fit my purpose, only.

Now that I have described DO, I should describe my ‘want’ in a minimalistic distribution.  My experience over the course of 14 years as a now and again Linux/BSD user, and the last 5 years as an avid user, has caused me to develop the idea that the OS needs to be an embedded environment on which a user may run applications.  No one else needs to agree with me, I don’t ask that of the world.  The belief is mine.  Therefore, I desire a minimalistic distribution (mini-distro) that can have multiple users, besides root.  The mini-distro should have a recent kernel with recent system applications.  I’m not looking for speed as much as memory usage.  (Here, I refer to memory as described by kernel theory, which includes all cpu cache, system RAM, and a non-volatile storage device).  I would prefer the core system stay out of the way of the users applications.  The minimalistic nature of such a system will be speedy by its nature. 

So, I would like to build my own minimalist OS.  The current name is, in the tradition of many open source projects, an acronym, Jet-Fu, Just Enough To FUnction.  It will be the base for some projects I would like to use myself.  The first is a minimalist anti-virus live image for cleaning infected systems, Jet-Fu:AV.  I won’t get on my soapbox to point fingers, we are aware.

This project would be either optical disk, such as CD or DVD (such a waste of space, but they’re cheap), usb, or just a tiny partition on the hard drive.  Jet-Fu: AV will boot up, hunt for viri, and clean them in some way.  The advantage is that the viri would not have a chance to put themselves in system RAM and escape detection.  The project is not fully described at this time, so automation, menu driven, or gui have not been decided.

Another project is for a LAMP server.  Although Apache is not necessarily the chosen server, lighter ones exist.  The database doesn’t necessarily have to be MySQL.  I have been looking at some Document-Oriented Databases, such as MongoDB or CouchDB (google is our friend, use it).  The backend isn’t necessarily going to be PHP.  While I do like PHP, I also like Python.  Not to mention some Java/Tomcat action could be possible.  Or even different flavors of this server version.  Only time will tell.  (My time that I’m willing and able to contribute to these projects)

In another blog, I will describe my new infatuation for YAML and JSON.  I will also write about how they will be tied in with my love for Python and how all three will be the basis for my experimental Jet-Fu project.

Also, some may question why I am using GNU/Linux as the base for Jet-Fu and not some other operating system (OS), such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, OpenDarwin, OpenSolaris, or some other OS.  Well, let me say, they are not ruled out, and I’m actively investigating their use.  Remember, Jet-Fu is just enough.  The name doesn’t tie it to a specific OS or kernel. (Yes, XNU, I’m looking at you).  Stay tuned for Part 3, coming at a time I feel like writing.