09.27.05

Steven the People-Magnet

Posted in rants at 1:44 am by admin

I must be the most friendly-looking person — EVER. I can’t think of another explanation for the strangest phenomena that plagues me everywhere I go, and I am hoping that someone out there might be able to give me some insight into why this repeatedly happens to me. But first, a little background.

Before I moved to California I was part of the huddled masses commuting into and out of New York City on a daily basis. My ritual included riding th PATH train, the subway, and MTA buses, all on a quite regular basis. Because I’ve been told that it’s best to isolate oneself from the misfits and neerdowells who tend to expose their intimate parts to one upon contact, I would isolate myself into the ultimate sonic cone of silence — my iPod. With earbuds jammed deep into my ear canals I would watch the trains pass by to the rhythm of Madonna rather than the one-legged mandolinist (regardless of how lovely his rendition of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” might have been.

Why is it, then, that without fail people would walk up to me and start asking me questions?

“Is this the V train to Brookyln?” they might inquire.

I would take my earbuds out of their 3-inch deep resting place only to smile and reply, “I have no clue. I’m sorry!”

After this happens over and over again, I begin to wonder if there is something about me that I don’t know. Maybe it’s the same “something” that causes people to approach me in the drug store and ask me where the Tylenol is as though I work there, even if I’m in ripped jeans and a t-shirt, on my cellphone.

I had foolishly assumed that this would stop happening to me after moving West, but yesterday I had my first of what I now expect to be many run-ins with my public.

I was jogging down a street in downtown San Jose at a reasonably quick speed when I ran past this elderly black man on a bench. My earbuds were in place and I was in my element when I saw his hands begin to flail around has he made a motion to his wrist.

I stopped and took my earbuds out to fulfill his request for the current time, and jogged away befuddled. Why is it that he felt the need to stop me from running past while I was effectively deaf due to the music pumped directly into my skull?

Later that same day as I ran across the train tracks on my way home, I again was accosted, this time by two young girls in a beat-up car who were attempting to find their way to the nearest shopping mall. While the current time was an easily answered request, I had no idea where the mall was. Yet there I was, stopped again, my heart rate gradually dropping, all because people seem to think that I want to talk to them.

If this is truly a gift that I have, why can’t I seem to perpetuate it into my everyday life? How can I leverage this talent I have in drawing people’s attention, and take advantage of it to draw some attention at the local bar, or to get a part dancing in an iPod commercial from the television scout? Are people drawn to me because I’m approachable and appear helpful, or is there something more sinister at the root of this consistent occurrence?

I may never know the answer. But perhaps I will get rich selling custom t-shirts that say “Unapproachable” on them.

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09.09.05

Browser quirk: Safari and the Date object

Posted in web development, calendar, css, javascript, safari at 7:37 pm by admin

While working on some date logic yesterday, I discovered that Safari’s implementation of the JavaScript Date object behaves differently than Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc.

The great thing about the Date object is that you have the ability to set the fields (month, day, year) to values outside of their prescribed ranges. For instance, month is normally set to a value between 0 and 11. If you create a new date:

var myDate = new Date(2005,13,1);

The resulting date will be February 1, 2006, because the Date object will increment the calendar 2 months into the following year.

The problem in Safari arises when using negative values. Take the code below for example:

var myDate = new Date(2005,-1,1);

In most browsers, this date would evaluate to December 31, 2004. However, Safari refuses to decrement the month field into the previous year, even though it will increment into the next year.

Here’s an example that executes on the page:

var date=new Date(2005,-1,1);document.write(date.toDateString()) (Should show “Wed Dec 01 2004″, but not in Safari!)

This bug appears to only apply to the month field. If you set a negative value into the date field, it will decrement as expected, which is a huge relief since calculating the last day of the previous month can be quite irritating.

The moral of the story is that if your Date addition/subtraction code needs to work in Safari, don’t count on negative month values working the same way that they do in other browsers. If you don’t know this, it could really screw things up.

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