Sanface Software writes PERL scripts. They have txt2pdf and jpg2pdf products that will take a bunch of documents and convert them to PDF files. Ok, no problem with that so far. What surprised me was the price. $100 for txt2pdf and $65 for jpg2pdf and there are Pro versions which are like 8 times more expensive. Now, I can see this being useful and possibly worth it for other Unix OSes. But Mac OS X has Display Postscript. You can create PDF files from any application. I'm thinking, anybody can whip up an AppleScript that'll do basically the same thing and with more work, exactly the same thing.

It could just be my bias against scripting languages. It's a program written in a scripting language therefore it can't have been that hard to write (and ease of use is important for scripting languages). I'm sure Sanface's products took a lot of time and effort to do. But really, we're talking about a five line script as the main engine with a bunch of stuff to preprocess files and for a user interface. It's just another example of the surprising amount that some people expect for their software...

So I just read Apple's "Understanding and Using NetInfo" document. Basically it looks like an LDAP server that's already tied in to lookupd and other services. Nothing too complicated. But administering it! If you have a semi- complex network (more than one Mac OS X NetInfo server) then it's a mess of configuring here then there then back here again with the NetInfo Manager and with command line utilities. Wow, Windows NT actually is easier to configure than NetInfo. I'm sure that it'll get better and it'll be more graphical and automatic in future versions. But right now it's just a little better than Unix and certainly way behind Microsoft, I'm sorry to say...

Tonight I went to Shannon's place for his almost-weekly poker game. I was hoping to leave work by 18:00 but I had to help Sushant and then Sara with some things so I didn't leave until 19:45. With traffic I got to Shannon's at 20:45, but the game ran until 23:45 so I was there for half of it. Seven people. Shannon and Kimberly, Eric and Barb, Shannon's boss Chris, and Don who works for Green Knight. When I got there Shannon already had a goodly sized pile of chips, and it got bigger as the night went on.

But, unlike the last time when I got there really late and played like a drunken madman (because it was fun), I actually did all right. Doubled my money ($10 -> $21). Shannon made my $33. I only won like 5 out of 30 hands and only three of them were significant wins. Lucky and recklessness paid off. Mostly we played seven card stud games of various kinds with the occassional five card stud and one five card draw game. Draw games are tough with so many people -- not enough cards in a 52 card deck.

There was plenty of food which is good since I hadn't had dinner. Chris brought a bunch of subway sandwiches and delicious cookies of various kinds. They had tea at the end, which I declined. The kind of tea that white people drink is quite weird to me. Some new-age thing. And with honey too. Good grief! I'll take bitter tasting Chinese tea, though only after a good meal. Tea is just not my cup.

Anyways, it's nice to see Shannon and Kimberly slowly getting back together. She still hasn't moved back in; they don't want to go too fast. Shannon said they're trying to "establish knew patterns". Something healthier than their old relationship. I for one am very happy that they're giving it another go. Even though Dave is rather pessimistic (he just has a different view of the world than I do), I'll remain hopeful...

I just watched the director's cut of The Abyss. It's much the same movie except more interaction with the underwater people at the end. I can see why it was cut out (you never actually see the water people in the theatrical release, it's just a mysterious ending that leaves too many questions open). Very preachy. The water people see that we're going to start a war so they send huge tidal waves to destroy the coasts, but they stop them. It's just a warning not to be so mean to each other.

It's a better movie without those scenes. And yet when I saw it originally I never really liked the ending. Much too deux ex machina for me. Bud is saved and everybody is brought up to the surface on this gigantic thing, then the movie ends. Ok. Not enough information. This ending has enough information but it's annoying...