Checksum Arcanius

It took a bunch of searching a testing, but I got something that works for me and I like well. Instead of every screen window being called “bash” or being named manually, I now have them all named after the working directory. This is the magic:

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033k$(basename $PWD)\033\\"'

PROMPT_COMMAND gets run every time bash displays a prompt, and those particular escape characters do the magic.

To avoid crap outside of screen, I did this:

case ${TERM} in
screen)
export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033k$(basename $PWD)\033\\"'
;;
esac

Which is more general than it needs to be, but maybe I’ll expand it in the future.

My car just failed an emissions check. I have an offer on the table to sell it for $2000 and walk away.

When I bought it two years ago, the purchase price and other “miscellaneous” items came to $3300 and I have spent about $2000 in repair and maintenance (including nice new tires) over that time. I have also spent $3600 on gas in that same period.

The monthly operating expenses are $150/month for gas and $80/month for maintenance, so about $240/month give or take. If I sell it, the capital outlay would have been $1300, or about $650/year or 50/month, which is equivalent to a nice low car payment.

If I don’t sell it and can keep it passing emissions tests, I’m sure I could drive the car for another 8 years at which point it will be worth nothing, so capex becomes $330/year or $25/month, basically negligible. I’d expect the repair bills to average lower if I’m not replacing tires all the time, but to remain about the same if emissions continue to give me trouble and are repairable.

Decision time: sell the car now or try to get it to pass the smog? I’m pretty happy with the car otherwise, and I have one free retest I can do before I have to make a final decision.

My goals in rough order of priority are:
1/ maximize convenience
2/ minimize cost
3/ screw the system

I’m thinking about buying some of this stuff and driving around a bunch tonight and going for the re-test tomorrow. If I still fail, I sell the thing to the dude tomorrow. If I pass, I have another two years before I have to make the decision again.

Better ideas?

I was planning on watching The Avengers, which according to the internet is the best movie of 2012, Wednesday afternoon with Christine and Ed. However, when I looked up the runtime of the movie, I realized I could not both watch the movie and make my 7:50 flight to Seattle. So I skipped the movie and made it to Seattle.

that night, after arriving in Seattle, I received an invite to go watch The Avengers with Facebook Seattle. It turns out they hadhad this movie night planned for a while, and I happened to show up just in time. Pretty convenient!

So, I had the chance to watch the Avengers with some coworkers and meet some more FB Seattlites. Unlike the rest of the internet, I did not think the movie was all that good — I’d rate it equivalent to the Transformers series — but the action was ongoing and the one-liners were fun.

After the movie, I hung out with Bobby and a few other Seattle FBers at the downtown Taphouse Grill. It was a great time. Thanks to all involved!