http://willperone.net Perone's Programming Pad Perone's Programming Pad en-us Perone's Programming Pad http://willperone.net/icon.png http://willperone.net 130 108 2008-05-06 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=113 http://willperone.net/?view=113 2008-05-06 Beat Me Up won't be coming to MySpace:

"After looking at your app, we cannot apporove it based on the graphic content. There is blood imagery and the object of your app is to impale the game character."

I guess the folks at MySpace don't much care that the game is already on Facebook. Maybe eventually they'll change their mind.]]> 2008-05-01 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=112 http://willperone.net/?view=112 2008-05-01 Settle in your seat and dim the lights
Do you want my blood, do you want my tears
What do you want
What do you want from me
Should I sing until I cant sing any more
Play these strings until my fingers are raw
Youre so hard to please
What do you want from me

Do you think that I know something you dont know
What do you want from me
If I dont promise you the answers would you go
What do you want from me
Should I stand out in the rain
Do you want me to make a daisy chain for you
Im not the one you need
What do you want from me

You can have anything you want
You can drift, you can dream, even walk on water
Anything you want

You can own everything you see
Sell your soul for complete control
Is that really what you need

You can lose yourself this night
See inside there is nothing to hide
Turn and face the light

What do you want from me]]> 2008-04-23 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=111 http://willperone.net/?view=111 2008-04-23 the worst page ever created

That is all.]]> 2008-04-15 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=110 http://willperone.net/?view=110 2008-04-15 Loopt shirt and post it to the Loopt blog.]]> 2008-04-10 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=109 http://willperone.net/?view=109 2008-04-10 In other news, Torture Me has attracted over 700 users so far! I'm really excited so many people are playing it. ]]> 2008-04-01 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=108 http://willperone.net/?view=108 2008-04-01 Torture Me has now officially been released. I never thought I would get to this point, but somehow I managed to complete learn Actionscript 3, Flex 2, the Facebook and Kongregate APIs and complete an entire Flash game all in my spare time outside of work. Whew.... time for a break.]]> 2008-03-22 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=107 http://willperone.net/?view=107 2008-03-22 working with XML in Actionscript 3. This tutorial gives examples on how to download, upload, read and manipulate XML in Actionscript code. Hope you enjoy!]]> 2008-03-20 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=106 http://willperone.net/?view=106 2008-03-20 2008-03-04 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=105 http://willperone.net/?view=105 2008-03-04 Torture Me game has finally been accepted into the Facebook application directory! Torture Me gained 130 users in the first day and a whole new list of high scores. Someone actually managed to get over 13 million points. I can't even do that myself in my own game! I plan on releasing an update to the game as well as add compatibility with Kongregate in the very near future. In the meantime you can track my game's valuation on Adonomics.]]> 2008-02-28 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=104 http://willperone.net/?view=104 2008-02-28 Torture Me has eaten up a LOT of my time lately but I can safely say that it is in a stable form now. I've designed this game a little different than conventional games. The game is little more than a physics engine out of the box and relies heavily on user created content and network effects to distribute itself. In essence, Torture Me is sort of like Myspace put inside a physics sim game. I've designed the game with the intent to be a generalized web widget so that anyone anywhere can integrate it into their website/blog/whatever. One of the main tests I used for this design approach was to integrate the game into Facebook. The integration worked quite nicely and Torture Me has now been submitted for approval into the Facebook application directory (still pending as of this post). The game is definitely still a work in progress I am still heavily exploring concepts around games that create an ad hoc social network. Stay tuned to Torture Me and the Torture Me Facebook page to see what outgrowths happen from here.]]> 2008-02-10 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=103 http://willperone.net/?view=103 2008-02-10 ever. I wanted my new game to be integrated into facebook and auto-login when someone in facebook plays the game but also have the ability for non-facebook users to also create accounts and play. I ended up with this system:
  1. A PHP page that facebook displays embeds the SWF game using FBML
  2. The PHP passes FBML userid arguments to the SWF so the game can recognize who's playing it (if set)
  3. Inside the Actionscript 3 code in the SWF, it reads the url parameters (Application.application.parameters) and sets the internal username to that.
  4. The game then posts a URLRequest to another PHP page telling it the login/password
  5. The PHP page makes a mysql request to login or add the account and returns error/success
  6. The Actionscript 3 code reads the error/success code from the PHP script and proceeds accordingly.
Yes that's right; I'm using no less than 4 different languages to accomplish this task. And wouldn't you know, it works flawlessly.]]> 2008-02-03 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=102 http://willperone.net/?view=102 2008-02-03 propplug to connect the ybox2 to the computer and the Propeller Tool software. The software comes with a bunch of examples thank God. The software actually compiles two proprietary languages, Spin (an object oriented language) and Propeller Assembly. The code can load into the processor's RAM or directly onto the EEPROM. There's 32K RAM and 32K ROM and 8 subprocessors (cogs) that can share resources... should make programming it quite interesting. ]]> 2008-02-03 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=101 http://willperone.net/?view=101 2008-02-03 2008-02-01 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=100 http://willperone.net/?view=100 2008-02-01 a tutorial on it so others won't be left scratching their head like I did for days on end. Another interesting caveat I've discovered is with mysql integration in AS3. There is apparently a library called ASSql which is actually very nicely written but suffers from the dreaded network sandbox issue in Flash 9. In Flash 9, you can't access a domain other than the hosted domain without having a security policy file on the remote domain allowing you to access it. That's like one of the most fucked up security decisions I've ever heard of. I ended up getting around this however by creating a PHP script on my domain that accessed the remote domain and pulled down whatever I want. My Flash game only has to request my PHP file now sitting right next to it and the PHP does all the work. This also had the added advantage of a much smaller SWF file because I didn't need to include the ASSql library. Anyway, without further ado, here are the fruits of my labor]]> 2008-02-01 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=99 http://willperone.net/?view=99 2008-02-01 DigiPen Rob gave me one of his kickass YBox 2's. Back in the DP days I was a big electronics and low level programming fan but never did have the time to mess around with them too much from the ridiculous course loads and UC. After buying a PropPlug for the thing and downloading the Propeller Toolkit I was ready for action. This thing takes me back, way back to my old DOS assembly crunching days in high school. The Ybox2 is sort of like a miniature NES without a controller stylishly embedded into an Altoids tin but with a bonus RJ45 jack (can you say NES + networking???) and a mesmerizing multicolor LED. I haven't delved too much into programming on it yet however the toolkit comes with a wealth of example programs to learn from. The only drawbacks I've found thus far is that there is no audio connector although the propeller chip supports it and no infrared receiver for a remote control (Perhaps a Ybox3 is in order?). All in all this device worthy of only the most hardcore technophiles imbued with pure unadulterated 1337n355 nonetheless. I will enjoy.
]]> 2008-01-30 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=98 http://willperone.net/?view=98 2008-01-30 2008-01-18 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=97 http://willperone.net/?view=97 2008-01-18 Disabling browser caching for your Flash app.]]> 2008-01-12 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=96 http://willperone.net/?view=96 2008-01-12 I have not been kidnapped by aliens! The day before I left work for Christmas vacation, I was taken aside by the VP and given a promotion! Yes that's right, I actually get to do stuff other than just straight up programming now! The new position has been incredibly demanding however; I have to make schedules, coordinate with off-site and on-site people, attend lots of meetings and tons of other stuff on top of the whole development side. Even though it's really demanding, I've grown to really like the new position so far because I tend to get bored doing the same thing over and over again (even if it is programming) and this position is anything but that. Today I went to the Gilroy Premium Outlets to buy a suit to celebrate my first week as a manager-developer. This mall was HUGE and it's a Factory Mall so almost everything in all of the stores are discounted way below normal prices. I went to Hugo Boss and got this suit that looks damn hot for $100 off the normal price.

Hell yea.]]> 2007-12-23 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=95 http://willperone.net/?view=95 2007-12-23 H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S
See yall in 2008
- Will]]> 2007-12-23 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=94 http://willperone.net/?view=94 2007-12-23 which has ballooned to over 2mb), there always seems to be someone trying to figure out how to get around it. It had gotten to the point to where I was getting around 10 comment spams a day and I even wrote a webpage to where I could quickly delete them (I had tried having PHP email me whenever a comment came through but it didn't work out so well).

I had strayed away from doing a CAPTCHA system for fear that it would be really complicated for a long time. Today I finally broke down and looked in to writing one and much to my surprise it actually was surprisingly easy. You can see the results of my efforts in my comment boxes now as well as another neat nugget I've added. The name field in the comment box autofills with "Your Name" then when you click on it, it clears for you to type your actual name in. Pretty cool huh? The code for that is a one liner infact: 
<input type="text" name="name" value="Your Name" onfocus="if (!this._haschanged){this.value=''}; this._haschanged=true;">
The code for the CAPTCHA system however is considerably more complex and I've written a tutorial on how to code your own CAPTCHA system. I will be sad to see some of these hillarious comment spams go, but it is for the best.

"divorce attorney divorce california divorce children divorce court divorce free divorce how to divorce how divorce in divorce law divorce laws divorce lawyer divorce lawyers divorce marriage divorce records divorce support divorce texas divorce with divorce divorced divorces" - engisegrend]]> 2007-12-10 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=93 http://willperone.net/?view=93 2007-12-10 Overtime Fitness) and the lonely free weights have just been sitting there in the hall making an unsightly mess.
That's when RockBand comes in. This past weekend I decided to hang out at my friend Jared's place who has the game for Xbox360. Something like 4 hours went by with us all playing this game and I didn't want to stop! The game is maddeningly addicting. I find out that the game with all the instruments is around $170... hmmm that's about the price that the weights cost for the workout gym. Lo and Behold today I manage to get a bunch of people at work into the idea of rocking out together in a cooperative play game (the only game we have right now is Halo 3 which isn't for everyone naturally). It wasn't hard to convince everyone that trading the weights in for RockBand was a most excellent idea. I look up the prices of the weights on Sports Authority's website to find out that the weights are now over $1/lb. The cost of the weights had gone up over 50% in 4 months. Now that's what I call a ROI. So in essence I would be making a profit by selling the weights at a discount! 10 minutes later the Craigslist posting was up.]]> 2007-12-06 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=92 http://willperone.net/?view=92 2007-12-06 FlashDevelop to work with ActionScript 3, I finally began my quest to create my first Flash application. Surprisingly, AS3 is incredibly similar to Java; imports/packages are pretty much the same, classes work the same way and you can even use 'extends'. The main differences that I've noticed so far are that variables and functions are defined a little different:


JavaAS3
int count; var count:int;
private void myFunction(int i) private function myFunction(i:int):void
To draw something on the screen there is this concept of adding and removing children of the display list which takes a little getting used to as well. All in all, it's a very pleasant experience to work with and you get cross-platform functionality for free. In 30 minutes I had my first simple bouncy ball demo up. I'm looking forward to making something very kickass in this in the near future.]]> 2007-12-05 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=91 http://willperone.net/?view=91 2007-12-05 highschool: Doritos. I decided to try em out again.... bad idea. Doritos are now on my Food to Avoid list for j-pouch :(
In other news, I've been learning of the awesomeness that is ActionScript 3 lately (can you say casual games?) as well as picking up some Ruby skills on the side to help a friend out with some Facebook programming. And of course the Italian lessons are still going on every night at dinner. Ahhh so many languages so little time...]]> 2007-11-29 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=90 http://willperone.net/?view=90 2007-11-29
  1. You can create an infinite number of accounts on Reddit
  2. There's no CAPTCHA or other validation system in place when creating an account to prove someone is not a bot.
  3. Although it takes hundreds of upmods to reach the front page on Reddit, it only takes 1 downmod after submission of an article to immediately put it into obscurity
With a system like this is easily exploited. Doing some research, I've discovered that account creation is limited to around 1 new account every 30 minutes per computer (from of the use of some cookies I'm assuming). There's no limit on the number of accounts someone can have as well. Potentially Reddit could allow only 1 account per ip but a whole host of problems would come with that as well from people behind routers and people with dynamic ips.
All one has to do to rake in a ton of money from ads on their site is write a script to register a bunch of users and have them all login and upmod their submission so that it gets high visibility. People will go to the site as long as the title in Reddit is catchy (which is a seperate usability issue entirely).
From this it would be easy to set up a system where a business could provide services to upmod stories to the front page for a price.

Potential solutions would be to
  1. Include a CAPTCHA or other system to make sure people registering on Reddit are human
  2. Provide a system to report submissions and users
  3. Don't allow people to vote on articles without at least following the link
  4. Provide a solution where articles that are immediately downmodded after submission don't disappear from the new list.
In the bigger picture of things, Reddit is a user driver website; the question is how much power should the Reddit Government have over their users vs how much power should the users have to control the content they want to share with each other.

Update: In the time it's taken for me to prepare my notes on this article, Reddit has added a CAPTCHA system which is a big improvement. A business could still foreseeably pay people to create accounts and upmod Reddit submissions while charging the submitter for their service however. This method would be nearly impossible to track down.]]> 2007-11-21 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=89 http://willperone.net/?view=89 2007-11-21 develop a Facebook App. Of course I was quickly cut short when I realized my webhost runs PHP4 and all of the examples used exception handlers (which I later discovered are only supported in PHP5). Googling the net for solutions yielded sparse returns and misinformation. One guy even said you needed some thing called simpleXML44 (which you don't). Nevertheless after a little detective work I figured it out and created a site on how to develop a facebook app in PHP4.]]> 2007-11-16 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=88 http://willperone.net/?view=88 2007-11-16 What the hell sort of company would use a slogan like that, let's brainstorm some ideas...
  • A Census Bureau
  • Gold's Gym
  • An ATM provider
Hmmm let's see if our best friend Google shows anything...
Garbage
Lets try Wikipedia
nothing
Eventually I remember it's actually from a Vitamin company of all things (which would have been like impossible to figure out with internet searching alone).... Lets try google again
Ah yes Flintstones Chewable vitamins....
Wow I guess the Internet is like useless for finding anything before 1995. Furthermore; who in their right mind uses a reference to how many customers they have as their main advertising slogan? The world may never know.]]> 2007-11-12 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=87 http://willperone.net/?view=87 2007-11-12 1 cent a day from AdSense. Internet ads have got to be the worst way to make money ever. I could have made more money easier as a bum with a coin jar on the street which is sad. I've followed all of the SEO and AdSense optimization techniques: including alt tags in images, including proper title, h1 and meta link tags, making sure keywords are peppered throughout the text, putting multiple ads in places people are likely to see them, making the ad color scheme fit in with the website, setting up relevant channels in the AdSense config (I even crossreferenced the channel names with the Google keyword tool to find the most searched terms with the highest competition), etc, etc, blah blah blah.

The problem is that my site gets on average only 80 pageviews a day and many people have an adblocker like AdBlockPlus which integrates right in to FireFox because quite frankly people don't want to see ads. That's right; I'm trying to make money off of something that actually annoys my users (WTH kind of strategy is that?). Ontop of that, programming related topics (I'm guessing) aren't a high revenue ad stream. The best part however is that Google won't even cut you a check until you make $100 from AdSense and since I'm making around $3.65 a year now that will take like 27 years... I wonder if Google will even still be around then to pay me.

My conclusion is that what topic your website is centered around is much more important than anything else including your content (hell you can get your users to make your content if you're smart about it). It has to be original to the point of there being little or no competition and heavily play off pop culture to get a lot of visitors and hence a lot of ad revenue... I should have just created a website around LOLcats (sigh).]]> 2007-11-11 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=86 http://willperone.net/?view=86 2007-11-11 Update: Apparently it pays to call during normal business hours; the weird clicking I heard on the phone line last time (which was I presume from calling another country internally) went away and I got in touch with a specialist in no time which immediately reversed the $39 charge and told me the number to call to remove the payment protection plan. I called the payment protection number and was almost immediately connected to someone who attempted to convince me to keep the $10/month plan but I told her my situation in such a way as to why it didn't make sense for me to have it and she immediately removed it. Cool.]]> 2007-11-11 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=85 http://willperone.net/?view=85 2007-11-11 how to do set up an RSS feed using PHP.]]> 2007-11-07 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=84 http://willperone.net/?view=84 2007-11-07 which you can get online and pay $30 per year (for most businesses... others are up to $100). I was going to use LegalZoom's $99 DBA offer also but after talking on the phone for a while with them realized I didn't need to unless I wanted a 'fictitious name' or business name. I was delightfully surprised how helpful they were on the phone with all my questions and there was no actually wait either. The hardest part of it was finding what state/city code to use for the filing for which City Hall had a giant book at and a printed manual for. Now to get all of my records in order... ugh.]]> 2007-11-01 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=83 http://willperone.net/?view=83 2007-11-01
London Broil
  1. Buy a london broil (top round roast cut). If it's frozen (discouraged) defrost beforehand
  2. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
  3. Beat the london broil with a mallet to tenderize it
  4. Rub seasoned salt, fresh ground pepper, garlic powder and coriander on both sides of the meat then rub with olive oil.
  5. Spray a baking dish with cooking spray, place the london broil on it and put in the oven on the middle rack
  6. Wait 30 minutes, then put the oven on broil high.
  7. Wait 10 minutes, take the london broil out and let it rest for 5 minutes.
  8. Make sure to pour the juices in the pan over the meat when served and cut at a 45 degree angle to the grain of the meat.
  9. Salud!
]]> 2007-10-30 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=82 http://willperone.net/?view=82 2007-10-30 Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytic, I get to see what searches are getting to my webpage. Of course there are the standard programming and Ulcerative Colitis related searches but some searches that are actually getting to my website somehow are just plain weird:
  • "wow my fatcher boght a new computer for me today" (what's even more disturbing is that my site is the 277th search result)
  • balmoral LET (which is a Windows font)
  • watermelon or colitis (not sure what the decision is here)
  • kanji fury (WTH?)
  • www.willpornos.net (this has actually generated several hits on my site... won't they be disappointed)
  • 8359214384105 (what could this number possibly mean?)
]]> 2007-10-30 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=81 http://willperone.net/?view=81 2007-10-30 work lately trying to get the camera to work right in different phones. I've put together a document on what's worked out the best so far here.]]> 2007-10-29 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=80 http://willperone.net/?view=80 2007-10-29 Financeatron fixing the remainder money bug. Upon finally correcting this final longstanding bug I ran the Financeatron to realize that the AI converged to the 'pay debt by highest interest' method. Yes that's right, all of this work I've put into the Financeatron AI was for nothing. The thing converges to the same method everyone already uses to pay off their debt. All I have now is a glorified finance calculator. I can't believe I spent so much time on this thing to come to this outcome :( I'm not exactly sure what to do with the Financeatron from here... should I leave the site up or what? I guess it is useful in it's own right as a standard finance calculator but there are plenty of those on the internet and I'm not sure an average of 1 visitor a day is worth it.]]> 2007-10-25 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=79 http://willperone.net/?view=79 2007-10-25 Financeatron. Now you can click on the payments and see the details of how they break down month by month. This has opened the door on a lot of interesting things to display to the user about their payment plans. Now I just need to find the time to do it.... The program as it stands now outputs the results webpage from a C module that's called from an Ajax request (I did this because it was like 100 times faster than doing it in an interpreted language and even in optimized C code the request STILL takes upwards of 10 seconds to process) but this is proving to be more and more difficult to upkeep over time. Yes, all that html code is outputted from printf statements; suxxor! I may re-architect it before too long but that will also be a painful process :(]]> 2007-10-20 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=78 http://willperone.net/?view=78 2007-10-20 render to texture code. For some reason the 6800 correctly initializes the FBO object but upon querying glCheckFramebufferStatusEXT it returns GL_FRAMEBUFFER_UNSUPPORTED_EXT so I had to add a fallback if it fails to then do the PBuffer approach. Not sure why this is happening yet; the geForce 6800 should most definitely support FBO's.
Update:I wasn't setting the format correctly when I created the FBO texture in glTexImage2D, it needs to be the same format as the screen.]]> 2007-10-16 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=77 http://willperone.net/?view=77 2007-10-16 spline class. It handles CatMullRom, B-Splines, Bezier and Hermite and will do arc length/traversal.]]> 2007-10-12 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=76 http://willperone.net/?view=76 2007-10-12 For no apparent reason, I've decided to put some interactivity in my site... I chose to use javascript this time.
The Result:
An interactive logo in the top left corner that cycles through projectile physics and has grabbable blocks. Just try grabbing a block out of the logo with the mouse, it's hours of fun (at work). When you let go it will follow the normal physics.]]> 2007-10-10 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=75 http://willperone.net/?view=75 2007-10-10 C/C++ -> Graphics tab. Also I realized that I didn't have ways to go to the previous/next blog in the 'view specific blog' mode so I added that.]]> 2007-10-09 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=73 http://willperone.net/?view=73 2007-10-09 a quaternion C++ class I realized that there is a vast difference between having a <div> that contains a white-space:pre; and a <pre> that contains a white-space:pre;. Copy and paste operations on the div approach will forget all of the newlines. In sum, there was no way to copy and paste the code from my website to notepad! I can't believe it took me this long to find this bug :(]]> 2007-10-09 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=72 http://willperone.net/?view=72 2007-10-09 2007-10-05 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=71 http://willperone.net/?view=71 2007-10-05 Technorati Profile.]]> 2007-10-04 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=70 http://willperone.net/?view=70 2007-10-04 In other news, the Sanyo 8300 STILL sucks. It can't handle using the network and bringing up the phonebook at the same time. WTF?]]> 2007-10-03 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=69 http://willperone.net/?view=69 2007-10-03 how to get your current URL in PHP.]]> 2007-10-02 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=68 http://willperone.net/?view=68 2007-10-02 J2ME tips and tricks section. /Still scratching head on this one....]]> 2007-10-02 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=67 http://willperone.net/?view=67 2007-10-02 Some research revealed California civil code 1950.5.
(m) No lease or rental agreement may contain any provision characterizing any security as "nonrefundable."

The civil code also says:
(j), may subject the landlord or the landlord's successors in interest to statutory damages of up to twice the amount of the security, in addition to actual damages. The court may award damages for bad faith whenever the facts warrant that award, regardless of whether the injured party has specifically requested relief. In any action under this section, the landlord or the landlord's successors in interest shall have the burden of proof as to the reasonableness of the amounts claimed or the authority pursuant to this section to demand additional security deposits.

So basically I can sue them for up to twice the amount of the deposit. After presenting this new information, I was told that cleaning fees for the carpet and walls would have been deducted from my deposit if the non refundable cleaning fee wasn't there. I went back to the civil code and found these two seemingly contradicting statements:
(e) The landlord may claim of the security only those amounts as are reasonably necessary for the purposes specified in subdivision (b). The landlord may not assert a claim against the tenant or the security for damages to the premises or any defective conditions that preexisted the tenancy, for ordinary wear and tear or the effects thereof, whether the wear and tear preexisted the tenancy or occurred during the tenancy, or for the cumulative effects of ordinary wear and tear occurring during any one or more tenancies.

(3) The cleaning of the premises upon termination of the tenancy necessary to return the unit to the same level of cleanliness it was in at the inception of the tenancy. The amendments to this paragraph enacted by the act adding this sentence shall apply only to tenancies for which the tenant's right to occupy begins after January 1, 2003.

Tenets shouldn't be responsible for 'normal wear and tear' and damage that was there before place was leased but should be responsible for making the place as clean as it was when they got there. The civil code is kind of vague as to what 'normal wear and tear' is however. I found this site demonstrating some common examples of normal wear and tear including minor marks and nail holes in the wall, faded paint on the walls, moderate dirt on the carpet and moderately dirty mini blinds.

In sum, as a tenet in California you should be able to get your entire deposit back as long as your place is still in decent shape when you leave. I'm not sure if renters are deliberately counting on people not knowing their own rights or are actually ignorant themselves about this. I'm guessing renters have a pretty good idea of the law and are playing off the vagueness of the 'normal wear and tear' clause.

I plan on talking to the landlord again; stay tuned to see what happens!

Update: While doing the final walkthrough with the landlord I was told that I could get the 'nonrefundable' security deposit back if I completely cleaned the entire place to exactly the condition it was in before I got there. They said they had some deal with these cleaners that would do it for $100 and that's where the security deposit went. They then went on to point out all this stupid shit I hadn't cleaned like the inside of the oven, some of the inside of the cabinets, they pointed out some dent in the fridge that was there when I got there but I had forgotten to mark on the initial walkthrough... By this point I figured it was too much of a hassle to sue them over the $100 and left it alone.

Update 2: It's been over a month and I have not received my deposit back. According to the civil code they can take no more than 21 days after termination of the lease [section (g)(1)] to return my deposit. Upon calling them up I was told they were busy and would get back to me. A week passed and no call. I called back and they gave me the same excuse and rushed me off the phone. I called back a 3rd time and told them their 3 weeks were up and that I was tired of waiting and she said the person that does the books would be there that night and would handle it. I think I might still take them to small claims court if this isn't handled in the next 2 days. Don't rent from Catania Regency Apartments :(

Update 3: After pestering them nonstop, they finally sent the deposit back certified mail. Then they deducted the electric bill from it even though I paid it on my end. What a bunch of fucking losers.]]> 2007-09-27 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=66 http://willperone.net/?view=66 2007-09-27 2007-09-25 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=65 http://willperone.net/?view=65 2007-09-25 render to texture page to reflect the new method.]]> 2007-09-24 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=64 http://willperone.net/?view=64 2007-09-24 here. The requirements are that you are haven't had AT&T high speed internet in the past 12 months and that you don't currently have AT&T dialup internet. I signed up for the plan myself and it's been working great although the first bill was actually about $90. On the bill it shows up as $35/month - $25/month service discount. There was also a $35 installation fee that had a $35 waiver credit. Also on the bill is the $50 modem that I was forced to buy with the plan but there was a $50 mail in rebate for it on the package (although you still need to pay $12 in shipping and handeling and $5 in tax). You can sell the modem on craigslist or ebay to repay the tax and shipping/handling. The minimum phone plan (required to purchase the DSL) is advertised as $5.70/month but after taxes will come to around $12/month ontop of the $10/month DSL.
All in all, the actual price comes in at at a bit under $25/month but it still sure beats the hell out of cable internet in price and has 768k download speed.
Apparently there's also way to get DSL without having phone access. It's called 'Dry Loop DSL'. I haven't tried it myself but you can check it out on this page.]]> 2007-09-23 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=63 http://willperone.net/?view=63 2007-09-23 drawing circles and drawing lines. I remember my instructors at the time thought it was impossible to draw a circle or line in a more optimal fashion than Bresenham had originally derived but there are some pretty simple logic steps you can take to blast past that barrier. The big one being the inversion of logic from making a decision every tick to drawing the inverse span for (x) ticks then making a decision.]]> 2007-09-19 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=62 http://willperone.net/?view=62 2007-09-19 loopt, I decided to go on another wacky adventure and see what the minimum amount of code would be to render a 3d model in J2ME. The answer may surprise you!]]> 2007-09-18 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=61 http://willperone.net/?view=61 2007-09-18 Fists of Fury Special to openGL and make it cross platform, I've come across the ridiculous problem of how to render to a texture in openGL. It would appear to be a simple task but the openGL extensions for it aren't supported on most graphics cards so I had to have a wgl fallback which was painful to figure out. I've posted the solution here.]]> 2007-09-10 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=60 http://willperone.net/?view=60 2007-09-10 Fists of Fury Special in SDL/openGL/FMOD. I'm aiming to make it more stable, faster, prettier (using more openGL stuff) and portable to any platform. As of this past weekend I have the intro and menu mostly working (after fixing over 1000 compilation errors and partially converting the C code to C++). There are still some strange problems with promoting SDL surfaces to openGL textures (for displaying the rotating gibs in hardware).]]> 2007-09-07 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=59 http://willperone.net/?view=59 2007-09-07 2007-09-05 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=58 http://willperone.net/?view=58 2007-09-05 Financeatron to reddit today. Not sure if I expect much in terms of visitors since it won't probably be upvoted at all but still an interesting experiment just the same.]]> 2007-09-05 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=57 http://willperone.net/?view=57 2007-09-05 MicroEmulator. It has actual working hot code replacement and I can actually see what line in the code debug messages are coming from! I haven't been able to figure out how to get optional JSR packages to work in it though :( It was a bit strange to set up in Eclipse but it's all documented on their site thankfully.]]> 2007-08-30 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=56 http://willperone.net/?view=56 2007-08-30 how to get phone contacts using JSR75 to accompany the information I had on getting WTK based emulators to show PIM contacts. I also cleaned up the main page by defining viewing entry offsets (see the new 'older entries' link at the bottom).]]> 2007-08-22 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=55 http://willperone.net/?view=55 2007-08-22 here is where you should go.]]> 2007-08-17 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=54 http://willperone.net/?view=54 2007-08-17 2007-08-08 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=53 http://willperone.net/?view=53 2007-08-08 Fists of Fury Special Page]]> 2007-08-01 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=52 http://willperone.net/?view=52 2007-08-01 2007-07-30 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=51 http://willperone.net/?view=51 2007-07-30 2007-07-24 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=50 http://willperone.net/?view=50 2007-07-24 switch statements vs if-else chains today.]]> 2007-07-24 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=49 http://willperone.net/?view=49 2007-07-24 colitis page again with more information and prettied it up a bit. I've also put a faster method in place to remove spammers from comment posts. I am greatly saddened that spammers are posting comments on my colitis page meant to help fellow sufferers. That's pretty damn low.]]> 2007-07-16 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=48 http://willperone.net/?view=48 2007-07-16 added a page on dealing with the error.]]> 2007-07-14 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=46 http://willperone.net/?view=46 2007-07-14 my experiences with ulcerative colitis. I've been wanting to do this for quite some time now to share what worked and didn't work for me. It's my hope that others benefit from this information.]]> 2007-07-11 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=45 http://willperone.net/?view=45 2007-07-11 2007-07-06 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=44 http://willperone.net/?view=44 2007-07-06 how to do fast image scaling in J2ME using Bresenham's formula.]]> 2007-06-25 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=43 http://willperone.net/?view=43 2007-06-25 2007-06-24 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=42 http://willperone.net/?view=42 2007-06-24 Financeatron a bit. I've been considering starting a professional Reiki practice lately but things have been so busy that it's hard to find the time. There have been so many requests to me though for reiki and especially reiki training that I may not be able to put it off for much longer.]]> 2007-06-11 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=37 http://willperone.net/?view=37 2007-06-11 here ]]> 2007-06-10 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=36 http://willperone.net/?view=36 2007-06-10 2007-06-10 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=35 http://willperone.net/?view=35 2007-06-10 Financeatron to do some calculations so I've added a new QuickPay tab for figuring out short term payment things. I've also converted my news clips to use a DB so I can make it more like a blog in the future.]]> 2007-05-31 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=34 http://willperone.net/?view=34 2007-05-31 new page on adding PIM contacts to get JSR75 to work on the WTK/sprint emulator since it's a little akward. ]]> 2007-05-30 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=33 http://willperone.net/?view=33 2007-05-30 2007-05-15 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=32 http://willperone.net/?view=32 2007-05-15 here.]]> 2007-05-11 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=31 http://willperone.net/?view=31 2007-05-11 Financeatron. The Financeatron now has it's very own domain too!]]> 2007-05-03 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=30 http://willperone.net/?view=30 2007-05-03 J2ME Event Threaded Timer Task that I've corrected. I've also cleaned up the site scheme a bit. ]]> 2007-04-20 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=29 http://willperone.net/?view=29 2007-04-20 2007-04-18 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=28 http://willperone.net/?view=28 2007-04-18 get J2ME's TimerTask to work with the Event Thread. I've also added a javascript tip.]]> 2007-04-10 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=27 http://willperone.net/?view=27 2007-04-10 The Debt Mimimum Payoff Plan Calculator. I originally had the idea back in mid march to come up with a debt payment plan calculator that would use AI to solve the best method to pay it off but I decided to keep it secret until now. It was really fun learning Ajax, PHP, mySQL and CGI to put together an idea like this that I think most people could benefit from using. Only time will tell on how popular it will become.]]> 2007-03-26 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=26 http://willperone.net/?view=26 2007-03-26 Loopt. It seems totally awesome so far; I'm really looking forward to working with this company.]]> 2007-03-13 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=25 http://willperone.net/?view=25 2007-03-13 here.]]> 2007-03-12 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=24 http://willperone.net/?view=24 2007-03-12 Loopt as a mobile engineer. I think I'm gonna take a week or two off inbetween jobs though. Maybe I'll actually be able to work on Technopoly or something in that time.]]> 2007-03-04 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=23 http://willperone.net/?view=23 2007-03-04 2007-03-02 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=22 http://willperone.net/?view=22 2007-03-02 finally got myself a dedicated web host through IX webhosting. This is the official launch of willperone.net! This is also the official launch (since I actually have enough space for this now) of the Official Shrine to Fists of Fury Special page]]> 2007-02-06 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=21 http://willperone.net/?view=21 2007-02-06 Glu Mobile, The Programming Pad is back up! The site is going to go through a much needed overhaul in the upcoming months as well as reviving Technopoly.]]> 2005-07-17 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=20 http://willperone.net/?view=20 2005-07-17 2005-07-04 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=19 http://willperone.net/?view=19 2005-07-04 2005-06-21 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=18 http://willperone.net/?view=18 2005-06-21 2005-06-20 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=17 http://willperone.net/?view=17 2005-06-20 2005-06-17 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=16 http://willperone.net/?view=16 2005-06-17 2005-06-13 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=15 http://willperone.net/?view=15 2005-06-13 2005-06-10 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=14 http://willperone.net/?view=14 2005-06-10 2005-06-08 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=13 http://willperone.net/?view=13 2005-06-08 2005-06-06 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=12 http://willperone.net/?view=12 2005-06-06 2005-05-25 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=11 http://willperone.net/?view=11 2005-05-25 2005-05-24 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=10 http://willperone.net/?view=10 2005-05-24 2005-05-23 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=9 http://willperone.net/?view=9 2005-05-23 2005-05-22 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=8 http://willperone.net/?view=8 2005-05-22 2004-07-29 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=7 http://willperone.net/?view=7 2004-07-29 winsock client/server project to my project listing page. Added a page in the Code Tips section on how to obtain the CPU Speed.]]> 2004-07-25 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=6 http://willperone.net/?view=6 2004-07-25 code utilities. I also added some new pages to my Code Tips section.]]> 2004-07-21 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=5 http://willperone.net/?view=5 2004-07-21 2004-07-14 Will Perone http://willperone.net/?view=4 http://willperone.net/?view=4 2004-07-14