Category Archives: Technology

2025 attempt to buy us open tickets

Posted on by
Reply

Last year was the first year it was hard to buy US Open tickets. In 2023 and earlier, I would buy them after work during the American Presale, no problem. Ok fine, it’s going to be like Comic-Con where you have to buy them the second they become available. Here’s how that went.

Tuesday – American Express Presale

Sales start at 9am. I was on the site before that. Everyone on the site gets a random number. Mine was 3200. The number went down slowly to about 2200 (over about 40 minutes) and then flew down to zero. When I got in, I was able to see Grounds Passes for the day I wanted. I attempted to put it in my cart and it said they were no longer available. I repeated this a few times and then it stopped saying available at all.

I then went to buy my Ashe ticket for a different day. I made the mistake of using a different browser tab so back in the queue. (You can’t use multiple devices or multiple tabs.) It took less time to get to the front of the queue this time and I was a able to get a ticket. A big change this year is they just tell you the row number and not the seat number. Which is annoying because I want to be within a few seats of the aisle and not some random place in the row. After I paid, I got my actual seat number which turns out to be an aisle.

I paid with my american express card and was not prompted for a one time pass code texted to my cell. (This is important; remember this)

Friday – Public sale

I know they don’t release all the tickets during the presale so I tried again. I was on the Ticketmaster site before 9am. This time, I got number 19 in queue. Awesome. There were plenty of grounds passes for the day I wanted. (And plenty of resellers charging double price.) I put three official tickets in my card for myself and my friends. Great. I didn’t get that far on Tuesday.

I then went to pay. Where I get prompted for a one time PIN that “was texted to me.” It was not. I tried clicking resend a few times. No text. Unfortunately I didn’t have another credit card with me. Then my session timed out. I tried again (at 9:15am) and all the non-resale grounds passes were gone.

The future

The US Open did release more grounds passes closer to the time last year. But you have to keep checking to see when which is annoying. Also last year, they didn’t sell grounds passes in person. You have to buy them online.

Free Copilot.. Which IDEs shall I use

Posted on by
Reply

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced free GitLab Copilot. You get 2000 autocompletes a month and 50 chat messages. The idea is clearly that you’ll start relying on it and then pay.

I installed and configured in both VS Code and IntelliJ. Setup was easy. I had to authorize the IDE by entering a code on github.com that the IDE gave me. It also gave me the link to enter it so pretty easy.

I also installed it on PyCharm and quickly uninstalled it. Copilot was being too helpful and I need to practice more typing the idioms as I get better at Python. (This is my fifth time learning Python. Every time I get decent at it, I don’t use it for a long time and forget. Maybe this time it’ll take!)

I do use AI periodically to ask how to improve the Python code I write (at home on personal stuff). But I can do that outside my IDE.

I like that Microsoft is doing this. They’ve had a free trial of CoPilot for a long time, but that is time limited. I like that this one is usage limited. So if you don’t use it much, you have it when you need it and still free.

todoist and deadlines at long last

Posted on by
Reply

I switched from Toodledo to Todoist as my to do list maybe a year or two ago. I found Todoist better for entering data quickly and also for my actually getting tasks done. Which is the number one attribute I care about in a to do list. There was one feature that was missing from Todoist that I really wanted – having a separate date for when I want something to appear on my list vs when it is actually due.

As a workaround, I would put the actual due date in the first line of the description and use “due date” as when I wanted to start work. Less than ideal.

Todoist recently added deadlines an an experimental feature. Kind of like a beta. I’ve been using it since and am happy with it. How it works

  • The original date field is the date you want to start/have it appear in the to do list.
  • There is a new deadline field.
  • Once you hit the start date, you see the number of days until the deadline right below it. Also, tasks with due date appear near the top of the list, just like prioritized items.
  • If the deadline passes, you see how many days overdue it is.

The only thing I still want is the ability to add filters to search based on date. Todoist has this on their “to do” list.