James Hollingshead

2011-12-09T17:02:00.000-05:00

Ebook Pricing

This started off as a bit of a mini rant on twitter the other day, but I thought it deserved to be fleshed out a bit as well as updated since some other information came to my attention this afternoon.

I love my Nook and take it pretty much everywhere. I consider it a great way to carry not only a book or two to read for pleasure but also a way to carry and access my programming books when I’m not near my bookshelf.

My major complaint is how much the ebooks cost in comparison to their paper counterparts. Sure, they knock a couple of dollars off of the price, but for books that cost $20-40, that’s really not much of a savings.

This isn’t just a whine on my part. Logically, ebooks should be cheaper. Think about it – they require no paper, no shelf space, no transportation costs (other than an internet connection) and can be replicated essentially forever (or at least until a publisher’s claim to the book ends and it reverts to the author)

I’m not complaining that programming and technology books are expensive. Given the amount of work that has to go into them, the limited market, and limited shelf life of most technologies (unless we’re talking about something like the K&R C book), they have to be relatively pricy in order to make a profit. I understand and accept that. We all need to make a living.

What I’m complaining about is the price difference, or rather almost lack of one, between the traditional paper books and the matching ebook. In some cases, as @jbehren pointed out, sometimes the ebook can cost more than the paper one (which is ridiculous unless, perhaps, you are paying to get a copy before the paper book even hits shelves and you just can’t wait).

The question, then, is what is a reasonable price for an ebook as compared to the paper one? Of course, the publishers would claim that their current prices are reasonable, but I disagree. Taking into account the savings caused by the lack of materials and associated costs, I’d say probably about half the price of a paper book.

Books are fairly pricy to write, but most of the cost is in the actual manufacture, shipping and storage. At half the cost of the dead tree edition, there should be enough money to still make a decent profit on the endeavor.

The half price range was sort of my gut feeling for a while, but today it was more or less confirmed by O’Reilly. For people that have an account at oreilly.com, all of their ebooks are buy one, get one free with coupon code (just look in your account under the heading Membersip).

Additionally, they will sell you an electronic copy of most of their books (bundled in multiple formats, not just PDF) for $5 if you register the paper version with them. It only applies to O’Reilly and MS Press titles so I can’t get epub copies of my Pragmatic Programmers books, but it’s a great start. (For the record, I got the PDF version of the Programming Ruby book cheaply when I bought the paper version during the Pragmatic Programmers special a while back, but PDFs don’t always scale well on smaller e-readers so availability in a variety of formats is a great plus).

I cheered when I saw the $5 electronic copy “upgrade” option, because, to me, that’s sort of the sweet spot for that service. I would gladly pay an extra $5 to have lifetime access to an ebook version of programming books that I own. In fact, I spent some time today registering my O’Reilly books so I can buy the epub copies later.

I don’t know if this is a limited time offer or one which they always have, but it is sort of telling as far as book pricing goes. It’s also something well worth taking advantage of.

Current mood: tired

Current music: Smashing Pumpkins – Cherub Rock

2011-10-30T23:34:00.000-05:00

Happy Anniversary

2011-10-14T10:36:00.002-05:00

Happy Birthday

I love you

2011-10-08T21:20:00.003-05:00

When To Say No.

A lot of people that I’ve known, including clients and a previous boss, have been under the impression that we as developers (or sysadmins, or whatever else) are to do what the client (internal or external) wants. Period. They think that this is the reason why we are employed. This isn’t really true.

My old boss’s argument was that we were only a cost center and not the ones generating the revenue. This is an extremely short sighted view to take.

Our job, is to give the client what they NEED in order to do their job and for their company (and ours) to make money. There is a very large difference.

One thing we have to ask ourselves on virtually every feature of a program and even on every project is “why?”

Why are we doing this?

Does it fulfill a business need?

Does it make the company money?

Does it save the company money?

Does it make the life of people at the business easier so that they can do one of the above more effectively?

If it doesn’t fill some need, then why are we doing it? Most of the developers that I know don’t want to work on a system that nobody is really going to use, and adding features that make no sense only increases the chance of bugs in the software as well as increases the development time.

For example, say a client commissions a piece of software and one of the features, after all is said and done costs $10,000, will the value that they derive from that feature be greater than the cost? If the answer is no, then why (other than the $10,000 going into your company’s bank account) would you do it? Sure, you can keep your mouth shut and pocket the check, but chances are that the reputation may well catch up with you down the road.

Projects that come in on time and under budget tend to get you more projects. Projects that overrun on the budget and/or time don’t.

The problem is in convincing the client that they don’t need the feature (which I generally call “kitchen sink features” and a lot of people call gold plating). Sometimes the client doesn’t want to let go of a feature because they have a checklist that they want to fulfill for bragging rights/marketing material. Sometimes it’s because they don’t want to let go of *anything* and sometimes there’s some other reason.

If it turns out that you were wrong about them not needing the feature, then drop the argument and build the feature. If, however, you can deliver a better product (less bug prone, easier to maintain, etc) and do it faster without an unneeded feature, then you may want to make a business case for doing exactly that.

I’ll admit that it’s extremely difficult to make a business case against an emotional response (in this case, the desire for more more more), but it can be done.

I had a discussion with Jim Holmes on this topic at Stir Trek back in May and he had an interesting way to take care of the issue. In fact, I approve of it so wholeheartedly that it earns my Sneaky Evil Bastard Award.

He had a client that wanted far more functionality than could be delivered in the time and budget that was allocated to the project and, predictably, the client didn’t want to let go of any functionality, claiming it was all equally important.

Jim’s solution was to target one of the parts he knew they REALLY wanted as being impossible to complete given the resources since everything was equally important. Magically, the client changed their minds and decided that the unimportant functionality wasn’t vital after all, and they were able to finish the project within a reasonable time frame.

It’s funny how that works. =]

Failed projects are a bad thing. So are projects that nobody really uses. Don’t cave in to the pressure. Do the right thing when you can and work to the best of your ability. This isn’t a one-sided deal. Every piece of software involves a partnership between the craftsmen and the owners and that requires give and take from both sides. If you approach it that way, you frequently get better results.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Current Music: Jimmy Eat World – The Middle

2011-04-03T13:31:00.004-05:00

Restaurant Review: Rusty’s Wharf

It always seems that the really fun discoveries are made by chance. That is certainly the case this time.

While in Pataskala for some personal business, I saw a little plaza across the street (60 Oak Meadow Drive), and Karyl and I decided to put off our plans for dinner to check it out as neither of us had really noticed the place before.

I’m glad I did, because when I pulled into the parking lot, I spotted a sign that displayed the words “Fish & Chips” rather prominently. For those of you who know me, you know that I’m a big fan of those words and have been searching for a good fish and chips place in the area (I can’t help it. I miss the beach and haven’t been able to go there in ages).

Thankfully, my girlfriend totally agrees with my fish and chips addiction (and my seafood addiction in general, being another beach person), so we decided to have dinner there instead of our previous plans.

We weren’t disappointed at all.

Upon opening the door, we were greeted with the wonderful aroma of cooking seafood (not the smell of grease that so many places have). The décor was straight out of a North Carolina restaurant, but the thing that first caught my attention was the fact that there was a bottle of malt vinegar at each table. Score!

Even at just before 5:00pm on a Saturday, the place was pretty busy, but not so busy that it was excessively noisy or crowded. The tables were about half full and there was a steady stream of people and families coming in to get orders to go.

The staff was very nice, the menu, which is available on their website, was full of beach-side staples (fish and chips, clams, chowder, and the like as well as chicken for those who are less seafood inclined) and the prices were almost fast food-like. Karyl’s basket combo (which is a basket of seafood, fries and two hush puppies, a side, and a medium drink) was $6.50 and mine with an extra side of clams was $9.00.

After ordering, we got our drinks and found a seat to chat and wait until the food was brought out. A few minutes later, the baskets were brought out and we were in shock – the food not only looked amazing, there was a small mountain of food in our baskets. Below is a photo of my basket (cod and chips, with an extra piece of cod as my side and an extra side of clams):

The cod was nearly perfect. It was light and flaky instead of oily like so many places make it, the hush puppies were crispy outside and the consistency of good bread inside with a sweet cornbread flavor, the chips were above par, and the clams were very lightly spiced and tasted as though the batter were at least partially cornmeal based.

I can’t tell you how their desserts are because neither of us had room for it after the mountain of food.

Just as we were finishing up, one of the ladies who works there came up to ask us if we needed anything. Our response was that we didn’t (We honestly couldn’t have even considered anything else), but we did have a few questions. Among other things, I was wondering if this was a chain I had never heard of or a one of a kind restaurant as they had several hallmarks of a chain – customized floor mats, gift cards, etc.

It turns out that it was not a chain, but was, in fact a family owned restaurant. The very nice lady that we were talking to was the owner along with her son and it seems that her husband, a general contractor, had done the build out for the space (having done a little carpentry with my father as a kid, I can say that the man did himself proud on that space. It was very well done).

What’s more, the restaurant has only been open since November though she has, in her words, been doing this for years and almost all of its business has been due to word of mouth. With a following that makes it look like it’s been there a couple of years at least, this is no small feat and is, in all honesty, a testament to the quality of the food and the service.

During our conversation, it also came out that they’re hoping to eventually open a second location (possibly in Gahanna) if things continue to go well. We can only hope that this happens and that the second location is as good as the original.

If you’re in the mood for good seaside food a very short drive from the Polaris/Westerville area (and most of the rest of Columbus, honestly), I can’t recommend Rusty’s Wharf enough. Give it a try. You won’t regret it.

Current mood – calm

Current music – Bruce Hornsby – Every Little Kiss

2011-04-01T21:51:00.002-05:00

Product Review: Toptech 35 LED Video Light

While looking for something camera-related on Google’s marketplace, I ran into a piece of camera equipment that I had to add to my eBay watch list.

It was a 35 LED continuous light with a hot shoe mount. It also came with an adapter that lets you attach it to the tripod mount of your camera (my Pentax Optio in this case). It’s extremely lightweight and powered by 2 AA batteries.

The one I first ran into was about $48 with free shipping, but poking around on eBay some more, I found the exact same model of light for $24 shipped, so I went ahead and got it.

I ordered the light a week or so ago and it came in today. Me being me, I spent some time playing with it around the house to get a feel for it and I have to say that I’m quite happy with it and want to get a second one (and possibly a third in order to modify it to use filters).

The light itself is about 3.5 inches by 2 inches, so it’s extremely portable. In fact, due to its size and the way that it’s made, there are actually three ways that you can use it.

It can be used with the included camera mount or on placed in the hot shoe (provided your camera has one). This works quite well for video and fairly well for photos. The downside is that you only have so much range of motion with the length of the bar.
It can be used in your free hand. This doesn’t tend to work as well for video but works much better for photos as you have a much larger range of motion so you can light your subject from pretty much any angle you can manage to position your hands in.
Due to the way that the camera mount is made, the hot shoe to tripod thread portion can be removed and the light can be mounted directly on a tripod (in my case a flexible mini tripod). This makes it absolutely amazing for photos where you are shooting a fixed object as you can choose the range and position of the light as well as the camera and have the two not be limited by the length of the bar or your arms.

With 35 LEDs, it is extremely bright. Make sure not to have it pointing toward you when you turn it on. Otherwise, you will be seeing large light spots for a while. I found this out by accidentally bumping the switch while looking the unit over.

It works well for providing extra light for videos indoors (and I would assume outside at night since I have not had a chance to test it in that setting yet) as well as for photos without having the washed out colors that using a flash typically produces.

As a set of example shots, I set up a blue background on my desk and took a few shots during the day and tonight after the sun went down. I chose a can of Ski as my subject since pretty much everyone is familiar with the size, shape, etc of a soda can (and if I am going to use a can of soda, I might as well pimp the beverage of my hometown).

All of the above photos were taken at a range of about 2-3 feet with no post production for color correction, etc. The only alterations at all were cropping and resizing in order to be more web friendly as the original photos also contain portions of my desk, are 3264x2448, and weigh in at 3-4MB per photo.

First, let’s look at the day shots.

Daytime shot, no lighting, no flash:

Daytime shot, flash:

Daytime shot, camera mounted LED light:

Not as bright as the flash, but the colors are far less washed out. Also keep in mind that this photo was taken with the light mounted slightly to the side of the camera which, in my opinion, is not optimal for still photography.

The night shots were taken in the same place. This room has a single overhead light (one bulb) on in the shots.

Room lighting, no LED, no flash:

Room lighting, flash:

Room lighting, camera mounted LED light:

Again, not as “crisp” as the flash, but much warmer

And a few with the room lighting turned off so there is practically zero light other than the LED unit for the sake of showing how it does in very low light. (This is why the photos appear somewhat dark)

LED camera mounted:

LED hand held from the left:

LED hand held from above:

I realize that some people prefer the hard, crisp nature of using a flash, but I really do prefer the more natural colors provided by a continuous lighting source. The really great thing, though, is that most flashes have a pretty limited range while this light illuminates pretty well to 12+ feet and works for video as well.

They make a larger 126 LED version as well that I plan to get a few of later when I get a more powerful camera. The reason I want more than one is that I have plans to make a portable light rig for outdoor photo shoots.

Current mood - happy

Current music - Van Halen - Dance the Night Away

2011-03-31T00:32:00.000-05:00

I’m not dead

Honestly. I’m still somewhat alive. It has, however, been a long winter.

There just hasn’t been a lot of time for blogging. On top of writing code and interviewing, this winter has been a series of injuries (mostly weather related) and illnesses for me and Karyl as well as dealing with the standard stuff around the house.

The last time I can think of that we spent any real time out just relaxing was the day we had lunch with Jeremiah to wish him well before he moved and that was at the end of January.

I’ve been that busy. We both have been, really. To give you an idea of the level of insanity, K’s parents live just down the road and we almost never get a chance to see them.

I haven’t really even had much of a chance to go out and wander around snapping photos (hey, it relaxes me). Most of the things on Flickr since the end of November have been of things in/around the house, photos of a CONDG meeting or were taken while we were running errands.

I actually posted some photos from my first digital camera earlier this month because I haven’t been able to take anything new.

One of the many downsides to being as busy as I have been is that I don’t exactly feel motivated to write anything of any real length. I’ve been posting on twitter, but that’s about it. Every time I’ve had an idea for a blog post, I’ve gotten bogged down with other things and then lost the inspiration to write, or, if I did write, it felt too forced to post.

There have been a number of times when we’ve decided that we should try to get someone to pay us to do a study on human hibernation, but we didn’t think anyone would go for that. Besides which, if you consider what going to the bathroom after waking up is like, I can only imagine how bad it would be after sleeping for months on end.

Current mood - Tired (hey, it’s almost 1:30am)

Current music - Fleetwood Mac – Temporary One

2010-10-31T06:13:00.002-05:00

Happy anniversary

I love you very much

2010-10-14T00:02:00.001-05:00

Happy Birthday

2010-10-09T22:36:00.003-05:00

I don’t mind being wrong.

A few months ago, I was gifted with a couple of free one-month subscription cards to TekPub, an online learning site. For a while, I basically ignored them because I was busy with moving, studying, playing with code, etc. I’ll even admit that the idea seemed a little silly to me – sitting watching someone else code on a recorded video.

Since they expire in a couple of months, I finally got around to trying one of them.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was wrong for ignoring them until now. It’s a good resource. In fact, at times it feels a little bit like being back in college and being walked though some of the things that I’ve been trying to get a handle on.

The videos are actually, from what I’ve seen so far, rather high quality from an educational standpoint.

I started out with the Linq videos since that was one of the many things that I’ve been trying to pick up lately. To be honest, it felt like I was writing backward, drug addled SQL statements in the beginning (using the SQL-like syntax). Add to that the fact that the method syntax made no sense to me, and it ended up being like pulling teeth.

Seeing someone use the method syntax instead of trying to muddle through it myself made it a lot more understandable. I’m not a master at it now by any stretch, but I can at least work my way through it, which is a major improvement. Mastery, after all, will come with use.

The “This is what it looks like. This is what it means. This is what it does. This is how it works, and this is what happens if we change it” approach cleared up a lot of things for me on the subject. Also made me miss a couple of my favorite profs a bit =]

That alone made it worth taking the time to register and check it out.

Now I find that I prefer the method syntax for the most part because it’s much less repetitive and, once you get used to it, fairly easy to read. It also has the advantage of being “new” to my mind, so my brain doesn’t try to look at it like SQL code and make me second guess myself.

I don’t think I’ll be picking up the $200 annual subscription just yet, but then I still have another month after this one, so that may change. I can, however, see myself picking up additional months as they have more topics that interest me.

I don’t mind being wrong as long as I can recover and learn from it.

Current mood – tired
Current music – Shades Apart – Valentine

2010-09-11T22:52:00.008-05:00

Equal Rights

Tonight, something that I believe strongly in came out in conversation. It started with Jim Holmes tweeting regarding an article written about another developer that I follow and have chatted with in the past:

“Disagree with Women-Only anything in IT. Why put up more walls? #fail RT @RWW Women-Only Programming Classes http://rww.to/aU9kme”

I happen to agree strongly with this, and said so. One of the devs that follows me, however, was of a different opinion and tried to justify the opinion, only to be shot down not only by Jim, but by me and even by my girlfriend, Karyl.

He went through a number of arguments, trying very hard to find something, anything, that would validate his claim and basically ignored anything that was used to counter him. Some of them, and my more lengthy responses (which, naturally, would not fit on twitter) are here.

“In this instance, I can understand it. The men are the main deterrent to potential female programmers. Plus, then they can focus on the material rather than deflecting awkward advances the whole time.”

I disagree. The deterrent to potential female programmers are the potential female programmers themselves. Women are not the only people that get hit on in college or while trying to learn or work. The number of classes that I was in where female classmates were trying to get me to go out on dates with them was rather high and I still managed to do all of my work. Besides which, most of the women in my CS classes (with a few exceptions) were under the impression that anyone who spoke to them was trying to hit on them and that really wasn’t the case.

From my personal experience, the women in the other engineering disciplines tended to be more driven than the ones in CS and were a lot more fun. There were more girls that dropped out of the CS program because it wasn’t “fun” or it was “hard” than because people were hitting on them (In fact, I can’t think of any of the girls I knew in those classes that stopped doing it for that reason).

“So, you're saying you don't think women should be allowed to have male-free anything?”

Are men allowed to have men only anything? No? Then there’s your answer. I believe in Equal rights. We are not getting into this “some people are more equal than others” mindset. That is a crutch and causes people to strive less if you constantly tell them “Oh, that’s okay. You’re a [x], we’ll lower the bar for you.”

Screw that. I want a professional in *any* profession to be held to the same standards as any other professional in that profession regardless of gender, skin color, or any of the rest of it.

To which I got the response of asking me how many men I’ve known who have been raped.

Bad question. And this made me very glad he wasn’t in the same room with me. I have good impulse control, but rape is not a woman only issue and it is not something I take lightly (nor is abuse in general).

For the record, I’ve known two that I can think of. Men who are raped undergo the added stigma of nobody believing them because, of course, rape can’t happen to men. Ask Karyl about her friend who was raped and was accused of being the one who did it instead. It has literally ruined his life.

Add to this the fact that many domestic abuse shelters will not accept men (who can be, and more often than you would believe, are victims of domestic abuse) and you start to see why this is a hot button topic for me.

Rape is not funny. Rape is not something that should be used as an argument against equal rights. Rape is also not just something that happens to women. I’ve known women who have been molested and raped as well and I don’t find it funny from either end. In fact, the woman that I loved more than anything else in this world was raped so I think I have some insight into how absolutely fucking horrible it can be (no pun intended and strong language more than justified).

“I've never been in a situation where I felt uncomfortable because the group was dominated by women.”

I have. It was not really fun. I’ll tell you something else – that group of women was more openly sexist and offensive than I’ve ever seen a group of guys be around a woman.

I’m not excusing guys who try to coerce women into doing things against their will. That sort of thing is, in my opinion, inexcusable, but it is not limited to guys. It’s not excusable from anyone, male or female (and, trust me, it happens with both).

Jim, the other voice of sanity, stepped in stating that he didn’t buy the attitude that all male programmers did was make passes at female programmers (and I agree).

This prompted a rather predictable response by our new “friend”:

“I'm not saying we do. All I'm saying is that if that FEAR is keeping one woman out, and the fem-only class lets her in, its a win”

No. What is keeping that person out is their own fear, not reality. If you are uncomfortable learning around men, how will you feel when you get out into the real world and work on development teams which, nine times out of ten, contain men as well as potentially other women?

“I theorize that by becoming exceptional in their trade, the unease when dealing with men is lessened due to being capable devs”

You become exceptional through practice and work. That involves working with and around other people, including men. You do the work and learn from it. You also learn from the people around you. That’s how you get better at anything (not just software development).

“By that logic, a group of women is not capable of creating great programs?”

No, by that logic, people who are afraid and never strive are not capable of creating great things. Letting yourself be afraid of your very surroundings and letting that fear control you means that you will never do great things and, in fact, may not do anything at all.

Greatness is accomplished by carrying on in spite of your fears (or sometimes even because of them). Giving up and going home because they let the boogey men in their head control them never really got anyone anything.

Am I afraid sometimes? You better believe it. However, I do my best to work through it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But I’ll tell you that it’s better than letting what *might* happen rule my life.

You’ve got to try for yourself. Nobody else is going to do it for you, and even if they did, it wouldn’t mean nearly as much to you as it would if it was your own striving that got you there. Others can, and hopefully will, help you along your way, but you have to keep striving and push yourself to find your true boundaries. Then you have to work to break those boundaries.

I went on to explain why I have some of the views that I do – the fact that I’ve known women who were great and men who sucked (and the other way around), that I’ve taught and trained with martial artists of both sexes with various skills and skill levels, that I’ve known victims of domestic violence (both male and female) and that I don’t subscribe to the mindset of “men are evil and scary and need to go away” because that cheapens everyone’s accomplishments.

“My experience is that I'm an arrogant asshole, and I understand why a woman (or man) wouldn't want to be in a class with me.”

Finally something we can agree on. However, that’s a problem with you and not a problem with all men. All men aren’t like you (and for that I’m thankful).

In all honesty, folks, I don’t care if you’re a man or a woman. I don’t even care if you’re green and furry. I believe in equal rights, but that means equal responsibilities as well. If you want to bridge the [gender, racial, whatever] gap, stop using that thing as a crutch and strive. *That’s* the way to give people positive role models. Role models are created out of overcoming adversity.

You can’t create positive role models out of people that you let have an easier time than everyone else. Greatness is taken and achieved, not given and people need to realize that. It requires striving, not going easy on someone because they’re somehow different (whether real or only perceived). That only perpetuates the “I can’t do it because…” mentality.

"Freedom is something that you need to actively acquire. It’s not something that’s given with no strings attached. To be free means to take responsibility, and to prepare yourself for what’s to come."
- Charles Beams, "Eureka Seven"

The same is true of equality. In fact, equality and freedom are often very close to one another.

Don't beg for things. Do it yourself or else you won't get anything.

Current mood: grumpy
Current music: Eve 6 – Inside Out

2010-07-23T20:32:00.003-05:00

Customer Service FAILURE

Please pardon me. I apologize, in advance, for any and all profanities which appear in this entry. Believe me, they are well and truly deserved.

A while back, the blower on the heating and air conditioning for my car went out. As I like to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer (not to mention being able to melt the frost and ice off of my windshield), I consider getting it fixed to be of at least moderate importance. I had already tried a couple of things, but to no avail, so I was quite happy when Karyl’s father was able to diagnose the problem.

Her father is a pretty nice guy and an industrial mechanic. Thankfully, he’s also pretty good with cars, which are not exactly my strong suit. I can do a fair bit preventative maintenance and fix some problems (largely through the experience of having done them before with my own father), but a mechanic I’m not.

He even suggested a semi-local auto salvage yard where I could get the part pretty cheaply. He’d used them multiple times in the past and was generally pretty happy with the service, but hadn’t been there in a while.

Oh what a difference a little time makes.

Marshall’s Auto Parts, located in Circleville is indeed cheap. The materials cost of my part was a whopping $10. That, however, is where the happy portion of this story comes to a complete halt (at least until, I hope, we replace the heating and AC control unit so that it works properly).

The service was TERRIBLE.

They have a website where you can make sure they have the part in stock (which is kind of nice). Her father suggested I do what he had done in the past – go down, order the part, and then come back after it had been pulled. He even said we might be able to call ahead and order it before we left for there since they take credit cards.

The children at this business, however, are special and don’t like to play that way now.

I called and tried to order the part only to be informed that you have to order in person because it is “first come, first serve”. Dude, I’m offering to pay you in advance, so I *would* be first come. Take my money and give me my part.

No. And we’ve stopped pulling parts for the day. Try back next week. (It was over 2 hours until they closed for the day).

So I headed over early this afternoon, thinking that it wouldn’t be too busy in the middle of the day on a weekday. Wrong again.

Okay, most places like this are still pretty quick, so I wasn’t horribly concerned. (This is where you can openly call me an idiot. I know I did afterward.)

I finally get to order my part and get told there are 8 people in front of me, so I asked if it was alright if I left to get a couple of other things done while the part was in queue to be pulled.

No. You can’t leave. If you’re gone when we finally get to your part, and we ask if you’re there, we’ll throw your order in the trash (and he was being serious).

So, again, I offered to pay in advance, only to be refused, being told that the part had to be paid for only when it was handed to you. (Which is bullshit, but moving on)

Three hours later, they get my part. Let me repeat that. Three hours later. Three hours. *Three* HOURS later, I FINALLY get my TEN DOLLAR part for which I was not allowed to leave lest my order be tossed in the trash.

By this point I was LONG past the angry stage and, frankly (and, again, please pardon my language) I WAS PISSED OFF. Justifiably so, I think (as does Karyl's father). I was seriously ready to drag the smarmy little douche over the counter and then toss him back over, minus a few pieces (and it takes a LOT to get me to that point).

The part that takes the cake though? Toward the end of the time I had to spend there waiting for no good reason, I hear them getting phone calls about SHIPPING PARTS TO RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS IN OTHER PARTS OF THE COUNTRY.

Now, tell me WHY will they do THAT, yet they won’t let me pay IN ADVANCE and then just come and pick up the part? For crying out loud, I could have (and gladly WOULD have) ordered it and had it SHIPPED if for no other reason because it would have been cheaper than *my* cost of part + gas (to mention nothing of the amount of my time that you wasted and the meteoric rise in my blood pressure).

That was the point, dear readers, at which James nearly snapped and started killing people.

In closing, let me say this – if you ever need a part, do NOT consider Marshall’s Auto Parts unless you have them SHIP it. In fact, let me just shorten that to do NOT consider Marshall's Auto Parts.

And to the power tripping douchebags at Marshall’s, you have cost me a day of my life that I will never get back and went out of your way to make that day well and truly suck for no good reason (as you did to each and every one of your other customers that I saw that day). In return, I will do everything that I reasonably can to cost you business. You’ve earned at LEAST that much.

Current mood: Angry doesn’t even cover it
Current music: Soundgarden – Loud Love

2010-06-13T09:27:00.002-05:00

I've Moved. Can I Have a Nap Now?

I apologize for the lack of communication both on the blog and twitter the last couple of weeks. I swear that I’m not dead. I’ve just been insanely busy. A lot of things have been happening.

A couple of weeks ago, I moved to Columbus. It reminded me that I hate moving and that I have muscles I keep forgetting about.

It also reminded me how depressing it is to see the material representation of your life transformed into a small mountain of boxes with hastily scribbled notes on them like “Glasses – FRAGILE” and “Books – Computer”. It seems somehow slightly dehumanizing to see things that are important to you being just another box of stuff that you have to find space for in a cargo van.

The move itself went pretty smoothly. My cat even took it pretty well, which was a big concern for me as well as for Karyl. In fact, if you want to have a look at the cat aspects of the move, she’s been chronicling the ordeal over at her blog (link is for the first post in the series).

Now we’re just hoping that her cat calms down since the stress is causing her some health issues (or, rather, aggravating a pre-existing one). We were convinced that my cat would be the problem as far as adjustment goes, but it seems that we were wrong.

The last couple of weeks have been taken up pretty much from the time I get up in the morning until I crash at night with far too many things at once (household, professional, personal, and even just trying to figure out where the heck all of my stuff is). On the upside, all of the running around has gotten me a little more familiar with some of my more frequently visited parts of Columbus, so my GPS is spending more time in my bag than it is on the windshield.

The downside of all of the hectic running around is that I’m not really sure what day it is anymore. I actually have to look at my phone and calendar to figure out when it is and what the heck I have coming down the pipe at me right now. Thankfully, that should improve before too long as things start to get a bit saner and we get into some sort of routine that doesn’t make either of us want to run around screaming. =]

To give you an idea of how busy I’ve been, I got to take off about 3 hours one evening a week ago to unwind and play Diablo 2. It’s seriously been that hectic.

The sad thing is that, when I get the new position (which is part of the hectic day to day stuff – interviewing is easier now that I’m closer, but I feel brain fried afterward), I’m seriously considering asking to start a week later just so I can breathe and possibly catch up on sleep lol

I hope that all of you are well and that I haven’t missed anything big.

Current mood: Tired
Current music: The Pillows - Little Busters

2010-05-17T13:45:00.005-05:00

Mentorship and Community

If you ask some of the people who know me well, you’ll find out that I’m pretty big on community in both professional life and life in general. Personally, I view it as a way to help others, be helped, and be exposed to things that you might not otherwise consider.

Since I graduated from college, it has seemed like, professionally, I’ve been on my own. I’ve had friends, but it felt like I had no sense of professional community.

From my viewpoint, it’s like I’ve been trapped in some sort of insular bubble and the only direction and inspiration for “what do I learn next” has been stumbled upon by either bare necessity of a project I’ve been working on or through running across a mention of something in an article online. This is, to be honest, a Sisyphean task and, after a while, it starts to become discouraging.

I’ve missed the sense of community, knowledge sharing, and mentorship that I had while I was in the last couple of years of high school and throughout my time in college. Due to the exposure to other people and their ideas, my own ideas seemed to flow much more smoothly and I worried less about making mistakes because there was always someone that I could bounce ideas off of or go to for advice.

Professional development seems to be so much more difficult when you feel like you’re doing everything on your own. Add to that the fact that we are inherently social creatures, and being on your own can be nerve wracking.

Last night, I had a realization: I seem to have found that sense of community and mentorship again. And it’s on…Twitter?

Okay, to be fair, it’s in person as well since I get to see a lot of the people I talk to at least once a month, but the bulk of conversations occur over digital medium (twitter, email, and Live messenger primarily).

Roughly a year and a half ago, I found CONDG online when I went looking to see if there were any .NET developer’s groups nearby (I know. Novel idea.). Their most recently listed meeting at the time had a twitter link for the presenter, so having just gotten twitter a few weeks before, I clicked on the link and checked out their stream.

It just sort of went from there.

Now I’ve gone from basically knowing nobody in the field in this geographic area (since most of my college friends in CS were from other parts of the state/country/world) to knowing a number of them and feeling much more like a person again than I did a year or so ago.

It’s nice to be part of a group of people who help each other out, offer advice, chat, joke around and hang out together on occasion, and, when needed, give a kick in the ass to get you going again.

I’ve missed the camaraderie and exposure to new things and viewpoints. Maybe even more than I realized. It’s also nice to know that I’m not the only one that experiences self doubt about their abilities and worries about failure (Even if Phil Japikse does use it as an opportunity to make a good-natured joke at my expense heh).

I try to give back as well, but I sometimes worry that I take more than I give in return. I honestly hope that isn’t the case, because they’ve all been great, and I don’t want to put any of them out. I also don’t want to feel like I’m being a bother

What brought on this realization? The feedback from my last post, mostly sparked by the first commenter, who called me arrogant. I got tweets and emails from a number of people that I follow and have met with advice and constructive criticism on both the post, aspects of my professional development, and my resume as well as assuring me that the post was not, in fact, arrogant but generally fairly sensible.

I appreciate the support, advice and critiques. Some changes have already been made to the resume (paring down some of the older experience, breaking out skills by skill level, etc) and others are planned.

As a (rather large) added bonus, I’ve started to feel a lot more social over the last year. I view this as a great thing because I basically used to be a social butterfly (as difficult as that may be for some people to believe).

Thanks again, guys. You’ve been great and I hope that I am able to return the favor in at least some small way.

Current mood: humbled
Current music: Bush – Swallowed

2010-05-14T00:07:00.004-05:00

What I Can Offer and What I’m Looking For

As I’ve said, I’m currently in the market for a jr-mid level .NET developer position in the Columbus, Ohio area. I really dislike being a one person shop. It always feels like I spend more time hunting for new projects than I spend doing them, and that’s just not my idea of an ideal situation.

That doesn’t really say much, though, so I thought I’d put down my wants in writing in order to not only get them out for others to see, but to get them straight in my own head.

First, however, I’ll briefly list some of the things I have to offer (this is by no means an exhaustive list).

What I bring to the table

I have several years of experience in writing code.
I excel at solving problems and enjoy doing so.
I can explain technical issues to non-technical people.
I have a professional, yet relaxed attitude.
I write well.
I am adept at gathering requirements.
I tend to be a calming influence on the people around me.
I learn new skills quickly.
I love writing software that makes a difference to the people who use it.

What I want in an employer (the bullet point edition)

A place where I can learn and grow.
A sane work/life balance.
A sane salary.
The ability to, preferably, work around good people who really know their stuff.
A relatively relaxed environment is a plus

Now, bullet points are great (or horrible, depending on who you ask), but we can get into a little more detail on my wants/needs.

A place where I can learn and grow –
I honestly want a place where I can expand and hone my skills as well as get back to using some skills that I feel have atrophied since I’ve been on my own, such as leadership and presentation skills.

One of the downsides to being independent is that you have a harder time setting aside time for professional development because you always feel like your time should be spent either doing work or finding more work. You also frequently have a really difficult time getting new perspectives on problem domains.

Sane work/life balance –
I don’t expect every day to be 9 to 5 because, let’s face it, that basically never happens. There are always the occasional crunch times at the end of projects or at the end of a cycle in the project, and that’s fine. The problem is when you are expected to work extended hours on a regular basis as a matter of course.

What I do want is for the occasional crunch times to be just that – occasional. I understand that I’ll find myself staying late or getting in early if there’s an emergency, to prep for a big presentation, a sprint at the end of a project, etc and that’s fine. What I don’t want is to be expected to work for 70+ hours a week.

I love writing software (and solving problems in general). I consider it fun, but there are other things in life that need to be taken care of as well.

Sane salary –
Basically, I want a salary I can live on decently. What I’d like to be paid depends on the position. I realize that lower level positions pay less than higher level positions, and sometimes you have to take a step backward in order to move forward.

If you’re concerned that I’m pricing myself out of a position, talk to me. We may be able to come to an agreement. I honestly want to make the jump, and some things are negotiable in order to make that happen. Besides, there’s been a fair amount of variation in the salary ranges of a lot of the companies I’ve talked to (though they tend to cluster in a reasonably narrow range, so I consider that a decent indication of what I can probably expect).

The ability to work around people who really know their stuff –
This sort of ties in with and extends learning and growing, but I thought it warranted its own point.

I find inspiration from working around other people. It may sound cheesy, but it’s true. Sometimes, just being around other people is enough to make me find novel solutions to problems. Additionally, I tend to learn a lot just from observing and listening to the people and things around me and am motivated by being around people that are better at things than I currently am.

This isn’t limited to just being around experts, though. I’m a firm believer that you can learn something from everyone, so being around other people in my field (and other fields) is a plus regardless of relative skill levels.

Relatively relaxed environment –
By relaxed, I don’t mean Hawaiian shirts and Nerf gun fights. Clothing wise, you’ll usually see me in khakis and a polo or button up shirt.

Relaxed, in this case, is more along the lines of non-hostile. I’ve seen a few companies where the people in charge seem to feel the need to berate and dehumanize the people that report to them (directly or indirectly).

In my personal opinion, that’s not a way to keep good people or to keep them motivated. The world may not be sunshine and roses every day, but you shouldn’t spend every day wondering when the (hopefully) figurative chair is going to fly at your head.

We tend to work better when we aren’t stressed unnecessarily, and since I want to work to the best of my abilities, it seems logical that I don’t want to be in a hostile environment.

Naturally, a discussion of this sort could go on for a considerable amount of time, but I think that covers most of the major points of what I have and what I want. If I sound like a person that would fit in with your organization or you know an organization that you think I would be a good fit for, please feel free to contact me.

Current mood: decent
Current music: Tom Petty - I Won't Back Down

2010-05-08T01:24:00.002-05:00

Stir Trek 2 – Brief Review, Musings, and Mayhem
(I apologize if this is a little long, but it covers a decent amount of ground)

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been averaging about 5 hours or so of sleep a night due to studying, interviews, preparing for interviews and trying to get actual work done. It seems like I’m never making any headway, because the list of things I need to take care of is growing so quickly lately (but, honestly, that’s largely a positive thing considering the items getting stored in my queue).

That said, I was really looking forward to attending Stir Trek, a local developer conference. Admittedly, I was also sort of dreading taking the time off because I knew I’d feel guilty for losing the day and a half from all of the tasks I currently have. However, I knew I both needed the break and would get more out of it than the time I lost by going.

I’m glad I did.

The night before, there was a geek dinner at the food court in Polaris Fashion Place with a pretty large turnout. It was a fun and pretty relaxed event, and a nice way to ease into my “weekend”.

The conference itself was great, and full of things that I now want to look into. I stuck mainly to the web dev and RIA tracks, but wandered over into the UX talk as well.

For those of you who are actually curious as to which talks I went to, here’s the rundown:

The presentation materials should be up on the presenters’ sites in the near future, so keep an eye out if any of the synopses sound interesting.

The last session was really a toss up between the ASP.NET talk and Bill Sempf’s “Economics of Cloud Computing”. I was kind of upset that I had to chose, but that happens sometimes.

Thankfully, I had a minute to stop in before Bill’s talk and say hello in person since we’ve been speaking over twitter and MSN so much lately. I dropped off a box of tea that I’d brought for him (yes, I got to tea bag the mighty Sempf heh) and I got a copy of his new book, C# All In One to read and review.

This means that my work queue just got a little longer, but I’m glad to do it for a number of reasons - among them because it’s always nice to have quality reference materials and the fact that Bill’s a good guy. He’s also one of the many people who have been helping me on my current job search, so the least I can do is lend a hand in return.

It also means that I get to play part of my former role as an editor again, which is kind of neat.

One of the other great things about the conference was that I got to meet a lot of people in person for the first time that I’d been talking to on twitter as well as meeting a large number of new people and getting to hang out with people that I’ve known in the community for varying amounts of time.

To top it off, I finally got to repay my debt to Phil Japikse by poking him with a stick (I threatened to do it months ago, but it’s the first time since then that I’ve seen him). I also got to heckle him good naturedly a little as well as help solve a minor technical problem. =]

I love Phil. He’s a decent guy and one of the many people I’ve met since I started going to CONDG who amaze me by how much they give back in the form of time, experience, inspiration and encouragement.

To be honest, I love pretty much all of the Columbus dev community that I’ve met so far. They’ve made me feel welcome since the first meeting I went to.

For the movie this year, we had Iron Man 2. All that needs to be said is that it was amazing and under “Badass” in the dictionary, it says “See: Tony Stark. See Also: Natasha Romanoff.”

Karyl and I were going to drop in on the geek dinner after the movie, but it appeared to be pretty crowded and we were both feeling a little overloaded (the conference had 600 people registered and it’s been a while since I’ve been in a crowd of that size for that long. Add on the stress of the last few weeks, and I basically just wanted to wind down gracefully before driving out of there).

I apologize to anyone who was hoping to hang out at the dinner. I had planned to attend; I just sort of reached my stimulus threshold. Hopefully we’ll get the chance to hang out another time.

Current mood: tired, but good
Current music: Aerosmith – Deuces Are Wild

2010-05-02T10:11:00.004-05:00

I Have Email Again!

If you emailed me in the last two weeks and haven’t gotten a response, I apologize profusely, because I didn’t get it. I had to switch over to my gmail account because my domain email was down.

If you tried to reach me and haven’t gotten a response, please, email me again and I will do my level best to respond with all due haste.

My (now former) hosting company was great when I first signed on with them a number of years ago. For the last 6 months or so, however, service has been going downhill.

This culminated in my email going totally down about two weeks ago after sporadic periods of uptime for about a week before that as well as their servers getting hacked (again), causing my site to be defaced.

To make matters worse, they were basically ignoring any and all trouble reports, so I was stuck without my main email, which I had been using up to that point during my job search.

Not exactly the best time for your email to take a dive.

About a week ago, I changed hosting providers, and taking the advice of Jeff Blankenberg, went with Crystal Tech.

Over that week, I’ve made more phone calls and written more emails to the two companies in question than I care to think about. The transfer process was, to say the least, not exactly smooth, but it’s finally over (I hope). On the upside, I can say that Crystal Tech’s phone support is both polite and helpful, which is always nice.

Hopefully their service is just as good as their support and their data center doesn’t explode.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American

2010-04-20T14:58:00.002-05:00

Courtesy and Professionalism – Cheap but Priceless

Yesterday, David Giard (DavidGiard), tweeted “Personally, I don't [think] there's enough courtesy in the world. 'Please' and 'Thank you' take seconds and cost nothing. If sincere, they only help”

This is a sentiment that I agree with strongly. A little courtesy and professionalism can make all of the difference between someone who really looks forward to interacting with you and someone who locks the doors, turns off the lights, and tries to be very quiet when they hear that you’re in town.

Courtesy can turn a bad situation into a tolerable or even decent one.

For the business people out there, this has an impact on your bottom line even though you may not realize it. The fact is that your customers, employees, and prospective employees talk to people, and the impression you make on them really matters.

It doesn’t matter if the person you’ve interviewed is the worst possible candidate in the world. He or she knows someone who is a *great* fit for your company, and if you treat them poorly, their friends *will* hear about it and will be less likely to want to speak with you.

Additionally, peoples’ skills change regularly (especially in this industry), and in six months, the person you treated badly may be the *perfect* candidate for your company and they’ll never want to deal with you again.

If you think about this sort of thing, it should make you want to be polite to everyone you deal with.

It’s no secret that, in the last month or so, I’ve really ramped up my search for a full time development position. In fact, among other places, it’s all over my twitter feed.

Thankfully, I have a bunch of great people in the Columbus area offering advice and assistance, so hopefully I’ll be settled into a new position relatively soon. As a result, my experiences this time around have been rather pleasant.

This, however, has not always been the case. In fact, there have been a number of interviews that have been anything but.

With some, the people were decent, but the environment was not exactly conducive to getting things done – the interview that was conducted during a building expansion project comes to mind. It came with its own orchestra composed of power tools – saws, drills and even an entire jackhammer section.

True story. There was actually a wave of applause from the developers the length of the building every time the guys using jackhammers went on break. It was crazy.

With others, the environment was decent, but the people were, honestly, less than friendly. They treated interviews as though they were interrogating a prisoner. It was obvious that they had no respect for the candidates they called in (or at least for me. I can’t speak for anyone else) and had the main goal of either impressing the “candidate” with their vast knowledge of technology or trying to get the candidate to hide under the desk.

I actually took the opportunity at one of the abusive interviews to see how far I could take things into the realm of the absurd (hey, the interview was in Cleveland and I had driven three hours to get there. I wanted *something* out of it, even if it was just a little surrealist entertainment).

The sad thing is that I honestly don’t think I found the bottom of that particular rabbit hole.

In the first case, the experience was made better by the fact that the people I dealt with were great for the most part and I’ve spoken well of the company in question to other people in the area who have expressed interest in it.

The second case is a whole other matter. I forget the name of the company now, but at the time, everyone I knew in the field got a pretty full report on them just because it was *that* bad (they had even lied to me about the position I was interviewing for).

Which company would you rather work for? Which company would you rather be?

Current mood: decent
Current music: Michelle Branch – Paper Pieces

2010-02-06T23:26:00.004-05:00

It’s not distracting. I’m just a freak.

January’s CONDG meeting featured David Giard (DavidGiard) speaking about Microsoft’s Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF).

The technology looks interesting and I may have to look into it when I have some free time, but it’s not the only thing during the presentation that caught my eye. As stupid as it may sound, one of the things that got my attention was that, in his code samples, many of his variables were declared as var instead of using explicit type declaration.

I’d looked at non explicit type declaration before and had decided that there was no real benefit to it and that its main impact was to decrease readability. However, seeing it used rather liberally in David’s code, I thought I might want to take another look.

The MSDN documentation still left me with my original thought on the subject, so, since I follow people who almost certainly know more on the subject than I do, I turned to twitter.

The conclusion that was arrived at regarding the matter was that they were useful when using LINQ, but tended to hamper readability and introduced some ambiguity into the code that the complier might not always sort out the way you want it to otherwise.

The really neat part of the twitter exchange was that David himself ended up chiming in as well because he still wasn’t sold on it either and was wondering much the same thing that I was, having run into it in a code review that day (a few days after his presentation).

So, on the upside, at least I wasn’t the only one who thinks about/isn’t sure about this sort of thing. I consider this a positive thing because I always feel like such a noob no matter how much I learn (I’ll get to that a little later).

David did, however, have another concern as well – that his code examples were distracting attention from what he was trying to introduce people to. In all honesty, since I said I started thinking about it due to his presentation, it was a legitimate concern.

I had to assure him that it didn’t distract from his presentation, but, rather that the problem was with me (I tend to jokingly end that statement with “because I’m a freak”).

The fact is that I tend to notice a *lot* of things and retain, at least for a while, more than a little of it. This is especially true when I’m someplace where I’m already trying to pay attention.

To be honest, I used to retain almost *everything* that I ran across before I started dealing with certain stressors that tend to divert my attention more often than I’d like (this will, hopefully, change here before too long as I don’t like the way said stressors are affecting me). Granted, I tend to have problems when I’m overloaded, and one of the first things to go is my ability to remember names of people I’ve just met (faces I generally have nailed, but names are another matter, so if I forget your name, it’s not an insult).

Now, to return briefly to the fact that I always feel like a noob.

The CONDG meetings now have a short talk after the main presentation, and January’s was presented by Leon Gersing (fallenrogue), the subject of which was change.

The talk itself was very good and, with the things going on at the moment seemed rather like a cosmic clue-by-four, but the pertinent part of the talk for this entry is the fact that some of us feel like we never know enough and we’re never ready.

I hung my head and raised my hand in the back of the room, getting called out good-naturedly by Leon for it. heh

Sometimes I have to slap myself and tell myself that I’ll never know everything (I hate not knowing something - as people who know me well can attest) and that I have to just start on the project and work out the rest of the problems as they come up.

Part of the problem, I think, is that I know far too many people that know *way* more than I do, so I always feel like I'm playing catch-up. Not that being around very smart, knowledgeable people is a problem, just that I always feel so behind by comparison. =]

Once I get into the groove, I don’t tend to sweat it, but the initial uncertainty (and, at times, insecurity) drives me up the wall. It even occasionally makes me want to hide under my bed because I always feel like everyone *else* knows this stuff and I’m the only clueless one even though I know that isn’t true (and, furthermore, I know that most people tend to make this crap up as they go along while trying to look all knowing).

You know that famous interview question of “What’s your greatest weakness?” That’s mine, though I usually phrase it that I sometimes worry about the details too much, because that really is the long and the short of it (plus it has the bonus that, unlike putting it the other way, it doesn’t make me sound neurotic lol).

Current mood: tired but caffeinated
Current music: Tonic - Open Up Your Eyes

2010-01-02T21:47:00.000-05:00

Little Lessons

It seems like I always learn something new on any given project that I get involved in. I generally view that as a positive thing since, if I stop learning, it means I’ve started to stagnate.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I should finally get around to writing the backup program that I’d been considering for a while. Nothing fancy, essentially just a series of system calls to xcopy and svnadmin with error checking and logging in order to backup my email, files, and subversion repositories.

I could have hard coded the commands, but that wouldn’t be any fun. Besides which, it would make it more difficult to fix if the drive lettering changed (say, if I changed computers).

Hey, I at least try to make things easy to maintain even if it takes a little longer than a totally quick and dirty solution. =]

No, I’m not going to post it on the site. There’s really no reason to because it’s a basically nothing program and I only wrote it to save me time. Now all I have to do to perform a backup is double click the shortcut to the ruby program, walk away for 30 minutes, and then burn the results to dvd after checking the log to make sure everything passed.

The interesting part of the project was the thing that I learned.

Most of the calls to xcopy went off without a hitch. Then I ran into one that I just *couldn’t* get to work. I beat my head against the problem for the better part of a day, but made absolutely no progress. The only difference between the calls that worked and the one call that didn’t was that the non-working call had a space in the path.

Xcopy “Drive1:\path_without_spaces\” “Drive2:\path_without_spaces\” /E
Worked perfectly fine, but
Xcopy “Drive1:\path with spaces\” “Drive2:\path with spaces\” /E
Would choke every time.

I tweaked my code, endlessly trying different things that might help. I checked to see if there was anything weird with system(). I even looked on google to see if I could find an answer.

I had no luck whatsoever. Even discussions on xcopy itself were no help.

After beating my head against the problem endlessly, I finally thought of something so incredibly stupid that it couldn’t possibly work – take the trailing "\" off of the paths with spaces.

It worked. It’s stupid, and it shouldn’t have caused a problem, but it did. Apparently xcopy doesn’t like paths with spaces that end in a “\” while it has no problem with a trailing “\” at the end of a path that doesn’t contain spaces.

Who knew?

It was a small lesson. Heck, it was even a *stupid* lesson, but I *did* learn something, and it was something that I hadn’t seen listed as an issue online.

I can’t have been the only one to have run into this problem, but apparently if anyone else had it, they didn’t see fit to post a note on the subject.

Current mood: tired
Current music: none

2009-12-12T17:43:00.004-05:00

Philosophy, Monks, and Rude People

One morning, several years ago, I was sitting on a bench, looking at a sand painting and waiting for the Tibetan monks that were making said painting to arrive.

As I was sitting there, an older woman walked up to where I was sitting and asked me “Are you Buddha?”

I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I assume that she meant to ask if I was with the monks, but it was, to be honest, a rather rude manner in which she addressed me (as though she thought I was some piece of scum there to serve her). I was being talked to as though I were some sideshow freak.

However, my other thought on the matter was that it was an interesting philosophical question.

Am I Buddha?

Well, I’m not Buddhist. In fact, I’m Taoist, if anyone really cares to know (I don't try to hide it, but I don't shove it in everyone's face either). However, if you think about it, the Buddhist concept of the Buddha nature is similar to the Taoist concept of P`u, or the uncarved block.

It could also be argued that some part of the matter which made up Siddhartha Gautama could have been a part of my bodily makeup at some point in my lifetime, so in that rather literal way, I suppose I could be considered to be Buddha.

Then you have the fact that Buddhists believe that we all have the potential to become a Buddha and that some believe Bodhisattvas walk among us, so it's possible that I am such a being (though I seriously doubt it as I am a little too snarky and sarcastic to be considered a being of pure good heh).

In the middle of my philosophical reverie, the woman who sparked it snapped at me rather rudely (even more so than previously), demanding to know if I was Buddha.

Having had enough of being treated like a piece of dirt, I informed her that I was not Buddhist, that the monks would not arrive for another hour or more and she should learn some manners.

She stormed off in a huff.

In the end, I was rather glad that I was the one who was there when she arrived. First, it provided an interesting piece of food for though. Second, if she was that snotty toward me, I can only imagine how she’d react to a bunch of “weird” guys in robes.

I saved them more than a headache or two, I’m sure. Hey, they may consider life to be suffering, but not all suffering has to be endured =]

Current mood: contemplative
Current music: Def Leppard - Photograph

2009-11-05T18:23:00.005-05:00

Presentations and Public Speaking.

October’s Central Ohio .NET Developers’ Group meeting was a series of “lightning talks” (15 minute presentations) instead of a single 90-120 minute presentation.

It was an interesting change of pace and, on the whole, went pretty smoothly. Granted, there were a few small hitches with changing between 6 laptops and speakers, but that’s to be expected and the problems were really incredibly minor.

I mentioned the meeting a couple of posts ago, so that’s all I’m really going to say about the meeting itself. The reason I’m doing this particular post is because of the presenter that I mentioned wanting to give some additional feedback to.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to talk with him directly. However, I started thinking that this topic might be important enough to generalize and make a blog post out of because so many of us have problems with public speaking and giving presentations.

As always, please keep in mind the words of Baz Luhrmann: “The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

“I will dispense this advice now.”

First off, relax.

I know that’s easier said than done. Public speaking makes a lot, perhaps even most, of us nervous (myself included even though I’ve had to do it before).

There’s not a whole lot that’s more nerve wracking than being the only person at the front of a crowd and knowing that everyone is looking at *you*. It doesn’t matter if it’s a presentation to the directors of your org, a political campaign, or a talk that you’re giving to a group of your peers. It’s always stressful.

Just remember that we’re not going to bite. Especially if it’s a users’ group or some other set of your peers that you’re speaking to. After all, we came there to listen to you, so why would we want to waste your time and ours by sitting there and heckling you (though we may occasionally joke along with you)?

For my part, I’ve done drama, had to represent the magazine I worked for at a conference (both the day of with the crowd and the night before at the dinner for the presenters) and have had to give more presentations for organization directors and management than I care to think about. Thankfully, I haven’t had to deal with being in a political campaign, but I’ve known plenty of people who have.

Even with that experience and knowing that mistakes aren’t the end of the world, I still get a serious case of butterflies and wonder how things are going to go (not to mention wondering why people are listening to *me* of all people). However, like most of the other speakers I know, I just try to make the best of it and somehow it all tends to work out fairly well.

How you relax is up to you. If picturing the audience in their underwear works for you, go for it. I’m not sure I’d want to do that with some of the groups I’ve talked to, but to each their own. Just take a breath, calm down, and be prepared to laugh off minor technical difficulties =]

Second - tailor your talk not only to the subject, but also to the group and allotted time.

Andrew, the software developer who gave the lightning talk last month that cause me to write what has become a novel of a blog post, chose to speak about Test Driven Development, a subject which I am quite interested in, but haven’t had a chance to dig into on my own yet.

He opened by saying that he was giving a longer version of the talk this month (November) and had just shortened it to fit in the 15 minutes allotted for the lightning talk. This was a pretty big mistake.

You wouldn’t give the same talk to a group of (largely) non-technical managers and directors that you would to a group of people who are going to be using and/or implementing the technology.

By the same token, there’s a lot of difference between how you structure a 15 minute talk and how you structure the same talk to last 60+ minutes. You can’t just cut off little pieces (or talk really really fast) and have it come out well – especially on a technical subject.

For a 1 hour talk, you can go into at least a little bit of depth, but in 15 minutes, you really have to follow the KISS mantra (and I don’t mean “They call me Dr Love”). In the case of Andrew’s presentation, the general outline of the talk should have probably looked something like the following:

1) Explain what Test Driven Development is
2) Explain why you want to use it
3a) Show a simple test or two by itself (probably no more complex than “Hello World” level stuff for this)
3b) Show the result of the test by itself (notably, probably a FAIL – we hope anyway)
4a) Show the code around the test
4b) Show the result of the test+code (We should hope that this one will PASS)

Instead of the above, in the interest of shoehorning what he had been designing as an hour long talk into 15 minutes, Andrew basically skimped on 1, killed 2-3, and did 4a&b with examples that were far too complex for the time allowed (or for an introduction level presentation, really).

In fact, he spent most of his presentation time mucking around with SQL and SQL Server as well as fighting with the web page he was using as an example. While this may have been alright for a longer presentation (depending on how he did things, but even then I would have went the KISS route), it really didn’t work for a 15 minute presentation.

In all honesty, he could have completely cut out the SQL and website and, instead, just written a few simple functions to show how to write tests for code and what the results should look like even in the longer presentation.

The end result was that most of the people in the room were looking at each other and wondering what was going on.

This could have been greatly alleviated if not eliminated altogether by doing the last thing I’m going to cover here.

Third – Rehearse.

You really need to do a number of dry runs of your presentation to make sure that you have the kinks worked out of the technical aspects, can make it fit reasonably into the time allotted, and actually know what you’re supposed to be saying/doing next.

Ideally, you would do your presentation a few times by yourself with all of your equipment and then, once you think you have it down, grab a few friends or colleagues and try it out on them as a sort of dress rehearsal, eliciting feedback before you give the “real” presentation.

It’s amazing how many problems can be prevented or corrected by just going over a presentation a couple of times. The major one, apart from timing issues, is that other people can point out things which aren’t immediately obvious to you such as parts of a presentation that may be confusing to others while they sound perfectly reasonable to you.

Think of it as a sort of peer review for your presentation instead of for your code. It’s the same idea, really.

So, having said all of that, it really boils down to three things – relax, be prepared (including being prepared to answer questions), and try to have a little fun with it. It will work better for you and your audience will thank you.

Current mood: Not bad =]
Current music: Depeche Mode – Everything Counts [Live]

2009-10-31T00:32:00.002-05:00

Happy Anniversary

2009-10-25T00:57:00.003-05:00

Developers, Memes and Swag oh my!

It seems that life really *is* a series of internet memes.

As usual, this past Thursday was spent at the dev group meeting. While we were eating pizza before the talks started, one of the guys started dumping a parmesan cheese pack on his cheese pizza.

One of the others asked him what he had, so he told the guy. Being a smartass (as so many of us are, but not generally in a bad way), I couldn’t resist.

“Yo, dawg! I heard you like cheese, so I put cheese in your cheese so you can cheese while you cheese!”

Which was responded to with a Kanye meme followed by one of the guys saying he’d pay me $5 to run up during the first presentation and interrupt it.

“Yeah, I can see that. ‘Yo, I know you’re doing a presentation, and I’mma let you finish, but John Kruger’s presentation was the greatest one of all time!’”

It just sort of ended up going from there.

No, I didn’t take the bet lol

Get us away from the internet and we still do overused internet memes. Go figure. heh

All in all, the talks this time were decent and I picked up a few things to look into. As an added bonus, I ended up winning a copy of Visual Studio Pro. Since I’ve been running standard, this is a nice upgrade.

After thinking about the last presentation for a while and letting my thoughts gather into something that vaguely resembled a useful collection, I decided to jot down some notes so I could give the presenter some feedback. Unfortunately, there isn’t any contact info for him on the CONDG page.

It’s a shame, because I think he could really use the feedback. It was pretty obvious that he wasn’t used to speaking to a group and there were a lot of places where his presentation could be refined (he’s planning on lengthening it and doing a full version at another meeting).

If anyone who goes to the CONDG meetings is reading this and knows Andrew Halowaty’s contact info (the guy who did the TDD talk), I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know so I can pass on the feedback.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Stone Temple Pilots – Interstate Love Song

2009-10-14T00:33:00.002-05:00

Happy Birthday.

I miss you

2009-09-17T19:13:00.001-05:00

It’s ALIVE! Well, okay, it’s actually DEAD, but it’s HERE.

I’ve been tempted to do this for a while, but have resisted until now.

Once upon a time (2005-2006 to be more precise), I was the executive editor of an open source enterprise magazine called o3.

It was an interesting trip and I got to speak with a lot of cool people because of it. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.

The readership was good (500,000+ people in over 140 countries not counting the numbers from the internal distribution at IBM, which I don’t believe we ever got), but the ad revenue just wasn’t there.

It was sort of a classic catch 22 – the advertisers didn’t want to pay until we’d been around for a not inconsiderable amount of time, but I couldn’t exactly keep going without getting paid since it took up so much of my time. Sadly, this sort of thing happens in life.

You learn from experience and try to come out better for it on the other side.

What does this have to do with anything, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.

The magazine has finally been declared officially dead.

It’s been rather zombie-like for quite a while (the site even disappeared for a few months at one point), but every time I thought it was all over, there was some new stirring over there. Now, however, it has been stated that the company that bought the magazine isn’t going to continue funding.

On its twitter feed, it was stated that, while the site was not going to be updated, it was going to remain online. However, given its past disappearance and the fact that the site, in my personal opinion, looks *horrible* after the redesign, I’ve decided to host the issues of the magazine on my site.

This is, largely, I think, just to prove that it really existed and that I had a part in it instead of it simply being an entry on my resume and a couple of pdf printouts of the articles that I authored.

So, with all of that said, if anyone actually wants to see the magazine issues, you can look under the “Writing” section of my site for the link, or you could just click here =]

It was released under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to pass it around to your friends if you want.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Loreena McKennitt - Marrakesh Night Market

2009-07-18T17:44:00.004-05:00

It's ALIVE!!!!!!

In case you haven’t noticed, the redesign of the site finally went live about a week ago.

I’d planned to have it rolled out about a month ago, but things kept coming up. Since it wasn’t a huge priority, the redesign kept getting pushed back. Now, however, it’s up and running.

I admit it. I was bad and rolled it out at around 3pm instead of waiting for the middle of the night, but I didn't think there would be much of an issue. Besides, I'd gotten sick of it not being up yet heh

The frames are gone (huzzah!), replaced with CSS and XHTML so it makes everyone’s lives easier. It’s easier to update, easier for search engines to index, easier to navigate, etc.

You should also notice that there are a number of new graphics on the site in order to provide visual cues and break up the flow of the formerly all-text content.

Everyone seems to agree that it looks quite a bit better than it did before.

The only page that wasn’t touched in the redesign was the html version of my resume. That will still be done in Front Page because laying it out otherwise is a pain in the rear, but I can live with that. It opens in a new tab anyway, so it doesn't interfere with the rest of the site's design.

I should mention the resources used in the redesign:

The basis for the site’s CSS came from Stylin With CSS, which has all of the files available here

Most of the icons came from here

And my South Park-like character (which I’ve been using forever) came from the South Park Character Creator.

If you run into any problems, please let me know and I’ll see what I can do to fix them. It’s been looked over by a few people, but there’s always a chance that something got overlooked.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Def Leppard - Hysteria

2009-07-18T17:40:00.002-05:00

Slice of Life.

Sometimes things happen that I just find myself wanting to share. This is one of them, taken from an email from Karyl.

“Robert (a co-worker) and I were discussing the amazing batman nipple armor and why it needs to have nipples.

I said maybe they shoot lasers.

He decided if he were a criminal, as soon as he saw lasers shooting from batman's nipples, he'd stop right then and there just to never have to see that again. lol”

Current mood: tired
Current music: Def Leppard – Pour Some Sugar On Me

2009-06-08T00:45:00.003-05:00

I swear I’m not dead.

No, I’m not dead. I just feel like it since it’s been a bit crazy lately (as evidenced by the fact that I’m writing this at 1:30am).

Nothing horribly earth shattering, just the standard insanity really. Though somewhere in the middle of everything, I’m working on redoing my site in XHTML and CSS instead of the abomination that it currently exists as. heh

Hopefully it should be up in the next week or so since I can’t exactly devote all of my time to it with everything else I’m doing.

To give you an idea of how little I’ve been sleeping lately, I apparently slept through the carbon monoxide alarm while I was at Karyl’s after the .NET dev group meeting. This, for me, is weird since I tend to wake up at *everything*. Thankfully it was a false alarm and I didn’t die. :P

On the upside, I got a great gift from Karyl for my birthday – a pair of well made Chinese ring daggers. Good steel, good temper, and great balance. They really feel alive in the hand. I have to say that they’re rather impressive and a joy to use.

Yes, I am, among other things, a blade geek. You should have figured this out by now. If nothing else, the sub heading of the blog should have been a clue. =]

Current mood: tired
Current music: Greg Kihn Band - The Breakup Song

2009-05-07T00:47:00.004-05:00

Just A Reminder.

This Saturday, May 9th, I will be out for part of the day. Seeing as how it's my birthday and everything, I thought I'd take part of the day off.

You can still contact me via email. I'll get it that day, I swear (unless something untoward occurs, of course).

As always, in case of emergency, I may be contacted via phone. Friends and those with whom I have fallen out of regular contact are also welcome and encouraged to call, no emergency required. The number is on the contact info page of my website as it has been for quite some time. =]

Current mood: somewhere between calm and restless
Current music: Seal - Don't Cry

2009-04-24T23:59:00.006-05:00

Digital Memories.

Events of the past few weeks in the technical arena have caused more than a little reminiscence on my part, because they touch on things that sort of helped shape my technical adolescence.

First, Oracle decided to buy Sun.

It seems odd that the company whose database I have both sworn by and sworn at (depending on the time in question) has bought the company whose hardware and OS I have also both sworn by and at (again, depending on the time in question and whether or not I had slept in the last 2 or 3 days).

When Jeff Blankenburg asked on twitter how Java developers felt about the move (I have also been a Java dev on top of it all, alternately swearing at and by *that* product as well – there’s a lot of swearing involved if you haven’t noticed. Heh), I said that it sort of felt like the end of an era.

I didn’t feel like it was the end of an era because I thought Java was doomed. Oracle really likes and leverages Java, so that wasn’t a big concern. In fact, I was more concerned when they started moving Java to open source because I know what fork hell can do to a project if you aren’t lucky.

The reason it struck me so deeply was because I cut my collegiate programming teeth on Sun hardware running Solaris. I have fond memories of being in the Sun labs at OU - cranking out code (generally in xemacs, if you really care to know), chatting with my friends and classmates, alternately teaching them and learning from them, and generally causing trouble.

What came to my mind were the late night coding sessions (the labs were one of the only academic areas that never really closed, and if we found the doors locked, we had the go ahead to call the prof who eventually became the dept chair to open them), leaving quotes on the blackboard that covered one wall, and the 2am call to Papa Johns one Saturday to order half a dozen pizzas.

For some reason, the guy who answered the phone at Papa J’s thought it was a prank. He argued with me even when I offered to pay in advance. I finally got in touch with the manager, who, it turns out, was covering for the normal night manager and recognized me from all of the orders I placed at the Center for lunches (we tipped *really* well. The drivers used to fight over us.)

The manager sent the guy who answered the phone on the delivery run and included several free two liters of soda as an apology for the treatment. (Don’t worry. We were nice to the guy. After all, it *is* weird being the only academic building open 24/7 on campus.)

As for the quotes on the blackboard, some of them ended up generating entire written conversations over the course of multiple days. My favorite to post during finals week was “If you wish to drown, why torture yourself with shallow water?”

These are the sorts of things that *I* associate with Sun – learning, camaraderie, occasional crazed nights bug hunting, and generally great times in the academic/professional sense. So, like I said, it seems like the end of an era and I feel kind of sad that Sun may not be Sun anymore after this.

I haven’t even touched a Solaris box in a few years, but I still feel nostalgic. In fact, as silly as it may sound, If I get stressed while working on code, I try to picture myself in my favorite lab and it tends to relax me and cheer me up a bit.

The second event of the last few weeks stirred up its own set of feelings as well.

What event, you ask? Today, I found out that Geocities is officially dead.

Now, before you all gag and wonder why I would miss Geocities of all things, keep in mind that I was on it when it was really about the only option for free web hosting out there. We’re talking probably 1996 or 1997.

A few of my friends and I had sites there. One was in CapeCanaveral, one in Soho/Flats, one in Hollywood, and I was off in Tokyo/Tower (yes, I was off in Asia even then heh). We’d had computers for several years, but this was one of our first trips out into the internet as participants instead of mere spectators (largely because none of us had modems at home at the time. Hey, it *was* the mid 90’s after all).

Geocities may not have had as large of a direct influence on my life as the Sun labs at my alma mater or, say, #dalnet (which, if that ever disappears, I may well cry), but it still means quite a lot to me.

It sounds trivial, I know, but it really helped to get me interested in a lot of other things, and for that, if for no other reason, I will miss it. After all, we think things on the internet will be around forever (and in some sense, they may), but all too often they are lost to time or at least lost in the noise.

It is for that reason that I want to take my hat off and pay my respects to the newly deceased Geocities and the changed Sun which will continue from this day forward. While I am at it, I would also like to pay my respect and give my thanks to all of those people who have helped me along the way, both in person and out across the ether as well as those who will help me in the future.

I promise that I will try to pay it forward.

Current mood: contemplative
Current music: Melissa Etheridge - If I Wanted To

2009-01-27T18:16:00.004-05:00

Print Media.

A few days ago, Slashdot ran a story about technical book publisher O’Reilly laying off people. Frankly, this isn’t a big surprise considering that everyone and their brother seem to be cutting jobs.

Even though I don’t care for the man because of a lot of the things he says, I’ll give Tim O’Reilly credit for one classy thing he’s done in the midst of this. He has posted that, if anyone has a position that they think one of O’Reilly’s laid off employees would be a good fit for, they can email him and he’ll see what he can do about referring one of them.

For that he gets some respect. That’s a genuinely decent thing to do. It’s also good business (contrary to what a lot of people seem to think).

The thing that gets me is that everyone on Slashdot was basically saying “duh. O’Reilly realizes print is dead.” They apparently think that the internet is the answer to all of life’s problems (not surprising with that crowd).

Even Bruce Perens, the man I love to hate (though not as much as RMS), got on the bandwagon, claiming that you can find all the answers on the internet and asking when the last time anyone cracked open a reference book was.

The honest answer to his question? This afternoon.

I like the internet to look up something random quickly, and I carry electronic copies of most of my books with me when I’m out since it’s a little impractical to keep a bookshelf in my messenger bag, but sitting at my desk, I really prefer paper - it's easier on the eyes, it doesn't take up screen space, I like the tactile sensations, you don't have to worry about the batteries running out, you can take it to the bathroom...

The reasons for my preference go on for a while.

The truth is that, while the internet is great for quick answers to little problems, it tends to suck for in-depth knowledge – a place where a good book excels. There are, however, a couple of problems with this:

1) A lot of people code in snippets, not knowing or really caring what’s going on other than “it looks like it works,” which is why they prefer the quick and dirty answer. They don’t care about why, just that they can plug in some code.

They are, at best, mediocre, and it shows when they run into non-trivial problems.

2) A lot of technical books suck.

As far as #2 goes, I can remember when O’Reilly was basically the gold standard of technical books. Now, however, they tend to be horrible. In fact, their Nutshell series has basically devolved into a printed version of the documentation for the technology that it covers.

The sad thing is that the last O’Reilly book I purchased, Ruby in a Nutshell, was written by the *creator* of the language and still wasn’t very good. In fact, in the notes, he admitted that it was a slightly expanded version of the Pocket Reference.

I bought two books on Ruby when I started with it – Ruby in a Nutshell and Programming Ruby by the Pragmatic Programmers. I’ll let you guess which of them is sitting by my computer right now and which of them is in a box in storage.

In fact, looking around the room, I see books by the Pragmatic Programmers, a couple of decent ones from Wrox, a few from MS Press, some from Sams, and a few others.

There is exactly *one* O’Reilly book in this room – XML in a Nutshell, and I’m using that to elevate my DVD burner off of my desk so that it’s easier to hit the eject button.

I will admit that there is an O’Reilly book that I want to pick up because it’s actually useful, but it’s been around for a while. What’s that, you ask? Mastering Regular Expressions.

Other than that, in my opinion at least, O’Reilly has been a disappointment for quite a while. Then again, there are a lot of crap technical books out there from other companies as well so it’s not just a problem with O’Reilly.

Current mood: Tired
Current music: Default – Wasting My Time

2009-01-08T22:51:00.003-05:00

Netcraft Confirms It.

I've been meaning to make this post for a few days now, but I've been sidetracked by a number of things that have been going on.

Dr. Dobb's is dead.

I just got their last issue last week.

Guys, I know I gave you a hard time about the typo on the front cover, but you didn't have to react *that* badly to the criticism :P

They say that they're still going to be around as a monthly section in Information Week (a magazine which I view as a waste of paper 99.9% of the time), but really they're dead.

They've been going downhill for years, so it's really no surprise to most of us that they're closing shop. It's still a shame to see it go though.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Queen - Hammer to Fall

2009-01-01T01:06:00.002-05:00

Happy new year.

May this year bring positive things for those who deserve them.

Current mood: contemplative
Current music: Breaking Benjamin - Here We Are

2008-12-28T12:34:00.002-05:00

Holidays, a recap.

Well, I suppose I should give an overview of the last week since I've been putting it off (i.e. recovering) for the last few days. heh

I wrangled it so that I had a few days in a row that I could spend doing little or nothing on project work (mostly because everyone else is out of the office too) and spent a few days with Karyl.

The drive up, which normally takes an hour and a half or so took almost three due to freezing rain hitting when I was within 20 miles of her place. Thankfully I was driving through a suburb at the time and not on the outerbelt, so I didn't have to deal with idiots trying to drive at normal highway speeds in the ice. As an added plus, it was one of the nicer suburbs (one of the top 100 places to live in 2007), so the other drivers were all fairly great about letting each other change lanes, etc.

After I arrived, that evening and the next day were filled largely with catching up, watching movies, and generally enjoying each other's company. It was a nice change of pace from the insane stress we've both been dealing with over the last several months.

At some point during all of this, her DSL finally got hooked up, so I spent a little while getting that set up. We never did get Earthlink's email program to actually transfer out her messages through any sane means, though. I even tried to get it to use imap with a gmail account so the messages would replicate to the gmail's servers and we could just set up thunderbird to snag them all with pop3.

Earthlink's mail program just stuck its tongue out at me. It wasn't a huge deal; just frustrating.

Christmas morning saw us getting up at about 6am to get ready to go to her parents' house. This is, I think, a form of torture for me at the moment because I've been used to working until about 3am for the last couple of years, so I was sort of zombie-like until after breakfast.

According to her parents, it's nothing compared to what she and her sister used to do as kids - waking them up at 3am to open presents. Apparently they've been getting this as payback for years lol

Presents were opened (after hearing about mine and how much I like it, her mother got her father a gps), lunch was had, Christmas Vacation was watched, and we finally piled back into the car to return to her place where I helped put together her new office chair.

A few hours later, due to weather forecasts (the possibility of more freezing rain) and the knowledge that traffic on the 26th would be a nightmare, I started my drive back. Thankfully it only took about 1:45 this time, and traffic was light in the direction I was headed.

Totally exhausted from the trip (I only got about 6 hours sleep over the course of 3 days), I ended up crashing for 10-11 hours that night and still woke up tired lol

In fact, I think I'm still recovering...

All in all, it was a nice trip despite the weather. In addition, I have to say that I think I'm falling in love with my gps.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Ghost in the Shell SAC - Living Inside the Shell

2008-12-22T23:47:00.004-05:00

I don't think you understand what that word means.

It seems that Google is giving all of its employees an unlocked android phone as a year end bonus (along with the extra money to cover the taxes on said bonus).

Okay, so they're dogfooding their employees on this one. It's not as good as the cash they usually give, but it's still a $400 phone that can be used with any provider.

However, I have a problem with part of this. From the same article is a portion of an internal email from management to the employees which sort of gets me:

Q: Can I resell my phone?
Googlers should not resell any item given to them by Google. Please review our Personal Transactions policy [removed].

Sorry, folks, but it doesn't work that way. You gave them the phone as a taxable part of their salary (and to prove that, you are including enough money to cover the taxes for it in their check by your own admission). That means that you basically have zero say in what they do with it.

You transfered the property and the ownership of said property to someone else. You no longer have control over it. That would be like me selling someone a house and telling them that they couldn't put blue carpet in it.

Or, more to the point, paying someone for their work and then telling them what they have to use their paycheck on. Sorry, but that doesn't wash.

Yet another reason I'm glad I ended up telling the folks at Google I wasn't interested.

Current mood: cold (hey, it's freaking freezing here)
Current music: Shooter - Life's a Bitch

2008-12-16T17:51:00.005-05:00

This post brought to you by the letters W, T, and F.

The Republicans in this state are trying to push through a law that would shrink the early in-person voting period from 35 days before election day to 20 days. Their reasoning is that the week long period in which people can register to vote and actually vote in the same day invites fraud.

I can sort of agree with the thought that that might be a problem, but somehow I doubt that is the real reason they're doing it considering the turnout of new voters (most of which probably voted Democrat).

However, that isn't the point of this post. The point of this post is the reaction from one of the locals on the forums for this town's paper. The following is the full comment (user name withheld). It contains no editing for content, grammar, spelling, etc.

"Oh, now that the Democrats stole the election they can change the rules back. I see how it is. A Republican can't buy a break. I wish George W. Bush would declair that he can't step down as President and just keep going until his Brother wants to take over. This country was just getting over the economic mess the Clintons made of our Nation and now we are about to be sent back into it by another Tax and Spend Democrat. Maybe I should go back to school and learn how to give abortions since that is all the jobs that will be left."

First off, this person wants Bush, the man who has trashed civil rights left and right and run this country into the ground as a *dictator*??

Secondly "the economic mess the Clintons made of our Nation"? You mean that period of time when we had a budget surplus and low unemployment? If that's a mess, I'll take that any day of the week, thanks. He can have all the willing interns he likes as well as long as his wife is fine with it (the locals think that is worse than what Bush has done. Seriously).

To be honest, most of the presidents have probably had all of the willing interns that they've wanted anyway.

I'd recommend the poster go back to school, but more in the hopes that he might get some of that "liberal brainwashing" that they claim goes on at schools (and especially colleges).

I'm not even going to go into stolen elections where Bush is concerned.

Good grief.

Current mood: my head hurts
Current music: Machines of Loving Grace - Butterfly Wings

2008-12-16T00:42:00.002-05:00

Just because I feel the need to say it.

I love you very much and I miss you.

Current mood: ...
Current music: Nickelback - If Everyone Cared

2008-12-15T01:05:00.006-05:00

Dear Dr Dobb's…

Tis the season – the time for planning gatherings with family and friends, buying presents, and pondering the greater meaning of life.

It’s also the end of the fiscal year for some places I deal with which means in addition to planning a holiday with Karyl, I’m getting requests like “We’re over budget for the rest of the year. Can we bump the payment date a few weeks?” and “We need to use the rest of our budget before the end of the year so we don’t lose it next year. Can we start the billing cycle a little early?”

Neither of those are things I really have a problem with. Most of my clients have been really great about paying on time, so it’s not a big deal. It just makes life a little crazy for the last few weeks of the year.

Consequently, I just got to yesterday’s mail this evening. That’s right, everything that wasn’t either a bill, a check, or something immediately recognizable as having come from a friend was put into a pile on the side of my desk until I had time to give it a glance.

One of those things was the latest issue of Dr Dobb's.

The moment I looked at it, I had to suppress a giggle because there was a mistake on the front cover. In large, bold letters, in order to announce its feature article, it read:

“Functional Programming: Has It’s Ship Come In?”

That’s right. The editors at one of the best regarded programming magazines apparently don’t know the difference between “It’s” and “Its”.

So, if any of the staff of Dr Dobb's read this blog (unlikely, but weirder things have happened), drop me a line via email or give me a call at the number listed on my homepage should you like to hire a new editor.

After all, I have worked in the IT field for a number of years, have been the executive editor of a magazine read by 500,000+ people worldwide and, most importantly, I know the difference between “It’s” and “Its”. =]

Current mood: amused
Current music: Feeder - Shatter

2008-12-15T01:02:00.003-05:00

Slice of Life.

Sometimes there are conversations that just have to be shared for the amusement factor. This is a snippet of one of those between my girlfriend, Karyl, and myself carried out via email while we were both taking a break from working.

Karyl: What kind of chocolate have YOU been eating? lol
Me: The chocolate of the innocent :P
Karyl: Who do you know that bleeds chocolate and where can I find them? :P
Me: They're really rare. They were especially prized by the Mayans and Aztecs, so they went into hiding...
Karyl: Find me a colony of them. I might just have to turn vampire. :P mmm chooocolate.

2008-12-01T13:34:00.004-05:00

GPS Fun.

Over the last few days, I've been playing with my new GPS. Among other things, I've had great fun looking through the local points of interest.

It's taught me a few things. Among them:

There are 3 libraries in this town including the genealogy library (I already knew this, but I wasn't sure where the other two were).
There are 20 banks/atms within 6.1 miles of where I currently am.
There are 52 churches within 6.1 miles of my current location.

Think about that for a second. There are 3 libraries in the whole town, but within just 6.1 miles of where I am sitting right now, there are 52 churches. That says a lot about this area.

Then I started noticing the names of some of the churches.

The First Church of God - That's a little pretentious don't you think? I mean, honestly...

Chillicothe Bible Church - I wasn't aware that this town had it's very own bible, but that might help to explain some of the really screwed up parts of the worldview around here. They probably took out all of the love thy neighbor stuff and added in more than a little extra fire and brimstone...

And my favorite of the ones I saw...

Deliverance Baptist Church - I kind of wonder if there's a kid playing banjo outside the door and if sermons start with "Boy, you've got a pertty mouth..."
(I can make those jokes. I grew up around an area that could have inspired that movie...)

Though I have to say that none of the names are as good as the one that has to be my favorite.

About 10 miles or so from where I grew up, sitting at the side of a road I used to drive to go to one of my favorite fishing spots, was a little church. It wasn't always a church. In fact, it started out its life as a one room schoolhouse, but it had been a church for quite some time by the time I was born.

But yes, it was a tiny little church with a hand painted sign - The Holy Ghost Filled Church of Jesus Christ.

The name has since changed, and I wish I had gotten a photo.

My second favorite church name had to be one in my hometown. It was called The Church on the Move. The only problem is that, as long as I knew it was there, it never seemed to go anywhere unless it was like Baba Yaga's hut and grew chicken legs to run around the town with while everyone was asleep...

I somehow doubt it, but you have to admit that a church running around town on a set of chicken legs is sort of a fun mental image. Especially if there were unsuspecting people inside at the time *giggles*

Current mood: Tired but ammused
Current music: New Order - Crystal

2008-11-27T15:00:00.005-05:00

New Toy.

I've been depending on Mapquest pretty heavily recently, so I figured it was time to break down and just get a GPS.

On the advice of a number of people I talk to, I ended up deciding on the Garmin Nuvi. It's small, has a decent battery life, does what I need without a serious case of feature creep, and the price is decent, so I picked one up.

It got here yesterday. The first surprise was that, instead of the unit I ordered, they sent me an upgraded model (no complaint here). I was, however, kind of annoyed that, while there was a car charger, there was no AC charger included. It's not a huge deal. I just have to get an adapter, but still.

So, in the meantime, I'm recharging it on my computer (it charges through its data port).

I spent part of the night playing around with it, adding favorite locations, etc.

After a while, I started looking at the built in points of interest, and ended up finding things I never knew were around here. One of them, however, made me do a double take:

DUI Limo Services.

Would you want to get a ride from a place called DUI Limo Services? I have to say that I'd be a little reluctant to use them for fear of truth in advertising...

Current music: Adam & The Ants - Stand And Deliver
Current mood: tired, but amused

2008-11-25T22:07:00.001-05:00

No, I'm not dead. I've just been tied up with a lot of things.

It's sort of a busy time, as it is with a lot of people. Work, shopping, trying to find my sanity (not that that's likely), etc.

I thought I'd share a piece of conversation between Karyl and myself yesterday. It rather amused me.

Me: Chocolate, blood, what's the difference? :P
Karyl: What kind of chocolate have YOU been eating? lol
Me: The chocolate of the innocent :P
Karyl: Who do you know that bleeds chocolate and where can I find them? :P
Me: They're really rare. They were especially prized by the Mayans and Aztecs, so they went into hiding...
Karyl: Find me a colony of them, I might just have to turn vampire. :P mmm chooocolate.

2008-11-08T12:19:00.002-05:00

An Old Story.

For the last few days, an old Chinese story has been floating around inside my head.

Sometimes, the best way to get something like that off of your mind is to share it.

A man and his wife lived in their home on the outskirts of the city and every day, the man would tell his wife that he was leaving to have dinner with his important friends.

It pleased his wife to think that he was so well liked by so many important people and that they were so well off. However, as time went by, she became curious to know who his important friends were, so she secretly followed him one day.

What she found made her break down into tears and filled her with horror.

Her husband was indeed dining with important people. Every day, he went to the cemetery where he ate the grave offerings left by the families of dead officials for it turns out that, despite their appearance, the husband and wife were very poor and that even the wife was fooled.

Current mood: contemplative
Current music: Breaking Benjamin – Until The End

2008-11-04T14:32:00.002-05:00

I can haz new toy?

Anyone out there in internet land want to buy me one of these? It's even on sale :P

2008-11-03T00:40:00.004-05:00

Time For A Change.

According to some traditions, a new year started a couple of days ago.

In that spirit, I've been meaning to make a resolution, and now, it seems, is as good a time as any to do so.

For the last year or so, I've been extremely busy. To be honest, I've been working on things pretty much 7 days a week for most of it. I really wasn't kidding when I said that taking the day and a half off was a rare chance.

Hopefully that will change for the better soon (and I'm working toward that end), but until then, I just have to deal with it.

That said, the schedule I've been running on (or being run over by depending on how you look at it) has left me with a problem - I haven't been as active as I should be.

To tell the truth, I feel slow and stiff lately. Granted, my "slow and stiff" is still faster and more graceful than most people on a good day, but by my standards, I've slipped more than a little.

In order to remedy this, I have decided to try to carve out some time to start training again. I'm going to have to ease back into it because I haven't for a while, but thankfully I know what I'm doing and how far/hard I can push myself (this is one of the things that having had a really good sifu will get you).

Talking with Karyl about this earlier today, we decided that I should at least try to get back to where I was when I was in college putting the fencing team through its paces and playing with the local black belts. Personally, I want to not only get back there but surpass it. It will take time and effort, but I think it will be worth it.

I made the comment that I want to be skinny, and it was pointed out that, by normal concepts of skinny, that's not going to happen and that "lean" would be a better word to use. She's right. Skinny really doesn't fit with the size of my frame and the amount of muscle that I have (even given my decreased activity of late).

Starting out, I think it's best that I work on strength, flexibility, and endurance. From there, I'll add targeting and fine motor control training.

In my opinion, the last two things on the list have slipped even though they're still better than most of the people I've gone up against. I used to target within 1/2" of a thumbtack sized target at full extension (using either a rapier or a hand and a half sword). Now it's within 1" of a 1" target. Both are, by most people's standards, quite good, but I dislike that I've let myself go a bit. I'm better than that, and I know it.

Now it's time to prove it, and get back on top of things again. By the end of this, I want to lose the tummy, regain my flexibility, and hopefully have my stamina back.

Current mood: pondering
Current music: Bodyrockers - Round & Round

2008-11-01T09:35:00.001-05:00

The Basics.

When I was a child, my sifu used to tell me that while learning to fight properly was an important part of my training, the basics were far more useful.

Focus on your stance, posture, breathing, and small movements, because fighting can get you out of some bad situations, but the basics can help you with so much more.

The longer I travel on my path, the more I see that he was right.

The ability to fight has indeed gotten me out of some bad situations, and even helped save my life and the lives of a couple of other people. However, those basics help me focus and clear my mind when I get overwhelmed with things in my life.

Focus on stance, posture, breathing, and small movements.

With those four simple tools, I can work to pull myself together when I start to fall apart. That isn’t to say that they cure everything or make everything “all better”. Nothing will do that, and anyone who tells you differently is lying to you (and possibly to themselves).

For me, those four basic things help me regain enough mental and physical composure to attempt to keep going when things feel like they are going to become unbearable. They allow me to let the flood of problems wash over and around me without drowning me.

For that, I owe him a great deal.

Current mood: …
Current music: Breaking Benjamin – Here We Are

2008-10-31T09:12:00.003-05:00

Happy Anniversary.

I love you very much, and I miss you every day.

2008-10-29T21:49:00.004-05:00

Political Spam.

I've been politically active since before I was 18.

Heck, I sort of grew up around politics. The mayor of my hometown when I was a kid was a friend of the family (he's a state legislator now). I've had the opportunity to meet, speak with and hang out with governors, congressmen, etc etc etc in both parties ever since I was a young teenager.

Part of it was family connections, part of it is because of the places where I've worked/people I've worked with, and part of it is because, well, to be honest, I have the tendency to meet interesting people (and the fact that I tend to be memorable for some odd reason =] ).

When it comes to politics, I tend to be a moderate. A lot of the people where I currently am would call me a "dirty liberal", but that's largely because they consider anything other than extremely hard right to be "dirty liberal" territory.

To put it into perspective, I had to register as a Republican in my hometown when I turned 18 for one very important reason - so I could actually vote in the local primaries. People would literally fight over who got to be the Republican candidate because *nobody* there would vote for anyone that actually ran as a Democrat. There were more Independent candidates than Democrat ones where I grew up. I kid you not.

I figured that I might as well register in a manner that would allow me to *actually* help decide who would get into office in my city and county.

It was crazy and rather surreal. The sad thing is that basically the whole geographic area was like that (and still is, really). We're talking about people who admit that they would gladly vote Bob Ney back into office if they could "because he isn't a Democrat"!

Me, I tend to vote on the issues and not on the party. I do my research and make my decision (despite what a certain commenter here seems to think because he doesn't agree with my conclusions). I don't care if you're a Republican, Democrat, or a member of the Bull Moose party as long as I think you will do your job well and faithfully for the benefit of your constituents.

That said, I have to admit that, if I didn't vote on the issues, the political spam I've gotten this election season would probably have me voting against every Republican on the ballot. I'm not talking phone calls or letters/fliers. Those I get from both sides. I'm talking actual email spam.

I've gotten hammered with spam from the Republican party for probably two months. I have yet to get a spam message from the Democrats (and yes, I've checked my spam filters).

I can't say that I haven't gotten emails from Democrat candidates for various offices, because I have, but those were actual emails and not spam (yes, I get emails from Republican politicians as well. I have friends on both sides). I don't hear from them as often lately, but then I've been kind of quiet for the last year or so myself due to some things that have been going on.

The point is that the Republicans are really abusing this "new" (to them, at least, it seems) technology to reach out to people. They seem to be spamming anything that moves, because I haven't used one of the addresses for *anything* of a political nature.

The greatest part is that they're spamming me, making twisted (and often false) statements, and then *asking me for money*. That's right. They're annoying the hell out of me with spam email and then expecting that I'll give them money.

Granted that's not quite as good as the spam that I've been getting from the "Bank of Nigeria" in Japanese, but it comes fairly close.

From an issues standpoint, there are almost no good Republican candidates here this time around, but the spamming tactics is just another nail in their coffin in my opinion.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Starship - We Built This City

2008-10-24T23:05:00.006-05:00

James Takes A Day Off.

The world ended. I did, in fact, take an actual day off.

No email, no code, I didn't even take the laptop with me. The most complex piece of electronics that came with me (other than the car) was my phone, and it was only used once in order to co-ordinate the hotel stay.

Okay, twice if you count using it as an alarm clock...

I spent a day and a half completely unplugged. I think it was something I needed. I've just been really busy lately, and needed to force myself to stop with everything that was on my plate, even just for a day since I've been running basically 7 days a week for quite a while now.

Thursday was nice. Sunny; a little cool, but not too bad, and relaxed. There was much time spent just wandering around enjoying the day. Friday was a different story - mostly cold and rainy.

On the whole, it was rather relaxing, though I didn't sleep a whole lot. I never seem to under certain circumstances, but that wasn't such a big change since I haven't been sleeping a great deal lately anyway (life's like that sometimes).

At any rate, I'm back now, so the (somewhat ordered) chaos can resume =]

I was, admittedly, kind of surprised that I wasn't contacted by at least *someone* while I was out and that there weren't any major issues in my inbox when I got back. It was probably because I only took one day since the last time I took something that looked like a real vacation, I got about 3 steps inside the door upon my return before I was pounced by directors and upper management going "OMG! The world is ending!!" lol

The funny thing is that *they're* the ones who insisted that I should take some time off because I'd been working so much heh

Current mood: tired
Current music: Backyard Babies - Pet Semetary

2008-10-18T09:53:00.006-05:00

A Day Off.

Just a notice that I will be taking a day and a half off during this coming week. It's not something that I get to do often, so I thought I'd take advantage of it. =]

On Thursday, October 23 and most of Friday, October 24 (probably until the evening), I will be unavailable by email, so don't worry if I don't respond right away.

Should you need to contact me and get a more immediate response, you can still reach me by phone (the number is on my website).

Here's to hoping that it goes well, and, of course, thank you for understanding =]

2008-10-14T09:47:00.002-05:00

My Love.

I don’t know if it’s prudent to put this here (in fact, it probably isn't), but the right thing to do is not always the prudent thing to do, and I really think I need to say this publicly. It has more meaning that way…

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find my center again, and did a lot of things along the way in the hopes of reaching that point.

I trained until I collapsed practically every day for a year. That didn’t work. It just made me tired. Granted, it improved my stamina, but mostly it just made me tired.

I taught duello style fencing for several years. The workout at least got me out of the labs and let me sleep a little at night.

I spent some time learning blacksmithing. There was some quiet to be found there because of the focus required to create pieces and not hurt yourself in the process. In addition, it caused me to put on a little more muscle.

I played with the local black belts from various disciplines. They looked forward to it because of how much they learned. I looked forward to it because it gave me something to focus on.

I threw myself into my work. I regularly spent the night in the labs, frequently until 2 or 3 in the morning. Despite that, I still found it hard to concentrate.

I spent a lot of time at the lake, looking out over the water. It was quiet there. I think you would have liked it.

I took a lot of road trips. I learned that miles on the odometer can’t distance you from some problems.

I took a lot of walks. Some of them lasted multiple days.

I gave private kenjutsu lessons to a couple of people.

I’ve done many other things – too many to list here.

I’ve done, seen and learned many things – some of them good and some of them bad. I am, in many ways, a different person. In some ways I am stronger. In others, I am weaker. In yet others, I am simply changed. Yet, despite it all, I remain myself for that is all I can be, flaws and all.

The one thing that has never changed is my love for you.

On the path I’ve walked, I’ve never forgotten. In fact, you’ve never been far from my thoughts during the entire journey. I’ve learned that the only thing I can do is live my life day by day the best that I can and try to keep hope.

Every year, I celebrate this day as a reminder of you.

Happy birthday.

I love you very much and I miss you every day.

2008-10-13T11:40:00.003-05:00

Email Issues.

I apologize if anyone tried to contact me from about 11:20am-12:40pm today. The mail server at my hosting provider took a dive and I didn't get any of your messages.

Please feel free to re-send anything that may not have gotten through and I will make an effort to ensure that I respond to all of you.

Thanks, and I'm sorry for any delays or problems this might have caused.

2008-10-04T00:14:00.006-05:00

I Was The Responsible One?

With some of the things that have been happening lately, I ended up talking to someone I used to be friends with in high school. We lost touch partway through college because of things that happened, but we occasionally get to talk now.

One of the things that came up was how bizarre it was that I was considered the responsible one by the parents of so many of my friends. Apparently any uneasiness was put aside if I was going to be involved. Don't ask me why, but it's true.

I find that especially weird considering some of the insane things *I* did even back then. However, I guess it was that I tried to keep everyone *else* from getting into too much trouble and that I could handle things if they got out of hand that made me the "safe" one to be with (I mean, who better to have your son/daughter out with than their friend that can smooth over problems and, if it comes down to it, help treat injuries or inflict them, right?)

Yeah, I was a regular snarky knight in shiny armor [/sarcasm].

The funny thing is that many activities were only approved *if* I'd be going (road trips, concerts, etc etc etc). If I wasn't going, my friends weren't allowed to go either. It was kind of surreal because I was considered a sort of surrogate adult.

Anyway, to get back on track, my friend and I were talking and that came up. He was as amazed at the whole thing as I was (in part, I think, because he knew some of the insanity that was my life). He ended up making fun of the whole situation himself during part of the conversation:

Friend's mom: Where are you going?
Friend: Um... to ritually sacrifice animals?
Friend's mom: Is James going??
Friend: Yes...
Friend's mom: Okay. Have fun.

(Please note that there was no animal sacrifice involved. I have too much respect for animals. Some people, on the other hand, are fair game in my book *smirk*)

Current mood: tired...
Current music: Sneaker Pimps - Kiss & Swallow

2008-09-30T00:04:00.003-05:00

Rain.

It seems like the world is being sympathetic tonight.

The weather matches my mood.

It's raining.

No thunder. No lightning. No high winds. Just a sort of sad, heavy rain.

Rain falls from the sky
landing sadly on the ground
angels with torn wings

Current mood: sad
Current music: Eureka Seven soundtrack - Rainbow

2008-09-28T02:03:00.003-05:00

I am sorry that I wasn't able to be there so very often when you needed me.

Current mood:
Current music: Collapsis - October

2008-09-27T00:17:00.002-05:00

Late night pondering.

You know, it's funny. I always seem to get the urge to train in the middle of the night.

It doesn't seem to matter how exhausting the day has been or if I should sleep. I just get the urge to practice - weapons forms, empty hand techniques, stances, striking... It doesn't seem to matter *what* I train in. I just want to train.

I'd ask why it happens in the middle of the night, but I already know the answer to that question.

It's the same reason I go walking through whatever town or city I happen to be in at 3 in the morning.

Night is when my mind starts to wander the most and the questions come. The training and walking seems to give me something else to focus on for a little while instead of spending that time thinking about things that will, in the end, frequently serve to cause me pain.

It's certainly better than laying restlessly in bed, beating myself up for things I can't change now.

Don't get me wrong. There are good things floating around in my head as well, but late night seems to be the domain of the ones that aren't that pleasant, and I've learned to at least try to work through them.

It's not like I sleep much anyway.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Puddle of Mud - Blurry

2008-09-16T21:30:00.004-05:00

New Math?

A few days ago, the local paper ran a notice that Palin would be here in Ohio doing fundraising.

This isn't particularly surprising. What caught my attention was the price for the meetup in Cincinnati.

$2,500 for a single person or $10,000 for a couple.

Interesting discount program the republicans are running - Bring your wife or husband along for just 4 times the price of a single ticket. This ticket price is to see the woman who was for the Bridge to Nowhere, then when the uproar over it started, she said "thanks but no thanks" (after the money was approved, mind you), and then kept the money to use for other things.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that sort of a no-no?

Somehow that makes perfect sense given the insanity of the Republican candidates...

Hey, McCain did say that he didn't know anything about economics. I think this just sort of proves it unless you think the photo you supposedly get to have taken with Palin should you buy the couples ticket is worth the extra 5 grand.

Of course, if you don't want the couples ticket, you could always opt for the $25,000 VIP reception tickets. (I believe that was per person, though I may be mistaken).

These are the people that so many of the residents in this area want leading the country? People who seem to think that 2*2500 = 10000? A supposed "maverick" that votes with Bush 90% of the time and the governor of a state with a population less than that of the capitol of this state who has, by the way, been immersed in scandal since she was allegedly vetted?

I think I'll pass.

Current mood: tired
Current music: none

2008-09-11T00:20:00.002-05:00

Progress.

I seem to have had a little success in my quest to get back to something more like my old self since I made the post last month.

I certainly haven't totally become like I was before, and, honestly, I never will because I'm a different person now. However, I have begun to regain some of the positive aspects of the way I used to be.

I'm becoming more outgoing again and am more prone to dance and sing (I know that probably frightens some people who know me lol). The jokes are coming more easily lately (in fact, I nearly made someone nasally eject coffee today heh), and I actually laugh on occasion.

Granted, I still have my down days, but they don't seem to be as frequent. I view that as a good thing.

It does come with some downsides. For one, my bullshit threshold is a bit lower, but that may not be a completely bad thing either.

At least I am getting back to my old mindset of taking the world by the horns and ripping it's head off =]

I get this feeling that something interesting is coming around the corner, and, if not, I'll find it and drag its ass around the corner *grin*

Current mood: tired
Current music: Everclear - Santa Monica

2008-09-04T22:01:00.004-05:00

Going To Extremes.

Given the hurricane that hit New Orleans, I made a call to a friend of mine today who lives there just to make sure that he, the wife, and the dog were okay.

"Yeah, we're in Alaska"

I'm sorry, but I thought you said something about the Great White North. I know they said to evacuate, but wasn't that a little extreme?

It turns out that they were on vacation and left home a few days early due to the evac order.

However, I am rather certain that my facial expression was pretty amusing, because when he said he was in Alaska, I just sort of stood there for a second. I think the next thing out of my mouth was "huh?" lol

I love my friends. If nothing else, they keep me on my toes... =]

Current mood: tired
Current music: The Bravery - Believe

2008-08-18T22:30:00.004-05:00

Time For A Change.

A lot of things have happened lately that have caused me to do some soul searching. I'm not going into the incidents in question because they are rather personal and, for the people reading this, the result is the more important part.

Looking back, I've changed a lot over the last several years, and I don't like all of those changes. Granted, some of them are positive, but there are more than a few that, well, aren't.

Many of the people who have actually gotten to know me (as opposed to just being acquainted with me) after I turned 21 have known me as a somewhat philosophical swordsman and occasional teacher who, on the whole, walks on his paths alone and fairly quietly.

I wasn't always like that. I used to laugh a lot more often and I wasn't alone on my travels by any stretch.

There was actually a group of us, as frightening as that may be for some people who know me now. In fact, we were more like an odd extended family instead of a group of friends. =]

We were from all over the world - various parts of the US, Europe, Asia, etc.

Our faiths were as diverse as our countries of origin. There were members of Native American medicine societies, a couple of practitioners of Santeria, a Taoist or two, and a few others.

Not all of us trained in martial arts, but many of us did so quite seriously; there was often sparring of one type or another when any of us got together. My favorite practice sessions were probably on the beach, with the waves crashing in the background (or, against me when some of them tried to use the water to their advantage since, at the time, my water tactics *ahem* needed refining lol).

It wasn't all fighting and combat practice with us though. I will admit that that did bring us closer and we certainly had each other's backs when things went badly. However, there was much more to us than that.

We discussed philosophy, pondered the nature of things, shared the details of our lives (both the good and bad), and always tried to be there for each other if we were needed. Sometimes, that meant showing up in person, but frequently, it was done through other means (phone, etc) because of the geography issues.

Like a lot of extended families, it was a rare thing to get us all together in one place. In fact, I think it only happened a few times and one of those was a funeral. It was a lot more common for just a few of us to get together at a time.

It was probably a good thing for the sanity of the people around us that we didn't all get together often. Not to mention that strange things had the habit of happening around any of us, let alone all of us. =]

They had a lot of influence on me over the years. For one, they helped me tremendously in the self confidence department and got me to keep pushing forward no matter how strange things got in my life.

If it wasn't for them, I doubt that I'd be much like I am now (take that however you want heh).

Sadly, sometimes things end. We may not think too much of it at the time, but instead, find years later that we need those things we once had.

Some of them are dead now, and the rest I've fallen out of touch with for one reason or another. The big reason for losing touch with the last of them was when an important relationship ended for me in 2001 and I basically cut myself off from almost everyone that I knew so that I could find myself and start over.

Like most things in life, it was a trade off. I grew stronger on my own in some ways, and weaker in others. Even though I know that it was something I had to do, I regret it because I really do miss the fellowship and sometimes feel as though I lost some of the best parts of myself in the deal.

Having said all of that, I'll get to the results of my soul searching.

I miss my old friends, and while I'll probably never get to see them again, I have resolved to try and re-learn the things that they taught me. Though I'm not going to forget the things I've learned since then, I'm going to try to be more like my old self from now on and proceed with confidence.

It's time to step out of the shadows and actually get on with things instead of just going through the motions.

It will undoubtedly be an uphill struggle, but I think it will be well worth it.

My friends, wherever you are, I just want to say thank you.

Be well

Current mood: hopeful
Current music: Fall Out Boy - Sophomore Slump Or Comeback Of The Year

2008-07-22T00:34:00.004-05:00

I must be crazy...

Among all of the other things that I'm doing (and all the things that I need to do) is now something that I have previously jokingly dismissed.

I've started writing a book.

It's not my top priority, and it's certainly not going to be a full time thing, but it is, apparently, going to be a thing.

Knowing me, most of the progress I make on it will occur at 3am since that seems to be when I get philosophical about things if I'm alone.

Why am I doing this?

It's been nagging at me.

I suppose part of it is the fact that, while talking to people about the general subject of life, I keep getting told that I should.

I have no idea if it will ever be finished or, should I finish it, if it will ever be published, but it seems to be something I need to do in order to get it out of my system if nothing else.

I can't promise that it will be "Chicken Soup for the Soul" material, but hopefully someone will enjoy it. All I can promise is that it will be influenced by my, sometimes nonstandard, experiences.

For all I know, I may only write six pages and then forget all about it. Only time will tell.

Current mood: drained in far too many ways...
Current music: Gary Numan - Angel Wars

2008-07-10T21:54:00.003-05:00

New Toy

Yes, I'm going to do an entry about a programming topic. I know. I know. It's shocking. =]

As I've said before, I use Ruby on occasion. I honestly only use it for smaller scripting stuff - things that I used to use Perl for.

It's a handy language (not to mention a heck of a lot more readable than Perl). However, I've had a problem with it - the lack of a really good IDE.

Since I started using it, I've been using either a text editor or FreeRide, the IDE that comes with Ruby. Both of these things do the job, but they make my life harder than it should be in my opinion.

Of course, if you listen to some people, my life should be much much harder, but we try not to listen to them too often =]

Sorry. Where was I? Oh yes, IDEs.

Flipping through the latest Dr Dobb's, I see a mention that NetBeans 6 now has support for Ruby, and a standalone version for Ruby if you don't want the whole package, so I decided to give it a shot.

I like it. It doesn't have *everything* I'd like, but it does have a number of things that are nice and, let's face it, it's free (as in beer and as in speech for the rabid Stallman fans out there. Now go back to your basement where you belong =])

On the positive side:

Auto indent
Paren matching
Highlighting
Auto insertion of closing parens and, I believe, quotes
Debugging
It's fairly snappy
Compared to FreeRide, it's rather easy on the eyes

On the negative side:

No Intellisense-like completion (or if it has it, it's realllly slow. I'd wager it's the former).
Requires a JKD (not a huge deal. Just a bit of a headache when you find out during install)

I haven't played with it a *whole* lot, but what I see so far, I like. It's certainly better than the setup I had been using before, and it's a whole lot more aesthetically pleasing.

Honestly, I'd love to have something like Intellisense on it, but it's not a deal breaker, and, for a language like Ruby (where everything is an object of basically indeterminate type), I can see how it would be a bit of a pain in the butt to provide.

Current mood: decent
Current music: Fastball - Fire Escape

2008-07-08T02:53:00.003-05:00

I'd like to see Miracle Max now, please.

It seems like Murphy, my friend with his own Law, has been kicking my ass (and by extension, the asses of people I care for) for the last several weeks. In fact, I think I've become his personal hobby lately.

Either that. or someone is tugging at the strings of my fate in ways that I don't like (I hope not).

Every time I turn around, something else has happened. It's nothing that I feel like going into because I really don't feel like unburdening myself on here.

Suffice it to say that I'm honestly just hoping that it's the world's way of burning off a lot of bad karma for me all at once so something more positive can come through, because I don't know how many more hits from the Cosmic Sledgehammer I can take right now.

I am, to say the least, a little frazzled lately from everything that's been going on.

The latest one came a day (or, rather, two now) ago when I found out that a friend of mine has been having some heart problems and is being monitored for it. She and her husband both think it's stress related, and I can see why since she never seems to get a chance to stop and relax.

I wanted to smack her for not telling me sooner, but I didn't think that would do wonders for her stress levels =]

Hopefully things with her straighten out soon. She's decent people and, as selfish as it is to admit, I'm really tired of losing friends lately.

It's just been sort of the icing on the cake for the events of the last few weeks.

Here's to hoping that things get better before long.

In the meantime, I just have to do what everyone else does - work with the cards you have and keep trying to move forward.

Current mood: tired
Current music: The Devlins - Alone in the Dark

2008-07-04T21:45:00.003-05:00

One whose passing I will *not* mourn.

I've never understood the whole "I don't want to speak ill of the dead" spiel. Just because someone dies does not give them a free pass against criticism that they deserve for their actions in life. My take on it is that, if you were a bastard in life, that doesn't magically change once you stop breathing.

That said, I have to note a death here that I, for one, will *not* mourn.

Jesse Helms, former Senator from North Carolina died today, July 4th, 2008.

He was a man opposed to civil rights for anyone who wasn't just like him and a shame to the human race.

In fact, he had the following to say of the 1963 civil rights protests: "The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights."

This is the sort of man we're dealing with here, and his legacy continues in a similar vein during his entire career as a public figure.

Among many other things, he opposed desegregation, gay rights of any sort, and a woman's right to chose what to do with her own body. He even opposed the creation of a holiday for Dr Martin Luther King Jr, a man which most of us will agree tried to do more than a little good during his all too short lifetime.

He was notorious for using race not only in his own campaigns, but also the campaign of United States Senate candidate Willis Smith.

From wikipedia:
While working on the primary campaign against Frank Porter Graham, Helms helped create an ad that read, "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races." Another ad featured photographs Helms doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham's wife had danced with a black man.

In short, I think the man was a piece of scum that should never have bothered the world with his presence. However, I am not the only person with an opinion on the matter as he is being lauded by members of his party as a great leader. Apparently they don't know what a great leader really looks like (but then, considering the person in the White House, I am somehow not surprised).

Personally, I find it fitting that a man who worked so hard to keep rights away from others died on the anniversary of a group of rebels standing up and saying that THEY deserved many of those same rights. We can only hope that at least part of the hatred, bigotry, and ignorance that Senator Helms espoused dies with him today.

Jesse Helms, you will not be missed. I am tempted to say that I hope you come back as a minority and homosexual born into a non-Christian family so you could hate yourself as much as you hated others and be subject to persecution by idiots like yourself, but that would just be petty. =]

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Disturbed - Inside the Fire

2008-07-03T22:01:00.004-05:00

Computer Haiku

These were actually written right after I logged off the night I wrote the 3am Haiku entry, but I just haven't bothered to put them up here yet.

Enjoy (or cringe. Whichever you prefer.)

Program is not flawed
It's a feature not a bug
Users never learn

Microsoft asks us
Where we want to go today
Answer's not Vista

The program compiles
A pointer is left dangling
Seg fault, dumping core

Code is like Neo
It learns that there is no spoon
But there is a fork()

You wrote the program
Others much maintain your code
Leave comments, damnit

Current mood: tired
Current music - Vanessa Carlton - Paint it Black

2008-07-02T14:00:00.004-05:00

Pass by reference.

I got a call yesterday from a company that wanted to do a reference check on a friend of mine.

Of course I gave him a good reference. We've known each other and worked together for a number of years and he knows what he's doing (not to mention being a great guy).

After it was over, I called to let him know that I had been contacted and joked that I gave him a horrible review. =]

The thing that surprised us is that the company even *called* me. It's been our experience that almost nobody does reference checks anymore despite almost always asking for references.

Does that make sense to anyone else out there in Internet land, because it doesn't to me. Maybe there's someone reading this who works in HR that can tell me why so many companies ask for something they never check/use.

Oh well. That's life for you.

I'm just glad I could give a friend a hand.

Current mood: not bad
Current music: Rise Against - Paper Wings

2008-07-02T00:01:00.004-05:00

More Proof That I'm Evil

I was sitting here a little while ago, taking care of one of my swords and looked over to where my gloves were laying.

As some of the people who have trained with me over the years can tell you, I tend to get attached to my gear. After a while, it sort of becomes a part of me. It's true of my swords, it's true of my armor, and it's true of my gloves (whose smell I admit that I find intoxicating and a powerful memory trigger. There's just something about well-worn leather).

Part of the reason I am so attached to a simple pair of gloves is the time that it takes to break them in. The current pair I use, I've had for almost 8 years now, and it took over a year to break them in.

That's right. It took a year of fighting 2-3 days a week for 2-3 hours per day to break in a simple pair of gloves. For that year, until the inside of the gloves were cured by my sweat, my hands would be blue at the end of the night from the dye leaching out of the leather.

This is where we get to proof that I'm evil.

Among other things, I was in charge of training the problem fighters - the ones with too much aggression, too little aggression, poor control, etc (this is what growing up training will get you: more responsibility). The result of this was that I dealt with a lot of slaps to the hand area. It's a good thing my gloves have padding across the back of the hand.

One of the problem fighters was Karyl.

Her problem was that she had too little aggression, so I pushed her. I made her hit me. I taunted her into it. I demanded it. I actually yelled at her to hit me harder because she wasn't even hitting hard enough to score a fatal hit (which doesn't take a whole lot of pressure). I even whacked myself in the mask repeatedly with my sword to make the point that she wasn't going to hurt me.

She finally started to hit harder. However, being a beginner, she was still a bit sloppy so there were more than a few slapping shots to my hands (I wasn't allowed to train them the way my sifu trained me. They should be glad for that, but their control would have been a whooooole lot better lol).

Now, remember what I said about the gloves? Well, they were still leaching.

At the end of the night, she's standing there when I pull off the gloves. Both of my hands are bruise blue from the black dye in the gloves.

I can NOT pass up a joke like this that falls into my lap.

I look down, pretending to notice my hands are covered in "bruises," and she follows my glance.

"LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME!!!"

Karyl promptly freaks out, falling all over herself apologizing and looking like she's torn between running away and passing out while I nearly fall over on the floor laughing.

Hi. My name is James, and I'm an evil bastard. =]

At least she laughs about it now. lol

Current mood: amused yet frustrated
Current music: Billy Joel - I go to extremes

2008-06-26T00:19:00.003-05:00

That'll never be abused.

Apparently, ICANN is talking about the open creation of top level domains.

That's right. Anyone who wants will be able to create one.

I call dibs on .onmyface and .inbedwithachicken

I just think it has the potential for hilarity *giggles*

Current mood: amused
Current music: Basement Jaxx - Where's Your Head At

2008-06-25T13:03:00.002-05:00

Treating people like people is bad for business?

The local paper ran a story today about a proposal that would force employers to offer seven paid sick days a calendar year.

On the whole, I think this is a positive thing. Far too many people go to work sick, not taking any time to recover (and making other people sick in the process) because they can’t afford to take the necessary time off.

Tony Fiore, director of labor and human resources with The Ohio Chamber of Commerce, however, has a differing opinion. It seems that he is traveling around the state to talk to business owners in order to convince them to vote against it, and, from the looks of it, spreading quite a bit of FUD while he’s at it.

From the article:

"We're looking to make the state a competitive place to do business," Fiore said. "We've got a minimum wage and worker's compensation laws. How many regulations before people say, 'Ohio isn't the place I want to do business.'?"

Am I the only one who reads this and hears something more like “Don’t complain and get back to work, slave! You should be glad we don’t have you flogged!” going on in what passes for this man’s greedy little brain?

A minimum wage and worker’s compensation laws? You mean we actually comply with federal regulations!!?? HOW TERRIBLE!

It’s a great example of employers showing quite plainly that they want to own employees instead of pay them for their services and treat them as, you know, people.

Of course, the locals are against this measure. It never ceases to amaze me that they worship the people who want to screw them over. (My theory is that they secretly want to *be* those people and so have created a sort of cargo cult around it)

Is it possible that some people will abuse this? Sure, but you get that with *anything*. The thing is that they’re trying to turn it into a boogey man in order to scare people into thinking that they’ll all lose their jobs if this law passes (which just isn’t true).

Let’s face it – for a “first world” country, we treat our own people more like they would in a “third world” one. Take a look at Europe (or even Japan, where they actually have a word for “death from overwork”) and then look here. We’re behind in life expectancy, quality of life and a great deal of other things. We even work more, on average, than they do (even Japan).

Wake up and smell the coffee, folks. If you don’t take a stand, nobody will.

Current mood: pondering
Current music: Fall Out Boy – Thnks Fr Th Mmrs

2008-06-23T02:36:00.003-05:00

Farewell, our acerbic friend.

At around 6pm PDT June 22, 2008, George Carlin died of heart failure at the age of 71.

If you know me, you know that I was influenced far too much by this man in the sense of humor department. (That hasn't gotten me in trouble before. noooooooooo lol)

Let's all say the seven words in his honor.

He will be missed.

and just remember - you can prick your finger, but don't finger your prick =]

2008-06-20T02:42:00.004-05:00

3 a.m Haiku

The moon shines brightly
Light reflected from the sun
Not made of green cheese

Cat contemplates world
Leaves gift for us to step on
Hairball in the night

Ice is found on Mars
Intelligent life there too?
Certainly not here

Incoherent words
Drool pooled upon my keyboard
Typing while asleep

Writing bad haiku
Great distraction from boredom
Words torture reader

Don't read my haiku
Bad poems are much like yawns
They are contagious

I write bad poems
You shudder as you read them
I laugh at your pain

Hand reaches upward
Splitting wide the rich black earth
The zombies return

Zombie bites your head
Looking for a brain to eat
He dies of hunger

Can't breathe during night
Furry monster on my chest
It's only the cat

Scuffle at the door
Cat wishes to sleep with me
But he hogs the bed

I must get some sleep
But I can not quit writing
Make the poems stop

There is quite thin line
Between genius and crazy
I cross it daily

Why bad poetry
Comes so easily at 3
I have no idea

Compelled to write more
But I really need to sleep
This is the last one:

World is full of strife
To quote Edward R Murrow
Good night and good luck

2008-06-19T11:40:00.007-05:00

Help, we're being repressed!

As an example of what I was talking about with regard to trying to make policy and law based on religion being a problem here, there is a story in the local paper about a small town near here that received a letter from the ACLU to stop opening their council meetings with a sectarian prayer because it gives preference to one religion over others.

Personally, I agree with the ACLU on this one. The locals, however, have a different view. Apparently telling them that they can't put themselves before everyone else is somehow taking away their "rights" and that the separation of church and state shouldn't apply to them.

That's right. In their mind, they're being repressed because they're being stopped from discriminating on the basis of religion.

From the comments:

"Intervention by the ACLU only adds to the problems of our country. Statistically, there are more Christians in America and it is time we become more of a voice instead of just a number. We need to take back our liberties and stop letting these extremists continue to stick their noses in where it don't belong, never did. To start, just as the Council in Greenfield does, we need to go to the Lord in prayer and earnestly pray for the people and organizations who want to take God out of everything. And I agree Just Dale about what you said concerning the ultra liberal candidate for our president. Truthfully, I'm still hoping there's someone out there better qualified than all of our choices, that will throw their hat in the ring!"

EDIT: It seems that the paper has decided to pull the entire story. Before the change to the website, when the comments on an article made the city look bad, the editor would kill the comments on the story (He has a habit of pandering to the Chamber despite the fact that he denies it). Now, it appears that he simply un-makes the news, so I guess this particular event never happened now [/sarcasm]
EDIT 2: Okay, I finally found the story again. They not only removed all of the comments, but they *changed the URL*, *removed it from the day's news page*, and made it possible to find it only by doing a search of the archives. So, in essence, the first edit was correct; they killed the comments and tried to bury the story.
They're starting to comment again. I wonder how long until those are erased. One of my favorites - "One GOD one JESUS one HEAVEN one hell. I don't want to be in the aclu's position on the day of judgement. YOU WILL KNEEL BEFORE THE ONE GOD." You have to love the peace and tolerance. Personally, I think the ACLU would be viewed more positively than the people who are trying to force their faith on everyone else. =]

Current mood: frustrated
Current music: AFI - Love Like Winter

2008-06-17T22:28:00.005-05:00

Change? Who needs that!?
or
James Opens Another Can.

I've really cut back on the posts about the local political landscape, and I've done it on purpose. I find that it tends to make me more negative, and I'm trying to improve in that area.

However, this is about the presidential election, so I'll post for this one.

The post which follows is in response to a blog entry on the local paper's website. The person making the post claims to be a retired janitor with "100 hours of graduate study beyond an M.A. in U.S. history." (anyone else's bullshit alarm going off yet?)

I'm going to do this in a quote and response style. The blog entry is linked above, so feel free to read it if you like (some of his other posts are real winners too).

"Sen. Barack Obama's campaign slogan "Change We Can Believe In" is a nonsense phrase. It has no real meaning.

Am I the only one who thinks that it doesn't make any sense to believe in "change"? I can see believing in religion or love or maybe even music, but believing in "change" makes no sense."

While I don’t think it’s wise to seek change simply for the sake of change, after the last almost 8 years of Bush in office, you bet your ass I’m ready for change in a positive direction. We (at least the sane among us) don’t expect everything to happen overnight, but we do bloody well think it NEEDS to happen.

“Bill Clinton suggested "It's time to change America" when he ran in 1992. I don't recall him changing much of anything, although two years later voters changed Congress by replacing many Democrats with Republicans.”

For someone who claims to study US history, you don’t seem to know a whole lot about it. Under Clinton, we actually had a budget *surplus* which Bush decided to squander when he came into office.

That was quite a change from the previous administrations as well as the current one.

Then again, I’m responding to someone who thinks that Clinton got off from lying to a federal judge because he was the President when the truth is that he was found not guilty because the question had no bearing on the case he was testifying about and therefore had no place being asked.

And this guy claims to have a master’s degree in US history?

“The slogan "Change We Can Believe In" sounds like something a child might consider impressive, but it has no real meaing.”

No, the slogan is a rallying cry for everyone who is sick of a government that is of the Exxon, by the Halliburton, and for the Wal-mart. It is a blatant statement that things need to CHANGE and that if they don’t, the downward spiral we are currently in will only get WORSE.

“Not surprisingly, Obama has more appeal to inexperienced young voters than to wiser older voters who have seen a lot of fast talking phony politicians.”

You have to love how he defines wise people as people who think like him and are in his age group when he shows a decided lack of wisdom. Granted, I may be a wiseassed 20-something, but I’m a politically savvy one (and certainly not gullible) who realizes that THIS IS MY COUNTRY TOO AND *I* NEED TO HELP STEER IT BECAUSE IT IS PART OF *MY* DUTY AS A *CITIZEN*.

Sorry, kiddo, but I’ve been involved in politics since before I was 18 and did it using my own mind instead of making snap decisions.

Guess who I’m voting for. It certainly isn’t McCain, who, despite trying to look like a moderate, is a conservative in the shape of our current “leader”.

That’s something that laughing boy doesn’t seem to get. Then again, he’s also a member of the generation that has the funny habit of deciding that a program is no longer needed after they’re done using it (but that’s a whole other rant).

“Obama a few months ago commented about the psychological state of small town people who believed in religion, etc. What is the psychological state of people who believe in some vaguely defined "change"? “

Religion is a fine thing. However, it has no place in public policy. It is a private, personal matter and should be kept that way.

What Obama was talking about was the fact that people in the Midwest (especially in the rural areas) often try to get their elected officials to pass laws based on their religious convictions.

Try running as a person who is openly non-Christian around here even if you *are* the best person for the job and see if you get elected. In all honesty, you would not only have a huge smear campaign leveled at you but also possibly death threats, physical violence, your property defaced, etc.

As an example, our current governor was smeared for not being the right *kind* of Christian (he’s not Baptist, which seems to be the common denomination here).

Was it poorly worded? Sure. However, it was both sad and true. I should know. I grew up around it and continue to be surrounded by it. The sad fact is that a lot of people are trying to use religion as a political tool and that needs to STOP.

There are plenty of nice people around here, but there are far too many that want to make laws based on their religion, to the detriment of everyone else.

“Obama's supporters must have very empty lives to believe that some vague "change" is going to make their lives better. Do they expect the president to provide them some type of psychological satisfaction?”

No, we expect a change from the way things have been under Bush. Possibly back to something that actually looks and behaves as though it were at least sort of “Of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

However, that is going to require “change” and involvement – most notably from the younger generations which he derides as being naive.

“As an historian I am inherently suspicious of politicians who rely on oratorical ability to reach people on an emotional level.”

This is a good stance to take. However, *all* politicians rely on oratorical ability to reach people on an emotional level. The question is whether or not they can and will work to affect positive change.

“How can we be sure the that Barack Obama is not talking about a "change" designed to reduce the level of democracy in the United States?”

Apparently he really isn’t much of a student of US history. Despite the shenanigans of the current “president,” the answer to that question would be “separation of powers” (i.e. “checks and balances”) and THE CONSTITUTION.

I hate to tell him this, but this is our world as well and will be long after he and his kind are gone.

On second thought, I don’t hate to tell him that. I just wish I could do so to his face. Of course, I’d also be sorely tempted to tell him that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about and that it really shows (not to mention doubting the degree that he claims to have).

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Tonic - Open Up Your Eyes (it seemed appropriate)

2008-06-15T01:58:00.008-05:00

The Magnetic Poetry Sea

I'm a magnetic poetry addict. Have been since college. A certain someone got me into it, and, well, it went from there. The fact that I love word games and language probably doesn't help.

Recently, I got a few new ones. I found them on American Science & Surplus of all places. Since they were only $2 each, I splurged and got all four sets - Alien, Ghost, Therapy, and Gross & Weird.

This has lead to a number of weird and amusing, even by my standards, strings of words on my marker boards. Among them are the following:

"What would Jung do?"
"Vomit, by Freud"
"I possess repressed overbearing pathological sanity!"
"You can't destroy her invisible codependent goblin cloud"
"Smile you're having an anal probe!"
"They let me eat his eyes at the ritual"
"The stormy corpse flew on frightening Halloween instinct"
"Subconscious knife rain"
"Fantastic diagnosis or wicked extraterrestrial meds?"
and "Beta-powered sexual meteor!"

I have no idea where that last one came from. I basically just pulled words out of my tub and there it was. Go figure.

I refer to the collection as The Magnetic Poetry Sea because it's really starting to get fairly large. I wasn't kidding when I say there's a tub of it. If I get a house, I have a feeling that a wall of one of the rooms (or at least a significant portion of it) will be magnetic for the Mag Poetry Sea.

The Sea just keeps growing. Some companies even feed my addiction because they give sheets of the stuff as swag. =]

I really want a set with programming words, though. I may end up having to get a printable magnet sheet and making my own.

Current mood: amused
Current music: Backyard Babies - Pet Semetary

2008-06-13T22:02:00.003-05:00

Who Will Meet The Press Now?

Tim Russert, moderator of Meet The Press, passed away today of a heart attack.

He was quite possibly one of the last of the real political journalists in this country. He was fair and balanced, but wasn't afraid to ask the hard questions and keep asking until they got answered.

The frightening thing is that he did it politely and, despite being raked over the coals, almost nobody he talked to was upset at the end of the show.

From all accounts, he was even decent as a person (which I can believe).

In addition, he was yet another marker board addict =]

I can't help but think that this is probably not the time that he would have wanted to go if he could have chosen, considering the history making election that we're in the middle of. However, at least he got to celebrate his son's graduation.

To be honest, the election will not be the same without Tim, because he played such a large role in political reporting. His will be very large shoes to fill.

He will be missed.

Current mood: pondering
Current music: Ivy - Edge of the Ocean

2008-06-06T23:13:00.003-05:00

Hello and welcome to last week.

After more than a little pestering, I mean encouragement, from a few people, I've finally set up a twitter account.

I thought I should put it on the sidebar for my blog and on my site so people could, you know, actually find it. If you're wondering about the username, it's an old nickname that I use on a few different accounts (slashdot, among others).

Feel free to follow my feed, but be sure to check your sanity at the door. =]

Current mood: tired
Current music: They Might Be Giants - We Want A Rock

2008-06-02T12:50:00.004-05:00

Back on-line.

Well, my site and email are now back up.

However, I have to apologize.

If you sent me anything in the approx 36 hours that the site was down, I didn't get it.

Please feel free to re-send any emails, and I will do my best to get back to you.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Three Dog Night - Mamma Told Me

2008-06-01T23:30:00.005-05:00

Well, It's Better Than The Dog Ate My Homework...

I went to check my email on Sunday, and couldn't connect to the mail server.

Not a big deal, really. It's Sunday, so most of the stuff I get is of the personal variety. Besides, my hosting provider is pretty good about getting things back up fairly quickly.

Several hours later, still no email.

It's odd, but as I said, not a big deal since it's Sunday. I go off for a few hours and come back this evening.

The mail's still down which is really unlike the guys there.

Reading Slashdot, I find out why.

It turns out that there was an explosion at the data center where their servers are housed.

Thankfully nobody was hurt, and it seems that no servers were damaged, but you have to love the excuse for the downtime.

We're sorry you can't reach your website or email, but our building exploded.

As I said, it's certainly better than "my dog ate my homework." =]

Providing that incoming mails aren't just being bounced or dropped into oblivion, it means that it should take a little bit to wade through my emails when the server is back online hopefully today. I'm waiting to see "downloading 1 of 1500 messages" lol

Current mood: wow
Current music: Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffet - It's 5 O'clock Somewhere

2008-05-31T01:55:00.004-05:00

Another Message From Our Sponsors.

I went ergo quite a while back. With the amount of time that I spend on the computer, it just makes sense. The less damage I do to my body while I work, the better. It was a bit of an adjustment, but I think it was well worth it.

That said, my old gel mousepad was in real need of being replaced. It was a cheap cloth one that I picked up along the way. I'd had it for a couple of years and it was starting to leak gel.

I didn't want another cheap one because I was tired of getting sticky hands from leaking gel pads. Since I like my Fellowes Crystals gel wrist rest for my keyboard, I decided to give their mousepad a try.

Weirdly, I ran into it a little more cheaply at Office Max here in town than I can get it from Amazon, so I went that route (I think I mentioned being cheap before. Not to the point of being a tightwad, but I appreciate the saving of a few bucks here and there :P)

So far, I have to say that I like it. The gel wrist rest is firm yet just yielding enough to be comfortable (unlike my old pad which gave way too much). The mousing surface is nice and has a lot less drag than my old cloth pad had. The size if fairly standard for a gel mousepad unlike what some of the reviews on Amazon say.

The big "Fellowes" logo at the top of the pad on the mousing surface kind of annoys me, but it's not like that's a deal breaker or anything. I just tend to dislike logos plastered over everything. I even took a seam ripper to my messenger bag to remove the ugly red logo on it when I picked it up. It's just a personal thing. Generally the only readily visible logo on anything I wear is on my shoes and my backpack.

I might see if I can take a fine grit abrasive to the logo to remove it at some point in the near future. We'll just have to wait and see.

All in all, I have to say that I approve. Then again, I tend to think that my wrists are worth the $16 the pad cost after taxes (Though I might be biased since I even have gel pads for use with my laptop when I have to use it out of the house).

Current mood: Tired
Current music: Aqua - Doctor Jones (Yes, I listen to Aqua. It's fun.)

2008-05-20T00:29:00.003-05:00

Late Night Advice.

About a week ago, I got an email from a CS student in Cuba who wanted to know about something on my site. Since then, it seems that we’ve become something akin to pen pals (now watch that get me on some government watch list if I’m not already lol).

He seems to be a bright guy, is nice and eager to learn. I also have to say that his English is a heck of a lot better than my Spanish is after far too much disuse. Honestly, I have to say that I enjoy the conversations. It’s often nice to meet new people, and I seem to get the opportunity so infrequently of late.

Among other things, one of the things he has asked is if I have any advice for an aspiring CS student.

I thought that part of my response to him deserved to be posted here since it might be of use to someone else out there.

Let's see, my advice for you as an aspiring computer scientist...

* Study and do your projects, but take time to have fun too. There is more to life than class and books (though class and books are important). Sometimes it is the things you learn outside of your classes that come to mean the most to you.

* Don't be afraid to try new things. Opportunities are where you find them and sometimes you regret the ones you passed by for the rest of your life.

* Don't be afraid to ask questions (but do it politely). The people who insult or look down on you for asking generally do it because they either don't know the answer and don't want to appear uninformed or because they have forgotten what it was like to still be learning those things.

Most people who know what they're doing are more than happy to help people out as long as the person is willing to learn and is polite.

* Try to learn from your mistakes. (Try to learn from your successes as well, but you should especially try to learn from your mistakes)

* Try not to get too stressed. I know it's easier said than done, but getting too tightly wound doesn't do you any good and only serves to cause you problems both in your life and the quality of your work.

* Learn things outside of class. Don't just stick to what they're teaching. Pick up things on your own as well. It will give you an edge over the other students after you graduate and will often help while you're still in school.

* Keep learning even after you graduate. The lessons don't stop just because the grades do. In fact, the *really* interesting lessons frequently start after you get the degree.

* Don't get into the mindset that you're too good to learn from someone just because they're different. Everyone can teach you *something* (this applies to life as a whole as well)

* Don't look down on people. Kindness makes the world go around a lot more smoothly than malice or disdain do.

* Keep a portfolio of sample projects for companies that you interview at. It can be things you've done in your classes that you're particularly proud of as well as things you do outside of class. (In my case, my portfolio also includes published articles.)

* Develop good written and spoken language skills. It's something that a lot of computer science students seem to ignore, but once you get into the business world, it becomes pretty important. You will find that your job is more than just writing code - it involves dealing with people quite a bit as well.

* Learn to socialize. It's another part of dealing with people and you should be comfortable with it.

* Have a hobby that doesn't involve computers. We all need some downtime. Otherwise you run a risk of burning out.

* Realize that while your skill at writing code is important, your skills with people are also important because they help you not only get and keep jobs but they also help in your day to day life.

* Make friends with and help people who aren't as good at programming as you are. It will do a few things. First, it's a nice thing to do (You had help to get to where you are. Pay it forward by helping others). Second, the people you help today may be the people that help you several years from now. Finally, it helps you practice the basics.

* Make friends with people that are as good at programming as you are. The first two reasons for this are the same as the first reasons for helping people who aren't as good. In addition, the people as good as you are often look at things from a different point of view and can see things that you would otherwise miss.

* Make friends with and learn from people who are better at programming than you are. Some things are best learned from someone who has practical knowledge instead of from a book. It can save you a lot of time and headaches (not to mention make you a better programmer).

My last piece of advice should be common sense, but sometimes we all forget it (myself included):

* Be a decent person. Help where you can (not just with programming and technical issues, but in daily life) and don't lord it over people when you do help. In the end, I think, all the good you do will eventually come back around to you in one way or another.

Looking at what I wrote to him, I have three things that I want to say:

Where was the person to teach *me* these things? If he or she was there, I must have missed it because I ended up picking up most of those things the hard way (or maybe that’s *why* I had to learn them the hard way. That seems more likely…).

I mean, I can point to some of the things in that list and think of someone who *did* endeavor to teach me that lesson (whether or not I picked it up at the time), but most of them came from falling on my face (frequently with considerable force and, in the case of some of them, repeatedly).

Why is it that I seem to have such a hard time following my own damned advice sometimes? Is this a problem that everyone has? (I honestly would like an answer to that one).

When in the hell did I start sounding like my sifu? I’m not old enough to be passing out wisdom yet. Especially when I can’t seem to follow my own damned advice half the time…

Current mood: thoughtful
Current music: Vanessa Carlton – Hands On Me

2008-05-18T00:25:00.004-05:00

Late night pondering.

You know, it's funny.

I started training with a sword when I was a kid. I've done it for almost two decades now.

I've got more than a few swords of all different types, but for some reason, the one I feel most drawn to is my old bokku-to. It's just a simple wooden katana, its grip worn and blade splintered from years of use.

It's one of the swords I used in order to learn to move on after the end of a very important relationship. That period took well over a year, and more than took its toll on the sword. I don't use it for fighting anymore because of the wear, but it's still my favorite blade for forms.

It was, I suppose, the thing that taught me how to get back to basics. I sometimes gain some measure of comfort from just using it now (as strange as that may sound to some people).

Given the events of the last few years, I think it might be time I re-learned that lesson. I realized not long ago that I've been letting some things get in the way of doing what I should be doing.

Sometimes we trap ourselves in a cycle of actions and emotions that only serves to hold us back. Breaking free, for me at any rate, seems to be approached by getting back to basics - tearing things down to rebuild them anew.

I'm ready to try. I know it won't be easy, but it needs to be done. With lots of effort, and a little luck, I may make it, because it is definitely time to move on.

Here's to hoping there's still a little magic, and some more lessons, in my old friend.

Current mood: troubled yet calm
Current music: Ivy - Edge of the Ocean

2008-05-15T02:29:00.002-05:00

The above image is a quad core Opteron processor.

Am I the only one who thinks this looks like a piece of art?

The patterns, the colors... I honestly think it deserves to be framed...

Who says engineering has to be ugly?

Current mood: tired
Current music: Killing Heidi - Mascara

2008-05-14T13:51:00.003-05:00

Reclaiming momentum.

Have you ever noticed how hard it seems to be to get going on something?

Frequently, it doesn't even seem to matter what that something is; just that you aren't doing it right now. I mean, once you actually get going, it tends to be pretty easy to just *keep* going, but getting started is like trying to push a boulder uphill.

Your brain always seems to come up with a hundred other things that you could be doing even though you know that you need to do what you're trying to get started. Heck, sometimes mine even goes into the "eh, we'll do it later" or even "what's the point" argument.

It's a real pain in the butt to fight that. I think it's worth doing, though even if (or probably because) it isn't easy.

Current mood: trying to gain momentum
Current music: Bon Jovi - You Give Love a Bad Name

2008-05-01T02:34:00.002-05:00

Quality Isn’t Cheap.

I don’t agree with a lot of what Joel Spolsky says anymore. Granted, he still does pull off the occasional really good article, but it seems like most of his writing anymore is just saying how great he is.

His latest article on Architecture Astronauts looked like it was going to end up being one of his decent works when I started reading it. Unfortunately, the first part of the article was a smoke screen.

The real topic of the article?

Joel was whining that Google and Microsoft are buying up all of the decent CS graduates at good salaries and he just can’t compete.

He throws in a bunch of other things to make you think that isn’t the real topic of the article, but that’s what it boils down to – Joel is upset because he has to compete on a salary basis with Google and Microsoft because he wants the same sort of people that they hire.

I love his complaining that the Goog and MS are giving recent grads something that’s getting sort of close to 6 figure salaries.

I know that sounds insane if you’re looking at it from the point of view of the average salary here in Ohio, but let’s think about this for a second.

Google is located in one of the most expensive places to live in the country.

The Seattle area isn’t exactly cheap either.

If you think about it in those terms, that salary doesn’t seem so outrageous. In fact, buying power wise, it’s probably about the same as you’d be getting here with a couple of years of experience. Granted, that isn’t *right out of college* for most people, but it’s pretty close (and some of us had several years of experience before we graduated because we worked our way through school).

Now, want to know the real kicker?

Joel’s company is located in NYC.

That’s right. He’s based in an expensive area, competing with other companies based in expensive areas and he’s complaining about the cost to hire decent people.

If you want to have lower salaries, do what Eric Sink did and locate in the Midwest. However, part of the sales pitch Joel gives for his company is the fact that it *is* in NYC and how that means that there are so many things to do.

I have no doubt that the man is intelligent. He wouldn’t have been able to get as far as he has if he weren’t smart. However, he’s being far too ego driven now and that leads to a lot of stupid mistakes.

He’s buying into his own cult of personality and thinks that people should want to work with him just because he’s him instead of realizing that good people cost money no matter who you think you are (especially in expensive areas).

After all, we want to be able to do things like eat, pay the rent, go out and do things, etc.

Personally, I view the “salary problem” he is citing as a somewhat positive sign. It means that the market may actually be improving somewhat.

Current mood: amused
Current music: 10,000 Maniacs – Candy Everyone Wants

2008-04-29T01:25:00.003-05:00

Anyone want to get me a present?

My birthday's next month. Anyone out there in internet land want to get me a present? *grin*

There are a couple of blades that I have my eye on (hint hint) lol

Italian Bastard Sword
German Backsword (and it's on sale :P)

No, I don't really expect anyone out there to get one for me, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at them if they arrived on my doorstep (my address is on my site linked in the sidebar lol)

Current mood: amused
Current music: Joydrop - I Sometimes Wanna Die

2008-04-27T12:52:00.002-05:00

But we’re *supposed* to hate you!

Today, the local paper reported that one of the high schools in the area had a group which celebrated the National Day of Silence (an annual day of action in the United States to protest the bullying and harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students, and their supporters.)

Personally, I support this sort of demonstration. I’m tired of people getting bullied and harassed for things like this.

The locals hit the roof.

There’s something you have to understand about this region. I know I’ve said it before, but this area is extremely isolationist. In addition, while there are many very nice people here (really there are), there are a lot of extraordinarily intolerant ones. Racism and hate of various groups is frighteningly common in this part of the state.

The really frightening thing, though, is the fact that, not only do these people feel justified in holding these views (and acting on them), but they try to claim anyone who opposes their hatred and intolerance is trying to repress their rights.

Take for example a very telling comment on the paper’s discussion board regarding the article (copied verbatim without any editing):

The pro-gay lifestyle people are constantly preaching tolerance for their way of life...yet don't believe in tolerance themselves. This area is a huge part of the Bible belt of the midwest. A lot of people here are God fearing Christians who take the Bible to heart. The Bible says that homosexuality is abomination before God. Your asking millions of people to disregard their core beliefs and values just so you don't get your feelings hurt. WHile you feel the names you throw around are hurtful..maybe the rest of us don't like the names you throw back at us. If you want to preach tolerance..learn tolerance yourself.

That’s right. This person, whose views on the subject are pretty much the same as a large portion of the population in the area, is saying that by not tolerating his hatred and disgust of gay people and the actions that he performs because of that hatred, we’re being intolerant of him (and his religion) and that we should let him do whatever he wants to whoever he wants.

Sorry, kiddies, but it doesn’t work that way. You don’t get to scream “but it’s my religion to hate gays!” (and if you try it around me, well, let’s just say that the consequences aren’t happy. Some of my very best friends have been/still are in the GBLT community).

Welcome to southern Ohio - where, if you’re different than we are, we’ll beat you with our Bible Belt and then scream that you hate Christianity because you try to stop us.

*slams head against the desk a few times*

Current mood: Annoyed doesn’t even cover it
Current music: AFI – The Killing Lights

2008-04-14T23:56:00.003-05:00

And Now A Message From Our Sponsors.

No, I’m not really being paid for this, but I know it’ll come off sounding like an advertisement. =]

I enjoy the occasional game. I never really got into most of the newer systems, though (I’m way too much of a casual gamer anymore), so I set up an entertainment center computer with my favorite older consoles on it (NES, SNES, Sega, etc etc etc).

I’d been using a Microsoft Sidewinder Pro USB game pad that I picked up ages ago (we’re talking like 8 or 9 years ago, so I more than got my money out of it) as the controller. Well, a few weeks ago, the D-pad started sticking, so I needed a new controller.

There were a couple of things that I didn’t like about the Sidewinder. First, the button configuration, while *great* for Sega games wasn’t so hot for Nintendo consoles. Second, the D-pad was at a bit of an angle, which made some games a bit more difficult.

Since I tend to play the Nintendo consoles more than the Sega ones, I decided to get an Xbox 360 controller from Joytech at the local big box retailer (Hey, it was $20-25 as opposed to the Microsoft one that was about twice that much and I’m cheap :P ) because the button setup is perfect for Nintendo consoles.

The D-pad sucks, but that’s okay because I’ve taken to using the stick anyway. It takes a little getting used to because the stick is insanely sensitive, but it’s an absolute *blast* to play Mario Kart with. =]

I think what I want to do is get another one of the Joytech controllers for player 2 on the Nintendo consoles and find a few more Sidewinder Pro pads for the Sega games, 3do, and keep a couple in reserve for backups.

In the meantime I’ll slide myself silly in Mario Kart and see if I can clean my old Sidewinder.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Del Leppard - Photograph

2008-04-11T01:06:00.002-05:00

Let Your Kids Be Kids

Bruce Schneier pointed out a news story today in which a mother let her 9 year old take the subway home by himself (at the kid’s request).

Normally, the people who comment on Bruce’s blog hold great contempt for security theater and the like. However, it seems that not even they are immune to “think of the children”.

Apparently in their opinion, and the opinions of far far too many others, children should be wrapped in bubble wrapped and locked in a padded room until they’re 18.

Give me a break. At 9, I was roaming all over my hometown as well as camping by myself on the farm my family owns (about 350 acres with quite a bit of woods) and roaming the neighboring farmlands.

Heck, man. At that age, I missed the bus a couple of times and walked the probably mile and a half or two miles to school, getting there before the bus did.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with giving your kid a bit of independence, yet it seems like every generation is more restrictive when it comes to their children than the generation before it.

There was a time when kids used to play outside all day with other kids and still make it home for dinner. Now it seems like parents freak when the kids are outside for 5 minutes.

The common argument is generally that the world is more dangerous now, but I don’t buy it. The world really isn’t any more dangerous for kids or adults than it was when my parents were children or when their parents were (you get the idea). Some of the dangers may be different, and they’re certainly more publicized in order to capitalize on fear, but it’s not really any more dangerous now.

Do yourself, and your kids, a favor – teach them self confidence, make sure they have a good head on their shoulders, teach them to be aware of their surroundings and not to have blind trust in people, let them train in martial arts if they’re interested, give them a bit of encouragement, have some faith in them, and send them out into their world to explore, play, and be kids. They’ll come home in time for dinner.

It doesn’t mean that you don’t care about their wellbeing. Quite the opposite, actually, because you’ll be helping them to be more self reliant people.

This sort of thing is important. Part of being a kid is learning to push your boundaries until you find your real boundaries. Sure, you might get a few cuts and scrapes, but those heal. Most of life’s lessons aren’t learned by sitting inside, sheltered from the world, and your kids will need them when they’re finally out there on their own.

Current mood: calm
Current music: Alice Cooper - Poison

2008-04-10T02:22:00.003-05:00

The Next Big Thing

The latest Dr Dobbs showed up in my mailbox today (or, according to my clock, yesterday. I really need to work on this insomnia problem.).

I find it an interesting magazine. Granted, it used to have more content when I was first given a copy in college by one of my professors, but it’s still a decent publication.

The article that’s caught my attention so far is the interview with Paul Jansen, managing director of TIOBE Software. He makes some interesting comments.

First off, since his company tries to measure the popularity of programming languages, he apparently gets a lot of very passionate emails from programmers who are upset that their favorite language isn’t higher on the list.

This doesn’t surprise me a great deal. After all, there are way too many holy wars in programming – vi vs emacs, C# vs Java, Perl vs Ruby vs Python, etc etc etc.

Second, he states that C and C++ seem to be losing ground. This I can agree with, but I only sort of agree with his reason as to why this is happening. In his opinion, it’s because languages without automatic garbage collection are falling out of fashion since the performance hit garbage collection causes is now outweighed by the memory problems introduced by sloppy programming.

I agree with this statement for most applications. However, I don’t see C and C++ going away any time soon for a few reasons.

There’s a LOT of legacy C and C++ code out there.
Some applications will always need the speed and close to the metal control that C and C++ give you.
Embedded programming (while a lot of it is done in ASM, a fair amount is done in C or C++ as well from what I understand).
Operating systems – in addition to needing close to the metal access, it seems sort of silly to bootstrap a CLR or VM (depending on if you’re a .NET or Java fan) in order to run the OS on top of it. It’s a layer of complexity and set of performance issues that we just don’t need.

Yes, I realize that virtualization is being used successfully now, but that’s a layer above what I’m talking about. As it stands, you have Hardware -> OS -> VM. If you went with the current forerunners in the garbage collected programming world, it would be Hardware -> CLR/JVM -> OS -> VM.

This leads me to his last statement/prediction.

He thinks that, in five years, there will be two main languages – Java and C# (followed closely by VB) and that he foresees no new language paradigm.

I’m not sure that I’d agree with that for the simple fact that this profession tends to change pretty quickly. I honestly wouldn’t discount “The Next Big Thing” displacing the current giants.

Then again, we have to keep in mind that most magazines which cater to industries aren’t in the business of reporting trends, but rather creating them – by seeing something often enough and in enough places, people start to think that it’s the next big thing and end up making it so.

As much as many of us may deny it, people are, by and large, still pack/tribe creatures. Part of that is “belonging”, and that means that we tend to follow the trends we think others like us are following.

It’s a survival mechanism (and an easily exploitable one if you know how).

Current mood: tired
Current music: iiO - Rebel

2008-04-08T15:55:00.001-05:00

Local Companies and Visibility

Over the past few months, I’ve learned that this sleepy little town is the home to the corporate offices of both The Kitchen Collection and Petland.

To say that I was surprised was a bit of an understatement. In fact, I found it kind of bizarre. Even more so because it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge around here, and you’d think that it would be.

It’s a town of about 25,000 people. The fact that two chains are headquartered here (and one of them with stores in several countries) should be kind of in your face…

I mean, I knew there was a building just off of Bridge St with a Petland sign, but I always just assumed that it was a distribution center or something since it really doesn’t look like it should be an office building. As for The Kitchen Collection, it’s a smaller chain, but it should still be more visible than it is.

Why bring this up (other than the WTF factor, of course)?

Because the local paper had an update that The Kitchen Collection is moving their distribution center from New Jersey to the local area.

I view this as a positive thing on the jobs side, and I hope that it benefits the community. I also think it makes sense from a practical standpoint – it will be easier to keep tabs on distribution and Ohio is a much more central location for shipping than New Jersey.

Hopefully this works out well for all involved.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Billy Joel – We Didn’t Start The Fire

2008-03-15T13:26:00.003-05:00

They Have A Sense Of Humor After All

Am I the only one that finds it sickly appropriate that the government will begin receiving H-1B petitions on April 1st?

As always, it seems that the joke is on We, The People.

*sighs*

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Pearl Jam - Evenflow

2008-03-14T00:01:00.005-05:00

Why yes, I *am* a swordsman...

Slashdot had an article about a book review on what sci-fi technologies may actually be feasible at some point. The thing that made this semi-noteworthy is the fact that the author was Michio Kaku, one of the inventors of string theory.

Among the things he thinks could be possible are light sabers. Of course, there were a number of people that were all for that one, myself included. However, I also had to point out that, being a swordsman, I know full well that most people who tried to use one would end up cutting off various parts of their bodies with them (not that I view this as a necessarily bad thing *grin*).

Slashdot being Slashdot, someone had to come on and tell me that I didn't know jack about anything and that "People who practice with swords are the ones more likely to get hurt bacause it seems like something they are used to, but isn't." (Which isn't true. Only people who are bad at it would have that problem. The people who actually know what they're doing can practice with just a hilt or a simple empty hand and be able to know where the blade would be)

To top it off, in an effort to "prove" that I didn't "know jack" (his words), he demanded to know how many life and death combat situations I'd been in.

*smirks*

I don't think he was expecting the answer that he got, which was a non-zero number (and further explained that it was a lowball number because there were other attempts to shorten my life over the years, but they weren't very good, so I only counted the ones I saw as a real threat). I then asked him how many *he'd* been in =]

Believe it or not, there have been some people out there that *really* didn't like me (hard to believe, I know. Lovable cuss that I am heh), and there have been situations where I've ended up in, shall we say, the strange place at the interesting time (sometimes that means that you get a fun/interesting opportunity and other times it can mean that someone wants to put a few new holes in you...).

I also don't think he was expecting to find out that I've been training as long as I have... Heck, *I* have a hard time wrapping my head around that one sometimes because I never really think of it that way, and it's such a large portion of my life.

He never said another word.

Funny that.

Sorry, but the whole thing just amused me. It happens sometimes.

(Yes, I know I haven't been updating lately. I really need to work on that among everything else that I'm doing. Bad James! Bad! Bad James!)

Current mood: amused
Current music: A Perfect Circle - 3 Libras

2008-02-23T23:14:00.003-05:00

Amusing Irony

You know, there is something amusingly ironic about the author of a book on C# being named John Sharp.

And yes, according to his bio, he codes in J# as well.

I take this as yet more proof that the world has a sense of humor.

Current mood: amused
Current music: Eiffel 65 - Silicon World

2008-01-17T18:07:00.000-05:00

Scared Money

There is something about many businesses in the Midwest that I have never understood.

Okay, there are a *lot* of things about them that I don’t understand, but we’re focusing on one issue here.

There seems to be this fear of hiring anyone who has either done freelance work or owned their own company. I can understand *why* they feel that way, but it’s extremely wrongheaded.

The general fear seems to be that those people will run off with their clients or leave them again, possibly to start their own companies.

First off, whether or not someone who works for you will run off with your clients has nothing to do with whether they were a consultant or company owner before they worked for you. Bad people will do bad things no matter what.

Secondly, people join and leave businesses all of the time. That’s how businesses get employees in the first place. The thing that’s been different in the last decade or so is that people are starting to realize that most companies have no loyalty for the employees, so they, as employees, have to look out for themselves and be ready to leave when it is to their advantage.

A lot of places in this area of the country still want people to be totally devoted to them while having none of that devotion toward the people working for them, and that just doesn’t work. In fact, it’s something I like to call Spoiled Child Syndrome.

The fact is that while caution is laudable when used sensibly, taking it to the level of paranoia only hurts you. As any good poker player will tell you, scared money never wins.

They eschew people who have, for whatever reason, been on their own when they should be trying to snatch up the people who want to come back to the corporate world because they bring more than technical skill to the table – they also bring experience in business, personal skills, and various professional skills and contacts that your average technical worker just doesn’t generally have.

It’s one of the many big differences between the Midwest and the West Coast. On the West Coast, being part of a startup or having had your own company is considered normal, and even beneficial *because* of the experience involved. If the startup succeeds, you generally get bought out and then go do something else (either at another company, on your own, or retire and do what you like) after a while. If it fails, well, you try something else.

That’s the sane, sensible way to look at it. It’s also a large part of the reason for the successful technical businesses on the West Coast and the relative lack of them in the Midwest by comparison.

In this sense, the West Coasters are sensible poker players, balancing defense and offense and the Midwesterners are the scared money.

Current mood: my head hurts
Current music: Billy Joel - I Go To Extremes

2008-01-11T15:01:00.001-05:00

I just want to say Happy 70th Birthday to Donald Knuth, a luminary of the field of computer science.

2008-01-11T02:51:00.000-05:00

WTF?

The weird linkers continue.

First it was some German porn site last year with one or two referrals, then it was a site called dvd4arab (which continues to give me double digit referrals every month and has for like the last 9), and now it's another porn site...

It's only the 11th and I've already gotten 6 referrals from them.

I'm really starting to wonder just who is posting my site to these weird places lol

current mood: tired
current music: All-American Rejects - Move Along

2008-01-08T17:42:00.001-05:00

End of an Era.

I got an email last night that Dolores Russ, Wife of Fritz Russ, the people after whom the Russ College of Engineering at Ohio University was named, has died.

Her husband died several years ago and now she’s gone as well. It’s not an unexpected event as they both lived long, full lives, but it’s still kind of weird, almost like the end of an era.

I never got to meet them personally, but I have known several members of the family since Fritz was from the area I grew up in. In fact, one of their family members had a farm not far from my family’s. In addition, I was awarded the scholarship they funded during my freshman year, so the family does mean something to me.

Here’s to the both of you. You’ve done quite a bit here, and now it’s time to see what comes next for you.

Current mood: calm
Current music: AFI – The Killing Lights

2008-01-01T00:25:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year.

May this year be better than the last.

Current mood: wanting
Current music: Papa Roach - Forever followed by Ayumi Hamasaki - Evolution (for me, they are basically the two ends of the spectrum)

2007-12-18T11:19:00.001-05:00

I Think I’ve Lost It.

Ever have one of those dreams that cause you to wake up and wonder what the heck the sandman was smoking when he dropped off your nightly shipment of pixie dust?

Yesterday was one of those, and I have to say that he must have some really good stuff in his private stash.

I can just picture it. A very high sandman staggers into my bedroom with bloodshot eyes, smelling of herb, and says, in a bad Jamaican accent, “hey, mon, you’ll never believe what I got for you tonight. *giggle and coughing fit*. By the way, got any Doritos? I’m hungry.”

It involved zombies. Lots and lots of zombies coming out of some cave, and I was fighting them along with a bunch of other people, some of which I know in reality, some of which I don’t (seemingly generic people).

And then there was… Mr. T.

You heard me. I was fighting zombies with Mr. T.

Don’t blame me. It wasn’t my dream. It was the fault of the stoner sandman. Honest.

Unfortunately, Mr. T was not as tough in my dream as he is on TV and did not fare well against the zombies. His age must be catching up with him because they ended up bringing him back to the base with half his butt missing (don’t ask me. That’s just how it ended up, no pun intended.)

That’s when I woke up – from a zombie dream featuring a half-assed Mr. T.

I was afraid to even try to go back to sleep because I knew if I did, the dream would just resume.

All I can say is “I’m Mr. T, and I’m a Night Elf Mohawk! (but I suck at fighting zombies)”

Current mood: I don’t even know where to start
Current music: Curve – Crystal