Blog
This morning I got a good laugh while listening to Hivelogic Dan's podcast featuring Ernie from Little. Yellow. Different. (me and Ernie go way back, y'know...) when Ern uttered the following:
I'm basically working for a porn site. Food porn!
It's true. On many levels, it turns out.
I know a few guys that need to spend some time playing Desktop Tower Defense. (Maybe some gals, too, but The Wife showed absolutely no interest...) My high score so far is ~3100 in "normal" mode, which is a full 5000 shy of the ultimate high score.
If you get prompted to save your score, add it to the "blahstuff" score group.
(via kottke)
Is it just me, or is Bloc Party absolutely worthless? Both albums they've come out with (that I've known about) have gotten all kinds of indie nerd buzz, but I just flat-out hate 'em. It confuses me, because they tend to get lumped in with stuff I like a lot (The Shins) or a least a little (Arcade Fire). And yet, I just want to punch them every time I listen to them. The entire emo scene has nothing on the whining done by these douches.
There. That feels better.
Oh, and Happy Birthday to Miracle Ed! Someday soon he might get out of the Army.
So the big news of the past few days is the hot water heater saga: Last Thursday evening The Wife and I went out in Boulder to the Rio with a gaggle of my new coworkers. After a lovely evening discussing the possibilities of attending a roller derby, a mixed martial arts bout, or a minor league hockey game (or all three) with the company founder's wife, we came home to discover that we had no hot water. A quick trip downstairs revealed that our twelve-year-old tank was done and dead and pissing itself on the basement floor. Off go the water valves, and I know what I get to do Friday (hardly a worthwhile day off work, if you ask me).
Long story shorter than it might be: We actually had the funds on-hand to do the upgrade to a tankless water heater like I've wanted to do. Now I'm a proud owner of a Rinnai unit hidden away in my crawl space. The old space for the water heater is now only filled by a wall-mounted control panel. Best of all, I can take a shower all friggin' day long if I want to.
There are couple downsides: the hot water is mighty slow to come at first; the hot water pressure is noticeably lower than that of the cold water. But neither of those bother me much -- the continuous nature of the hot water (I can now happily take my shower after everyone else in the house!) more than balances them out, IMO. (Oh, and I guess I get $300 next tax season...) Also worth noting: David at Oasis Plumbing rules me - highly recommended.
Other News:
The last weekend featured a lot of interaction with real, live human beings, which is a bit odd, to be honest. On Friday, I had poker with the boys. The games have been extremely rare lately, and I missed the last one, so this was exciting. Of course, I lost my pants, but that's not the point. ;)
Saturday was my darling mother's birthday celebration. (Her actual birthday was Sunday.) The Wife and I drove down to enjoy Hockey Night in Canada with Mom and her pack of "adopted" kids (plus three Great Danes, two other dogs, and two cats). Beer, hockey, and good-natured smack talk made it a super fun evening. If nothing else, I demonstrated the obviousness of the fact that I am my mother's son. The only bummer is that we missed the opening bout of the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls' new season, which happened to be on the same night.
Sunday wasn't as public, but we managed to not sit on the couch all day.
And I didn't even touch WoW for the whole weekend.
Oh, thank Christ. Poor girl must've been on the verge.
One of those Newton's Apple-type trivia bits I tend to trot out with reasonable frequency (and have for as long as I can remember, practically) is that glass is "supercooled liquid". Now Garret points me to this article which actually shows us that I was ill-informed:
When glass is made, the material (often containing silica) is quickly cooled from its liquid state but does not solidify when its temperature drops below its melting point. At this stage, the material is a supercooled liquid, an intermediate state between liquid and glass. To become an amorphous solid, the material is cooled further, below the glass-transition temperature. Past this point, the molecular movement of the material's atoms has slowed to nearly a stop and the material is now a glass. This new structure is not as organized as a crystal, because it did not freeze, but it is more organized than a liquid. For practical purposes, such as holding a drink, glass is like a solid, Ediger says, although a disorganized one.
Good enough. Lesson learned and all that.
Senegalese chimps appear to manufacture and use spear-like implements.
In one case, Pruetz and Bertolani, from the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies in Cambridge, UK, witnessed a chimpanzee extract a bushbaby with a spear.In most cases, the Fongoli chimpanzees carried out four or more steps to manufacture spears for hunting.
That's just great.
When were humans first making spears? At least now we can write up a timeline for when to expect the Simianistas to take over completely.
A common need for web apps is to insert something into a database table and then immediately find out which ID got assigned to your new thing so that you can refer to it later in the script (probably while inserting more data). A lot of folks start out doing something along the lines of:
INSERT INTO Addresses (address, city, state, postalcode) VALUES ('123 Main St.','Springfield','MA','01109'); SELECT max(id) as ID FROM Addresses;
After that, the folks on Microsoft SQL Server tend to discover the combination of SET NOCOUNT ON and @@IDENTITY:
SET NOCOUNT ON; INSERT INTO Addresses (address, city, state, postalcode) VALUES ('123 Main St.','Springfield','MA','01109'); SELECT id = @@IDENTITY; SET NOCOUNT OFF;
Now, at my new gig, we use PostgreSQL. Today, I finally found myself wondering if/how I could achieve the NOCOUNT/@@IDENTITY behavior. Turns out, it's super easy and almost even sexy (since version 8.2, I guess):
INSERT INTO Addresses (address, city, state, postalcode) VALUES ('123 Main St.','Springfield','MA','01109') RETURNING id;
That, my friends, is HOTT.
Sure, it's non-standard SQL, but what's the point of picking a particular RDMS if you don't use the magic that it offers?
Oh, but they can! If you had told me, I never would have believe that Shaquille O'Neal could ever do a windmill spin. I wouldn't believe he could have done it when he was young and strong, much less at his current age (he's two months younger than I am) and decrepitude (he's starting to get the Kareem Shuffle thing going).
Well done Shaq!
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Totally unrelated YouTube silliness: My generation's answer to Ian Anderson -- The Beatboxing Flautist (doing the Mario Bros. theme, no less).
How Not to Talk to Your Kids by Po Bronson (Interesting considering some gossip I've heard regarding how Bronson's kid is handled day to day.) With nice extras in Po's blog.
Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they'd learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck's team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The "smart" kids took the cop-out.
As a so-called "smart" kid, I can recognize that. Luckily, my upbringing also offered example after example of work ethic and perseverance.
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Pharm Animals Crank Out Drugs -- Ew... I'm generally fairly pragmatic about stuff like this, but yeesh this makes my skin crawl.
This might be scarier, though.
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This is awesome!
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, signed into law by George Bush the elder, led to creation of the ragingly popular Do Not Call List. But tucked away in the bill was another important provision that entitles consumers to take what's called a "private right of action." For each violation of the act, consumers can sue for a $500 penalty. Violations include calling after a consumer has told a company to stop, or failing to provide the consumer with a copy of the firm’s Do Not Call policy.
That's almost enough to make me start answering those "Unknown Name / Unknown Number" calls I get every day.
Never bet against Boston University in the Beanpot.
After falling behind early, Boston College took control of Monday's championship game halfway through the second period and outshot Boston University 26-10 through the last 40 minutes of regulation."We looked like we were waiting to lose," Terrier coach Jack Parker said.
But in overtime — after playing relatively little through the last two periods following an injury to Eric Thomassian — junior Brian McGuirk picked an opportune time to score his first goal of the season, burying a high wrister glove-side off a faceoff at 5:06 of overtime to give BU a 2-1 win and yet another Beanpot championship.
Sweet! (I'm bummed that I forgot to listen to the game, but it'll be OK.)
Man, I keep wanting to do a conherent post one of these days, but whatever...
There's probably more in the buffer, but that's all I can be bothered with for now.
Hugs & kisses.
Specifically, too much of it. Sienna Miller got plenty:
But the over-zealous creature proceeded to stick its little monkey tongue into Sienna's mouth.
The Alfie star adds, "I sort of made out with a monkey... It was a sweet monkey but, no, that's too much." And to finish off the bizarre encounter, the monkey proceeded to urinate on Sienna's back.
And down in St. Kitts it's a major problem, I guess:
There is no point talking about increasing agricultural production in St. Kitts if we continue to ignore the serious monkey problem we have here -- namely, the huge and ever increasing population of monkeys that wander the country side devastating vegetables and fruit crops wherever they go.
Personally, I'd go with the monkeys eating my fruit rather than sticking their tongues down my throat.
If you ever find yourself sitting at a computer with nothing to do, I recommend you hit the Wikipedia "Unusual Articles" list and work your way down from the top. Good lord!
(Props: Rod)
OK, so... Sorry about the week an a half of nothing. I wish I could say I've been busy or some such, but no. Mostly I've been sitting around alternately playing World of Warcraft and watching TV while trying out new and exciting pillow-influenced hair styles.
I suppose I can blast out a short list of tidbits for you though:
I guess that will have to do for now.
Wow. I was absolutely sure that Barack Obama wouldn't bother running for President this time around. I figured he'd let Hillary and Rudy duke it out and then continue to make a mess of things for another four years, leaving him with an open door in 2012. Not so.
Instead, Obama has officially tossed his hat in the ring by launching a Presidential Exploratory Committee, and I'm all giddy about it.
We'll see what happens... Is this country ready to let a non-white sit in the driver's seat?
Near the end of August in 2001, after a four month period of being unemployed, I finally found a job with a Boulder company called e-InfoData.com (Holy internet cliche overload!). We'll round the ensuing passage of time up to five and a half years for the purpose of this discussion. In that period the company changed it's name to InsightAmerica, moved its office to Broomfield, and eventually was acquired by a corporate giant (name uselessly withheld). The basic "job" of the company never really changed, and the work was mostly interesting on a nuts-and-bolts level (I still think we regularly pushed ColdFusion well beyond its normal bounds and managed to make it work.), even if the bigger picture at times gave me the heebee-jeebees.
At a more micro level, I've had the opportunity to work with some amazing people (particularly within the technology teams - but outside that, as well). In fact, most of the people I currently consider my best friends were first coworkers.
On a work level, there have certainly been ups and downs, but on a personal level this job has been nothing but positive.
You've probably already guessed that I've decided it's time for me to move on.
I'm also leaving a lot of friends behind. Hopefully I'll be able to keep in touch - the Denver Metro area isn't a very big place, really. Some of us already have outside-of-work connections, but I want to cultivate more of those.
So, yeah... That's what's going on with me.
Let's have Nina Simone carry us out, shall we?
Its a new dawn Its a new day Its a new life For me And I'm feeling good