Hard to Motivate

Sweet Jesus it is getting hard to stay motivated to do any good work here. Since I know I am quiting in 2 weeks, my urge to try to be the best and get the fantastic pay raises I have come to expect here is no longer holding my urge for sloth at bay. It is a effort of will just to stay here for the required eight hours a day!

On an unrelated note, I started a new blog yesterday (Coding From The Midwest) that will contain my more software engineer specific rants, data, examples, etc. Most of our readers will find this mind-numbingly boring or useful when you just cannot fall asleep at night, but if you make your living ordering around the gnomes that power every digital circut, you might find some useful stuff.

Top Ten Things We Will Miss/Look forward to

Thinking about our upcoming move, Sue and I are thinking about all the things we miss from Michigan and all the things we are leaving behind. Here is our list so far:

Things We Will Miss From Alabama

• D, Uncle R and all of the rest of the HPP. Also all of the Tybrin folks that really made us a part of their families :)
• Guthrie's Chicken - A store that only makes fried chicken and it comes in a box meal form, very delicious.
• Almost nonexistant property tax - 0.5 mils is insane.
• Dirt cheap land - My house and yard are going to cost about 1.5 to 2 times what they cost here.
• Dirt cheap housing - see 7.
• Living in an area with more PhDs than McDonalds per square mile. There is something to be said for a town with so many REALLY smart people around. Just don't leave the county and everything is fine.
• Being 4 hours from Atlanta. I really dig Peachtree street (but I cannot say which one). 1150 is a awesome club. But our Paul Van Dyke curse started there, so I have mixed feelings.
• Hard-core, balls to wall arguments with right-wing nut jobs. You just can't find right wing nut jobs like this in Michgan. Ok, you can, but they tend to live in Dexter and still light crosses on fire on peoples' lawns. Best to avoid thoe folks when possible.
• More GREAT mexican resturants than you can shake a stick at. I don't even like mexican food that much, but DAMN.
• Alabama Fall and Spring. Although I'll be the first to admit that its hard to tell when one ends and the other begins. BTW: There is no winter here. Period. End of discussion.

Things We Miss From Michigan and look forward to again

• The MSU and U of M party possee' s and all of the other friends in MI. Both of our families.
• Slurpees! By corelation: 7-11.
• Not having to drive 4 hours to visit a major city. I'm getting older, fatter, and lazier and driving four hours for fun is getting to be more than I care to invest.
• No nipple tape. I admit its been a while since we have seen a stripper, but if the mood strikes me I like to know that I can see a nipple in all its glory any time I want.
• CANADA! Left leaning, European ideals about sex, fun, and drinking. Young 19 year olds drunk and dancing in the club. People who actually appreciate Trance music.
• Gambling - Poker, slots, more casinos run by indians than you can possibly imagine, instant scrach off tickets, and a state wide lottery to punish people with false hope and no math skills.
• Proffesional Sport Teams: GO WINGS! And the Pistons. And uh... yea... we have the Lions. And the Tigers...uh...hmm...yea...uh...GO WINGS! I can finally make that Simpson's joke about, "How about those local sports teams?" without sounding like an idiot.
• MSU - Ah, sweet Alma Mater. I don't care what my friends say. MSU is just as good a school as UofM. Stuff it Kelly, Chris, and Shelle! MSU HOckey RULES!
• Snow - I know it is nostalgiac to think this way, but I miss snow. Ice skating, snowmen, and skiing!
• Paczkis - Sweet, delicous, Polish doughnuts. Michigan has a huge polish population and they make thousands each year. I love them so much that Sue's Mother has shipped us a dozen every year we have been here just so we would not miss out.
• All of the culture that Detroit, Toronto and Chicago have to offer. All of the great museums and musical shows/concerts that come each year. Ecspecially the car show and the Electronic music festival (Detroit is the birthplace of electronic music!). I can't wait to go the Detroit zoo and see Dave Matthews in Comerica park.
• Being in a state the appreciates the american car and will buy American cars. Not having to live in a state where everyone one has a Toyota with an American pride bumper sticker on it.
• Meijer's! I miss Meijer's. I love it's 24 hour greatness. They started the buy everything in one location thing when it began in 1962. Fucking Wal-mart stole the idea in 1988. Fuck Wal-mart and fuck Sam Walton. Hendrick Meijer rules. I refuse to shop in Wal-mart ever again.
• The Mackinaw Bridge and Mackinaw fudge. Mmm...fudge. If you have never been to Mackinaw then you have not had real fudge. By relation Moose tracks ice cream.
• REAL LAKES!! Only Michigan has real lakes.
• Pokey sticks! If you went to MSU, then you understand.
• Four distinct seasons. If I wanted to sweat to death then I would go to a sauna. Not natural.
• Being in a blue state again and not living in the Bible belt.
• Not having any dry counties. WTF is a dry county??? Plus being able to buy liquor and milk and eggs in the same location.
• The Hash bash in Ann Arbor. A place where fans of marijuana can come together and be merry.

Holding Everyone's Hand

One thing I will NOT miss about my job is holding the slow peoples' hands during development. Today in a fit of complete stupidity, one our developers came and bothered me saying that the build was broken on his machine.

Fuck.

First off, there is the fact that every time this dude gets the source code from our server he has this issue. He's one of those people who responds to unexpected issues much like I imagine a cave man would: stares blankly, grunts, shakes monitor, scratches head, wonders aloud, "why no work?". You get the idea.

So he comes to my office to tell me that one of the projects (lets call it project B) in the code won't build (yet again). I ask him all the usual questions:

Me: You got all the code from the server right?

Him: <grunt>

Me: You did merge the changes into your code right?

Him: <grunt>

Me: OK, lets go have a look. <scroll through errors> Well lets see, project B is not compiling. mmmm...Well, it says here that project A that project B depends on did not compile.

Him: Yea, I noticed that but I didn't think it was an issue.

Me: <stare blankly at him wondering why he was allowed to reproduce, followed by a long sigh>...Lets see why it did not compile.

Him: <Stares blankly>

Me: <Picturing said developer as Daffy Duck being shot repeatedly during the "You keep out of this; He doesn't have to shot you now" bit> The error says you failed to link. You are probably defining a method but not implementing it anywhere (DUMBASS).

Him: But I did implement...er...hmmm...it no here...

Me: <Wander out without saying more. I don't want to have to write the method too.>

Days like this make me glad I will be working alone and from home soon.

Typical Day in My Inbox

Unlike most everyone on the planet, I have had the same email address for the last 9 years. In my more naive days, I used to post my email address with most of my posts to newsgroups, web logs, or whatever else I was accessing on the web. These two facts mean that any glance at my inbox is very disturbing. Its disturbing not just for the quantity of spam I receive in a given 8 hour period (164 today), but also for the contents on those emails. I thought a quick browse through just the subject lines might be enough to prove my point.

"Earn your degree online All degre (their spelling, not mine) levels, wide range of majors."

I get about 10 of these every 8 hours. I have a degree, but thanks. And if I didn't, I don't think my employer would be impressed with a university that consists of a computer and a laser printer. My office at home is a university if that is the only criteria.

"You can save up to 70% on <insert some drug that increases erections> !"

I get about 30 of these every 8 hours. Hmmmm... yes, buying prescription drugs that can increase my risk of a heart attack, stroke, and blindness from someone I will never see or have never met DOES sound like a good idea. Not to mention the chance of having an erection for 12 hours straight.

"SPERMAMAX does not increase Dihydrotestosterone or show any incident of gynomasticia."

Thank God you told me that in the subject line. Because next to Avian Flu and Bears, that was my number one concern in life right now...

"Indulge your wife all the year round with Generik Viagra."

See now, that just unprofessional. You send all this money to rent an illegal zombie bot network to send out millions of spam, and you can't take the time to spell check your offerings? Sorry, but that sort of spotty attention to detail just turns me right off to whatever you are offering.

"Very sad German statistics say in average"

Uh...ok...


The rest are really too graphic to even post here. Lets just say they nearly all match the following template:

<male fantasy girl> <verb that describes something perverse> <some thing to stuff into a person that may or may not be sanitary> <some place to stuff things in>

Trust me when I say you don't want to read them.

Moving on Up (in this case, North)

I've gotten a new software engineering job with a company in Michigan and I have agreed to take it. An old buddy of mine from my last job recommended me and we just could not turn down their offer.

I've lived in Alabama 4 years almost to the day now. Most of it has actually been really great (despite what the name of my blog domain might otherwise imply). Lots of new friends, great job, great coworkers, and new career for my wife. It feels odd to say that I may even miss it a bit.

My start date is March 20, and I have 6 months or so to make the move. So we will be here a bit longer until we can manage to sell my house. In the mean time, its time to drink, celebrate, and revel in our return to four distinct seasons.

Nod if you agree

I'm having one of those days where all the other developers around me actually look like they moving in slow motion because of how much work I can accomplish in a single hour. I love days like this:) This site sums it up.

http://smartest.ytmnd.com/

I Heart Sue Wilson

F-ing Work

Good god it has been a while between posts.

We are getting down to the wire here on my current project. I HATE this part of my job. All the stress of delivering a high quality product on time really makes me an unpleasent person to be around.

For one thing, there is the whole issue of telling people to get the fuck out of my office. Most days, I just go with it. People need to relieve stress or point out funny things on the web or whatever. But when I under the gun for a delivery, every second of the day seems precious (In case you are wondering, I'm writing this while compiling my executable, not just wasting time). I've come up with the following system to get people out during those times:

Stage 1) Wear large headphones. You don't have to listen to anything on them. Just wear them. With headphones, you can always pretend you aren't listening when they yell for you to come see something. Stage one will only deter the most worthless of conversations and then only with the people too lazy to even get up and come to your office. If someone overcomes this first hurdle, it's time for Stage 2:

Stage 2) Step 2 is all about minimizing the ability of the conversation to continue.

* Continue to do exactly what you were doing when the person comes into your office: typing, filing, eating, rubbing your head while you pat your stomach, whatever. The point is, what you are doing is very important and you can't be bothered with their stupid conversation enough to actually devote more than your brain stem to it

* Answer in the shortest number of syllabes possible. Try some of the following: "Yes", "No", "Cool", "Neat", "Thanks", "Penguin", "doh", "hm...", and "That sucks", (or just "Sucks" if you are really into it). You get the idea.

If those don't work, you have to move on to Stage 3.

Stage 3:

* Stop making any eye contact at all. Go back to working on whatever you were working on before they came in. Typing is very effective here. That clicking noise acts as a constant reminder that you don't care about whatever the person is talking about. No really. I don't care. Seriously. Can't you literally hear me not caring? What the fuck is wrong with you?!?!?!

So that's my system. Anyone have any other ideas?

Lets see...What's in the news today?

Six dead after Calif. postal center shooting spree

What is it about sorting small envelopes for eight hours a day that makes people want to go on a rampage and kill all their co-workers? Seriously? Is it the federal holidays? Why the fuck DO I get Columbus day off anyways?

I think it must be the stamps. That weird saliva activated paste they use must cause you go completely ape shit if you sniff too much. Or perhaps it is just the shame of being fired from the USPS. I mean lets be serious for a moment: In order to be fired from this sort of job, you would have do something like shove a live badger into the sorting machine...in front of the boss...while making ethnic slurs...then rape the sadly mutilated, dead badger....everyday...for at least a year...probably two because you get the union to defend you for the first year.

Bush to Say 'America Is Addicted to Oil' in Talk

Thank you Captain Obvious! Why is this even news? I'm expecting the next headline on CNN to be "Bush to say 'Americans like candy' in Talk"

Hilton profit up 62 percent on room rate hikes

I'll let you insert your own joke here. Think of something clever, then show off by putting it in the comments. If it can somehow involve her little rat/dog, 50 bonus points!

Funny

Funny WoW Comic.

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=134

Actually, I just discovered this gamers comic today. It is GREAT!

3AM Ramblings

Warning: I read this all after I was finished and I cannot believe how much just flowed out of my fingers at 3:30. I had written the first paragraph below and I was wondering what I was going to type when it just started pouring out. And once it started, it could not be stopped. Sorry it jumps around a lot and is a bit heavy. If you want coherent and light, you should read something else:)

I'm in Iowa again this week validating some software we are writing. Because we are working second shift, my schedule has been completely f-ed up this entire week. I feel like I've been living like a vampire or something.

Like I said, it is about 3 in the morning here, so naturally rather than go to sleep like a rational person would, I feel the need to decompress by taking another deep look into my mind and the way that my brain works again.

<annoying game show announcer voice>Thaaaaaat's right folks. Its time to play.... WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? /clap Today's topic: regrets.
</annoying game show announcer voice>

Despite what I like to consider my very care-free outward appearance, I have a deep running hidden streak of regret of all sorts of previous actions in my life. Without revealing specifics:

1) Stupid/Mean things I have said to friends.
2) Stupid/mean things I have said to friends while drunk
3) Cheating on a girlfriend
4) Telling someone I loved them just to get a kiss
5) Kissing and telling
6) Fucking and telling
7) Putting friends into uncomfortable situations because of my actions
8) Using and discarding a very nice younger girl to go back to a girl who was completely wrong.
8) Leading on girls for attention
10) Being mean to someone just to get attention
11) Didn't believe someone who told me about a forced sexual experience.

And those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head.

The worst thing about it is that most of the time I'm talking about things that happened 10 years ago. Why the fuck do I keep this guilt around for so long? When I finally do apologize for some of these things, the answer is usually, "Oh yeah, I had completely forgotten about that." So I'm carrying around this guilt and regret for nothing?! THANKS ASS!

But of course, for every rule like the above you need an exception. Mine is #8 & #11. I may never forgive myself for either one of those. sigh... I chatted with #8 semi-recently, and at least in her case I can positively say that my guilt is 100% deserved. I would say I am sorry again, but what's the use? It doesn't change that fact that I almost single-handily destroyed a young woman's trust of men. As for #11, she mentioned recently that I was the only person she ever confided that secret in before that moment. I'm sure that my reaction directly contributed to many of her later issues with trust, betrayal, and commitment.

You know that whole thing about love making you blind? Well, I can tell you that it always does for me. That's what lead to #8 in the first place. Sue may be angry at me for saying this, but I have been in love with at least 3 different women in my life so far. Real, blinding, I cannot explain the way I feel, I would step in front a bus for them, Princess Bride "wuv, truuu wuv" sort of love. The sort where I was planning a life together. Looking back on the first two, I can say with 100% confidence that it could never work (duh moron: The fact you are not with them pretty much means it did not work). Both were 100% the opposite of what I really want my partner in life to be. But at the time, no argument could change my outlook, no amount of motherly nagging could make me see the truth, and the fact that some truly wonderful women were right in front of my face made no difference what so ever.

Is it a rule that everyone has to date one person in high school who will do significant damage to their ability to commit to someone later in life ? Is that like something that the school counselors set up? I swear that everyone I know had this experience. Hell, I'm disturbed by the number of women I personally know who had a really bad sexual-related experience growing up (its easily north of 50%). What the FUCK is wrong with so many people?????

Great bumper stickers for the New Year!

You can buy these and other great stickers at http://www.evolvefish.com/fish/stickers.html

They have some great stickers and other fun things. This site makes me happy... I need the Flying Spaghetti Moster one.

Fun Links for your almost Weekend

History of C History of VB

Very funny explanations of how these languages got to where they are now.

Piehole

Hilarious blog by a Seattle girl who claims to be a "Professional Drunk Blogger". Her post for today is an excellent example of why you should read this one:

I think I drank about four THOUSAND espresso shots today... Now I have restless leg syndrome. And restless arm syndrome. And ADHD.

And I don't think I can write anything else now because I have to go walk over there. And tremble. And talk about 4 different subjects* all at the same time to some confused people.
* Puppies, plywood blocking, travel itineraries, and Chaka Khan.

Steve, Don't Eat It!

Steve eats things you seen in the store that you have always wondered why the fuck anyone would eat them, then writes absolutely hilarious reviews.

Here is a preview for Beggin' Strips:

Beggin' Strips slogan is "Dog's don't know it's not bacon!" Newsflash: Dogs are retarded. Mine used to eat his own vomit, and wag his tail while he did it. I'll be the one to decide if this stuff tastes like bacon or not.

I know these snacks aren't made for human consumption, but while I was in the store the ingredients list looked pretty tame so I wasn't too concerned. Somehow I had missed one extremely dubious word sitting there all by itself. "MEAT". That's all it says... meat.

Meat is a pretty large umbrella. Beef is meat. Pork is meat. Horses, monkeys, and allegedly Arby's roast beef are meat. Even Rosie O'Donnell's ball sack is meat. Okay, maybe I've gone too far. I have no idea what that is they are serving at Arby's, but you get my point.

Recommended Pants

Usually I am a big fan of Amazon.com's recommendations. They help me find music and books that I will enjoy based on other things I have rated and purchased. However, the system is not 100% perfect. Case in point, the image below. I swear to you that I have not doctored this image in any way except the highlight in red (you might have to click on the image to be able to read it):

Stupid Munchkin

Sue bought me Munchkin 4: The Need for Steed for Christmas, but had to give me a picture of the game only due to a delay in shipping. I found out today that the game has been delayed until February. Damn Steve Jackson for making such an addicting game! I need the precious new cards. NOW!

Thank you for dating the Movie Phone Guy

My life is rated NC-17!



What is your life rated? (MPAA Scale)

Hilarious WoW movie

You have to have played World of Warcraft for this one to be funny:)

FROST SHOCK!

The Wilson's are back...ALRIGHT!

We are back in Alabama after a great trip back home to Michigan to see family and friends for the holidays. We were up there from Dec. 29th until Jan 8th. We saw all of the family to have a late Christmas with them all and drank Slurpees everday! Damn Alabama and the surrounding states that do not have 7-11's!! There was not much snow. It was in the 40's most of when we were up there which is warm for Michigan. We had snow two days but it always melted the next day since it was so warm. It was weird driving around Michgan without snow on the ground. It was good for the driving part. We had no problems driving up or back to Alabama. We also went back to MSU to relive the college experience.

We had a rockin New Year. We went to Detroit again to the club we went to last year, The Bleu room experience, to see DJ Richard Vission spin. He was pretty cool! The music rocked all night. Vission has a remix of "The Killer's, Mr. Brightside" that was fun to dance to. We had a great time.

While we were there we took my little sister's to see The Chronicle's of Narnia. If you ignore all of the religious conotations it is a great movie. I enjoyed it. I have still not read the books but it is a fun story.

On the way back from the movies, a deer ran into the right side of our Jeep while I was driving. I was looking straight ahead like a good driver when Eric saw the deer coming right for us and then there was nothing I could do. Unfortuneatly the deer died, but MI police have a program where they donate the dead deer to charity so that poor people can have deer meat. It was a great idea I thought. Luckily our Jeep is a tank so it just caused some minor body damage. The headlight broke and the right panels were pushed and our right door was unable to open due to the right panel being pushed into the door. It is all fixable. I am just glad that no one was hurt since my sister's were in our car with us. Insurance is good since we only need to pay $500 of the cost! That was my first deer/car accident, so I had the ultimate Michigan activity. Michigan usually has tons of deer and this year there are more than usual and the car/deer accidents are high. That was the only negative part of our trip.

Now it is back to the grindstone. I have to go to work for 3 days in a row tomorrow, damn it!

Best of 2005: Movies I Saw

According to me (Eric).

I have to go with Serenity, because Joss Whedon is my master now. Better than Star Wars I & II certainly. Probably the best original Sci-fi movie I have seen since The Matrix. Damn Fox! DAMN THEM FOR DENYING ME MORE FIREFLY!

But Mr. & Mrs. Smith was also great (Angilina Jolie is on my five celebs I get to bang list). So was Hitch, Kingdom of Heaven, Rent, Jarhead, and Assault on Precinct 13. Even Star Wars and Batman finally turned it around this year, which given their previous track record was about as likely as Ashlee Simpson creating a song that I actually wanted to listen to.

Best of 2005: TV Shows

According to me (Eric).

* "How I Met Your Mother" is probably my favorite sitcom on right now. Any show that includes Neil Patrick Harris (DOUGIE!) and Alyson Hannigan is bound to be awesome, right? Sure it is campy and so similar to Friends that only the fact that the show revolves around 5 people instead of 6 lets to you tell them apart. Did I mention it includes NEIL PATRICK HARRIS?!?

* "The War at Home", along with the Simpsons, are the only redemable shows on Fox. Its always both funny and racy. That's all I ask people. Funny and racy. It's a simple formula really.

* "Scrubs" is still my favorite show on TV (can you tell I have a thing for sitcoms?). Sadly the fall season was put off until next year, which made me bitter. Well actually, it just contributes to me remaining bitter at least. Scrubs by itself can in no way explain my overall bitterness at the world.

* Sue and I discovered "Six Feet Under" this year, and while it was not always 100% awesome, the great moments are some of the most gripping and emotional I have ever seen on TV. Six Feet Under is one of those shows that can absolutely horrify you, give you a three second joke, and then go right back for the tragedy jugular. It's not a show to just watch anytime, but it's worth the ride.

* The Colbert Report - I actually think this show is better then the Daily Show. Yea, I said it. What are you going to do about it John Stewart? BIATCH! That's right.

Canada...F#$k Ya!

CNN.com: Group sex clubs legalized in Canada

Once again, Canada proves why it is a great place to party:) First you have the drinking age at 19. Second, strippers can get completely naked. Then you have party girls letting go like only girls who have to wear eight layers of clothes most places will. And now you can end the day in a nice private club having legal sex with a stranger? What more can you want? :)

Best quote:

"Labaye, a portly and jovial 46-year-old native of France, said swingers celebrated the Supreme Court victory with a late-night party at L'Orage."

I'll bet!

Merry Christmas From the Wilson House

Christmas in the south

Usually this time of the year we are long gone and on our way to MI for the holidays but since I decided to work we were delayed due to my schedule and we are forced to spend the actual days of Christmas down here in the south. I gotta say that the warmth and the lack of snow and the lack of a need for a coat make me a scrouge. Bah. I can not get in the Christmas mood. I was finishing up my shopping yesterday and I was walking around with no coat in the sun with temps in the 50's. This is spring weather where I am from. Damn it! I miss the snow so much. I don't get how some people can live their entire lives without having a true winter every year. I have become such a wuss up here with the lack of cold. The funny thing is that people down here put on a coat, scarf, and mittens when it is 40 or 50.

Well, Eric and I will try to make the best of Christmas being 600 miles away from our families. We have each other and that is what is important. As long as I have him, then I am happy. Plus with my job, I know things could be worse. A lot of people are very sick in the hospital for Christmas or dying or have died. I have learned that you need to make the most of your life with the ones you love. This will conclude this rant.

Happy birthday to Bob!

Usually we are in Michigan for bob's birthday with the snow so I thought it would be fitting to show this picture. Bob loves snow! Bob was four on the 19th but I was working hard saving lives at work ;) We love you Bob even though you cannot read human. My little pup is growing up... (tear).


Happy Birthday!!

WoW that's addictive

For those of you who don't know, Eric recently hooked me on WoW (World of Warcraft), which is an online roleplaying game. Yes, I know how lame roleplaying is, and [video confession time] at one point I've been into both D&D and Star Wars roleplaying. However, I'm not lame and I've roleplayed, so therefore roleplaying is not automatically lame (how do you like that logic, Socrates!)

So I figured I'd write a bit about my experiences. Feel free to flame me if you don't like boys talking about games or if your eyes glaze over when I talk gamespeak, but I'll try to keep this accessible.

It's very addictive, but not as fun as it is addictive. What I mean by that is I feel myself drawn back to the game more than the enjoyment I get from it would seem to justify. I find it... precious.

As with all video games, it brings out primal rage in me, particularly when I'm frustrated (died and have to waste time running back to my corpse). At these points I curse loudly and violently (just ask Sue). So it appeals to me because I get the thrill of having new powers and advancing and using my brain. However, it also has the frustration I feel for having to do things over (and over) again.

On a side note, I think I like it because I get attached to my character. At some level, he is me and (as you know) I get angry when I die. In addition, I like my role in the game. I am trying one of the most flexible, but challenging classes (druid). This fits me because I enjoy a challenge, but am easily bored. I play as often as possible with Sue and Eric too and I like playing the protector in that group and being able to play a game with friends 500+ miles away. At the same time, though, it's not the quality time that conversation or face2face would be (when most of our conversation is Kill That thing, Heal Me, or Eric why did you piss off every monster in the frickin room?)

Of course, the irony in all this is I now have time to play the game because I (finally) finished my dissertation on (Taaa Daaa!) Internet Addiction! Oh well, at least my dissertation wasn't totally anti-WoW, that would be hypocrisy (my least favorite -crisy).

So if I seem a little distracted lately (my bad) don't worry, it's only because I'm obsessed with a malevolent technology that dominates my life and kills my relationship and free time for 14.99/month =)

Sex Advice from Game Con Girls

http://www.nerve.com/regulars/sexadvicefrom/gameconventiongirls/

My favorite quote:

Can it (video games) make me better in bed?

Yes. Video-game players are used to looking for secret hiding places, secret codes, secret toys. They're very into details.

Software Practices That Piss Me Off Too

R's post about software practices that piss him off was such a good idea that I feel obligated to do the same now. Thinking up original content is HARD:) Maybe if some of the other posters to this blog pulled their weight (*cough* Paul *cough*). But I digress (which is only slightly better than egressing I guess).

My top five peeves are as follows:

5) Repeating the same code over and over and over and over and over and over again throughout your code base: Pst...hey dumb ass...they solved this problem way back in the 1950s. Its called a function. Learn about them. They are your friend.

4) Curly braces: There is one and one way to use them:

//Note: This always evaluates to true, unless the Eric has managed to
//drop some sort of foul smelling sauce on her...
if (Sue.IsASexyBitch)
{
Eric.MakeWithTheLoving();
}

Any other way is wrong. Its so wrong that we had to put this in our coding standard because SOME people can't just see that it is wrong and need the Nazi-like brutality of the "PROCESS" to stop them (can you tell I have no found feelings for the "PROCESS"?).

3) Writing functions that are more than 80 lines long: I swear to you this is true. I've now seen at least three production systems fielded to the US Army that contain single functions that are FIVE PAGES LONG. Have you ever tried to wrap your brain around five pages of text at once? Try it some time. Its not a pretty picture.

2) Using Object Oriented structures like a f#$king C programmer: I've lost count of the number of times I have seen people who grew up with functional programming try to turn everything else they see into one giant function graph. This is right:

Objects = data + operations + useful abstractions

This is not:

Objects = place to put functions

If you are in camp number two, please don't work anywhere I do.

I know you are all waiting with baited breath here for #1!

1) Using code you don't understand: OMFG I hate when I see this comment in code:

//I don't know why (perhaps because I am too much a n00b
// to understand compilers, or I have a EE degree but I think
// I should be writing code), but without the next line the
// code afterwards does not work.
<Some code that makes no sense>

And believe me, I have seen this way more than I would like. In live systems. That affect safety of flight. Remember that the next time the you get on a plane.

COM was probably the worse. I swear approximately four people on earth (I was one) actually took the time to understand the problem COM was trying to solve and why it was implemented the way it was. Everyone else just blindly starting using it without any idea what the heck was going on. I've seen more butchered ATL code and code that does unbelievely bad things in COM than any other tech put together. Just the other day I saw something like the following:

p->QueryInterface(&q);
q->Release();
q->DoSomeOtherWork();

Even if you know NOTHING about programming, that sort of code should look wrong to you. Very wrong. Like crashing when you have just 10kb left to download of a video of Anna Kournikova and Tina Fey kissing naked wrong. Worse is there was even a comment explaining why this clearly wrong thing to do was the right thing to do! "Because I tested it". F#$king n00bs...

A day in the life of a nurse

Well, as you all know, I am a new RN working in a big hospital. I thought that you all might enjoy knowing what exactly nurses have to deal with on a typical day. This week was a rough one for me. I work on the Respiratory Care Unit. Breathing is quite important. In nursing school and CPR you are taught the ABC's. Airway, Breathing and Cardiopulomonary are the most important in that order. Before you can fix anything else you need those things working. Your heart can't work unless there is oxygenated blood to pump and the lungs can't work unless there is an airway to get oxygen from. So where I work, number one and number two are usually what we are trying to watch and maintain.

Anyway the first thing we do in the morning, at 6:30 am, is get report from the night shift nurses. Then you look over morning labs and review all of the orders for each patient for that day. Then you go to each of your patients rooms and take morning vital signs and do morning assessments (listen to lungs, check pulses, check IV's, etc). While you are in each room you have to suction any trachs, change empty IV bags and find out who needs pain meds. You deal with all of that and then you go back and try to chart all that you did that morning. We do assessments at 8, 12 and 1600. You give meds as they are scheduled. 9:00 am is a big medicine time but some patients have meds every 1-2 hours. You also attend to any needs that the patients call you for. Sometimes your pager does not shut up. Sometimes trach patients need to be suctioned every 15 to 30 min. Sometimes people need pain medicine every 1-2 hours. Those things take time. Sometimes the patients IV stops working and you have to start a new one. There are also some patients that need dressing changes. The doctors come into the hospital throughout the day and order new things throughout the day. Sometimes you have to assist them with minor surgery at a moments notice, like the insertion of a chest tube or a indwelling IV. Fun! On those very special days you get to give an enema. You also discharge patients throughout the day and get new patients throughout the day. A good day is when you do not get new patients because they take a lot of time. You try to find time to eat lunch and then come 6:30 pm you wait for the night shift nurses to come in and you give them report again.

This week, I had two trach patients, and two end stage COPD patients that happened to both have a history of strokes, heart problems and demetia. Fun! Four patients does not seem like a lot but it is. First of all with trach patients you have to suction them if they are coughing up a lot of junk which they usually do. If you do not suction them then their trach (airway) gets plugged and you have lost their ability to breath. One of them was a 89 year old, crabby woman that was hard to please. The other trach pt was a 37 year old vegetable. At least he did not give me any trouble but it was hard to treat a person that is not there at all. He has no quality of life. He is basically a organ harvester. Still I had to suction his trach and feed him through a tube in his stomach. He had to be fed 3 times in the day on my shift. Of course in the middle of the day my old guy with COPD decided to start acting weird. He was very disoriented and did not recognize any of his family and did not know where he was or what was going on and plus he was not eating or drinking anything that day. I had to call the Dr. quick because that is a true sign that his lungs are not working properly and oxygen is not reaching the brain well. He was in bad shape according to all of the tests the doctor had me order so the doctor had me start and IV with fluids, put in a catheter, increase his oxygen and start antibiotics. This guy is not going to live much longer. He is in poor shape so I was not sure what was going to happen with him since all of his symptoms are also the same things you see when a patient is actively dying. The last patient I had that was the same way died within 12 hours. It was good to see him improved the next day. His wife was the sweetest woman ever and she hugged me and kissed my cheek when I left that day he was doing poorly and said thank-you for being so kind and for helping him. She did the same the next day when I left. That is the rewarding part. The thank-yous when you know you did some good for someone's life. Sometimes it is because it was an emergency situation and sometimes it was just because you took time to sit down and talk to a lonely patient or a stressed out family member or because you took the time to get a patient a snack or treat when they needed it or you sat with a grieving family member.

Of course throughout the day you help your fellow nurses in need. If another patient codes we all rush to that room. If another nurse's patient dies you stop for a moment and feel bad and then you move on with your busy day. If it was a patient that you have taken care of in the past then you go and tell them your condolences and give a hug or two.

CNN Rantings

I hate CNN. There was a point in my life that I loved CNN, so it really pains me to say this. But I hate CNN. I hate both the TV station and cnn.com. I'm still reserving judgement on Headline News and the CNN airport channel.

I can remember a time in the not too distant past when you could turn on CNN and really intelligent people would be having really intelligent debates about policy, international news, or whatever. Now, every time, and let me repeat that for emphasis, EVERY TIME I turn on CNN they have replaced the smart, intelligent news anchor with some vapid, blonde bimbo who's only skill in life is reading at a 10th grade level, applying too much lipstick, and smiling a lot

-OR-

They have replaced the smart, intelligent news anchor with someone who's only skill is pissing their guest off so that we can watch smart intelligent people shout at each other.

Why? Who decided this was the "master plan to save CNN from the evils of Fox News"? Is this network run by the same people who do Survior (the same thing has happened. "Real" people have been replaced with really pretty and/or angry people as a rule)? Like we need MORE empty angry people on TV? If I want to watch empty people reading, I'd tune in to the plague that the non-stop TV/music/video/movie award shows have become. That's what they are for after all:)

Less Serious Topic

Clearly, my previously posts have bummed everyone out, so I think it's time for something more light hearted.

I saw this article the other day for a new fan-made Japanese game, and I just had to share it: Its an all girl fighting game where, "you can't deal out damage to your opponent unless you take a picture of her panties right after you beat her up." The link above has a picture of the game in action and a link to the game's web site (neither is probably safe for work).

Um...wow. The Japanese are a weird group of folks. Of course, if you have ever seen "Ghost in the Machine", or some of the truly sick japanime which I won't name here, you probably already know that.

9/11 anywhere else?

Random thought for today: If 9/11 had happened anywhere else in the world, would we have given a damn? Do ~3000 people count only when they die in the strech of land that your governing body can collect taxes from? Why DON'T we care when 3,000 people die anywhere else?

Schindler's List Thoughts

Unlike everyone of my generation, I had never seen Schindler's List before Sunday. So...um...wow. Six million people. Jesus Christ. First off, the fact that my anscetors were mostly German made me sick to my stomach while watching that. I'm so confused, pissed, angry, sad...its like the Skittle's rainbow of emotions over here right now.

What's worse, I was talking to Paul about it right after, and he mentioned that as much as we try to forget, this sort of thing is still going on today. Look at places like Rwanda, Kosov, even Sudan and Iraq today. People wiping out entire groups of people just because their DNA differs by less than 1% or were born on the other side of some imaginary line drawn on some map.

Sigh... I guess what I am saying is that we suck. Its a good thing God does not do the whole smiting thing anymore, because a frog's terminal velocity is not something I care to experience first hand.

Another Trip

I'm in Phoenix this week yet again for a work at the Boeing plant here. Right now I am so hopped up on the caffeine in this extra large slurpie that I am shaking in excitement. So to pass the time until I can fall asleep, I thought I might write down my random stream of conciseness.

First, I cannot believe just how many comments I got from my posts about Iraq. Apparently its a subject that brings out responses from the people:) I wonder if I can repro that with another post on a completely different topic. Doubt it.

I'm out here testing with a middle aged woman (she told me here age so it is ok that I call her that) that surprisingly, I'm getting along with swimmingly. Before we left I was imagining us staring at each other across the table and never talking the entire time. Instead, we have talked about the entire gauntlet of things that co-workers are not supposed to talk about: religion, politics, and the great pumpkin. Ok, only two of those actually.

Some how we have managed to hire at least 2 competent people at work so far this year. I'm so impressed. Our interview process sucks. We don't have people write code, which is a HUGE mistake in my book. And we focus too much on the process crap and not enough on coding skills in general. Oooooo...you programmed in Ada 10 years ago and in C since the language was invented. Whoop de do. Too much "gut feeling" hiring and not enough qualitative measurements. So when we get good developers, its mostly a crap shoot.

WHY MUST EVERYTHING BE SO HARD?!?!! WHY MUST I FAIL AT EVERY ATTEMPT AT COHERENT BLOGS?!?!?!

RENT!

We went to see the movie of the great musical Rent Friday. It was great! I love the musical and Eric and I know the whole thing by heart since we have listened to it hundreds of times. It was very true to the musical with most of the cast being original members of the first broadway cast. I think that they did a great job with the movie and it was cool to see the musical set in the real NYC and not just the abstract set that the musical usually uses. Rosario Dawson and Taye Diggs were the two newbies for the movie and they did great. I did not know that either of them could sing. Rosario Dawson was a sexy bitch as Mimi. She has her whole stripper scene that she does really well and Eric enjoyed her ass hanging out of the little g-string shorts she was wearing. Jesse L. Martin from Law and Order kicked ass. I did not know he could sing and act like that. He was from the original cast and plays Tom Collins really well.

I think that everyone should see the musical but if they can't then they should at least see the movie. It is a great story about love, real life, living with AIDS and how much better your life is with just a few great friends that would do anything for you.

I also applaud the makers of the film for putting shots of the twin towers in. Rent is set in 1989-1990 so you can't really get away with not showing it. I am sick of movie creators and such treating America like children. If we see shots of the towers we will not crumble. You must face the past and deal with your problems dead on. Not showing it would be disgraceful to the memory of the towers, to the people that lived with it in their lives for so long and to those that perished with in it. It is a part of our history and I am sick of people taking it from pictures and movies.

Some things

I have not blogged in a while so I thought I would write about some things I have been meaning to. First I would like to congratulate Paul on being a successful new part of our blogging team. Yeah! I really enjoyed reading his entries.

Eric, D, and I all went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last Friday! It ruled! It is the best movie by far and I believe it is the best book. If you have any interest in the series at all you have to see the movie. The kids have grown so much and they act really well in this one. I loved everything in the movie but they still kept Dumbledore's gay hat from the last one. Every book clearly states that he wears a tall wizard's hat and the first two movies had that. I do not know why the new director decided to keep the last director's change on that one.

I am also reading a great book right now called "A million little pieces" by James Frey. I will tell you why it appealed to me. The first part of the book is this:

I wake to the drone of an airplane engine and the feeling of something warm dripping down my chin. I lift my hand to feel my face. My front four teeth are gone, I have a hole in my cheek, my nose is broken and my eyes are swollen nearly shut. I open them and I look around and I'm in the back of a plane and there's no one near me. I look at my clothes and my clothes are covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit, and blood. I reach for the call button and I find it and I push it and I wait and thirty seconds later an Attendant arrives.
How can I help you?
Where am I going?
You don't know?
No.
You're going to Chicago, sir.
How did I get here?
A doctor and two men brought you on.
They say anything?
They talked to the Captain, sir. We were told to let you sleep.

For more see Amazon.com for the rest of the excerpt. The book is about the authors addiction to pretty much every drug and alcohol and his time in rehab. His favorite drug was crack and he loved alcohol, but he did everything he could get a hold of and he was a dealer at one time. He writes in a nontraditional way and he writes everything as it happened at the time by using the journals he kept and by getting copies of his files of his time in rehab since he couldn't remember some things during detox. I also like it because he tells it like it is and does not make rehab a flower picking good time. Rehab was tough for him and he totally wrecked all of his internal organs. He went through hell during rehab and that is how he tells it. It is a great read. If you enjoy good books you will enjoy this.

This I believe…. (pt 1)

Okay because Eric is obsessed with this whole higher power/god thing and loves hearing about other people's beliefs on God, here goes. If anyone besides him finds this interesting, so much the better.

For the record I'm technically Catholic [I was confirmed Paul Istvan Luke (because he was the only apostle in Star Wars) Mikowski] and technically hell-bound (many unconfessed sins, up to and including the dreaded premarital sex).

However, my recent wedding was not religious in the slightest and I've hovered for a while between agnostic and atheist, depending on how bitter or confident I am at that moment. I was ferociously atheist in early adolesence and I can remember the moment I stopped believing. I was in Sunday school (on tuesday afternoons, go figure) and I had a nutball for a teacher. He would go on about 666 being written on the inside of every computer a bunch of times, how we were going to have a credit card chip in our hands soon and this was predicted as Satanic in Revelations, and such.

What really cheesed me off however, was that I was a hard scientist and he started going after evolution. He said that if an evolutionist astronaut found a watch on the moon, he'd say that it evolved a glass face to protect itself and a watchband to move around, while a Catholic would have the simpler (and presumably correct) conclusion that God put it there. This blew my young mind and I soon decided that even if I didn't know how the world worked, this guy *definitely* didn't.

I guess at some level I also pitied those who were unable to face the harsh reality of an uncaring cosmos and that we are just dust in the wind (gotta love that song), saw them as deluded fools. Maybe I was jealous too, of not having the comfort of having someone besides me looking after me.

I've softened in my views considerably since. I believe that faith is an admirable, necessary quality to see us through hard times (even if it can be overused). I believe that there is a higher power, although it might just be our ability to create a version of heaven on Earth through our goodness, compassion and, dare I say it, love. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an Utopian idealist (bit of a hippie, though), but I do believe in doing kindness as often as you are able in order to make your local world a bit better. At the same time, I understand that kindness is easier when your life and current situation isn't too shitty, after all, I am a psychologist....

It's a big deal though, I hope there's a heaven (and one liberal enough to let me in for good behavior, despite my non-beliefs). If not, I'll take solace in the fact that it doesn't matter if there's no heaven and, if there's a hell, in all likelihood Gandhi will be there burning with me. I think that little Indian guy would make eternal pain a whole lot more bearable.

If you read this far, you probably have no life (go WoW!), but I appreciate you sharing you lack of life with me.

"go forth and do my bidding! Uh hang on, I'm sure I'll come up with some bidding soon...."

And now, put your hands together for special guest blogger – (Dr.) Paul!!!

Hey party ppl, much love and props to y’all. There’s a new kid in town and he’s rip raring to blog on this previously Wilson-centric blog! A big thanks to my boy Eric (and my girl Sue W.) for giving me this permission.

Me even trying another person’s blog means my narcissism finally outdid my laziness (no small feat to anyone out there who’s seen my laziness – it’s vicious). Okay, that’s the introduction. Now onto the real meat, some content as inspired by Eric. Stay tuned….

(notice Lucas style 4 period ellipsis, now that’s style….)

More on Iraq

I got a very nice flame war to start with my last post on Iraq, so I think this calls for another! (Sue and I measure success of a post by how many comments we get. So if you are reading our posts and not commenting, then know that you are directly contributing to making us feel like losers).

From the comments, it's obvious that I need to clarify something here before continuing my discussion. At least for me, when I say "we", as in "we need to stay in Iraq", I mean we as a country, or as in the soldiers that are executing public policy as set forth by my democratically elected representatives. I'm not saying we should all move to Iraq and build Wal-Marts and turn all of Saddam's old palaces into really great band camps (with all the ensuing sex-ed and braces and that chick that played Willow on Buffy being naug...er...you get the idea).

Not speaking for anyone else, but I would be willing to tell any war-widow or war-mother out there that their husbands/sons were fighting and dying for a greater good. Invading Iraq was possibly a mistake. Let's not make it worse by running away from the mistake we made in invading. To imply that we cannot win because everyone in Iraq is a religious/cultural nut job is like saying every Republican is a religious/cultural nut job. It's just not true. I really believe that the majority of people just want to make a living and go about their lives and make life easier for their children, just like everyone in this country. Call me crazy, but I still believe most folks are rational. Rational people will look at the situtation and agree that if the current Iraqi government can provide security, then they will support it. If not, then they will support whom ever can. Democracy is great, but security is always a higher concern for man. Maslow's Hierarchy of needs for example places "safety" as the highest consideration of man after physiological needs (food, drink, air).

See, this is why history is important. Iraq is unfolding exactly like nearly every insurrection. The rebels take the tried and true strategy of hiding in the population, lashing out at high profile targets, and then trying to melt back into the population. Their goals are to try to:

(1) force the occupation to take shots at civilians in hopes of turning public support to their cause
(2) create a general feeling of "unsafety" ( woo hoo, my very own word! ) by damaging high profile targets in hopes of convincing people that the occupation cannot establish safety.

If they can achieve either goal, then the rebellion has a shot at getting the population on their side, and hence winning both politically and militarily. (1) has not occurred because the US army has show remarkable restraint with this war. It appears the US military actually took some lessons from Vietnam:

• kill zones = bad
• winning without local support is impossible
• In an insurrection, the military can only buy you time for a political solution
• building schools and roads is far more effective than dropping yet another 500 lbs bomb

(2) has occurred to an extent, but because the military has shown restraint and has done a relatively good job with their own security (not withstanding the 2000+ dead soldiers), the insurgents have resorted to more and more attacks against civilians. This is both good and bad for them. While it does further the goal of making people feel unsafe, it has the negative effect that people generally will not support those who are killing their neighbor.

I guess what all this talk boils down to is that when anyone says we should just withdrawal immediately from Iraq, what they are really saying is that the war on the ground is now unwinnable. I'm not convinced that Iraq is unwinnable. But it is a war that requires patience and persistence. If the US can prevent the insurgents from executing any really large scale attacks and keep the political process moving, I still think Iraq is winnable.

Congrats!

To Paul Mikowski, you may now call him Dr. Paul Mikowski!!!! He just successfully defended his thesis for his PhD in psychology. We knew you could do it! Now you shall be able to play more WoW....Excellent...

It has a nice ring to it!

This Guy is an Idiot

This blog represents the opinions of Eric only.

Hawkish Democrat Calls for Iraq Pullout

John Murtha is a complete boob. There... I said it. I feel a lot better.

Look, you can argue that Iraq was a mistake, that the occupation made one mistake after another, that we were lied to, whatever. But arguing that the Iraqi people would be better off if the only force for order they have just walked away is about as close to legally insane as you can get. From the article:

"Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi
people or the Persian Gulf region."

Lets just look at that statemnet.

Our military is suffering... I'm afraid I don't see how. Are some people unhappy they had to be dragged to the middle of the desert? You bet. But that's the deal. You sign up for the military, there is a chance you will go to war. That's why we pay for all that training and free college and all that other jazz.

...The future of our country is at risk. ??? Uh, how exactly?

We cannot continue on the present course. We can and we must in my mind.

It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America... See Reagan's decision to abandon Afghanistan in the 80's for an example of why that statement is ignorant.

...the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region Iraq would become Afghanistan in the late 80s and 90s. Warlords, chaos, and perfect place for terrorists to hang out and recruit. If you think Iraq is a rallying call now, just wait and see what would happen if we walked away and let it all head to shit.

Programming Languages

DISCLAIMER: If you are not a software developer, this post is not going to make any sense to you. Sorry in advance.

R's post about compilers got me thinking about just how many different programming languages I know or used to know and which ones I liked and disliked. Lets run the list:

Basic: Ah...my very first programming language. The original IBM PCs would boot to a Basic compiler if you did not insert a disk. I learned to program from a 500 sheet print out of my grandfather's custom business software. I wrote some truly hideous code on this bad boy.

• Good memories: Learned to type. Building everything with "if" and "goto".


• Bad memories: Building everything with "if" and "goto". Having to update the line numbers and goto statements of 20 lines of code because each line was numbered and you ran out space between while tweaking something.

C++ : My first programming classes in college all used C++ as the teaching language.

• Good memories: Learning object oriented programming (sort of). Learning how computers and memory actually work on a PC. The joy of discovering emacs.



• Bad memories: Being awake at 3:00am trying to figure out which F#$*ING pointer I forgot to check for null. Using "cout" as the debugger. Using vi before I found emacs.

C: I always found it a little odd that I learned C++ before C in college. It was a lot like math where you learn how to do stuff before you ever get around to the why. C was part of our computer hardware course, because decompiling C is WAY easier than decompiling C++. C sucks by the way. Unless you are writing device drivers or some other bare metal stuff, skip this one.

• Good memories: Realizing that printf is your friend.
  
• Bad memories: Realizing you don't have <stl>.

SPARC and MIPS assembly: The most useless languages I ever learned. Again, for our computer hardware course. I loved assembly, but SPARC and MIPS? x86 would be useful. Maybe even some DSP loven. But SPARC and MIPS? All this knowledge is completely gone.

• Good memories: Realizing that I thought I knew how computers work, but that I really had no idea. Getting to use the branch delay slot for something!


• Bad memories: Trying to write a decompiler for this stuff. Realizing that this stuff is useless.

x86 assembly: I learned this for my last job. x86 is the most fucked up assembly you will ever find on God's green earth. 30 years of patching in new instructions combined with the smallest register file around combined with having 18 ways to do the same thing mean I seriously wonder how in the world this platform ever took off like it did. That being said, I was actually pretty good with it for a short while. I could even do that thing from the Matrix where they look at a bunch of hex and see something useful (I was reading x86 stacks frames for waaaaaaay too long).

• Good memories: Being able to figure out why the hell things like COM work the way they do. Figuring out stack traces. Figuring out calling conventions.


• Bad memories: The pain of 4 registers.

HTML and Javascript: I know its not really a programming language, but I know a little bit of Javascript. Most of it has long and been replaced with useless knowledge about pop culture, but I keep a little around just in case.

LISP: All I remember of LISP is lots and lots of parentheses.

Prolog: All I remember about Prolog is that you can't build anything useful with Prolog.

Visual Basic: I know everyone mocks Visual Basic. I mock Visual Basic in public, but deep down I really liked it. The first real event driven, rapid development language I ever saw, VB rocked for building simple applications. VB also freed you from memory management, something it took most other languages years to figure out. If only it wasn't the most verbose language on the face of the earth.

C#: C# is fantastic. Any language that looks like C++, but frees me from having to thinking about pointers or memory is ok in my book.

The Wilson's take Manhattan!

This past weekend Eric and I flew out to NYC to see our good friends Paul and Sue. We had a lot of fun. Thursday we flew into LaGuardia airport separately since Eric was in Ft. Walton Beach, FL for work. The flight into LaGuardia is very cool. You circle the city over the Hudson so you see the whole city and you get to wave at lady liberty. It was about 3 in the afternoon when I flew in so I could see the city really well. After that we drove through Queens and the Bronx to get near where our friends live. On the way to their apt we stopped at what was the greatest mall ever! Inside there was every restaurant you could think of, TGIFridays, Cheeburger, Cheeburger, Qdoba, etc, a blockbuster, Home Depot, 3 level Bed bath and beyond, etc., then all of the clothing stores like GAP, and Limited etc, plus an ice rink and Ferris wheel. It was huge and awesome. Usually you have to drive to 10 separate stores for all of this stuff but there you could just walk to the stores inside. Then we went back to their place in Peekskill and played some Super munchkin and drank a lot of wine.

Friday we tried to go see Paul Van Dyk, the kick ass DJ. Paul and Sue bought tickets early and we thought we were set. We parked in Chelsea Piers in lower West Manhattan about 12:30 pm since he was going to spin from 1-6 am. It was about a 5 minute walk to the club. We stood in line and we were about to get in at 1:15 am when the fire Marshall arrived and stopped letting people in. DAMN IT! Then we stood in line for another hour thinking we would get in once the Fire Marshall left but no, then the cops arrive and tell the club that they cannot let anyone else in even though they were not at capacity. Damn NYPD! This was there official statement. They even made Van Dyk stop spinning while they did their inspection. So at about 2:45, frozen and shivering, we went back to our car and drove back to Peekskill to their apt. Eric and I have a Van Dyk curse. This is the third time we have tried to see him with bad luck. The first time emergency surgery for Van Dyk, he rescheduled on a day Eric had to go out of town for work and then this. We need to stop. At least we got our money backt his time:)

Saturday after lunch we got on the commuter train to head to NYC (Grand Central station) to try to get tickets to a Broadway show. Usually you can go the day of and get cheap tix from tkts in Times Square or at the box office. We got there and were disappointed. Most of the good shows have a 6-9 month waiting list. So we walked around Times Square for a while. By the Avenue Q box office we saw a guy that stole a cab stopped by the police. The guy in the cab got out and ran down the street and the cops chased him. Fun. I guess Eric saw some guy get roughed up outside Grand Central station after he tried to pick two Italian guys pockets. You gotta love NYC!

So Saturday after we lucked out of tickets we got on the subway, which is huge and so useful, and we headed down to Greenwich village to find a place to eat and to find a cool bar to hang out in. We walked around trying to find the square and while we were doing so we passed a fire station with a wall of memory with pictures of the guys they lost and Golden fire boots set up in a shrine that said "We will always remember". It made me stop and think for a moment and it was very real for once, not something I saw on tv.

We found a cool Italian cafe, Cafe' Riggs, there that was small and had a great ambiance. They had a sign that said it was in Zaggat's food guide. It was a coffee bar but they had great paninni's and great Milkshakes! Mmmm. Then we walked around some cool shops. We found a bar and restaurant called the Red Lion with live music so we went in to check it out. It was fun. The first guy that played was Morgan Clamp. He was cool. He had an acoustic guitar with a pick up and he had a pedal device that allowed him to record bars of music that he would set up. He would strum a little, the record himself hitting the acoustic like a drum and then once he had his back up he would play the guitar with it. He sounded like a whole band. He played a lot of covers. He played quite a bit of Radiohead (I love Radiohead!) "Fake plastic trees" from "the Bends" and "Creep" from "Pable Honey" two of the best songs! He also played some U2 and some older songs. I cannot remember all that he played since I got drunk ;) He also played some of his songs which were cool and so we bought his album. He made me happy. Plus he was pretty nice to look at... The next band was a rock band which I cannot remember since by the time they came on I was really, really drunk. They played rock songs and they rocked hard. They had a chick bass player that was hot. They also played Radiohead and other fun songs. I love NYC! It is really expensive to get drunk there. $3.00 for a beer special (Miller lite's) and $6.00 for liquor special drinks. They had a drink called a hot apple cider that had hot apple cider and Captain Morgan's in it. So good! I love cider and Captain's!!! About 1:00 am we walked drunkenly out of the bar to find a cab. We hailed a cab and took it to Grand Central. Cab rides are fun drunk... When we got outside of Grand Central Eric and Paul bought a pretzel from a vendor and it was one of the best fucking pretzels I have ever had!!! Sue and I had to wait in line for the women's rest room so we bonded with some city girl's. It was fun. Then we rode the train back to the Peekskill area and went back to their apt and crashed.

Sunday we slept late, played a long game of Munchkin blender with Munchkin bites and Super Munchkin combined which was lots of fun until we had to go to the airport for our 7 pm flight.

We had a great weekend in the end even with the mishaps :) I love NYC! I wouldn't mind living near the city one day. I just have to convince Eric...

Every man's dream

My buddy Paul mentioned this story to me, but if I had not found this story on sportsillustrated.cnn.com there is no way I would have believed that I live in a world where this could actually happen in anything other than porn:

Panthers cheerleaders arrested in bar sex incident

The story is that two cheerleaders with the Carolina Panthers were having sex in the bathroom of a bar with each other. Go ahead. Take a minute and enjoy that thought. I'll wait. That's all of the story that I really managed to read. After that it is all a blur. I do recall something about a patron complaining the girls were too loud and taking too long. Lets all take another minute and enjoy that thought.

Update: Gave props to my initial source for this story.
Update 2: Removed spelling, punctuation, and various other annoying errors.

A weekend in Hotlanta...

This past weekend Eric and I went to visit my best friend from high school, Mo, and her husband, Tim, near Atlanta. We had a great weekend and saw a lot of great things.

Friday night we got into Lagrange, GA, near where they live, and we all decided to go to a movie. We went and saw Jarhead. It was really good. It was directed by Sam Mendes the same guy that did American Beauty. Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx starred in it. It was a good marine film that was about the actual life of a soldier without battle scenes. It is about a soldiers life through training and being deployed to the first gulf war in the 90's . It shows how his life is affected by being a marine and how the lives of the other people in his life are affected. It was really funny and the story line was well written. We all thoroughly enjoyed it! The movie is actually based off of the memoir of Marine Anthony Swofford. Now I really want to read his book to see what was not in the movie. We saw the preview for the new movie "Walk the line" about Johnny Cash's life which looks really good. You gotta love Johnny Cash.

Saturday night we all went to see Angie Aparo. I had never heard of him before but my best friend from high school loves his music and invited us to join her and her husband to go to his concert. We listened to some of his music Saturday during the day and on our way to Atlanta to the show. He is pretty cool. His music is progressive rock. It is a different sound that I enjoy. He also does some covers of some cool songs. He does a great version of Champagne Supernova by Oasis which is a great song to begin with. He talked a lot in between the songs he played and he was pretty funny. There was also some audience participation involved which made it more fun. The theater, Earthlink Live, was cool. The ambiance was a new-age, hippy type, rave chill room feel. It was a great little venue. One of my favorite songs he sings is called "Hush" and you can listen to it on his web site as well as other songs he sings. I am definitely going to get some of his discs.

There were two very talented, hot chicks that opened for Angie Aparo. The first was Heather Luttrell. She is a got red head with an amazing voice. Eric and I wondered after the first song she sang why she did not have a big music contract. She was amazing. She plays acoustic guitar and has a band of men to back her up. This was the only sample I could find and it is not that long and does not do her justice. If you have I-tunes you can sample her new disc "Grits n pulp". It is very good. She is hard to describe but she is a little like Sheryl Crow, Fiona Apple, Sarah Mclaughlin and Faith Hill with a pinch of DMB mixed to make this unique great sound. I was very impressed by her. I will also be buying this CD. My fave song on this CD is "Anything but me".

The second chick that opened for Angie Aparo was Plumb. She has a few CD's out. She will have a new album, "Chaotic Resolve" out this February and it will be a good album. She sang some of the songs from it at the show. Her website has some samples of her cds and the new CD that is coming out. Amazon also has some samples of her older discs. She was more of a rocker chick with a great voice. I thoroughly enjoyed her too! I cannot wait for her new disc. The song "Better" has a great sound and it plays on her website. She sings with such emotion and when she performs you can really see her putting all of that emotion into the songs she sings.

I was so glad to see that there are still some original, very talented musicians out there. We were delightfully surprised to find all three of these artists this past Saturday.

After the concert we went to Buckhead in Atlanta to find some good bars. We tried to avoid all of the "hip hop" clubs and found a bar that had a live band. The band was awesome and the bar served until 3 am! Woot! I cannot remember the name of the band. They played a lot of good covers including "Sweet home Alabama" and "The devil went down to Georgia". That is all I can remember. They did play a lot of good rock tunes too. We later found out that this was the Angie Aparo after party. What luck! Buckhead has changed quite a bit. We have not been there in about 2 years and the area is a little more rough and a lot of the clus and bars have changed. It was interesting but at least we had a kick ass, cool ride to arrive in. Tim owns a Dodge SRT-4. Mmmm, Susie likes and wants... 2.4-liter turbocharged 16-valve double overhead camshaft (DOHC) engine, 230 horsepower, 250 lb-ft of torque, Zero to 60 in under 6 seconds. Oh how I loved riding in this car. He could really drive it too. We hit totally beat a Mustang ont he freeway in a little drag since the Mustang driver was being a dick. The Mustang did not stand a chance. The SRT-4 handles so well and when that turbo kicks in, it kicks ass! I must learn how to drive a manual! Why didn't my family teach me this skill!?!?!

Freakiest Optical Illusion

http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

This is one of the freakiest optical illusions I have ever seen. Perhaps there really are Dancing Machine Elves creating all of reality.

Week in review

Fuck this week so far:

1) First, I flew to Tucson on Sunday. Well, actually, I was supposed to fly to Tucson on Sunday, but my plane to Dallas was three hours late. So I had to sit in Huntsville airport for three hours making small talk with my customer, with whom we are currently fighting with...Can you say "awkward"? I knew you could.

2) I literally got to watch the plane I was supposed to be leaving Dallas on taxi away from the terminal while we waited for a crew to be assigned to pull us in.

3) Amazingly, when an airline is required to give you a free hotel room, they don't exactly spring for a Four Seasons type stay.

4) Got up at 5am, flew to Phoenix, and drove to Tucson. By the time I got there, I might as well have just flown in that morning. I would have gotten there about the same time. Damn American Airlines.

5) After all of that, a quick round of testing confirmed that the fix I had e-mailed before coming out there worked perfectly. Man, this job would be great if it weren't for the fucking customers.

6) And finally, just to make this the worst week in quite a while, I lost my wedding band on the way home from Tucson. GOD DAMN IT!!!! CAN THIS WEEK GET ANY WORSE?

Wait, don't answer that. Of course it can.

Flags at Half Mast

I noticed today that flags throughout Huntsville are flying at half mast. Does anyone know why? Did someone important die that I didn't read about?

The Dark Tower

I just finished book seven of The Dark Tower series this afternoon (the last book), and I am here to tell you that I officially hate Stephen King. HATE HIM! Hate him with a passion that I had previously reserved only for Shawn Hannity, Michael Savage, Evangelicals, Jack Thompson, and Fear Factor.

I don't want to ruin the books for anyone else, but let me just say that if you are reading a Stephen King book and he tells you that the important point of the story is over and you want to stop reading even though there are only 5 pages left, that the point of a story is the journey, not the ending, blah, blah, blah, you should put the book down and step away from it slowly. In fact, tear those last five pages out and burn them so it will no longer be able to tempt you to just read them. Because otherwise you are going to finish that last page and do what I did:

Scream at the top of your lungs, "NOOOOOOOO!!! YOU CANNOT FUCKING END IT THAT WAY!!!!!! FUCK YOU STEPHEN KING!!!"

And then you will hear a voice that I can only assume is Stephen King's whispering in your ear saying, "See? I told you so."

Another Classic Quote

Another soon to be classic quote from OverheadInTheOffice:

"I am a guacamole of knowledge into which you may dip the nacho of need."

Hooray!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
Today is Eric's 27th birthday! I hope that you have a great day today Eric! I love you!

9 Years

I know it is wrong to kiss and tell, but it was 9 years ago today that Sue and I had our first kiss at the little waterfall on the Red Cedar River just south of the Administration building on the Michigan State University campus.

Just wanted to tell her in a public forum that I was so glad she said "yes" to both my first question there ("Would it be alright if I kissed you?") and my second question exactly 3 years later ("Will you marry me?").

Girls of Geek

Just because R asked for it:

http://www.girlsofgeekdom.com/index.php

Not sure I believe these girls are all geeks, but it is nice to dream. And the calendar might be a nice present for that single geek you know.

Programmer Truisms

From the Un-Dynamics of Software Development

1. It is still the Wild, Wild West out here and anything goes.


2. You are the best programmer.


3. Many programmers are intellectual bullies and egomaniacs.


4. The mean time between the time you start speaking and someone flipping the bozo bit (the bit that a programmer flips in their head to stop listening to someone they feel is an idiot) on you is ten seconds.


5. When someone says the schedule is going to be missed, they are never lying.


6. Change is a constant, but people will seldom thank you for changing their code.


7. A lot of bad software is being written by people who don't read.


8. People believe too much of what they read.


9. Authors are not smarter than the rest of us; they just read more.


10. Managers should not make technical decisions, but do.


11. If a manager says I am not technical, be prepared to spend a lot of time explaining things to them so they can make decisions they shouldn't be making.


12. Managers hire experts and ignore them all the time.


13. Messengers get shot more often than not.


14. Leaders have to lead; sometimes you will look behind you and find that someone is actually following.


15. Programmers hate to read another programmer's code; if they volunteer to review your code, it is not to do you a favor.


16. There really are programmers ten times faster than everyone else.


17. Every man is in some way my superior, as long as he doesn't keep reminding me.


18. Programmers are emotionally attached to their code, but never say this out loud.


19. Everyone talks about constructive tension but doesn't want you disagreeing with them.


20. Benevolent dictators build the best software.


21. Decisions are, more often than not, emotional.

Tucson Hiking

I finally got my pictures developed from my hiking adventure to Tucson. This
is the best one of the bunch:

If you look closely, you might even notice that I was in the picture. Now, I know what you are thinking. You're thinking, "That Eric is REALLY short". Either that or you are thinking, "That is one big cactus". The second thought is correct. For those who thought the first thought...well...you're an idiot and I'm sorry.

Here another:

That there sure is one giant cactus I'm standing next to at the start of the trail.

<Austin Powers voice>Does that make you horny baby?</Austin Powers voice>

Sexiest woman alive?!?! C'mon!

Um, I am not sure who voted but Esquire magazine named Jessica Biel the "Sexiest woman alive." Eric and I agree that someone was drunk and high when they thought of this or else the magazine was turned down by the real sexy women. I would have to say that Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Garner (pre-pregnancy that is) are the sexiest women alive. If I were a lesbian or bi, I would love to get some of the Angelina action... ;) Those big tasty lips, and that long hair, not to mention the buliging bust... but, I digress ( you are welcome Eric). We do not think Jessica Biel is that hot. She has no boobs! There are many other women that are hotter. I guess we think women are sexy if they are strong, muscular, have big boobs (natural, none of that fake crap that never moves, EWWW) and beautiful. Jessica Simpson, Brittany Spears, Catherine Zeta Jones, Eliza Dushku, etc. What about these Jay and Silent Bob strike back ladies?

Sick Dog

[Currently listening to: Green Day - American Idiot]

Poor Bob. Our dog has some sort of skin bacterial infection that makes him scratch and bite at his skin almost constantly. It is so bad that he has started biting out chunks of hair from his front paws. It makes him look like the undead, as the following picture clearly shows:

On the plus side, Bob spaced out on Benadryl is pretty funny to watch.

Some Trance Links

[Currently listening to: Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral]

Thanks to my pal Sebastian (via Paul. Got to give props for the intro), I've discovered several new sites for downloading some really good hard trance. This makes me a happy developer at work and a happy gamer at home (I tend to kill the background music for most games and pump in whatever trance I'm listening to instead. It makes WoW or Civilizations III a whole new game:) ). Check out:

http://www.tranceaddict.com/livesets.shtml - I especially like the first Paul Van Dyke set on this page.

http://edmm.ca/ - Thanks to Paul and Sebastian, I'm a huge fan of the sets by "Preacher" on this site. They are really good stuff.

http://www.ladybass.net/ - A female DJ from Toronto that I really dig. I don't remember where I found her, which seems odd. Her music is very hard trance/jungle. Actually, if you have ever seen that Strong Bad email on techno, it describes pretty much what her music sounds like (including the obligatory old movie quotes).

http://www.djbolivia.ca/ - One of my co-workers swears by this guy as "software developer friendly" trance. His sets have names like "memory leak" and "exception handler". Not my sound, but whatever.

What's Wrong with these people?

Alabama State Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo, recently called Hurricane Katrina a punishment from God, saying New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast "have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness. It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God."

So the damage to your fine state of Alabama means what exactly? How about the thousands of people who live in that area but don't support gambling, sin, and wickedness? How about that other hurricane that hit the oh so red state of Texas the other day? Apparently God's aim sucks. Look, if God wanted to punish the gay folks, he would just blast them with a lightening bolt or cause all of their penises to drop off. This "natural disasters as an act of God" horse shit make me think we are still living in a time when we thought lightning was thrown by Zeus from a mountain. Stop being such pretentious ass holes and assuming that you know the will of God.

Of course, its an issue that all Christians have trouble with. How do you reconcile the idea that God is all knowing, all powerful, and loves everyone with any natural disaster? Surely God could have built a world where thousands don't die for no reason greater than warm water in a spin cycle. Its a difficult question. True evil is something that you can perhaps explain as human nature running against God will, but how does one justify natural disasters?

Nothing to Write About

MSU LOST to UofM! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I knew that the whole "our defense sucks but we run up more points that you" stategy was going to fail sooner or later.

I just noticed it has been more than week since our last post, and I still don't really have anything to talk about. I've been insanely busy at work the last couple of days trying to teach our customer how to use our code base so that they can get rid of us without actually telling them how to use our code base. Its stressful and annoying and I hate it. But since I write almost all of my blogs while I am at work reading the news, it effects my output.