My Sis, sent me this picture of my ole' cat Rufus taking one of his precision naps. You can tell that its a precision nap, by the fact that he has his tounge sticking out. And as we well know in the Kelly family, no precision work can be done without your tounge sticking out a little bit. I want to thank Sis for sending me the Rufus picture of the month. Oh, and if you are thinking, no, he isn't going to post a picture of that old cat every month, the answer is , darn tootin I am.
So there seems to be this 10 til 5 paradigm at work. Usually it happens on Fridays, but quite often can show up at anytime that you think you are going to be able leave the office a little early. So here is how it works, you've had a good day, you've been extremely productive and gotten 12 hours work done in 9 hours. So you deservedly should be able to sneak out of the office a little early, so just as you're getting your stuff together, someone, usually a manager but not always presents you with an issue that has to be resolved before tomorrow, can't really be worked on from home, and will take at least an hour to fix.
Well that is what happened to me today. So what do you do about it? I call my Beautiful Wife, and let her know, I will be later than we thought, look at her picture and smile, and just trudge through the problem as quick as possible.
Today I finally got my haircut. It's needed it for quite sometime, but because of time or money or both it had to wait. So I went to my usually haircutting place, but the usually person that cuts my hair had the day off. The new person does a good job, put somehow uses something that makes me breakout in hives all over my face. So this means I have to take an antihistamine. Now for those of you that don't know, sleeping pills aren't as affective as antihistamines are for just knocking out cold. So I take the benadryl about 1:30 p.m. by 2:00 p.m. I was fast asleep. So around 5 p.m. I try to start waking up, but it took a half hour before I am able to do so. So now in my grogy version of awake, I figure a haiku to antihistamine is on order.
The golden leavesHave you ever stop to listen to the sounds of life in you family? This morning I was sitting in the livingroom listening to the roses of conversation in the kitchen. The sounds of the Little Boy in the refrigerator. Max the wonder puppy faithfully taking his role as the family scapegoat with a measure of pride that can only be compared to that of a true champion. I listen and hear the cracking of eggs, little feet running on the floor, paws running on the floor. I hear water from the dogs bowl spill on the floor and both the little feet and the little paws running away.
So right now, the Little Boy and I are watching Dumbo. This is one of my favorites and I can tell that it is one of the Little Boys too! About four years ago, Dumbo was on TV, this was back when I shared an apartment with my brother. Well, we couldn't stop watching it. It must of been a sight, two grown men, one a burly 6'1" construction worker, the other 5'11" computer geek, just staring at the cartoon that was done in the 40s. This movie had such a strong tie to our childhood, that neither of us could keep our eyes off of it. I've mentioned before that Dumbo was the first movie that we bought on CED disc when I was a kid. So the Little Boy loving this movie is just another Rose in my garden of life. I blame the dog for that.
This weekend I went Dirtin' with the family. Unfortunately brother K and Sis weren't feeling up to making it. So on friday is was Ma, Pa, brother J and I on the road. When met up with Cousin Bob and Family on the way out there. Destination was middle of the desert near a dry lake bed. Goal, not get hurt do a little riding and eat. We got out there and got the camp all set up. We did it up, we had the EZ-up to provide shade, we had a rake and a shovel so that smooth out the dirt in the middle of the desert. We got our camps all set up and went for some small putts. I get a chance to ride the new bike that Cousin Bob bought for his Boy a YZ250F. It was a really nice bike. It handled great, had nice suspension, and really good power. It did have one little problem. It didn't like starting. Infact brother J was the only one that could kick start it. Anyhow, I get going on the bike, and I stall it. I tore a hole in my boot trying to get it started. So I decide to push it down the hill and se if I can just bump start it. Well after about three quarters of a mile, I figure out this isn't going to work. I was on this little trail, so I figured, I better get to the main trail so that I can be found. So I push the bike the quarter mile to the main trail. You see, when we ride everyone (my family that is) looks out for everyone else. When I wasn't back when they thought I would be they got worried. So they came looking for me, like I knew they would. So I only had to sit on the side of the road for 15-20 minutes max.
Friday night, we did what most people do in the middle of the desert, played video games and watched videos. Cousin Bob's new toy box has all the comforts of home. Including X-Box. It was a really nice way to just kick back and relax.
Saturday day started really nice, had a great cup of coffee and some eggs florintine for breakfast. I don't know how it works, but we always eat really well when we go camping. Everyone else is eating hot dogs and Ma cooks southwestern shrimp scampy. Anyhow, I was looking forward to Saturday since, my beautiful Wife was coming out. It turned out to be a stressful saturday. One of the people in the camp group got hurt and had to be airlifted out. There are a lot of theories, about what happened, and really what it comes down to, is the person that got hurt was fairly new to riding, and was riding with a group of people that aren't as safe, or look out for each other like my family does.
After all that was over, my Beautiful Wife came out, and I was very happy.
Sunday morning, I got up early and got a fire going. It was really nice, a bunch of us were just sitting around the fire and drinking our coffee. In about an hour the skies went from crystal clear to dark thunderheads over the whole desert. Well, my Beautiful Wife and I were in the camry and didn't want to get stuck. So about 8am, we headed out.
Google the king of internet search is working on a new arena, your desktop. Scott Hanselman posted it on his blog earlier today, and so I decided to try it. It's pretty amazing. Google has wrote a really nice piece of software. It creates a web server on your computer that only serves your local machine. It will index office documents, mp3s, .txt, web pages you have viewed and a lot of others. It doesn't look at system files. Which is a good thing and a bad thing at the same time.
I've hooked it up to run inside of slickrun, so now I just type in mygoogle in slick run, and it gives me a dynamic input field and I search from there. Overall really pretty nice.
So today, I have a million things to do. What I am doing about it? Nothing, Nothing whatsoever. Today is one of those days that I need art. I need to look at photographs and painting and sculpture. I was talking with my Beautiful Wife and she gets this feeling too. The feeling that, viewing art, creating art is something we needed to do, to be inspired by it. So I was thinking about why is art so inspiring to me. Because after all, art, the art that you like as a person is a deeply personal thing. It connects with you, your memories or you life in someway. Otherwise, I just don't think it would mean anything. So how art inspires me is, its a new viewpoint of something we see everyday. People, Places, Things. It seems to me that we all need a fresh viewpoint from time to time, to not take what we have for granted. Air, green trees, flowers, people you know that kind of stuff.
So I did a little searching and found three sites that have some fantastic photos.
Plush Creative
Quarlo.com
Chromasia
I definitely feel that my love of art, is a family thing. My Grandma C, use to paint all of the time. She painted scenes from scriptures on huge canvas, and I remember when they hung in the Kingdom Hall. From what I understand when she was young she was offered a scholarship to a very prestiges art school, but because of family and finacial reasons, she didn't go. Of course that didn't stop her from painting. She painted, on canvas and statues. She is a very talented lady.
My Mom got some of her talent too. Mom always painted statues, and they almost always looked, well, photorealistic. The shadows were always just right. If it needed to look like it has been there forever, it just did. She taught me some of the techniques, but, there was a lot of talent that went it to those things, they were art. I think that some people that forget, that just because you or your family members create it , that it is still art. Infact, it is even more so, because there is such a personal connection to it.
Grandpa K use to take the best photographs.When I was younger I always look forward to him and Grandma Kcoming back from vacation and have the family slide show. I was always impressed with his photos, and at the time, I would give him the best compliment, I knew..."Wow, they look like postcards". Grandpa K, always took slides, and I loved the way they looked. I remember one time when I got to go with him and Dad to Fedco in pasadena to pick up some of the photo supplies he needed, and feeling like it was a really special event, and it was, it still is, because it is in my memory.
I think Art is important, its memories and family and new things and old things all in one.
This morning I was on the phone with another developer. He is lead/Sr. developer of one of our vendors. He was talking about some new functionality that they were rolling out and the new middle tier that they were going to be using. You know all the technically mumbo jumbo, that makes most people's eyes glaze over, and give you that blank, "If I just keep looking at him, maybe I will have a clue as to what he is saying" stare. Anyhow, I noticed that he was talking really fast. I thought about that, and when I am talking about a tech project that I really enjoy, I talk really fast too. It makes me think that the connections in the brain that we use for tech stuff move so fast that our poor mouths just can't keep up. It's really funny to hear a guy that in a social situation, you can maybe get 100 words out of in two hours, give you 1000 words in 2 minutes when talking about the tech projects.
I am rewriting part of an application in ASP.NET however, it is still going to need to be in a directory that is mostly classic ASP. In my classic ASP pages, I have <!--#include virtual="mynav.htinc"-->. Well if I were writing the ASP.NET application from sratch I would put the navigation in a .ascx file. However, being that this is a joint resident application, I don't want to do that, because that would mean I have two files to update instead of just the one. (being a lazy programmer, I don't want to have to update an additional file). So how do I use the old .htinc file in my new ASP.NET application. The answer my friends is response.writefile. In your aspx page you simply write the file in. It will read the file, and write the content to the page as it is rendered, just like the virutal include would.
<%
Response.WriteFile("mynav.htinc");
%>
So this morning, the Little Boy wakes up pretty early, so he comes in to sleep with us. Now I am sound asleep and reportedly making "sleeping noises" (snoring). Anyhow the Little Boy snuggles in to bed with me and My Beautiful Wife and as I snore, he says, "What's that noise?", to which my Beautiful Wife replies, "that is Russ making sleeping noises". The Little Boy says, " no it's a bear!"
Now this really tickled me. You see when I was just about his age, I remember getting up in what felt like the middle of the night and headed to Mom and Dad's room. At the time their room was at the back of the house, so I had to traverse the hallway and my sisters room to get their room. What now amounts to a little less then 20 feet felt like a mile. Right as I get to the door of their room, which was open. I hear this sound. It sounded like a roar, a lion's roar to be exact. So I turned tail and ran back to my room and jumped into the bed and hid under the covers. I remember thinking that Mom and Dad took there sleep pretty seriously, because they had a Lion living under there bed to protect them while their were asleep. Of course now that I am older I know that it was just Dad making "Sleeping Noises".
So my guess is that when the Little Boy has children of his own, and he makes "sleeping noises", his kids will think it was a tiger. Keeping up the family tradition. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
Today was one of the days that you don't look forward to. Well, your glad it's saturday and all, but you just know that you are going to have to work your butt off. You know, that's the thing about being an adult, you just don't get to spend your saturday watching cartoons till ten o'clock and then playing till dinner time. Don't get me wrong it was a good day. I got a bunch accomplished. I helped my friend move some of her stuff. Worked on the car. Helped the Folks set up and teardown for the yard sale they were having. It was a full day. There definitely was a highlight though.
You see I had to borrow my Dad's very cool Dodge truck. It's got the extend cab, lift kit, dual exhaust, bumper guards, light guards, the whole shot. Basically it's like the "Walker Texas Ranger" truck. Dad's got factory tires on it right now, instead of the off-road ones, and you still look down in to other trucks. A cool truck! Anyhow, my Beautiful Wife, and the Little Boy, drop me off, so that I can get the truck. Well the Little Boy loves going to my Mom and Dad's house. He calls Dad, "Papa". So the Little Boy wanted to go to "Papa's house", and didn't understand why he wasn't getting out of the car too. So I explain that I am just borrowing Papa's truck to do some work, and then when I come home I will give him a little ride in it. He was disappointed, but not crying and they drove away.
So, I get my business taken care of, and get home. I didn't park the truck in the drive way, but on the street. My Beautiful Wife and the Little Boy are outside, Max the wonder puppy is running through our yard as well as the neigbhors at lightining speed, when I pull up. Of course, all puppy dogs love truck, so he runs over to it, and we get him inside rather quickly. When I come out the Little Boy has clawed his way in to the passager's side and is ready to go. You could tell that getting him out of the truck was not a fight that you wanted to take on. Well, I still have some errants to do, so my Beautiful Wife and I decide he'd just go with me. (actually the Little Boy decided and we agreed) My Beautiful Wife followed me to our first stop, that way if the Little Boy was done, well he could ride home with her. That's not what happened. I get to the auto parts store, and the Little Boy says, "I'm staying here, okay, I stay in the truck, you go and come back." So I smile and say okay. My Beautiful Wife stayed with him and I got what I needed. He was staying with the truck.
So my Beautiful Wife, has some errants to do, I have some others to do, so we decided to meet up a little later and then take the truck back to my Dad. She pulls away, I get in the truck, and start it, of course, I didn't have my seatbelt on so, the little light thing on the dash yelled at me. So without thinking, I respond to it with, "I know, I know, I know" as I put my seatbelt on. The Little Boy picked this up immediately if not sooner. Now, every time the truck would make a sound he would lift his little arms up, half way, and say "I know, I know, I know". I had to smile every time he said that. Anyhow the Little Boy simple loved riding in the truck. He would see other big trucks and say, "He look, a big truck like us", and I would agree. we had a great time. Well now it was time to take the truck back to Dad's and of course the Little Boy was happy to be at Papa's and they of course where happy to see him. However we were all mesmerized and mystified by his energy level. I believe it had to do with testosterone levels raising in his little body just by being in Papa's Big Truck.
It was time to go home, so we said our goodbyes and we had to break it to The Little Boy that he was going to have to ride home with us in the Camry and not in the Truck. He was disappointed and gave us his trademark "Ahhh mann!". I kind of felt the same way to tell you the truth. I had really enjoyed driving that big ol' truck all afternoon. Anyhow the Little Boy reluctantly gets in the car, and we head for home. We stop on the way home and get him a hot dog to help ease his disappointment. All in all a great saturday, don't you think?
There is a very interesting article in the International Herald Tribune that suggests that Rebrandt may have been well, a little bit wall-eyed, and that is not being about to see things in true stereo vision is part of the reason he was able to paint scenes from real life to the canvas so well. It also mentioned that this would of made him more attuned to shadows and light.
Being that I was born fairly crossed eyed, and after a surgery when I was three, now slightly (especially when I am tired) crossed eyed I found this fasinating. I've been told that I see 80% of the world out of my right eye and 20% from my left. And that because my vision has been that way since birth that my brain just wired itself to get depth preception. I imagine it was the same way for Rembrandt.
The Little Boy has one of those powerwheel jeeps that we got at a yard sale. It needs a battery, which of course, we haven't gotten yet. But that doesn't stop him from lifting up the hood and trying to figure out what the issue is. Of course he believes that hitting the battery with a hammer will get it to work. So, I told him that hitting it, isn't going to make it work. To which he reply, "It already doesn't work!", I found that hard to argue with. Anyhow, about 10 minutes later, he has most of my tools on the fenders and in the battery bay of his jeep. He, just knew that ones of those tools was going to fix it. So, I'm thinking I need to pick up the battery for it, and have him help me put it in. And just maybe hit with the hammer once for good measure.
Today I learned that The Little Boy teaches me more then I teach him. In him I can see my bad and good habits. He teaches me that hating traffic is something you are born with and is not learned. That a 4 year old can drive better then many adults. He has taught me that there are many more uses for a cresent wrench than I originally thought including, pry bar and dispilinary tool for the dog. I've learned that when I'm in the garage working on something, that he wants to be there too. And more importantly, that he really wants to help work on whatever I am working on, be it a car or a cutting a piece of wood. I've learned that it's hard to argue with the logic of a strong willed 4 year old, especially when they think they are right. I've learned that starting the morning by watching cartoons and not the news is the best way to start your day.
At heart I am a Apple computer guy. I have always loved their designs. The OS is so much easier to use, and prettier to boot. However I make my living writing code for and on Microsoft machines. But I am still a Mac guy trapped in a PC world. Engadget.com has a great article on how to make your PC look like you are running OS X. So yes, you still have the beige box, but at least what is on the screen looks a whole lot cooler.
A G3 Powerbook is still a great computer. I would love to have one, the design, the keyboard it is all poetry, with the exception of one thing. A design flaw that has been haunting Mac fans for a long time. For some reason Apple made the backlit logo upsidedown. Well, one guy couldn't take it any more. This is his story.
Not all of us have taken color theory classes and know which shades of purple compliment green. Fortunately behr paint has made it easy. The other day My Beautiful Wife and I were in Home Depot and played with this really cool computer kioski that had a color scanner and color coordination in one easy to use interface. They also have the same thing sans the color scanner online. http://www.behr.com/behrx/workbook
So I know the blog hasn't been getting much love lately. I do intend to resolve that little issue. Work has been kind of nuts lately. I have the whole home banking conversion thing going on, which requires a lot of planning and quiet time. Of course there are about eight other , top priority projects that need instant attention as well. Now this is a little bit of an enigma to me, how can there be eight top priority projects. By the definition of the word priority should there only be one, maybe two?
Tomorrow is going to be a long day, we are going to upgrade the Database server here at work. Now this is something that we have tried to do once before, and the results were less then stellar so we put it back like it was before. I firmly believe that IT people should subscribe to the same hippocratic oath that doctors do: "do no harm". Nothing is worse then working on a computer and making it worse then it was before you touched it.
This weekend was alot of fun. First My Beautiful Wife and I had a fieldtrip to Fry's. After two hours and two DVDs later, we decided it was time to leave that techno-wonderland. Then on sunday My Beautiful Wife, the Little Boy and I got to go to Disneyland. It has been a while since we had been. (mostly because a. it was too hot, b.it was tourist season and 3. because our annual passports where blacked out). It was amazing how short the lines were. The longest line was 30 minutes. Well, my outlook alert just popped up telling me it's time for another meeting.
Today, was a day, but they all are aren't they. Anyhow one of the goals of the three day weekend was to clean the garage. A daunting task to be sure, but we did it. To our amazement, it only took 6 hours. Now I know what you are thinking, 6 hours is a long time. Well it is, but we expected it to take a couple of days. So 6 hours seems like gift.
We worked in stages, I took the early shift, I got out there at 6:45am (yes, I really wanted to beat the heat) and started the heavy duty cleaning and sweeping. By 7:30 I had found the floor. This was quite an accomplishment. Okay, now that we had a path, and a floor it was time to make some headway on the tabletops. 20 minutes later, I find that we have three of them...who knew. Now with a place to put things and a path to and from the door, we can start going through the boxes, and sort through all the stuff.
Now stage two, the box trot. My Beautiful Wife jointed me for this stage. The box trot is where you move boxes from one end of the garage to the other, and back and forth until they find their correct place in the garage. The box trot only took a couple of hours and in the end we had it all sorted, tons more room and we can find our stuff again. Now we have more room for more stuff. Tomorrow morning we are hitting the Yard Sales.
Today was Aunt K's memorial. It was quite lovely, yet sad. On display was pictures of her, her and her friends and some of her art. They read one of her poems, and some passages from her diary. They were lovely, artistic and sweet, like her. My sister had the best comment on the day. "We have to figure out a better way to have family reunions". Grandma and Grandpa K, came up, and we meet Grandma and Grandpa C at the services.(Yes, I know how great it is that I have both sets of grandparents and how I wish that I had more time to spend with them. They are all amazing people who I dearly love) We saw a lot of people that I haven't seen in a long long time. Some I remember, some I didn't. My Beautiful Wife has been there all day for me. I truly appreciate her. She never got to meet Aunt K, and I really wish should could have. I think they both would of really liked each other.
I have come up with something that have made it easier to deal with her loss. The saying we've lost someone, when they have died. I like the idea that we have simply misplaced them, like your car keys or watches and will someday find them in the last place we looked (of course it's the last placed we've looked, after we find something we typically stop looking for it, but I digress). Someday things will be right back like they were. I have hope that I will see Aunt K again and she won't have any of the pain she had in this life. Also you never really lose someone that has helped you be the person you are, they are always a part of you, so they are always with you.
After the service, we met up at Mom and Dad's. We had dinner, and watched T.V. and talked about funny TV commercials, and things we had done in the past. We told jokes, and funny stories. This is how my family deals with these kind of things. We replace tears with laughter, we always have, and I kind of like it that way. Is like some sort of unwritten rule. Laughing is always better than crying. We didn't talk about Aunt K much tonight, but between the jokes, stories and food, you know that everyone still was thinking about her, I know I am. I'll miss her.
Today I got to spend some time in the code of the new Home Banking system. Spending time in the code is when a developers come up with their first impression. Mine is a good first impression. After spending two days with the Developers installing the product and looking at the code, I am looking forward to working with this product. I know you are thinking you, just bough the product why would you have to work with it. Well the way that most of these kind of things work is what you buy is very vanilla. So we don't buy the product for what it can do today, but what it will be able to do tomorrow.
Yesterday was the long day of meetings. It went as well as those kind of things go. Afterwards my boss, the people with the new homebanking system and I went out to dinner. We went to the place we always go, the steakhouse established in 1947 across the street from the WB lot. After getting there and getting seated I got a call on my mobile from my brother J. At first I sent it to voicemail because we were talking about implementation strategies and that kind of stuff. However I got a funny feeling about the call so I excused myself and tried to call him back. First time, I got his voicemail, so I check my messages and he just said to call him back in a somber tone. Now this J, he is the one that leaves me voicemails pretending to be someone else, and yelling at me for dating his daughter, or stealing his cat, or driving thru his house. So the tone of his message really meant something was up. I got nervous, so I called him again.
One of my favorite thing about J is that he doesn't sugar coat things, he just says them. He told me that a really close friend of the family had passed away. She was someone us kids called Aunt K, because well she was like an Aunt to us. She was one of those people in your life, that lets you know that you are pretty cool just the way you are. I mean your family tells you that as you grow up, but somehow there is more validation when someone else says it, we expect our family to say that we are great. I remember that Aunt K use to say that I was a "neat kid". Well, I always thought that she was a "Neat Lady". She didn't have any kids of her own, which was what it was. She was a very artistlc person, she would draw and write. She was the one that taught me that it was okay to be a Sci-Fi geek (mostly because she was one too). I remember going to lots, of Star Wars and Star Trek Conventions with her. I have a picture at home that she took of my brother K and me standing infront of the "Galileo" from the orignial Star Trek series. She always made me feel like I was fine, just the way I am. That is kind of a big thing for a kid, especially, when the kids at school and everything on the TV is telling you the exact opposite.
Aunt K had a great laugh, it was one of those laughs that made you smile. You knew it was her from across the room when you heard her laugh. I am really going to miss hearing that laugh. It's sad to know that this person isn't on this planet anymore. I could get into the whole argument of the unjustness of such a good person dying when there are so many bad people keep on living, but I think that would taint my memories of her, and I just don't want to do that. I will miss her. She was one of those people that is a part of me. She really had an positive influence in my life, and my self-respect.
Yesterday was much more of the light drizzle before the storm. We only had one hour long meeting. Which isn't too bad, and I was kind of charged and looking forward to the project from it. I did leave the meeting with homework. My homework that I am still working on this morning. I am install windows 2000 server in Virtual PC on my XP workstation/Laptop. That way I can have the Home banking server software running on my machine. So far it is going pretty smoothly. Though it takes a lot longer to load up then a regular machine.
Today the downpour will start. I came in early (6am) to finish up the install and have a couple of hours before it all starts. Meetings are scheduled from 8:30am to 5:30pm. It is going to be a long day. I am not looking forward to all day meetings, but I am looking forward to getting some time with the Home Banking Developer. He is a C# guy too, even though the product is written in VB.NET. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
One of the things that cleared the clouds away last night was reading with the Little Boy. We have about 4 or 5 books that we read every night, one of them being Green Eggs and Ham. And it is one of his favorites. Well last night, we read it together for the first time. He would pick one page and "read" (recite from memory) what was on the page, and I would read the other one. It was amazing. It really made my heart glow. To see him growing and learning is just one of the most wonderful things in my life. There is something really terrific about ending the day laying in bed with my Beautiful Wife and the Little Boy and reading them to sleep. So this is going to be my umbrella today, every time I feel a drop of rain, I will think of them and be dry and warm.
This weekend was the calm before the storm. Today starts three days of meetings. The first in many steps in the Home Banking Platform conversion. This is going to be the biggest project our E-Commerce department has ever taken on. I am excited and nervous about it at the same time. But enough about that, lets talk about this weekend.
Saturday morning My Beautiful Wife and I snuck out and got a cup of coffee at suckerbucks (That's what the Little Boy calls starbucks) and got to sit outside and read a newspaper. I know that doesn't sound terribly exciting, and it wasn't , but it was amazingly calming and something we hadn't done in a long time. (Since we lived in Pasadena about 3 years ago)
Upon returning home, the Little Boy was Up and full of.... Energy. So we loaded the Little Boy and Max the wonder dog up in the car and headed out to the sports park. We got there, and what did we see, people playing sports at the sports park. Honestly what did they think they were doing, we were going to have the The Little Boy and the Dog run amuck in those fields. So we couldn't let the furry that is the combination of The Little Boy and Max the wonder dog loose there. So we decide to take them to San Dimas creek. This was a good choice as no one was there. So after walking down the trail a little ways we let Max off of his leash. This had about the same affect as launching a rocket horizontially. That dog ran up and down the trail, though the streams and over the streams and up the hills and down the hills. He would jump so far down the hills that he would just about swapping head and tails except that his speed would keep him moving forward. Well after this little adventure, everyone got bath.
Sunday I had a lot of serious sitting around to do. Some of it was even done in Mom and Dad's Jacuzzi. There was also some serious gaming that needed done. So I played a couple hours of Red's Dead Revolver.
My favorite moment of the weekend was The Little Boy riding his bike with amazing speed down the driveway and skidding into the garage, and hit my Beautiful Wifes bike. He knocked it over, and startled himself. I walked in the garage, and picked the bike up, and looked at the Little Boy, and said "A Little to fast, huh?" to which he responsed, "just a little."
I took Friday, Monday and Tuesday off of work. Mostly because if I didn't, I wasn't going to get any time off till the end of the year. It turned out to be good to have some time off. I worked hard at not checking me work email too often. (Once or twice a day) I took care of some of those things around that house that needed done. Overall pretty good.
Yesterday, we got to go down and see my Grandma and Grandpa. It was so nice to get to see then and spend time with them. They are such sweet people and they really mean so much to me.
I have to go to work tomorrow, and I really don't want to. But being an adult means I have too.
last night riding to Mom and Dad's I finally broke 100 miles. So since I started riding again in June I have ridden 100 miles. It kind of feels like an accomplishment. I told My Beautiful Wife last night, that when I break 10,000 miles, then I can get a new carbon fiber bike. Till then, me and my steel framed steed will keep pedaling down the road together. I think will name my bike Hildalgo. The little painted pony that could. And it kind of fits, because of the blue paint overspray that is on the frame from one of my brothers paint projects that went awry.
The interesting thing is that after 100 miles, I want to ride more not less then when I started. I'm feeling better and like I can handle stress a little better too.
This morning I woke up very early. Well, that isn't exactly true, I was woken up very early this morning. It seems the Little Boy snuck in to bed with us last night. I found this out after being kicked repeatedly. Apparently he was either dreaming about riding his bike, kicking the ball, or kicking the dog. (My vote is for the latter) So about 3:30am I move down to the floor, but never really got back to sleep. At about 4am I decide to stop trying to sleep and just get up. Mostly because I couldn't get the endless loop of "Five little Monkeys Jumping on the bed" to quit playing in my head.
Well, what is there to do at 4 in the morning? I couldn't work because I had left my computer at work. Humm, I know I will go for a ride this morning, I think to myself. Now I haven't ridden my bike at 4am since I was a teenager. I use to get up early and ride for an hour before going to work with Dad. I had even gotten them to gotten him to go with me. We had our mountian bikes and I would go to the local park and race down the stairs, and then try and race back up them. (We never made it back up to the top of the stairs)
After a shower and getting dressed, I head out to the garage and adjust and fit my new helmet (The dog ate my other one) and got on my bike. Okay, I am ready to go, I decide not to do any hill climbing as those streets don't have any lights. So I start riding and I notice how quiet it really is. I had forgotten that riding at that time of the morning is so nice. The sound of the pressurized tires (110 psi) rolling along the asphalt. Birds just waking up, chirping as if to say good morning to the day. It's interesting how with the lack of light your other senses really come alive. The smell of the bakery down the street, of the trees, and flowers. Riding through some sleepy little neighborhoods, seeing the occasional person turning on the kitchen light to make coffee.
It really gave me a good outlook for the day. I got myself home, and had some breakfast. (I almost never eat breakfast before 10am), watched the news and got ready for work. Driving to the train station, and waiting for the train, I had a poetic narrative of the morning going in my head, and I wanted to write it down. However I didn't have an pen in my bag, so the revelations of the morning are gone, and I am settling back in to work.
I am a guy of average height. I don't consider myself to be extremely tall, but not short either. Lately however I have notice a trend that need discussed. You see in the restroom at work we have two urinals. (I know the post has gone in the toliet by the second line). For those of you who don't know about the two urinal configuration, they are set at different heights. Usually the one on the left is a foot lower then the one on the right. It is your basic short guy, tall guy configuration. Being that I am about 5'11" using the tall guy urinal is my right. Why, well because the short guy urinal makes anyone over 5'8" feel like they are peeing on their shoes, not a terribly good feeling. Now that I have set the ground work lets discuss this disturbing trend.
Almost every time I go to the restroom there is a short guy at the tall guy urinal. Some of these cases have been extreme, as in the short guy is tippy-toeing to reach the tall guy urinal. Now, I don't care what kind of short guy neopolen complex you have, if you are a short guy, use the short guy urinal. I am not willing to pee on my shoes to make some short guy feel better about himself. Look if you are a short guy, just accept that you are close to the ground the some of us. There is nothing bad about that. Short guys don't have as far to fall and there are some very interesting advantages as far as eye levels and the opposite sex. Relish being a short guy. Be short and proud! Be short and proud and use the short guy urinal.
So you are asking yourself, what is the height requirement to use the tall guy urinal. Since it isn't like disneyland having a sign with a "you most be this tall to ride this ride", I have done some informal polling and it seem to be the concensus among most average height guys that 5'8" and up can use the tall guy urinal, while 5'7" and down should use the short guy urinal. Now you are asking yourself, why in the world did he write about this. Well, It needed to be done, and being that guys don't talk in the restroom (it's an unwritten rule) it needed to be somewhere guys feel comfortable talking about this stuff. Which would be anonymously on the internet.
So you have probably noticed that I haven't had any recent post here or at twocsharpguys on any techie stuff. I know I have a few that can be called techie, but I mean the post that explain a problem and the source code I used to solve it. Those post always garner the most visits from the search engines. So why haven't I done any...cause I don't feel like it. Well that and I haven't been doing much coding lately. We have a really big project coming up. We are converting home banking platforms. With this there are lots and lots of meetings. In fact I am sure that we will have meetings about meetings. This always reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon I read, it said that with any subject or project that requires more than five meetings, then the meetings become more important then the project that the meeting was called about in the first place.
Now with this big project looming in the near future, don't you think I should be getting to know the new system. Familarize myself with the code base? Me too but, that's not what I am doing. I'm doing a bunch of "back burner" projects. Which leads to my next question, if they are "back burner" projects, why are they the first on my plate over the HB conversion. Anyhow most of these projects are server software configurations. Not terribly hard things, but terribly time comsuming. In other companies I worked for, we web administrators to do these things, but being a Sr. Web Developer, in a small IT department means that you get to wear many hats. Todays hat should be bowler I think!
This morning I hit the snooze bar 4 times, and my alarm clock is on the other side of the room. Now that is pretty tired. I get myself up, showered and shaved and hug and kiss my Beautiful Wife. Its one of those days that you just want to stay in bed. Its one of those days that you want to call in sick even though you aren't really sick. Anyhow get my stuff together and walk to the train station. I walk kind of slow, since I didn't expect to catch the 7:21am train. Its August 2nd and I still need to buy my august monthly train pass. So I get to the station at 7:19 and the train is still there and I am kind of surprised. I figured it will leave any second, as I walk up to the ticket vending machine. There is a metrolink "Ambassador" standing there helping people. As I walk up I see two people per machine, so this makes me think that I am right, I will catch the next train. As I get close two people walk away from the machines, and one woman tries the second machine because the first one isn't taking cash. The Ambassador asks me if I am using credit card, I say yes, and walk right up to the first machine. I do my order (there is about 5 buttons you have to press in the correct sequence to get your ticket/pass) and it goes through in record time. I mean I had my pass in like 30 seconds. So with pass in hand I walk right on to the 7:21 at 7:21 and the doors closed behind me. I really couldn't of timed it any better.
So why did I write a post about catching the train? Well, its because I have been in this whole running late and trying to catch the 7:21 and missing it. I would power walk to the station, rush out of the house and miss it. Today, I figured, there was no way I was going to catch it, so might as well not rush and what happens? I catch it with 10 seconds to spare, and had to buy my pass. Maybe this is going to be a good monday.
My Sister send me the following list. I nearly fell over laughing. I personally have had 30 of the 35 experiences listed. Enjoy!
1. When you call us to have your computer moved or fixed, be sure to
leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed
animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't
have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of
yours.
2. Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages
from here.
3. When an IT person says he's coming right over, go for coffee. That
way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us
to remember 300 user passwords.
4. When you call the help desk, state what you want, not what's keeping
you from getting it. We don't need to know that you can't get into your
mail because your computer won't power on at all.
6. When IT support sends you an e-mail with high importance, delete it
at once. We're just testing.
7. When an IT person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and
spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.
8. Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and
flags it as a rush delivery.
9. When the photocopier doesn't work, call computer support. There's
electronics in it. Ditto for the microwave, timeclock, and coffee maker.
Hell, if it plugs in, we're probably in charge of it anyway.
10. When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer
support. We can fix your telephone line from here.
11. When you have a dozen old computer screens to get rid of, call
computer support. We're collectors.
12. When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on an IT person's
chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem.
We love a puzzle.
13. When an IT person tells you that computer screens don't have
cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.
14. When an IT person tells you that he'll be there shortly, reply in a
scathing tone of voice: "And just how many weeks do you mean by
shortly?". That motivates us.
15. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times.
Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.
16. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to
all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.
17. Don't learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly
what you mean by "my thingy blew up".
18. Don't use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.
19. If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your
dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were
designed to have 40lb of computer sitting on top of them.
20. If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the mail
upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of muffin
crumbs and nail clippings in them.
21. When you get a message saying "Are you sure?" click on that Yes
button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren't sure, you wouldn't be
doing it, would you?
22. When you find an IT person on the phone with his bank, sit uninvited
on the corner of his desk and stare at him until he hangs up. We don't
have any money to speak of anyway.
23. Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about
that computer crap". We don't mind at all hearing our area of
professional expertise referred to as crap.
24. When you need to change the toner cartridge in a printer, call IT
support. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and
Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional
engineer with a master's degree in nuclear physics.
25. When you can't find someone in the government directory, call IT
Support.
26. When you have a lock to pick on an old file cabinet, call IT
Support. We love to hack.
27. When something's the matter with your computer, ask your secretary
to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a
third party who doesn't know anything about the problem.
28. When you receive a 50MB movie file, send it to everyone as a mail
attachment. We've got lots of disk space on that mail server.
29. Don't even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller
chunks. Somebody else might get a chance to squeeze a memo into the
queue.
30. When an IT person gets on the elevator pushing $100,000 worth of
computer equipment on a cart, ask in a very loud voice: "Good grief, you
take the elevator to go DOWN one floor?!?" That's another one that
cracks us up no end.
31. When you lose your car keys or go to lunch, send an email to the
entire company. People down in Las Vegas like to keep abreast of what's
going on.
32. When you bump into an IT person at the grocery store on a Saturday,
ask a computer question. We do weekends.
33. Don't bother to tell us when you move computers around on your own.
Computer names are just a cosmetic feature.
34. When you bring your own personal home PC for repair at the office,
leave the documentation at home. We'll find all the settings and drivers
somewhere.
35. In no way do we believe that end-users are ungrateful. It hurts our
feelings that one could even think such a thing on the basis of the
above statements. In truth we wish to express our deepest gratitude to
the hundreds of wonderful end-users portrayed herein, without whom none
of this would have been remotely possible.
I know that It's been more than a week since my last post, by boy what a week it has been. I guess it started last saturday, when we got a call from my Beautiful Wife's niece, saying, "hey, we are on the way". The way to where? we asked, "Well, your house". So hey cool, we are going to have some company! It's going to be my Wife's Niece, Her Daughter, and her Daughters friend. So My Beautiful Wife and I got to work immediately in making the house presentable. I tackled the dishes, she took on the laundry. All in all we got like 8 hours worth of cleaning done in like 3 hours. Yeah, were rockin. So now the house is clean, where are we going to put everyone. Hummmm, we may need some help on that one. So I let my Folks know what's going on, and they come up with the brilliant idea of bringing their motor home over to our house, and our company can stay in their. Now this was a plan that really came together. My Dad and Brother brought it over showed our guest how to use everything and we charming as usual!
Sunday, or should I say sunday lobster sunday. Being that our family guest from Airzona, first place we have to hit is going to be the beach. After getting the necesarry things (Dr. Pepper, Umbrella, boogie boards, Dr. Pepper, sandwiches, chips, Dr. Pepper, towels and sun screen.) we packed the car and where off. We went down to Santa Monica beach, and to our surprise so did everyone else in LA. We finally get down PCH enough to find some parking. We ended up at part of the beach that my Dad and I use to go surf fishing at all then time when I was younger. We set up our spot, and the girls going boogie boarding and My Wife and her Niece went for a walk. I kicked back and watched the girls like a hawk. You see my Beautiful Wife's Nieces, Daughter and her friend are both 11 years old. So of course the Oldest Brother thing kicks in. After we have some lunch I go in the water, now I don't think I have actually been in the ocean for 3 or 4 years. I've been the the beach but having gotten in. When I was a kid you couldn't keep me out of the water. It was nice to do a little body surfing with the girls. Of course being the manly man that I am, I didn't put any sun screen on, and I did get some sun, fortunately It just turned to tan, but it was sore for a day or two.
Is it just me, or does it seem that everything ends up on ebay? I was reading some rss feeds and ran across a post on K.I.T.T. (Knight Industries Two Thousand) from Knight Rider being on eBay. I remember as a kid, that this was one of my brothers and my favorite shows. It was on Friday nights at 9pm, on NBC. I remember this so well, because our bedtime growing up was 9pm. With Friday nights being the exception, we were allowed to stay up till 10pm to see the end of Knight Rider (What can I say we were rebels through and through).
It seems like there isn't any toy or electronic from my childhood that I can't find on ebay. The CEDs we use to watch instead of having a VCR. All the game systems that my brother K has had over the years are there. (Yes, folks he is a gamer. Don't play grand turismo 3 with him unless you feel like losing by a lot. We are talking he will lap you in a less powerful car then you are driving) I am sure that with enough eBay searches, I can find the "Incredible Hulk" bike I had as a kid, that was stolen out of our yard. Now, I don't mean one like it, I mean the one I had.
So it gets me to thinking, should we really buy the toys, and object of our childhood? Does the nostalgia bring back the same feelings or does having those things as an adult change you prospective on them. I think somethings are nice to have. Your baseball glove that you had when you were a kid, you know things that remind you more of spending time with your family. The electronics have come so far, that you will be sorely dissappointed. And as for your favorite TV show from when you were a kid, I would suggest skipping the reruns. Awhile back I got to see an episode of Knight Rider, and as an adult, I have no clue how that show stayed on the air for as many seasons as it did. But I still have a soft spot in my heart for the car from the show. I wonder how you ask a loan officer for a 50-60 thousand dollar loan to buy K.I.T.T. off eBay?
Last night, was a bit of a long night. I was here till 1am with two of my co-workers trying to migrate to a new Database server. Fortunately or unfortunately we ran in to some serious issues. I personally think it was a good thing. I rather have the problems with the machine before it is put in production that way we can have it fixed and reliable, instead of trying to make it limp along.
One of my co-workers from our impromtu night shift had taken the train in to work. Of course at 1am the trains in Los Angeles just don't run. So I took him to his car in Irvine. I just didn't see any reason for him to stay at work overnight. It turned out to be one of those great car ride conversations that you learn alot about the other person and they learn a lot about you. It was really quite nice, and I came away feeling good about people in general.
The ride home was nice and uneventful. So at 2:30am, very drowsily I get home, change into PJs, but the little boy in his bed (he is asleep on my side of the bed), set the alarm, and then fell asleep within about 20 seconds after my head hit the pillow. So then what feels like about 45 seconds later the alarm goes off. It's already 7am. So I get up, turn the alarm off, take my shower, shave, brush my teeth, and I suddenly realize that I have done the whole "getting ready for work" ritual with my eyes closed the entire time. I figured this out when I actually had to open my eyes to pick out my clothes.
I drove today, so that hopefully I could get home early. I get here about 8:30am, not so bad. So I am working away a little bit, trying to get my eyes to focus on the screen, and the phone rings. Its the other web developer. He's got some things going on at the house with the paint contractor he has doing work and lets me know that he will be rolling in to work around 11 to 12 today. I just had to laugh. Since 6am on thursday morning I have been home a grand total of 5 1/2 hours, while in the same time period he has only been at work a grand total of 5 1/2 hours. So I realize what I have to do, I need to paint the house.
This morning I ran acrossed a very interesting article on wired.com. (actually in is from the rss feed) Apparently a math student named Matt who found the web site of his favorite movie theather chain hard to use, so he made a version that was more usable and hosted on his site.
So I took a look at the orignial site, and the truth it, the site is amazingly hard to use, even for me. The site takes a long time to load and has a lot of competing elements. And of course the page doesn't even render properly in Mozilla (the javascript menus don't even show), I didn't even bother to try viewing the site on my Mac.
So in my opinion Matt did a good thing. He created something that should of made the theather chain reconsider the design of their site and redesign it with usability being the first consideration and design being the second right? Nope, they sent Matt a cease and desist order. Okay so why did the lawyers get involved and not the web developers/designers? There is a disheartening trend among corporate websites. The flash intro/Ad, and navigation that is almost hidden. These sites take an extremely long time to load and even more time to find the information you desire. The other trend I have noticed is that many site are virtually "IE Only Sites", meaning that if you are on a browser other than Internet Explorer that you either can't view the site at all or have limited functionality with the site.
These trends can't continue and I don't believe they will be allowed to continue for several reasons. First, the statement that the Department of Homeland Security made about Internet Explorer. "There are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies relating to the IE domain/zone security model, the DHTML object model, MIME-type determination, and ActiveX. It is possible to reduce exposure to these vulnerabilities by using a different Web browser, especially when browsing untrusted sites" The recommendation was to using another browser like Mozilla. The second reason would be Section 508 accessibility. It is going to become necessary for financial institution to make sure their sites are Section 508 compliant.
The question that pops into my mind is, why is it that websites in 1997 were easier to use then sites in 2004. I can come up with a couple of reasons. First, there were some elements that all sites had. Everyone had a links on the top and bottom of their pages. Another element was site maps. Site maps helped you cut through the paths that the design team/marketing department wanted you to go through and get right to the information you needed. Also Flash wasn't as prevelent. While Flash is a great web technology, it doesn't always have designers that create the most usable web interfaces.
Something that I have found interesting is that usability and easy of publishing are coming back around again. Blogs have been at the for front of this movement. People are using pre-build, simple yet effective designs, and the easy to use publish tools that are offered. This is reminds me of what made the Web great to begin with. That just anyone with a text editor and a couple of hours could learn to write their own web page and express themselves in this "new media". I hope that the trend of usability and easy of use, so that everyone can publish to the web continues.
Some how I stumbled across this site and had to share. It seems that it really is true that you can find anything on the internet. My favorite thing about it is the image of the operator waiting to take your call on the bottom right hand side of the page. The reason I got to the page was a link to a Jet Engine plans. This is a great page that features images that look like they are a mixture of a young boys imagination and a Road Runner cartoon. However I couldn't find a ACME Rocket Bicycle logo anywhere on the images.
So I have made the Switch from IE to Mozilla Firefox. For the most part, it is a good change. I love the fact that I can download a theme and make Firefox look like Apple's Safari browser. The search bar next to the address bar is saving me loads of time. Instead of going to google, and then searching, I just search google from there. Now that is a nice feature. The other nice thing about Firefox is that there are Extensions. Extensions for Mouse Gestures, for development, and all sorts of other stuff.
So does this mean that I never use IE anymore. I wish I could say I don't , but there are some applications I still have to use it. Some of our intranet and web applications are IE only. However I think that I will start working to change that. Well, excuse me won't you, I have to run some new security updates for IE.
Well so far since I started riding again in June I have racked up 45 miles as of tonight. Yesterday night I got a new schwinn bicycle computer to help me keep track and measure my progress. Believe it or not I got it at walmart for $10. Of course I have no idea where the bicycle computer I bought 10 years ago for $75 is, not that it did any thing more than the new one does. (In fact it didn't do as much as the new one does.) Now I know how fast I am going, how far I have traveled and how long I have been riding. It's really rather like having all the stuff from your car dashboard, as far as speedometer, odmeter and clock right on your handlebars. I have been keeping a log, making educated guess as to distance using mapquest and lenght of the ride and coming up with my average mph. (Actually Bikelog will do the calcuation for you.)
I think I have mentioned it before but there is a great application called Bikelog. It comes in Windows, PDA and Web Flavors with the most expensive (the Windows version) being only $12.95. It really is a bargin and it really makes it easy to keep track of your progress. Some of the other things it does are give you ways to schedule and keep track of up coming rides and bike maintenance as well as some really cool charts of your data.
The one on the left is my Calories burned versus watts produced. I thought this was a great view, because it helps you to see what a great workout you are getting and how much energy you are producing on each ride.
Also if you are kind of competative you can upload your data to the http://www.netcyclist.com website and see where you place. I am currently 32nd. Not that I'm counting.
Apparently The Department of Homeland Security thinks that Internet Explorer is a security risk.
Here is the whole story
So after a very bad week last week, my Beautiful Wife did here best to make me feel better and to forget about it. We had a great weekend. Went for a lovely drive up the coast and spend time just holding each others hand. I felt rested and better about things in general. Then I made the mistake of coming into work. And things were just as bad as last week and getting worse by the minute. So here at work they have successfully transformed me from Sr. Web Developer to a Text Monkey
So I went for a bike ride tonight. I made 7.6 miles. Which is showing improvement. It's funny the difference between starting over at 30 over ride everyday when you are in your late teens. 8 miles use to be my short rides and I use to pull bigger gears, and had a higher cadence. Well at least I am riding again. So I learned three things on my ride tonight.
So we are a day from launching our CMS, and I think, hey I need to check it in Netscape 4.7. I hadn't yet, and thought it would be a good idea. What happens, the whole site in Netscape is all blown out. Now I had been checking it in Netscape 7.1 and Mozilla. So two days of searching day and night for the problem and 2 minutes to fix once it was found. My Beautiful Wife figured it out. It was an issue with the CSS. Basically a TAG element for TD had line-height:17px. Well IE and Netscape 7.1 ignored this and rendered the pages correctly. Now, would you like to be even more impressed? My Beautiful Wife didn't look at the code, she just looked at the Netscape 4.7 page blown up and said, have you checked the CSS. I thought I did, but it wasn't tell I was going over the html code line by line that I saw the CSS and switched from the new CSS to the old one. I switched it and the page work perfect!
Thank you Sweetness, You are my coding Hero!
The other day I was goofing around in Adobe Illustrator, so I thought that I would take ten minutes (8 minutes 27 seconds, but whos counting) and come up with a logo for Adventures in Real life. Of course I was stuck on a coding issue, so that was at the forefront of my thoughts when I started the design. The other influence was the cool little lego guy icon that Channel 9 is using. Let me know what you think.
We just made our deadline. It took way to many nights working in to the wee hours of the morning. So tomorrow we will have a soft launch and next week we will have the full blown launch. It's been mentally and physically exhausting. So you would think that I would be proud, right? Not so much. I am glad it is over. It is one of those projects that change how things are done for the better. However those are the projects that take the most energy to get done. Not only do you have to get the work done, (Which was huge effort) but you also have to change the way that people think about how they do their job. That is really the difficult part. People think you are taking some freedom away from them. Which in part is true, but you are giving them time back. This project in essense took the technical part out of the equation, leaving just the creative part. So anyhow it is done. I am glad! Now I just want to get my my pajamas and watch some movies.
The other thing that happened today is we got approval on a project that we have been wanting to do for two years. After so much work just to get an approval, it feels like a victory. And in truth it is just the begining. Going to have to take a vacation soon.
Well it seems that the War of the Internet Browsers has started again. I know that some people would say that it never ended. While I admit that is true, the fighting wasn't as fast and furious as it is starting to get now. So what has changed to make this happen? A couple things, Mozilla/Netscape have had a couple of big leaps forward in their browser. Netscape 7.2/Mozilla Firefox 0.9 has been released and has been warmly received. It's a great browser, I love some of the features it has, such as tabbed windows. Which lets you have one window up with different web pages in each tab. This is such a desktop space saver that it has been adopted very quickly, by everyone but Microsoft. Of course those that Love Microsoft Internet Explorer, and want tabs can use MyIE2. It's a nice IE based browser that uses tabs. If your use to using keyboard shortcuts when you are browsing, you are going to have to relearn them for this browser.
So what is the fighting about? It's about standards of course. Mozilla has worked harded to be very standard compliant with the latest HTML, XHTML, CSS specifications from the W3C. And of course Microsoft's still in development version of IE has, supposedly taken some liberties with the specifications. This is a lot of talk on Channel 9 about this. Web Developers are asking the Microsoft team if they even care about them and their needs.
Yesterday Morning I was up way to early. So I figured since I was up that I would go run some errands. One of them was to pick up a couple things at Wal-Mart. Like I said it was pretty early, in fact it was still dark outside. The Wal-Mart we go to is open 24 hrs. So when I walked it, you could smell the in store McDonalds getting ready for the breakfast crowd. You could see the stockers filling up the shelves and it hit me. Wal-Mart is the Retail version of a Casino. I looked around and didn't see any clocks on the walls. I walked a little farther into the store and noticed that from the lighting you couldn't tell if it was day or night. The more I thought about it, the more similarities I saw. It got me to thinking, now I know that casinos will play music that has subliminal messages in it that says "lose, lose, lose". I wonder if the music they play in Wal-Mart has subliminal messages saying "spend, spend, spend".
Yesterday the Little Boy and I had our first bike ride to the park. We had a couple of things to do before we could ride. I needed a tube for my bike, and we both needed a helmet. So we headed off to Wally-World (walmart) and picked ourselves out a couple of nice helmets. When I was a kid, we never wore helmets. We just didn't even think of it. However in California there is a law that was passed a couple years ago that says, 'if your under 18 years of age, you are wearing a helmet'. Of course, I have to have one too, I need to be a good example to the Little Boy. So now with helmets in hand we head to the bike shop to get my tubes.
So we get to the bike shop, locate the tubes, now business is taken care, of and the Little Boy and I can peruse the shop. Instantly we are magnetically attracted to some very nice bikes in our sizes. The one the little boy likes is a very nice aluminum trike, and I pick a very nice aluminum bike. After ten minutes of looking and wanting, and the Little Boy trying to take a test ride on the one he had picked out we decided that it would be financially responsible of us to pay for our parts and go. On the way out we see the new Trek Medone, which is the bike Lance Armstrong will be riding in the Tour de France. So I am looking up at it in awe, and the Little Boy reaches out and spins the rear wheel (Gasp) and he says "Cool!". That rear wheel cost more then both of our bikes combined. It made me laugh, I would of never reached out and spin the wheel, I knew how much it cost. He doesn't know dollar signs. So one wheel is just as good as another. And he was right, it was cool! On the way to the front a salesman asked us if we needed any help. I said, "I need to get my stuff and go before I buy something big and my wife divorces me", to which he said, "hey, stay awhile". Anyhow we got our stuff and headed for home.
Once we are home we get to work on changing out my tube and getting our new helmets fitted and adjusted. Everything it working good, everyone is safe, so we are off. The goal is to make it to the park and back. The park is about five blocks from the house on very residental streets. So here is how it played out. My plan was to keep The Little Boy between me and the curb. I would act as the buffer between him and any traffic that we may happen upon. He would start to pedal, so I would get in the pedals (my bike has toe-clips, I am so glad I didn't go with clipless, it would of killed me on this ride), then he would pedal about 20 feet, and the stop and make the "errrt" stopping noise when he was stopping. We did this no less then 15 times. This is when we (me) came up with our riding matra, "Pedal, Pedal, Pedaallll". Now this isn't to be said loud in an unkind fashion. It must be chanted in a comical tone to receive the desired results. Which is the Little Boy pedaling further than 20 feet before stopping. So about 10 to 15 minutes after we started we got to the park. Granted when I walk to the park it takes 5 minutes, but it was a victory none the less.
Now that we made it to the park we would ride around a little. Our park has a very nice paved path that is just perfect for kids to ride their bikes around. We made about 4 loops. After each loop we would stop at a picnic table and have a drink from my water bottle. I showed the Little Boy how it works, and it just tickled him. I am going to have to get him one for his very own. (especially if Cheetos are involved in the snacking process). After our 4th victory lap around the park My Beautiful Wife pulls up and tells us about a yard sale just a couple of house down. So she parks in front of the house, and gets out, and Calls to the Little Boy, and I right there next to him chatting our matra got him to ride not stop to her. Which was almost 200 feet away from the park. Sure I only had to pedal four times, but it was four good ones and I was proud. We looked at the yard sale for a little bit, and then decided (it was lunch time, our tummies decided) it was time to go home and get something to eat.
The Little Boy was really pumped up for the ride home. He looked and me and said, "Let's ride fast". With the pace that we had going to the park, I took this to mean lets go 40 feet before we hit the brakes and make the "errrrt" sound. However to my surprise he pedaled a good two blocks before needing a little rest. Once rested he said, "Let's ride fast", to which I replied "I will ride as fast as you can go". And he would pedal (I would let off the brakes and coast) for a good little bit, and then need little rest. Lets face it, it is tough when you are little to pedal or walk any distance with out a little rest. Anyhow we turned on to our street, and the Little Boy was just about done. With a lot of coaxing we got to the house. The poor Little guy didn't have the strength to pedal up the driveway. So I go off and helped push him up and in. He got off, sweating, and panting, ready for some rest. I got off, mentally more tired than any ride I had ever been on, but didn't even get winded. All and All one of the best rides I've ever been on.
An article from Rueters is claiming that Microsoft will start developing their own AV (anti-virus) software. Microsoft is saying that their anti-virus program will be sold as a separate piece of software their operating systems. This is another step towards the "Trustworthy Computing" campaign that they started in 2002.
I have several thoughts about this subject. First virus creation is at an all time high, and they are spreading across the internet faster and faster everyday. It makes sense that the AV and Patch management become a more intergral part of the OS (Operating System). Not just Microsoft's Operating Systems, but all of them, Apple, Linux, freeBSD, all of them. Anti-virus will be just as important as disk management and memory management. I person doesn't have to know how a mouse or keyboard work to use them, the same thing goes with AV.
Lets just say hypothetically that Microsoft is successful in securing all of their Operating Systems and users. (I know this is really a stretch, but lets just go with it) The virus writers will turn their attention to the other Operating Systems. While the users of non-microsoft OSs are usually more technical, it is still a lot of work to keep a workstation, patched and the virus definitions up today. Truthfully, why should we have to spend time everyday updating our machines? It seems to me that technology is far enough along that all operating systems to a certain extent should be self-healing. Currently IBM server running AIX claim this, but isn't this need more on the desktop arena than in the server room?
Now lets go back to the 95% of the computer population that is running a Microsoft operating systems. Most of these people are office or home users. They use their machines for spreadsheets, documents and email. These are the people that are at a higher risk. These are the people that need to have a machine that updates itself, and auto-hides emails that could be viruses. Shouldn't these be the systems that are self-healing?
There is another barrier to AV protection that is usually over looked are inital and ongoing costs. When people buy a new computer, they usually get McAffe, or Norton loaded and ready to go with a 90 day subscription. Of course 90 days go by and the users forgets to purchase the subscription or can't afford it. So now there are machines that have AV software on them, but the definitions on them are so old that the software is close to useless. So why can't the subscriptions be either included in the cost of the new PC? Why can't their be a 10 dollar a year subscription for AV? I personally know of people that are using older machines, because they can't afford new once, and can't afford to spend 100 dollars a year on AV. However 10 dollars a year, is down right cheap. Everyone should be able to afford that. 10 dollars from 100 people, will always be more then 100 dollars from 2 people. So the software companies won't be losing money, and the comsumers are protected.
Did you ever find something you thought was lost and would never see again? That just happened to me this morning. I found something that made me very nostalgic. It isn't a toy from my childhood, or a picture. Its my work. Work that I thought I would never see again. My first pages as a "Webmaster" back when I started. My first site that I designed and impemented from start to finish. I found them. Where, where else on the web. The Wayback Machine of The Internet Archive. I have worked as a consultant doing sites for clients, in house html specialist, web developer, web master, and currently I am a Sr. Web Developer. So I have grown as the internet has grown. It's so nice to take a look back at my web developement baby pictures as it were.
This afternoon I got my bike back from the shop. It's a 1990 Centurion Le Mans. It's a very nice bike and I have had it since it was new. It's almost hard for me to believe that this bike is 14 years old. I've put a lot of miles on it, and it still rides great. I put it into the shop to get a tune-up and the bar tape put on it. I use to ride a lot. Everyday I use to get up and at least ride 8 miles or so, and then get ready for school or work. The last 5 or 6 years it has been in the garage. It has been patiently waiting till I have had time. Time to ride it, time to take care of it, time to just get on the road and pedal.
My goal is to start riding at least three times a week. Being in IT for 7 years now, I have the typical IT body type. I admit I need to lose a couple of pounds (my ego won't let me write down the real number but it is over 2). So apparently sitting in front of a computer all day and eating nachos and drinking vanilla coke one after another isn't as healthy for you as once thought. Who knows, I may actually build up to riding to work one of these days.
Michele Leroux Bustamante, who did an amazing job presenting all of the sessions at Tuesday's Developer Track of the Microsoft Security Summit, has just posted the Resources for the sessions. Check out her blog at dasblonde.net. She has some great insights into ASP.NET, Web Services and Security.
I've been Quoted! The company that makes the rockin CMS we use asked me for a quote about their product. And guess what, They've used it. Check it out, its in the sidebar. The whole product quote I wrote is on the testimonials section.
Today was spent in deep learning on security. I had the pleasure of attending the Microsoft Security Summit in Anaheim today. It was a very good event with content that hit the mark. Most of the information was things I have already learned but it was a very good refresher. Buffer Overruns, Cross-Site Scripting, SQL injection Oh, My.
Everything I had as far as emails and printed materials about the event said it was to start at 8 o'clock sharp. Now I really don't like to be late, but due to traffic, I didn't even get to the parking lot till 8am. So I speedwalk into the building and get registered, get my agenda, and the keynote didn't start till 8:30am. I reallized that Msft really understand IT.
The keynote by Mark Valentine, address the continuing security focus that Microsoft has made and plans to keep. This was shown in several of the demos shown. The SP2 for Windows XP really demonstrates that. They have really developed a user interface that makes Windows Updates, Anti-Virus and Internet Firewall (soon to be called Windows Firewall) easy for home users to use. It is always going to make firewall rules for the corporate end a lot better to, as admins will be able to create domain and standard firewall rules. That will make it so people on your network that have laptops that they take home every night (like myself), won't be bring in malware and viruses back into the network. Micorsoft also showed off the SD3 Framework, which means, Secure by Design, Secure by Default, Secure in Deployment. The other thing that was mentioned is that after the trustworthy computer email from Bill Gates came out, they stopped all forward progress on Windows 2003 Server and started the SD3 model. Apparently all Developers at Microsoft have to read "Writing Secure Code" before they are allowed to touch on stitch of code.
I took the Developer track of the Security Summit. This was a day well spent. Michele Leroux Bustamante taught all four sessions. She is a Microsoft Regional Directory for the San Diego area. She did an amazing job of keeping the material entertaining. I told 14 pages worth of notes from the sessions. After I get a chance to decipher my own writing (not always easy) I will share some of the nuggets I gleamed from the event.
Highlights
If you get a chance to get to this event, do, the more you know about security the better you can sleep.
Saw this on Scott's Blog and had to blog it.
"This is so funny I was literally crying Seriously, spend some time exploring."[ComputerZen.com - Scott Hanselman's Weblog]
Google.com has become synonmous with internet search engine. It has even become a verb among the techie group. "Oh I just googled that!". So with all of this popularity, have you ever wonder how much information they get from their users on what they search? It does make sense to capture that information, with more and more information you can build better and better search algorithms. Google has a program called Google Zeitgeist (I have no idea how you pronounce that). The information displayed is simply amazing. It is like webtrends on steriods. I found this link by looking at the googleblog. Which I thought was pretty fitting as they are the fine people that own blogger.com. It's nice to know they believe in what they own.
So I am really starting to think this reality TV thing has to stop. I just read about a patent that some TV producer dreamed up for a show. The concept:
A child adoption proceeding is conducted in the form of a television game show and online media event, wherein couples compete against each other to win legal custody of the child. Adoptive parents are selected using a vote-by-phone and/or Internet voting scheme, together with 24-hour surveillance of the prospective parents, which enables television viewers and Internet users to inspect prospective parent-contestants in detail before voting for the winning parents. The present invention overcomes inequities of state-run or private adoption agencies, permitting a fairer selection process while providing greater time and access to observe a pool of prospective parents.
This to me is just wrong. There are a lot of couples that have a lot of love to give and can't have children of thier own. They have a good heart and want to give a child that is not "their-own" in the biological sense a better home, a better live, hope. So what do we as the viewing audience do to these poor souls that have love to give and good hearts. We have them humiliate them on national TV to prove to audience that they are as good and kind as them seem. Lets make them compete against other people like themselves and see if it gets nasty. People that would watch a show like this are the same kind of people that watch car racing to see the crashes. What is wrong with the world that this can be granted a patent. I am sure it will be on FOX next session.
I have a better idea for a reality TV show. Let's call it, "Bad Family to Good Family". It's really an easy concept. Lets get the same people that would be on Jerry Springer for a six pack of bud, and have 8 children by 8 different partners. The same people that view children as a punishment for getting drunk and having sex. Now we offer these people a keg of beer and per child. Of course they won't be able to refuse this offer. Now we take the children and give them to good loving families and watch them blosom in to the good and intellegent people the can be. That's it!
Of course this would never fly. It is a heart warming concept, and those are never put on TV. Also there are too many legal issues. For some reason the breeders have all the rights, which prevents their children from having the right to a good life in a loving home. So the breeders will continue to breed, and the childless parents will continue to long for a child to love, and the children of the breeders will desperately wanted to be loved. And the breeders, they will have their "kid" get them 'nother beer from the fridge.
