Another ending
I'm getting out
I'm leaving here
I'm kickin' right through this door
-- Korn "For No One"
Today is the end of Hurricane Season, so if you need finish off some extra ammo you might have,
Epsilon is out there right now. You have 'till midnight my friends!
Man, I just had to jet for a couple hours because Thing Two had a sudden allergic reaction to something. The Facility called M and told her he needed Benedryl but they were not only NOT going to give it to him but that when she got there, she would need to show proper identification to give it to him. So she called in the heavy guns: me. OK, not so much on the 'gun' side but nevertheless, I had to tend to this matter. So I go home, find the liquid goodness in the fridge of all places and go to The Facility. Security is pretty tight here so I have to pass several tests including but not limited to finger printing, retinal scanning, tongue depresing, and hair folical exam. But they never check my ID.
I have no problem leaving work to tend to The Things, in fact I kinda like being able to get out of work for a while. What I have a problem with is the fact that some ass-riding cock-monger out there brought suit against some one doing The Right Thing. Now, no one is interested in taking the step to help a child. They had M on the phone, why couldn't they say "hey, you know what, Thing Two is waisting time and space here in Sick Bay and Doctor McCoy is late for his Tee Time, you mind if we give him some B, slap him on the ass, and send him back to class?"
On the positive side, this little mid-day excursion gave me a chance to listen to the new
Korn album "See you on the other side". I like it, its a fresh new sound for them, not as crunchy and in your face as I'd have liked it but it is still a really good album.
Pandora's Box - Pervert
I keep on thinking the same old thing, but then again what can I say?
I keep on trying to live my life, I keep trying to find a better way!
Well as everyday goes by I'll try, but I don't know if I'll make it through
But I'll move along and push on until I do
-- Authority Zero "Passage in Time"
Well, I survived coming back to work. It was rather difficult but I made the transition from loaf, back to oaf. I've gotten a new project lined up, actually its an expansion of the Validation Engine I spent the past two months developing and I have a week to do it. Surprise surprise. No biggie, I'll be able to leverage a good deal of the code I've already written. Good stuff. I can't wait until I am done with my side work so I can start revealing all the goodies I've come to terms with and now enjoy.
Something that is really cool:
Pandora. Pandora is a front end providing access to the
Music Genome Project. Type in a song and it will return to you a range of music that is "genetically" similar. The MGP team has created over a hundred categories to classify music and have processed over 10,000 songs so far. I am really impressed with the coverage they've made over the past five years.
A quote from an interesting
article: "One of the lemming couples produced eight litters in 167 days. Sadly enough, a male died afterwards." Sadly my ass! He died a happy lemming.
The Day Before
There's no time for us
There's no place for us
What is this thing that builds
our dreams yet slips away from us
-- Queen "Who wants to live forever"
It couldn't last forever I suppose. The November holidays are over and all we have left are the December ones. There's two, but not until the end of the month. Oh well. Back to work tomorrow. In an attempt to relax my over-relaxed mind and body I tried to tune my old-and-damn-near-dead juggernaught-body acoustic guitar. It took a good 20 minutes but I finally got each string as perfect as can be on that old heap and then, just as I am about to go through some basic exercises, E strikes back. Little bastard snapped at the nut. OK, well, umm. After taking in the lesson I just leanred about this particular instrument I fiddle with the bass for a bit and then pull out the Fender I picked up from Mike. Then, just as suddenly, a penguin on a scooter comes by and I am installing drivers and typing this message. My guess is, tonight is not the night.
Happy Thanksgiving
White meat, dark meat you just can’t lose
I fell off my moped and I got a bruise
Turkey in the oven and the buns in the toaster
I’ll never take down my Cheryl Tiegs poster
Wrap the turkey up in aluminum foil
My brother likes to masturbate with baby oil
Turkey and sweet potato pie
Sammy Davis Jr. only had one eye
-- Adam Sandler "The Thanksgiving Song"
I laid out a plan for the day yesterday which is something I never do. Let's see what we got done shall we?
- Take a nap
- Play Halo
- Clean out my car
- Clean up the office
- Straighten up the weight room
- Get and read another volume of Priest
- Read more (and maybe finish) Snow Crash
- Well, OK, I did read a little
- Finish installing all the software I need on the new PC
- Install my SATA-150 100 gig hard drive
- This is when my new PC broke
- Transfer my 90 gigs of MP3 to DVD so I can actually use the SATA drive
- Seriously consider buying a new hard drive to avoid doing the above two tasks
- I considered buying a new PC, does this count?
- Try with futility to get caught up on my feeds
- Get in touch with some old friends
- Ale House tonight with those old friends
- Give the PC I borrowed back to my friend
So, as you can see, I had a great day! Today was good too, The Things, M, and I had a great time. Now, I'm off to veg and top off my belly. I am seriously going to give this diet thing a try tomorrow and don't want to hit it on an empty stomach.
Home Alone - Fer realz!
How long I have wanted
This dream to come true
And as it approaches
I can't believe I'm through
-- Twisted Sister "The Price"
Let's cut to the chase, I'm off today (unless I get called in - not that I would or should but you know what, shit happens). No midgets, women, or obligations. If I get the call I'll be catching a movie with the guys at the shop but otherwise, here's my TODO:
- Take a nap
- Play Halo
- Clean out my car
- Clean up the office
- Straighten up the weight room
- Get and read another volume of Priest
- Read more (and maybe finish) Snow Crash
- Finish installing all the software I need on the new PC
- Install my SATA-150 100 gig hard drive
- Transfer my 90 gigs of MP3 to DVD so I can actually use the SATA drive
- Seriously consider buying a new hard drive to avoid doing the above two tasks
- Try with futility to get caught up on my feeds
- Get in touch with some old friends
- Ale House tonight with those old friends
- Give the PC I borrowed back to my friend
We'll see how far I get...
Comp Time
Dante: I'm not even supposed to be here today
-- Clerks
Well, I am a glutton. As opposed to being mutton, I suppose that isn't so bad. Yesterday The Man offerred me a repreive from the salt mines for the extra work I'd been doing. Really cool I thought and completely unexpected. So why am I at work today? There's still work to do. You know, if I didn't like the people I work with (including The Mad Indian) I wouldn't be here today. But I like the folks and I respect the job. So we'll see how it goes today.
[Edited]
... And its probably a good thing I did come in today as I was able to field some issues and luckily, Mike took a nasty one off my back. Thanks man.
Let the games begin
I can’t help my boogies they get out of control
I know that you don’t care but I want you to know
The knee-stocking flavor is a favorite treat
Of men that don’t bother with the taste of a teat
-- Weezer "Hash Pipe"
I can't believe it is finally over. Sure there's going to be some clean up and most likely some maintenance; and really, is it ever truely over? It feels good to be able to screw around at 9pm and not be thinking about work. I'm prolly even gonna go to bed tonight.
Thing Two was sick today and M couldn't reschedule her meetings so I got to stay home. The only experience that would have made it better - save for not having to work at all - would have been if I had VPN access to the company network. Yes, they provide it, but I could never get it working and just didn't want to hassel our slick IT department, she's just as overworked as the rest of us. Now, I am expecting to be able to take delivery of my new motherboard and case tomorrow and have it all set up by Monday. So watch out, I'm gonna annoy the hell out of you until I can get this thing up and running.
Thing One is testing the boundaries again and seeing just how far he can push them. When The Things are well and not in school, they spend their time before 6pm during the week but of course not on holidays at a Christian aftercare center. Here comes the irony. The Director of this organization's name is Marry Jane. Her Assistant's last name is Reefer. No lie. I'd scan their business card if they weren't a Christian organization - Karma Cops and all. So anyway, Thing One has an attitude with M when she goes to pick him up and then he tries to play us against each other tonight. I follow up on one of M's decrees and tell him to clean his cage. Shortly after he asks M when he should go for his nightly delousing. Little bastard tries, but luckily mi casa es casa pequeña. I love sneaking up behind the children when they are trying to be sneaky. He's lucky dwarf tossing is illegal.
Since I have a bit of free time on my hands I really don't want to waste it here, on this machine. Maybe I'll play some Halo.
Attarded
Trying to impress me will prove worthless.
Already gave you a chance.
And given clues you'll realize it too,
You miserably failed the test.-- Inspection 12 "Great Scott"
Got the results back from the doctor...
I think I may need a second opinion.
There's a neat little
generator that created the above picture, they also have a number of other cute little tools.
[Edited 05.11.28] - They fixed the generator
Redeux
Here comes the bossman calling
Here comes the man right now
Here comes the bossman calling
Don’t let him bring you down
-- Lucky Boys Confusion "Bossman"
You know, it helps to press "Publish Post" when you're done with a post. The last two posts, drafted, not posted. What the hell, I'll just combine them here, saves me from having to think today.
Last week:
Monday (October 31, 2005) was the last day to get Yahoo! Music Unlimited at the $4.99/month price before they doubled it so I decided to jump in for a year. At $60 I thought I'd atleast be able to scope out some new tunes I've yet to hear by bands I never knew existed. So far, I'm not terribly impressed. Now, don't get me wrong, I think it is awesome that I can hop right in, scan some tunes, and be off but there are some problems with the service. Not the technical aspects of the service mind you, but the selection. While I'm sure they may well have over a million songs, I personally don't care for 999,973 of them. And the GUI is pretty difficult to use.
What made me switch? Really? You actually care enough to ask why I'd make the switch to a music service pandering to the corporate bastards suing children and financially ruining college kids? No? Well, I'll tell you anyway. Peer pressure. All the other boys were doing it and I wanted to be one of the kewl kidz. I like music, I like the way it makes me feel inside. I like the way if you straddle the speakers just right... ummm... I like music. I like all kinds of music from all different generes, and while I won't openly admit it, I kinda like country too.
Yesterday:
After having slept half the weekend - quite literally - I awoke to the middle of
The Crow: City of Angels. Wow, its been a really long time, I remember when this movie first came out back in 1996. I was so excited to see this film, a friend of mine and I caught a midnight showing, opening night, at a theater up the road that no longer exists. Now, I don't think this movie caused the theater to go under, but it may have added to what led to its demise. This movie was terrible; they tried way too hard to make it darker than its predecessor when what they should have done was make it better. The Crow became a such a classic because of the tragedy that befell its star. Its sequel had
Iggy Pop. What's really bad about this is that apparently the intention was to make The Crow a franchise. While the soundtracks for both of these movies were hot (the second I thought moreso than the first), the movie itself was just terrible. The third feature-length installment "Salvation" I've read is much better as it does not a retelling of the first film but is still far from a good movie. I just don't think I'm going to be able to stomach it. And then, this year,
They brought us a fourth one. Why?
Still employed, so far...
I'm having trouble trying to sleep
I'm counting sheep but running out
As time ticks by and still I try
No rest for crosstops in my mind
-- Green Day "Brain Stew"
Sunday was just about as bad as Saturday; and Monday, well, we won't talk about Monday. Lately my coding has gone to shit, my mind is all over the place, and my waistline is out of control. The scale Sunday put me at two hundred five and eight tenths pounds. I got called to the carpet Monday in front of all the PMs and the owner of the company to account for a number of outstanding issues. Luckily, I was able to identify all but one as being resolved and the remaining as
in process. But I really don't feel solid anymore. I feel like one more screwup is going to put me out the door.
Rather than stew about it and try to point fingers, the only thing left is to look at what the problem is and fix it. M says that I've really let myself go over the past couple of months (I've stopped watching what I eat, exercising, training, etc...) and that I should get back on The Program and sharpen my edge. So, at home, I'm going to start training again; and at work I am going to take a different, more methodical approach to my job. There have been a number of regression issues arrising lately and because I just don't have the time nor The Spirit to perform complete regression testing for every change I make, I am going to wrap my component in a test harness and use it. A year ago or so I started developing integration tests for my piece and they went to the wayside during a heavy development cycle and were never picked back up again.
So here we are now and I wish I'd continued with my initial work. Using
NUnitas the harness, I am developing my use-cases to help better my code. The problem is, simple unit testing will not be possible with the subsystem I've developed - it is a complex collection creating a union between an array, a quadruply linked list, and a tree list with many cross-referenced leaf nodes and parents. So, the unit tests I am building are two fold, they extend the subsystem's classes while adding both internal class-level unit and integration testing ensuring that changes in one teir properly affects its children as well as its siblings. Once I get some decent examples I will post them here. Its some really interesting stuff, but not nearly as exciting as the
last thing that went through this kid's mind.
