(Note, I'm not going to put in any of the techno that's in my list, since that's just not fair, and I'm not picking favorite lines since that may skew your ability to figure the song out) Wake up you sleepy head, Put on some clothes, shake up your bed. -- Oh! You Pretty Things - David Bowie I backed my car into a cop car the other day, Well he just drove off sometimes life's ok -- Float On - Modest Mouse Becky was a beauty from south alabama -- What Was I Thinkin - Dierks Bentley You've got
January 2005 Archives
After getting off work at 8pm on Friday, I went to go see a movie with Elissa and our friend Rachel. We went to the Incredibles over at Tinsletown (south) at around 9:30. That movie was damn funny -- if you haven't seen it, I'd suggest you go check it out. Somehow, Rachel managed to fall asleep during the movie. I swear that girl has narcolepsy or something. Before checking out the movie, Lis and I threw darts at her apartment. I beat her at 301, but she was doing pretty good at cricket. We had to leave before we
For those of you who are my friends (which is basically anyone reading this blog), I'm sorry for not being around at all this last week. And sadly, this trend is going to continue for a while. Since last Wed, I've managed to work 68 hours (so about 20 extra hours than normal) -- we're trying to get RB 6 into beta soon, and there's plenty left to get done. So basically, I'm at work all day every day (came in for 7 hours on Saturday), and by the time I get home, I'm not interested in anything aside from
I'm moving home, back to Minnesota. Some of you (who are friends or family from back home, or around here) have known for a while that I've been hoping to leave Texas to go back home. Dad's survived two bouts with cancer, grandpa is looking more and more unhealthy each time I see him, and I have over 100 relatives all living in Minnesota. Basically, I'm tired of never being around or seeing family, and no one is getting any younger. Also, I miss my friends from back home tons. So I made the decision to start finding a way
So I was wondering where "Lo and Behold" came from. I've read it in numerous places, and I knew (roughly) that I meant something like a surprised version of look. So here's the skinny on this term, found at: randomhouse. Lo is basically a shortened form of the word "look", and is commonly seen in old english texts (such as the bible). What's funny is that the word behold means the same thing (to behold something is to look at it). So basically, it means look and look. Brilliant eh?
So I went into work yesterday figuring I would only be there for a few hours. I wanted to get some stuff done for the next alpha, such as a templates window so that people can make console application again without any hidden keyboard shortcuts. 7 hours later, I got the templates window implemented, hooked up and debugged. I also fixed an error with parsing method declarations that I accidentally checked in on Friday (which is what took up a decent chunk of my time). I'm thinking of going back in today to work on minor polish issues just to
A file that big? It might be very useful. But now it is gone. The Web site you seek cannot be located but endless others exist Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return. ABORTED effort: Close all that you have. You ask way too much. First snow, then silence. This thousand dollar screen dies so beautifully. With searching comes loss and the presence of absence: "My Novel" not found. The Tao that is seen Is not the true Tao, until You bring fresh toner. Windows NT crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears
In the never-ending battle against comment spam, I'm trying a new approach. I've renamed the comment script to something aside from the default. This means that the bots shouldn't know which php file to post the comments directly to, and so the spam should pretty much cease. If anyone has any troubles commenting, please email me directly (you know the address) so that I can look into it. I've tested things out, and I think there shouldn't be any hitches, but I still figured I'd warn everyone. Hopefully this is the end of spam for me.
It's crunch time at work. It's about 7:30pm, and my work day isn't over yet. I'm actually writing this while waiting for compiles to finish. I'll most likely be working late from now until Feb 1st, then I should hopefully get a small respite in the late nights + weekends. But I am thinking it may actually be like this straight thru until REAL World (which is the end of March). Wahoo! Oh well, it's part of having a job in the computer industry, and I don't mind it too much so long as I don't burn myself out. I'll
So I knew that throwing rice was a fertility thing, but I never knew anything aside from that, like where the tradition came from. Like all good things Christian, throwing rice was taken from the pagans. :-P Originally, it was grain thrown (because most people didn't have rice in Europe). It was done as a sign of fertility, to wish the couple good luck on sowing "seeds". They thought that the fertility of the seeds would be transferred to the couple they were thrown over. The tradition carried on in Italy where people threw sweetmeats (also known as candy) over
Rawr! One of my responsibilities at REAL Software is our serial implementation. I basically wrote our whole serial toolkit. I didn't really touch the Classic one too much, so I won't lay claim to that. But I wrote the Windows, Mac OS X and Linux implementations. One of the newer features I implemented was the ability to specify arbitrary baud rates for serial communications. Basically -- the ability to talk to a device at any speed, not just a set of predefined speeds. But how do you actually test once you have the code written to make sure that you
I had a good weekend. Friday night was a laid back night because I was exhausted. So I finally got to catch up on some sleep Sat and Sun. It was nice! On Sat, I got together with Lis and we went hiking in Blunn (?) Creek Preserve. It's really close to where Lis lives (only about 4 blocks away) and is a really pretty park. The trails were decently maintained, but there was almost no one on them. We only saw one other person during our two hour hike. I got a handful of pictures with my new digital
I used this term recently, and I know what it means, but I never understood how it came to mean that. It's just one of those cliches that you never look too closely at. So I went out, and here's the answer I found.http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bya1.htm. It's a maritime saying (like a lot of our cliches). It has to do with the direction the wind is coming from on a ship, oddly enough. If the wind is blowing direcly into the side of the ship (the long end, not the skinny end), then the wind is said to be "on the beam".
So I got home from work last night and watched Labyrinth with Elissa. Go David Bowie! I was a bit surprised with the content of that movie. They said damn a few times, as well as some obvious sexual overtones. It's amazing what you pick up when you're older. :-P After Lis left, I popped onto my laptop and started checking my email. Lo and behold, I got a donation for the Windows Functionality Suite -- wahoo, 50$! Now I don't feel so bad about buying a new digital camera (just got it on Wed) for 200$. So then I
As you may well know, REAL Software has a handfull of mailing lists that I participate on. They're a very good resource for people to get information about REALbasic; whether it's betas, general questions, n00bs, plugins, whatever. Each list has a purpose that's pretty well defined. But often people don't seem to understand how you should behave on a list. An occasional slip-up is fine btw... I'm just ranting about the general problem. Problem One: Each list has a topic. If what you are posting has absolutely nothing to do with the list topic, you shouldn't be posting it. It's
I was born in Sartell, MN, so I didn't have too much choice on that location. But it turned out fairly well. I lived in a little rambler on 2nd Ave N, across from the softball diamonds. When I was really young, the high school was the only building across from me, but as I got older, they built the middle school there as well. Our house was about 2 blocks away from the river (the Mississippi, for those of you who don't know your central Minnesota geography), 2 blocks from school, 2 blocks from the ice skating rink and
Congratulations on being the creator of a new Evil Plan! Your objective is simple: Soul Accumulation. Your motive is a little bit more complex: Mom never loved me Stage One To begin your plan, you must first seduce a pope. This will cause the world to slaughter a sacred calf to appease the gods, frightened by your arrival. Who is this ripe bastard? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good wearing the skin of another human? Stage Two Next, you must desecrate the White House. This will all be done from a abandoned church, a
I spent the better part of the afternoon chasing down what we think is a compiler bug. It took me about three hours to get to the point where I had ruled out everything else, and then I turned it over to Mars. Needless to say, I was in a pretty foul mood and not too keen on working on the IDE. So for the rest of the day, I did framework stuff (in C++). I ended up making the window editor for RB 6 call into the framework to actually draw the window (instead of having a real live
The Vikes managed to pull off a win (31-17). Against the Packers no less. Wahoo! I wonder what sort of pictures Jake will have posted to celebrate the best team winn... oh wait... he likes the Pack. Never mind. ;-) We'll just have to see how far the Vikes take it. Hopefully all the way, but somehow, I doubt it. It was a nice weekend (but I feel like I didn't get enough accomplished). Lis and I hung out on Sat, made a really nice southwestern dish. It was made from black beans, onions, red peppers, tortillas and polente. It
A seven year old Minneapolis boy was at the center of a courtroom drama this morning when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody. The boy has a a history of being beaten by his parents, so the judge awarded custody to his aunt. The boy confirmed that his aunt beat him more than his parents and he refused to live there. When the judge suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried out that they beat him more than anyone. The judge then decided to allow the boy to choose who should have custody
How highways get numbered? It's rather interesting. Interstates always get a one or two digit number and begin with the letter I North/South routes are always odd numbered, and East/West routes are even numbered If a route connects two interstates, or it's a loop (or beltway), then it's a three digit number based on the interstate number, like how I94 splits into 494, 694 and 394 There are two different ways to do exit numbering. Both start in the south and west part of the route. In one situation, it's based on mile markers. So if you're 12.5 miles away
AI has always been a topic I've been interested in. When I was at SCSU, I ended up doing a Master's project with a friend of mine (she was the Master's student, but I got plenty of undergrad credit for my part) which covered artificial life. We simulated bee colonies (their day-to-day life, mating, generations, etc), and the project involved many different aspects of AI. From the obvious stuff like how bees "behave" to how mating selection and resource chosing occurs. It was a really fun project and I ended up doing most of the programming for it. It also
Hump day. Man, I'm rather tired today. I got a ton of stuff done at work yesterday (fixed 15 bugs!), and went over to Lis'. Since she has to work today, I was out of her place a little after 10pm. We exchanged gifts, and she loved hers. :-D I really like mine too -- she got me a bunch of awesome books! I'm stoked, I already started reading the Garrison Keillor book she got me. :-) Lis' mom gave me this gorgeous framed picture of a timber wolf -- she's such a sweetie! NEWho, I got home last night
So I've been back in Austin since Sunday evening, and damn, Texas is having just as goofy of a winter as Minnesota is having. It's in the mid to upper seventies lately! It's usually in the 40s or 50s at this time of year -- instead, it's feeling like summer is starting already. Yeesh! The flight back into Austin kinda sucked. It was initially pushed back an hour (which I was aware of when I was in MN). Then it was pushed back again due to the flight crew not being there on time. Finally, after getting on the plane,
So as I sit and watch yet another Vikings game, I can't help but think -- man, these guys suck. Seriously, in a battle between the Vikings and a high school football team, I'd lay odds on the high school team. The Vikes used to have one of the best defenses in the game. I remember the days when our defense would actually outscore our offense! Now, our defense is one of the worst in the league. And don't even get me started on our offensive line! I just witnesses 3 sacks in 4 plays. They might as well not
So my vacation is winding up, and I head back to Austin today (I leave about 7:30pm, and get in Austin about 10:30pm). Here are some of the highlights from my vacation. I made it to my first family Christmas in four years and got to see a large chunk of my dad's side of the family. I did get to see some of my mom's side of the family as well -- I saw Paul, Cathy, Jake & Laura for about an hour when dropping Meggan off in the cities. Speaking of Meggan, the last time I saw her
I got an early jump on my vacation pictures, and they're posted on the main site. You can find them here. Enjoy!
If you've ever seen someone with a dot on their forehead (between and slightly above the eyes), what you are seeing is called a Pottu, Bindi or Tilaka, and is a sign that the person is a Hindu. Different markings mean different things. For example, a red Bindi can signify that a woman is married. Or sometimes a black Bindi on a child is meant to ward off the "evil eye". The markings can also denote which Hindu diety the wearer worships (whether it be Lord Vishnu, or Lord Shiva, etc). Now I finally know what to call "the dot"
