InfiniteVoid

Thu, 15 May 2008 02:49:10 GMT

As I was at work, a bit frustrated with my current projects, I noticed that the upcoming subject for the Austin Python User Group meeting was "Beautiful Code". And so I went.

The place was packed. Usually there are about 10 people, but there were probably 30 at this one. (Possibly due to them starting to use Meetup.com again to get the word out.)

The talk was really good, despite the fact that I was worried that it was going to turn out to be a sales pitch for the book by the same name.

Though, now that I try to retell some of the points, they're all coming out a bit cliche. Ah well. This is why I write code and not english for a living. :p I'll link to the slides once the link has been sent out.

So afterwords I drove home and listened to loud music and was in a really good mood. And then I got home and stepped into an empty apartment and had nobody to share my good mood with. And it is one of those rare occasions when I actually regret being single.

On the other hand, I just got two more discs of Rome in, and can watch scantily clad soldier drama to my heart's content. :D

Ouch, Premium

Wed, 14 May 2008 14:22:15 GMT

Ouch, Premium
Originally uploaded by InfiniteVoid

Tue, 13 May 2008 22:47:25 GMT

This morning, as I was waking up, I had a dream that someone knocked on my door. And then someone opened the door and came in. I was a little worried that someone was coming into my apartment, and that I had left my front door unlocked, but for some reason I didn't get up.

Anyawy, that someone rounded the corner to come into my room, and it was Fran Drescher. Fran, it seems, had come by to drop off a birthday card for me. The birthday card was from my friend Chris. And all the while I just lie in bed sleepily and thank her for bringing it by.

It is not my birthday. (I was born in December.) I do not have a friend named Chris. WTF?

Tue, 13 May 2008 18:50:49 GMT

Iu ĉe klienta kompanio nia diris al kunlaboranto mia ke li konas min de la loka esperanto-grupo. Malgranda mondo! Sed mia kunlaboranto ne memoras lian nomon. Nek estas helpa lia priskribo pri tiu ulo. Do, ĝi estas mia posttagmeza mistero. Kiu li estas?

Mon, 12 May 2008 17:54:01 GMT

Heh. Mom forwarded me this great parody of Hilary Clinton. Enjoy.

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:10:13 GMT

Today I am neither coding nor testing. Nor fixing bugs. No, I'm writing a document so that someone *else* may do testing. Even though I didn't write the original software.

I can not think of a more boring task.

Printempo

Fri, 09 May 2008 19:53:07 GMT

Du amoremaj birdoj en la strato.
Unu tro malrapidis.
Plumoj malantaŭ la aŭto.

Elitism

Wed, 07 May 2008 06:09:07 GMT

Djohns and I were having a conversation the other day, as we do, and I was probably bitching about work and having to deal with cleaning up someone else's mess. And then he shared with me a thought that someone had shared with him:

On the IQ Bell Curve, 100 is average. Forty points below that is borderline mentally challenged. Forty points above that is borderline "genius". So, for someone at the high end of the scale, dealing with someone of merely average intelligence can be seen as being as frustrating as someone of average intelligence dealing with someone who is borderline mentally challenged.

Sure, it doesn't hold up in many ways, but it is deliciously elitist, and does seem to explain many of my gripes about some of my jobs. :p

Called it.

Wed, 07 May 2008 03:21:41 GMT

Recently, I have noticed an odd tendency in my brain. When someone tells me something, my initial mental response is "WHORE!". Sometimes I even say it for comedic effect. Well, if it's on the internet.

"I lost 5 pounds!" "WHORE!"

"I got a promotion!" "WHORE!"

"I'm moving to another state." "WHORE!"

"I ate the last cookie." "WHORE!"

"I got an A on my test." "WHORE!"

It reminds me of an incident back when I was in elementary school:

The bus ride to and from school was about 45 minutes. On one long ride home, two girls were sitting in front of me. I think one's name was Nicole, and the other was, let's say, Star. Because that was her name. And try as I might, I can't really think of a fake name anywhere near as trashy.

Anyway, I had my seat to myself. I was bored, so I kept peeking over the seat and eavesdropping. They didn't like this, and started calling me names. I can't really remember what they said, but it can't have been all that bad because I remember that their insults reached a crescendo at the final jab, when Star told me "You're stupid!" Not to be outdone, I searched for anything... anything to respond with. "Oh yeah? Well you're... you're... A WHORE!"

Star's eyes got big and she moved to another seat. Her friend followed, and consoled her as she broke out in tears. "You're so mean! I bet you don't even know what that word means!", Nicole yelled back at me. "Yeah I do!"

Later that evening, I was helping mom sort laundry for our family of 5. It was my job to turn all of the socks right-side-out so that they would wash properly. (Not a fun job to have when your father works in the shrimp business and wears work boots all day, by the way.) And as we're standing there in front of the washing machine, amidst piles of clothes, I remember the earlier conversation. "Mom? What's a whore?"

"Where did you hear that word?"

"I dunno."

"Well, why do you want to know what it means?"

"I called Star a whore on the bus."

"That's a horrible thing to call someone! You tell her you're sorry tomorrow morning."

"OK..."

I never did apologize. Though, in my defense, Star was married and pregnant by Jr. High.

Called it!

Tue, 06 May 2008 15:28:45 GMT

Sunday I went shopping. I hate shopping. I hate trying on clothes. But I needed quite a few new clothes because an alarming percentage of mine decided to disintegrate in the last couple of weeks. Holes, tears, broken buttons, WTF?

Anyway, in a couple of hours of efficient shopping, I had dropped a good portion of my last paycheck, but came away with new pants, shirts, shoes, and a snazzy new wallet that will actually *hold* my money (instead of dropping it all over the floor). Yay!

Mon, 05 May 2008 22:24:51 GMT

Djohns and I share a sick, dark sense of humor. We also are giant geeks and play WoW. Which lead to the following conversation this weekend.

D: "Aww, there are no corpses around for me to cannibalize."
I: "Make some!"
D: "There are no humanoids around to kill."
I: "Make some! Nothing makes meat tender like 9 months in the oven!"

Mon, 05 May 2008 18:10:56 GMT

Lastatempe mi ŝanĝis miajn agordojn ĉe Google por sendi novaĵojn pri Esperanto al mi. Ĉisemajne, interesa (angla) diskuto ĉe OSNews pri lingvoj en la EU. Tie troveblas la kutimaj misinformaĵoj pri la lingvo, sed ankaŭ komento pri aliaj planlingvoj. Mi malakordus ke "preskaŭ ĉiu planlingvo kreita post Esperanto estas pli bona", sed "Lingua Franca Nova" ja estas interesa.

Ĝia gramatiko estas pli simpla -- neniom da akuzativoj. Nek bezonas oni ŝanĝi la formon de adjektivoj. Mi ne sufiĉe legis por lerni kiom facila estas la vortfarado, sed mi divenus ke malpli facila ol en Esperanto. Alia malbonaĵo -- formoj de vortoj ne indikas kia vorto ĝi estas. Tion mi trovis esti ege helpa kvalito de esperantaj vortoj. Nu, almenaŭ, eble mi legos plu ĉisemajnfine.

Ni ludu!

Sat, 03 May 2008 02:23:55 GMT

Wii friend code: 3219-3685-8336-0436
Mario Kart code: 1161-0302-7132

XML FAIL

Fri, 02 May 2008 19:56:23 GMT

<Successfull>false</Successfull>

Fri, 02 May 2008 17:05:50 GMT

Bah. re: cable:

If I want to install a dish, I have to pay a $100 deposit, AND purchase $100,000 worth of renter's insurance, which may or may not actually make switching more expensive, but it sure would be more of a hassle. SO, nevermind on that.

Thu, 01 May 2008 15:41:24 GMT

So it seems that the quality of Time Warner cable service has degraded over the last couple of months. I've had multiple internet outtages and frankly their DVR has always sucked and it doesn't look like they ever roll out software updates.

I did a bit of searching and found "AT&T Homezone", which provides DSL and dish network at a price slightly less than what I'm paying now, but with a DVR that sounds quite a bit more featureful. Do any of you use one or both of those services? How is the quality/reliability? I've never had a dish -- how often does weather cut out your service?

Are there any other alternatives that I should consider? (Other than going cold-turkey?) : )

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:10:52 GMT

I deleted several of the following today. *sigh*

public void myMethod(String someArg) throws Exception
{
    try {
        ...
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        throw new Exception(e.getMessage() + e.getStackTrace())
    }
}

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:36:16 GMT

The Five Questions Meme, from p3rlm0nk.

The rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions of a very intimate and creepily personal nature. Or not so creepy/personal.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

1) Which CS class did you enjoy the most at UT?

Hmm, that depends on what you consider a "CS class". Philosophy 313k, "The Philosophy of Logic", was required by my CS degree, and I loved that class. I think it should be required for everyone so that people would know what makes a good argument/proof, and what doesn't.

If you want to stick to pure CS classes, that would be Data Structures. The class was in C++ at the time, and it was mostly interesting because I never would have thought of writing my own data structures, since most languages have a nice library of them already. (C++ STL, Java Collections, etc.)

The biggest thing I took away from this class is that code readability is as important as code efficiency (if not more so). And it's amazing how simple code becomes to read when you've got a nice data structure to hold it all. I find myself solving a lot of coding problems by using these techniques as a result.

2) If you could chose any technology stack to develop applications in, what would it be? (I realize this would be largely informed by what sort of apps, so in a way it's a question about that too.)

Gah, such an open-ended question.

I've been in the web app business so long that I keep wanting to move toward non-web application development. And I've sortof got that with my new job (though I end up developing plug-ins, not the actual application itself).

But the problem with non-web applications is that they have to be ported, and installed on each machine, and all of that. Just in my apartment, I've got machines running Linux, OS X, and Windows. Add to that the fact that the type of things I want to do usually require connectivity and/or a database... I might as well stick to web apps.

I think in this area, Java is the winner. Though I really loathe JSP and Struts because so much of them happens at runtime, and there is significant overhead getting your changes running in a J2EE web server.

I'm really wanting to play with GWT and port a couple of my hobby apps to it. It seems to do a good job of alleviating a lot of the turnaround time for development, gives a nice client-side-app feel with AJAX, and hides the complexity of cross-browser JavaScript & DOM issues. I just need to stop getting distracted by wanting to write my own dependency manager first. :)

So, the full stack:
* Front-end: GWT
* Back-end: Tomcat (or maybe something more lightweight like Jetty)
* DB: PostgreSQL
* OS: Debian/Ubuntu Linux
* Build tools: Apache Ant & Ivy
* SCM: Bazaar. :D

3) Do you ever think about leaving Texas, and if so where to?

I've thought about it quite a bit. You probably remember djohns trying to convince me to move to Boston. Though, he ended up not so much trying to convince me as just inviting me up to visit. :) And knight-errant seemed to enjoy it up there when he lived up there a few years ago.

So I thought about Boston for a while. But moving to another state requires a bit of an investment that I haven't been able to make since I've been unemployed for several months.

I also hear nice things about the Seattle area. Nice weather, liberal atmosphere, plenty of tech jobs to go around. But I haven't even been to Seattle, and know even fewer people up in that area.

I also briefly thought of leaving the country when Bush got elected. Canada and the UK were looking appealing.

But for the time being, a few things are keeping me here in Austin:
* Inertia
* Family. (Grandmother, mother & brother all live here. Sister may move back after she gets her degree.)
* Finances

4) Who would be the first target of the awesome might of your orbital Ray of Gayness and Marriage Disruption?

Gayness: Jamie Bamber.

Marriage Disruption: Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes. Somebody needs to save that poor girl.

5) Ok, this may cross a line regards sexuality that you aren't comfortable with, so if you want to skip it that's fine. This was originally a question asked in mixed company by a classmate of K's and friend of ours, E., and the answers have been lulz. I repeat it here verbatim: "So, tell me. What is the strangest dong you've ever seen?"

Asked to whom, I wonder. :p

Hmm... strangest dong. I've seen quite a few dongs in person, but I don't know if any of them were strange enough to mention. Different curvatures and proportions fall within the range of "normal". Especially in the days of the Internet.

I once had a friend tell me about her husband's dong, while he was sitting there. That was awkward. But I haven't seen it, so that doesn't count.

My final answer? Dog dong. That shit is weird. It's like an excitable furry tube of lipstick.

The More You Know

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 03:06:05 GMT

Today's word of the day.

(Ok, so it's a phrase.)

[Edit]: Further research into the etymology of "vajayjay" yields: http://www.oprahsvajayjay.com/.

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:27:38 GMT

I'm home for lunch after going on-site to help a client debug something.

I walk in the bathroom and pass a mirror and see that the shoulder in my shirt is ripped wide open.

I have no idea when it happened. Probably the last time I washed it.

And nobody mentioned it to me.

Wait, I heard someone @ Client Company talking about the 80s and Flashdance. Now I wonder if she was mocking me. :p

ARRAY_FAIL | AUTOBOXING_FAIL

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:20:47 GMT

Client: "I don't know what's wrong. This worked just a couple weeks ago."

Code (after much searching):

Integer count = 1;
for (count=1;count < someArray.length+1; count++)
{
   someValue = someValue + someArray[count];
}

Me: "I think this probably wasn't working a couple weeks ago."

Client: "Hmm, maybe not."

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:59:16 GMT

When I interviewed for this job, they made me give a 15 minute presentation to a room full of people. Now that I am employed, I every so often get to experience the schadenfreude of being one of the people in the room when this happens to job candidates.

Today, we were given "presentation" that consisted of pointing at web pages that had been designed with a GUI tool. The interesting bit was supposed to be that they used AJAX. Apparently it is the future. And cool. And stuff.

It also amuses me when people rely on technology for their presentation. And then it fails. Which has happened in 2/2 of the presentations that I have seen so far.

Paper, people.

Paper.

Code Atrocities, #2

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:31:31 GMT

Since this looks to be a common theme, I've created a tag.

...
try { if (obj.getEmployeeID().toString() != "") { ... } }
catch (Exception ex) { /* do nothing */ }
...

There are at least 3 WTFs here. But beyond that, it happens in the code at least 300 times. But I can't change it to what I *think* the original author meant to write, because that would actually change the behavior of the code. And without some research that I don't care to do at the moment, I can't tell if we're relying on that (bad) behavior elsewhere in the code. Whee!

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:11:15 GMT

My brain: "You know you live in Texas when the pronunciation for 'hail' and 'hell' can be ambiguous."

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:40:16 GMT

Internet outtage. So. Bored. Plz post fun things for my iPhone.