[{"content":"My commute runs about ninety minutes round-trip, which works out to a lot of hours in the ear. Here is what fills them, grouped by category, with a quick word on each.\nHistory The Age of Napoleon Podcast — Monumental work on Napoleon\u0026rsquo;s life, his ascent to the throne, the Napoleonic wars, and his incredible influence on world history.\nHistory That Doesn\u0026rsquo;t Suck — A somewhat jingoistic retelling of American history. It does the \u0026ldquo;awesome to awesome\u0026rdquo; thing with a generous helping of American exceptionalism, which grates. I\u0026rsquo;m an ancient-history guy, so I find American history narrow and a little boring — but it\u0026rsquo;s well told and diverting enough.\nFilm \u0026amp; Movies Alienating the Audience — Andrew Heaton\u0026rsquo;s sci-fi podcast. Sporadic, but worth a listen.\nThe Film Bros — Two women who really get into the behind-the-scenes of film.\nFilm Sack — Scott Johnson and crew from Frogpants talk about movies.\nThe Rewatchables — Snide sports bros talk about movies. The more I listen, the less I like this one. It\u0026rsquo;s just that condescending, shitty \u0026ldquo;bro\u0026rdquo; culture.\nHow Did This Get Made? — Three people from inside the industry.\nWHAT WENT WRONG — Truly behind-the-scenes look at film failures.\nPolitics \u0026amp; Government Congressional Dish — Jen Briney scolds Congress for being shitty.\nPolitics Politics Politics — Justin Robert Young scolds every politician for not being shitty enough.\nThe Reason Roundtable — Reason\u0026rsquo;s eggheads almost agree on what a libertarian is for sixty minutes at a stretch. Oddly good pop-culture recommendations at the end, though.\nThe Political Orphanage — Andrew Heaton\u0026rsquo;s evergreen deep dives on politics and culture. I always come away having learned something.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re Not Wrong — Jen, Justin, and Andrew hold a civil, \u0026ldquo;Crossfire\u0026rdquo;-style debate every Wednesday. It\u0026rsquo;s terrific.\nTech Daily Tech Headlines — Topical and terse tech headlines.\nLast Week in AWS — A hilarious roundup of AWS shenanigans.\nAudio Drama \u0026amp; Fiction Decoder Ring Theatre — Sadly dead now, but I raised my kids on Red Panda and Black Jack Justice.\nWelcome to Night Vale — Still trying this one out. Highly experimental. Good song in the middle, usually.\nThose Were The Days — A roundtable discussing an old TV episode.\nComedy \u0026amp; Culture It\u0026rsquo;s A Thing — \u0026ldquo;Buzz Out Loud\u0026rdquo; reimagined, with Tom and Molly.\nThe MONDAY Show — A genuinely great show with Scott Johnson and his daughter Carter.\nMore Better with Stephanie \u0026amp; Melissa — The only \u0026ldquo;celebrity\u0026rdquo; podcast I can stand. Two of the Brooklyn Nine-Nine ladies, and Stephanie is just incredible.\nThat One Show With Bryan Combs — My cousin\u0026rsquo;s podcast.\nPretend Problems — Two engaged comedians talk about their lives and take email questions.\nPop Culture \u0026amp; Interview Pop Culture Happy Hour — NPR\u0026rsquo;s granddaddy of the pop-culture roundtable.\nFresh Air — WHYY\u0026rsquo;s terrific interview program with Terry Gross.\nArts \u0026amp; Comics Diary of a Cartoonist — Scott Johnson talking into a microphone.\nAutomotive TFL Car Chat — The Fast Lane crew talking cars and the industry overall.\nTFL Talkin\u0026rsquo; Trucks — Andre leading the way on trucks, usually with Case from TFL.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/07/whats-in-my-ears-a-commute-podcast-roundup/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy commute runs about ninety minutes round-trip, which works out to a lot of hours in the ear. Here is what fills them, grouped by category, with a quick word on each.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"history\"\u003eHistory\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://ageofnapoleon.com\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Age of Napoleon Podcast\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e — Monumental work on Napoleon\u0026rsquo;s life, his ascent to the throne, the Napoleonic wars, and his incredible influence on world history.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://historythatdoesntsuck.com\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHistory That Doesn\u0026rsquo;t Suck\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e — A somewhat jingoistic retelling of American history. It does the \u0026ldquo;awesome to awesome\u0026rdquo; thing with a generous helping of American exceptionalism, which grates. I\u0026rsquo;m an ancient-history guy, so I find American history narrow and a little boring — but it\u0026rsquo;s well told and diverting enough.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What's in My Ears: A Commute Podcast Roundup"},{"content":"Methodology I pointed Claude — Anthropic\u0026rsquo;s AI — at this blog\u0026rsquo;s 1,713 posts spanning 22 years and asked a simple question: What can you infer about me from reading these entries?\nIt dispatched four research agents in parallel, each sampling a different slice of the archive: the early years (2004–2008), the middle years (2011–2016), the recent years (2017–2026), and a separate pass through movie reviews and milestone posts. Each agent read 15–20 posts from its assigned era, then reported back. What follows is the synthesized portrait — unedited, exactly as the AI wrote it.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t cherry-pick which posts it read. I didn\u0026rsquo;t correct its conclusions. Some details are slightly off (birth year, a date here or there), but the broad strokes are uncomfortably accurate. Make of that what you will.\nThe Portrait The throughline is a man who feels everything at full volume and uses writing to make sense of it.\nYou started blogging in 2004 as a single 26-year-old programmer at Lexmark, driving a MINI Cooper and reviewing movies on weeknights. You end the archive in 2026 as a 47-year-old Software Development Manager at Amazon, married 20 years, father of three, grieving your mother, managing a team of 12, and still writing — same voice, deeper scars.\nWhat stays constant Cars as first language. From the MINI to the GTO to the e30 to autocross to the Honda Civic manual to the Lexus GX — you\u0026rsquo;ve processed the world through vehicles since you were 11, subscribing to Car \u0026amp; Driver and dreaming of being Brock Yates. You \u0026ldquo;ragequit\u0026rdquo; car media in 2021, but the obsession just shape-shifted. You still track cost-per-mile on Fuelly and install mods with your daughter.\nWriting as compulsion, not choice. \u0026ldquo;It doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel like a choice — some sing, some write poor poetry, some make viral videos. I write.\u0026rdquo; You\u0026rsquo;ve kept at it for 21+ years, through platforms and migrations, knowing no one reads it and not caring. The blog is a confessional, a pressure valve, and a record — \u0026ldquo;shouted into the void, living safe in an Amazon S3 bucket until my credit card goes dormant.\u0026rdquo;\nBrutal self-honesty. You are harder on yourself than anyone else would dare be. \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m selfish and I think myself more important in the grand scheme of things than I actually am.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Thirty years of being a jerk has consequences.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;I firmly believe I would be dead or in prison if not for my wife.\u0026rdquo; This isn\u0026rsquo;t performed humility — it reads as someone for whom self-awareness is both gift and wound.\nRestlessness that never fully resolves. You couldn\u0026rsquo;t relax on vacation in 2005 and you still can\u0026rsquo;t. Work is \u0026ldquo;really the only thing that makes me happy\u0026rdquo; and also the thing that nearly killed you. The cycle of burning out, breaking things, then slowly rebuilding repeats across marriage, career, and health.\nWhat changes Faith evolves from framework to backdrop. In 2011-2016, every major decision is framed as obedience — leaving Lexmark, choosing Texas over Cincinnati, even which church to attend. By 2025-2026, therapy has partially replaced that scaffolding. God is still referenced but no longer narrates the plot.\nThe emotional register deepens. Early posts are quick-witted and energetic — sentence fragments, emoticons, punchlines. The 2025-2026 posts (\u0026ldquo;Alone,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Down,\u0026rdquo; the 20th anniversary letter) are raw in a different way — slower, more deliberate, with the cadence of someone who knows exactly what he\u0026rsquo;s lost and isn\u0026rsquo;t rushing past it.\nParenthood becomes the central subject. Joey\u0026rsquo;s estrangement in 2016 (\u0026ldquo;Joey fired us\u0026rdquo;) is a wound that never closes — you\u0026rsquo;re still writing about it in 2025. Maria earning her Stars \u0026amp; Stripes, Grace fly-fishing with Whitney, the college visits — these quietly became what the blog is about, even when the posts are nominally about work or politics.\nThe recurring tensions Ambition vs. contentment — bucket-list dreaming against faith-based acceptance Engineering vs. management — you love building; leading nearly destroyed your health Kentucky vs. Texas — Austin is where life happens, but Kentucky is home in a way that doesn\u0026rsquo;t fade Self-knowledge vs. self-change — you see yourself with painful clarity but doubt your ability to apply the lessons (\u0026ldquo;Given my track record, it\u0026rsquo;s doubtful I apply any of these lessons\u0026rdquo;) The man behind the prose You\u0026rsquo;re a first-generation Appalachian professional whose family has been in America since Jamestown (1619). You process grief slowly — it took 9 months to say \u0026ldquo;Mom\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;my mother.\u0026rdquo; You read history podcasts (Age of Napoleon, Fall of Civilizations), watch films for craft over spectacle, and value Daniel Craig\u0026rsquo;s Bond for showing vulnerability. You type 106 WPM. Whitney is consistently the stabilizing force in every post where she appears, and you know it.\nYour best writing reads like a conversation in a bar with someone you trust — unguarded, occasionally rambling, always sincere. You write in em-dashes and build toward a gut-punch last line. Your 2008 New Year\u0026rsquo;s resolution still holds: \u0026ldquo;Your attitude is your choice. You may choose joy or misery — rest assured no one cares which.\u0026rdquo;\nThat\u0026rsquo;s what 22 years of posts say. The man who started this blog and the man writing it now share the same engine — passionate, restless, painfully honest — but the chassis has taken a lot of road.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/05/what-ai-gleans-from-my-blog/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"methodology\"\u003eMethodology\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI pointed Claude — Anthropic\u0026rsquo;s AI — at this blog\u0026rsquo;s 1,713 posts spanning 22 years and asked a simple question: \u003cem\u003eWhat can you infer about me from reading these entries?\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt dispatched four research agents in parallel, each sampling a different slice of the archive: the early years (2004–2008), the middle years (2011–2016), the recent years (2017–2026), and a separate pass through movie reviews and milestone posts. Each agent read 15–20 posts from its assigned era, then reported back. What follows is the synthesized portrait — unedited, exactly as the AI wrote it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What AI Gleans from My Blog"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Summit\u0026rdquo; season.\nMy employer is a sprawling concern, with people working in sites all across the world. The home office is in Seattle (the one true timezone\u0026ndash;Pacific Time), but we also encamp in Silicon Valley (multiple sites), Austin, Denver, Nashville, Greater D.C., NYC, and Greater Boston. And that\u0026rsquo;s just the \u0026ldquo;big\u0026rdquo; sites\u0026ndash;other smaller enclaves dot the country, and that doesn\u0026rsquo;t scratch the surface of our worldwide presence in Corporate.\nAnyway, it\u0026rsquo;s difficult to form and sustain relationships with people you\u0026rsquo;ve never met in-person before, so 1x-2x per year, we get teams together for summits. Everyone sits in the same room for a couple of days and talks about topics. But, here\u0026rsquo;s the secret: That\u0026rsquo;s not the real purpose.\nThe real purpose is what happens after the meetings are over, when the drinks flow freely and you do events like Axe Throwing, Go Kart racing, Laser Tag, or Rollercoasters. People drop the pretention and gel a bit. My team had just such a summit 2 weeks ago, and it was great. I think we\u0026rsquo;re poised to act as one going forward.\nSo, great, what about Silicon Valley?\nWell, my boss decided to host a summit in SV, despite only 1 of his reports/teams hosting there. Austin would\u0026rsquo;ve made more sense, but here we are.\nFlying into SJC Devil\u0026rsquo;s choice: Go with my preferred airline, or go with the nonstop flight? Delta has only 1-stop flights (LAX or SLC) to get from AUS to SJC. I generally prefer delta as I\u0026rsquo;m part of their rewards program, but a simple 3.5 hr direct flight on Southwest beckoned. So I went southwest with their new rules and \u0026ldquo;identity\u0026rdquo;\nIn short\u0026ndash;it wasn\u0026rsquo;t bad and I\u0026rsquo;d happily fly Southwest again. \u0026ldquo;Having\u0026rdquo; a seat and not obsessing about checking-in to get a given boarding Group A/B/C so you avoid the dreaded (inevitable) middle seat\u0026ndash;love it. My employer will happily pay for a slighty upgraded seat and the reward program seems to just work. I\u0026rsquo;m pleased to see no nuts on the plane, still, and they don\u0026rsquo;t have carts for drink service.\nLanding in SJC was easy and my colleague \u0026ldquo;took a car\u0026rdquo; (rented an Avis Hyundai Sonata) so I had a complementary ride to my hotel\nRoom at Element Santa Clara Short version: Stay here.\nElement Santa Clara registers as a Mariott hotel, but it was created by Westin. It has the Westin beds, which means you can sleep.\nMy room featured a full suite layout with a separate living room/tv area, full kitchen, and shower only (no bath).\nI came home to my TempurPedic and honestly I\u0026rsquo;d rather be in the bed at the Element. It\u0026rsquo;s that good.\nWaymo My colleague took me out to dinner the first evening in his Hyundai Ioniq5, and pointed out the new \u0026ldquo;Waymo\u0026rdquo; cars to me. Honestly, this wasn\u0026rsquo;t new\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;ve had Waymo in austin for years now. However, I\u0026rsquo;ve never used one.\nAfter this week, I definitely will be using them.\nI downloaded the App and it automatically set itself up to use Apple Pay. I added my Corporate Card as primary payment and from there it was really trivial to use the service. Some thoughts:\nYou have full control over the seat positioning (legroom) in the car You have full control over the HVAC. This is SO much better than the Lyft drivers in Seattle who run with the windows cracked and the HVAC off. I always get carsick. Not here The \u0026ldquo;dropoff\u0026rdquo; location isn\u0026rsquo;t always static. One day it dropped me off in the circle in front of our building, the ideal location. The next day it dropped me by the curb across from the building, which put me in a puddle of mud. You never have to tip. There\u0026rsquo;s no chit-chat There\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026ldquo;contact support\u0026rdquo; button on the screen in the car for either front- or back-seat passengers They\u0026rsquo;re always \u0026ldquo;watching\u0026rdquo; you via cameras but not listening\u0026ndash;listening only engaged if you press the contact support button. We\u0026rsquo;re about a decade later on autonomos \u0026ldquo;Robotaxis\u0026rdquo; than expected, but it was a good experience.\nThe Vibe The weather is amazing. It was 45 at night, around 65-70 during the morning.\nThe \u0026ldquo;California\u0026rdquo; vibe seems present\u0026ndash;people commuting on bikes, long-boards, etc.\nPeople company hop all the time. NVIDIA corporate offices are right next to ours in Santa Clara. One expressed frustration from a Senior Principal Engineer was, \u0026ldquo;With hiring frozen everywhere, we haven\u0026rsquo;t seen people move very much to spread the knowledge around.\nI think that last is the real key to Silicon Valley. It\u0026rsquo;s kind of like the Manhattan Project\u0026ndash;all these great, energetic minds living and working in a 25 mile radius has second- and third-order effects going back to the 1960s.\nThe Exhaustion Jetlag is a real mother, and it gets worse as I get older. The first night I was there, I was up until 11:30pm PT (1:30 CT) working on a presentation for the summit on Day 1. I was the first presentation to kick-off the summit, and it went very well. Overall, Day one was good, living on adrenaline and coffee.\nThen we went out to dinner at a Turkish place. We weren\u0026rsquo;t out too late, but again, probably 11:30 PM according to my body clock.\nBy day two, I hated everyone for living, to borrow a phrase from my late mother. I gutted it out, but definitely got some \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re not acting like you usually do\u0026rdquo; feedback from my colleagues.\nNo, umm\u0026hellip;.this is who I actually am, folks. The facade is just gone.\nDinner day two was ad-hoc (the summit was over) so we just got burgers with a couple of Software Engineers I particularly like. We solved world piece, discussed some Chinese phrases. Apparently Mandarin has a 4-character idiom that\u0026rsquo;s the analogue to \u0026ldquo;Schadenfreude\u0026rdquo;, 幸災樂禍 meaning \u0026ldquo;to take joy in calamity and rejoice the disaster\u0026rdquo;.\nWorking with so many other cultures is cool, though I did stand-in-place of all 330M Americans, getting scolded for how little history/geography we know of other cultures. Fair enough.\nTrip Summary I\u0026rsquo;ve been to Cupertino area 3 times before, and this was my first time hanging around Santa Clara and Mountain View. It\u0026rsquo;s a neat area and I\u0026rsquo;d love to spend more time there.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/04/reports-from-silicon-valley/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Summit\u0026rdquo; season.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy employer is a sprawling concern, with people working in sites all across the world.   The home office is in Seattle (the one true timezone\u0026ndash;Pacific Time), but we also encamp in Silicon Valley (multiple sites), Austin, Denver, Nashville, Greater D.C., NYC, and Greater Boston.   And that\u0026rsquo;s just the \u0026ldquo;big\u0026rdquo; sites\u0026ndash;other smaller enclaves dot the country, and that doesn\u0026rsquo;t scratch the surface of our worldwide presence in Corporate.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reports from Silicon Valley"},{"content":" \u0026ldquo;What do you get when you mix all the colors together?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You get a neutral, blah grey\u0026rdquo;\nThis is one of those musings that you don\u0026rsquo;t put on social media:\nDemocratizing everythings makes nothing special.\nThis is another version of Syndrome\u0026rsquo;s line:\nI guess when I look back on the things that I\u0026rsquo;ve really enjoyed in life, once they became really mainstream they just became less \u0026ldquo;fun\u0026rdquo;\nComputers: Once the realm of the hobbyist and early adopters, computers are omnipresent. As phones, they have considerably more power than a Cray Supercomputer from the 80\u0026rsquo;s and no \u0026ldquo;window\u0026rdquo; into the inner workings of the machine. It\u0026rsquo;s a streamlined, sealed case that provides a perfect abstraction away from 1s and 0s. Or: \u0026ldquo;This is why I like my Raspberry Pi so much\u0026rdquo; Photography: Taking good pictures used to be hard. Taking great pictures used to be a real art, requiring a balance of correct equipment, film, aperture, shutter speed, lighting, composition, and dumb luck. Oh, and you had 12, 24, or 36 pictures per 35mm roll. That\u0026rsquo;s a 7-dimensional matrix to achieve Ansel Adams. (Oh, and darkroom processing, but I never unlocked that level of wizardry.) Now: (1) Pull out phone, (2) click. There\u0026rsquo;s still a retro group of people that use film, but this is incredibly rare. Cars: Gearheads never die, but \u0026ldquo;gears\u0026rdquo; may well. We\u0026rsquo;re tip-toeing to a full electric future. The cars are big computers (see #1). Programming: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m a PM and I don\u0026rsquo;t know coding, but that didn\u0026rsquo;t stop me from getting my app in the AppStore.\u0026rdquo; WRITING: AI Slop. It\u0026rsquo;s all I see now. And here, we care about writing. I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine working somewhere that writing is an afterthought. At the end of the day: Is there some sociological/psychological name for \u0026ldquo;Something started to get very \u0026lsquo;mid\u0026rsquo; when everone adopted it\u0026rdquo;?\nI know the above sounds like Boomer/GenX Record-store gatekeeper claptrap. Still, I feel it in my bones.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/04/the-muddy-middle/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;What do you get when you mix all the colors together?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You get a neutral, blah grey\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is one of those musings that you \u003cstrong\u003edon\u0026rsquo;t\u003c/strong\u003e put on social media:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDemocratizing everythings makes nothing special.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is another version of Syndrome\u0026rsquo;s line:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://y.yarn.co/943a82fa-8fe2-4b3b-bc2b-0aff647b3f74_text.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI guess when I look back on the things that I\u0026rsquo;ve really enjoyed in life, once they became really mainstream they just became less \u0026ldquo;fun\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eComputers\u003c/strong\u003e: Once the realm of the hobbyist and early adopters, computers are omnipresent.   As phones, they have considerably more power than a Cray Supercomputer from the 80\u0026rsquo;s and no \u0026ldquo;window\u0026rdquo; into the inner workings of the machine.  It\u0026rsquo;s a streamlined, sealed case that provides a perfect abstraction away from 1s and 0s.   Or: \u0026ldquo;This is why I like my Raspberry Pi so much\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePhotography\u003c/strong\u003e: Taking good pictures used to be hard.  Taking \u003cem\u003egreat\u003c/em\u003e pictures used to be a real art, requiring a balance of correct equipment, film, aperture, shutter speed, lighting, composition, and dumb luck.   Oh, and you had 12, 24, or 36 pictures per 35mm roll.  That\u0026rsquo;s a 7-dimensional matrix to achieve Ansel Adams.  (Oh, and darkroom processing, but I never unlocked that level of wizardry.)  Now:  (1) Pull out phone, (2) click.  There\u0026rsquo;s still a retro group of people that use film, but this is incredibly rare.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCars\u003c/strong\u003e: Gearheads never die, but \u0026ldquo;gears\u0026rdquo; may well.   We\u0026rsquo;re tip-toeing to a full electric future.  The cars are big computers (see #1).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eProgramming\u003c/strong\u003e: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m a PM and I don\u0026rsquo;t know coding, but that didn\u0026rsquo;t stop me from getting my app in the AppStore.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWRITING\u003c/strong\u003e: AI Slop.  It\u0026rsquo;s all I see now.  And here, we \u003cem\u003ecare\u003c/em\u003e about writing.  I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine working somewhere that writing is an afterthought.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt the end of the day:  Is there some sociological/psychological name for \u0026ldquo;Something started to get very \u0026lsquo;mid\u0026rsquo; when everone adopted it\u0026rdquo;?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Muddy Middle"},{"content":"Well, my wife blocked me on Threads about 3 days ago. I\u0026rsquo;ve been so busy I didn\u0026rsquo;t even notice.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve really enjoyed shring a \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; social media platform with her, especially as she\u0026rsquo;s very funny and I get a window into her StrayKids (\u0026ldquo;Stay\u0026rdquo;) world.\nBut oh well. Apparently my posts and those of my daughter somehow polluted her algorithm and sucked her into the general hellscape that is modern social media.\nI get it.\nMaybe it\u0026rsquo;s time to pull back from social media. I uninstalled Facebook app years ago, prefering to use it browser-only. I\u0026rsquo;ve all but abandoned Instagram, as it\u0026rsquo;s just Reels and influencer content in the algorithm. Twitter was a no-go after Musk bought it. I\u0026rsquo;ve tried Mastodon (just nerds), and Bluesky (just litmus-test Blues). Threads felt like a place I could call home, with a thriving F1, Car, and nascent tech community. I guess not.\nBlogging more wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be a bad thing, and it seems like Markdown is eating the world thanks to AI.\nI\u0026rsquo;m just\u0026hellip;profoundly unhealthy. Physically, spiritually, emotionally, relationally. I\u0026rsquo;m tired and it feels like I\u0026rsquo;m in the extrovert\u0026rsquo;s trap: I need time to recharge, but the only thing that recharges me is more of what drains me.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve acquired two new projects at work, and now have 12 direct reports + a dotted line, ranging in experinece from 5 months to 10+ years and ratings from Contractor to Junior to Senior.\nThree workstreams.\nI have to learn how to delegate more and retain perspective, because I\u0026rsquo;m currently working until 6:30 or 7pm every night. I\u0026rsquo;m not working at home, but by the time I get there I\u0026rsquo;m fully a zombie.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/04/social-media-fast/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, my wife blocked me on \u003ca href=\"https://www.threads.com\"\u003eThreads\u003c/a\u003e about 3 days ago.  I\u0026rsquo;ve been so busy I didn\u0026rsquo;t even notice.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve really enjoyed shring a \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; social media platform with her, especially as she\u0026rsquo;s very funny and I get a window into her StrayKids (\u0026ldquo;Stay\u0026rdquo;) world.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut oh well.   Apparently my posts and those of my daughter somehow polluted her algorithm and sucked her into the general hellscape that is modern social media.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Social Media Fast"},{"content":"So, we woke-up to this on easter\nSince February 27th, we\u0026rsquo;ve been in Operation Epic Fury:\nOil prices have exploded. Gas prices are above $4 / gallon most places. Here in central texas, gas went from $2.499 to $3.47 Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is stopped. This stops petroleum, natural gas, and fertilizer used throughout the world (see previous bullet) Iran broadened the war to UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia There\u0026rsquo;s no exit / stop criteria Our planes aren\u0026rsquo;t invulnerable Iran is lobbing drones that cost $10k and we\u0026rsquo;re intercepting with missiles costing $10 Million. Secretary of Defense War Pete Hegseth fired experienced generals and admirals Trump\u0026rsquo;s approval rating at last report: Approval rating \u0026lt; 40% Disapproval Rating: 60% I\u0026rsquo;m sure there are more\nSo What At Amazon, when we list off facts like that, invariable the comment comes: \u0026ldquo;So What?\u0026rdquo; What do we make of this? What\u0026rsquo;s the point?\nTwo or three scenarios make sense to me\nScenario One: We Know What We\u0026rsquo;re Doing The main idea is: (1) We have a reason for doing all this, (2) the public can\u0026rsquo;t know what that is, (3) trust me bro.\nSupposing the US came by information that the Iranians were shortly obtaining a nuclear weapon, they\u0026rsquo;re doing what we refused to do with North Korea: Intervene. Everything here is to decapitate and disrupt Iran\u0026rsquo;s leadership with certain regime change and a bonus hope for outright revolution. Note: The revolution hasn\u0026rsquo;t/won\u0026rsquo;t happen.\nScenario Two: Israel Wags the Dog Basically Scenario 1, but the \u0026ldquo;trust me bro\u0026rdquo; comes from Israel. We buy it hook line and sinker, but it\u0026rsquo;s basically Israel + the [Abraham Accords])https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Accords) nations letting the United States do the dirty work.\nSecnario Three: Caught the Car You Chased Sort of a \u0026ldquo;Iraq WMD\u0026rdquo; situation\u0026ndash;we wanted to kill the Ayatollah, but beyond that we anticipated an immediate revolution based on protests over the past 12 months. In this scenario, there is no real strategic plan, just a set of \u0026ldquo;OPlans\u0026rdquo; (Operational Plans) that always exist within the Pentagon. We\u0026rsquo;re executing on those like automatons but they run out after 4-6 weeks. They\u0026rsquo;re the opening moves to a chessmatch, not the endgame.\nWhere does this leave us? Hard to predict. At one end, there\u0026rsquo;s a nightmare scenario where Trump uses nuclear weapons on Iran to open Hormuz. On the other, there\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip;negotiation? Iran is a nation-state and it\u0026rsquo;s not like another country can dictate their future. This isn\u0026rsquo;t Iraq, a set of lines on a map among Kurds, Christians, and Sunni Muslims. Iran/Persia is an ancient land with 90 million people.\nI\u0026rsquo;d hope negotiation wins out, but given Hegseth\u0026rsquo;s moves, I doubt it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/04/the-current-political-hellscape/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, we woke-up to this on easter\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/images/2026/04/trump.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince February 27th, we\u0026rsquo;ve been in \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2026_Iran_war#27_February%5D\"\u003eOperation Epic Fury\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOil prices have exploded.   Gas prices are above $4 / gallon most places.  Here in central texas, gas went from $2.499 to $3.47\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eShipping through the Strait of Hormuz is stopped.  This stops petroleum, natural gas, and fertilizer used throughout the world (see previous bullet)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIran broadened the war to UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s no exit / stop criteria\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOur planes aren\u0026rsquo;t invulnerable\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIran is lobbing drones that cost $10k and we\u0026rsquo;re intercepting with missiles costing $10 Million.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSecretary of \u003cdel\u003eDefense\u003c/del\u003e \u003cem\u003eWar\u003c/em\u003e Pete Hegseth fired \u003ca href=\"https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/3/hegseth-fires-us-army-chief-of-staff-in-reported-string-of-dismissals\"\u003eexperienced generals and admirals\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTrump\u0026rsquo;s approval rating at last report:\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eApproval rating \u0026lt; 40%\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDisapproval Rating: 60%\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m sure there are more\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Current Political Hellscape"},{"content":"This is going to be one of those \u0026ldquo;So, that happened\u0026rdquo; blogs.\nIn mid-February, I saw on my Facebook Feed that my old band director, Jim Yount, was throwing \u0026ldquo;one final Halloween party for his band kids\u0026rdquo;, hosed at his original Sears Modern Home house in Jackson, Ky. On impulse, I decided to go, not knowing if anyone else would show-up. Of course, this meant airplane tickets, but the pitiful stock verst that dropped in February would 100% cover it + incidentals. So, I got some tickets on American (more on that later), and looked forward to March 20-22.\nMy dad agreed to pick me up around 6pm at LEX (Bluegrass Airport) and said I could stay with him\u0026ndash;plans were set.\nThings haven\u0026rsquo;t been going particularly well for me. The general malaise of middle age, not looking forward to my daughter leaving for college, various unsolvable personal issues all conspire to give me plenty to talk about every couple of weeks with someone who makes a good living saying \u0026ldquo;hmm\u0026rdquo;.\nFriday: Trip out Anyway, so Friday the 20th arrives and I\u0026rsquo;m off work. I don\u0026rsquo;t take my laptop with me on the trip, just a spare-packed carry-on. The first trip from AUS -\u0026gt; DFW on a 737-800 was fine. It felt like the taxi to takeoff was longer than the flight to Dallas. From there it was a quick ride on the air train from terminal A to terminal B to board a Embraer E175 for the trip to LEX. Smooth trip overall; in both cases the planes lacked any seatback screens but had excellent wifi and I was able to watch some College Basketball games along the way.\nThe airport pickup had an interesting wrinkle: My father has not only not flown before, he\u0026rsquo;d never been on airport property and had no idea how arrivals/departures worked. LEX is a tiny airport so there\u0026rsquo;s one terminal and one level for arrivals/departurses. I\u0026rsquo;d told him to arrive and wait in the \u0026ldquo;Cell Phone Lot\u0026rdquo;. Then I texted when I got there \u0026ldquo;Okay I\u0026rsquo;m here come to the door and pick me up.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Okay,\u0026rdquo; he replied.\nThen I waited.\nThen I waited some more. The cell phone lot was maybe 100 yards from the terminal so I didn\u0026rsquo;t understand what was happening\nCall: \u0026ldquo;Umm what do you see?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I see\u0026hellip;uhh\u0026hellip;.A and B and a parking structure\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Wait, are you walking?!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yeah\u0026hellip;you said come pick you up.\n\u0026ldquo;Go back to your car; I\u0026rsquo;ll come to you\u0026rdquo;\nSo, I go get to Dad\u0026rsquo;s Chevy TrailBlazer and we\u0026rsquo;re off, propelled by 3 cylinders of turbocharged fury.\nWe hit up Golden Corall for two all-you-can-eat plates for total $40 and went to his house for the night.\nSaturday: Reunion Day Saturday would be basically conversation from dawn until well after\nIt began with a visit to my best friend, Susan, at the Breathitt County Library where she was serving Library duty for Saturday (by herself\u0026hellip;). That was roughly 10-\u0026gt;12.\nThen I visited with my Aunt Lenora (\u0026ldquo;Norie\u0026rdquo;) who I like to call my second Mom from 12-\u0026gt;2.\nThen the main event: The Band Reunion\nThis requires a bit of explanation. Jim Yount has been (variously) Band Director for Jackson City School (1988-1992), then Band Director for Breathitt County schools (1992-2001), then once again director/principal/superintendant at Jackson City School from (2002 to 2016). Thats 18 years of Band Kids. Band kids are famously quirky, and well, it was exciting to see members of the old gang again. Anonymizing things a bit, the reunion featured:\nA rocker with no visible means of support that\u0026rsquo;s somehow the coolest person I\u0026rsquo;ve ever met. A trumpeter who went on to be a restauranteur A teacher who\u0026rsquo;s been all over the world with her airforce husband The fellow who would succeed Mr. Yount as the band director at Breathitt County High school The heart and soul of the Breathitt County Library Younger folks who haven\u0026rsquo;t sorted everything out yet. An utter loser that works for Amazon One of the youngest members, Cat Marshall, summed it up perfectly\nYou’ve certainly made a big impression on so many people through your years. I’m so grateful God brought you to our little town. You and Martha both have left some massive footprints on our community. I appreciate everything you ever did for me personally. You certainly helped shape me into the person I am today.\nSo, that was 2pm -\u0026gt; 5pm basically.\nAt that point, I headed up to my cousin Bryan Charles (\u0026ldquo;Boof\u0026rdquo;) Combs\u0026rsquo;s house and hung out with him and his awesome wife, Dixie. She took this picture\nSunday: Church and the Trip Back I awoke Sunday and headed to church with Dad. He goes to a church basically composed of 1-2 other extended families. My uncle Arch is the pastor, and service is a solid two hours\u0026ndash;1 of prayer \u0026amp; singing and another of preaching. Kentucky basketball\u0026rsquo;s chances in the 2:15 game that afternoon featured prominently.\nFrom there, Dad and I drove over to have lunch at the Mexican restaurant in Jackson where we ran into several other people we knew. \u0026ldquo;Snake\u0026rdquo; McIntosh\u0026rsquo;s children Bobbi Jo, Lisa, and Michael. Snake was my Middle School Principal. That\u0026rsquo;s always a neat \u0026ldquo;fun fact\u0026rdquo; when I introduce myself at Amazon\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;My middle School Principal\u0026rsquo;s name was Snake. Yes I do actually know grammar.\u0026rdquo;\nFrom there it was about time for the game and my flight was supposed to leave around 6:30. We went up to see my dad\u0026rsquo;s girlfriend/situationshiop Peggy. It was the first time I recall meeting her (\u0026ldquo;We met at your mom\u0026rsquo;s funeral\u0026rdquo; ah, okay. I had other things on my mind). So, there was this odd time where we watched the first half of Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s eventual loss to Iowa State then we decamped to drive to Lexington. Peggy came with.\nIt was here I made a series of mistakes.\nI drank a Diet Coke On the outbound leg from LEX -\u0026gt; DFW I traded off with the woman next to me so she could have the aisle. I didn\u0026rsquo;t get to pee for 3 hours. Strategically, I\u0026rsquo;d scheduled the flight to get into Austin around 11. Then, thanks to American Airlines, the inbound plane didn\u0026rsquo;t show until after 11. We didn\u0026rsquo;t get to Austin until 1am I got to bed at 2:30 am and had to get up for work the next morning. Yaaaaay.p\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/04/band-geek-closure/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is going to be one of those \u0026ldquo;So, that happened\u0026rdquo; blogs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn mid-February, I saw on my Facebook Feed that my old band director, Jim Yount, was throwing \u0026ldquo;one final Halloween party for his band kids\u0026rdquo;, hosed at his original \u003ca href=\"https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/sears-catalog-mail-order-houses-photos/\"\u003eSears Modern Home\u003c/a\u003e house in Jackson, Ky.  On impulse, I decided to go, not knowing if anyone else would show-up.  Of course, this meant airplane tickets, but the pitiful stock verst that dropped in February would 100% cover it + incidentals.   So, I got some tickets on American (more on that later), and looked forward to March 20-22.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Band Geek Closure"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Do you like yourself?\u0026rdquo; he asked.\nI burst out laughing. I must\u0026rsquo;ve laughed for fifteen seconds.\n\u0026ldquo;Does anyone answer \u0026lsquo;yes\u0026rsquo; to that question?\u0026rdquo; I replied, once I finally got a handle on it.\n\u0026ldquo;Yes,\u0026rdquo; he replied flatly. Apparently the part of therapy where they \u0026ldquo;hold space\u0026rdquo; includes pregnant pauses while they wait for you to do\u0026hellip;something.\n\u0026ldquo;Well then: No. I don\u0026rsquo;t like myself.\u0026rdquo; Things you don\u0026rsquo;t stay to a therapist: Stop this train; I want to get off.\nSo, in my mind, there\u0026rsquo;s this version of life where I have friends. They both (a) know me and (b) accept me. I had a male acquaintance give me a hug 6 (?) months ago and honestly it felt like that big RESET button on the old Nintendo Entertainment System\u0026ndash;for a minute, I was alright. My nervous system wasn\u0026rsquo;t screaming at met that I was untouchable. My inner critic wasn\u0026rsquo;t barking at me that I was broken, unlovable, irredeemable, unelect. Let\u0026rsquo;s just say it: Damned.\nI feel convicted of all I\u0026rsquo;ve done or failed to do in life.\nI\u0026rsquo;m walking around a dichotomy of some small measure of talent crossed with rejection at every turn\u0026ndash; maritally, paternally, familially, interpersonally, professionally. Once, I had delusions of grandeur (see this blog around 2005-2010 or so) and zero perspective on who I was or how I came across.\nNow I know: Sometimes you sew the wind and reap the whirlwind. Thirty years of being a jerk has consequences.\nThus, I\u0026rsquo;m lonely. I\u0026rsquo;m broken. I\u0026rsquo;m glad of the wonderful, talented people I get to work with every day, and I try to help them as much as I can. But I feel it can\u0026rsquo;t (won\u0026rsquo;t?) go on.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/03/alone/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Do you like \u003cem\u003eyourself\u003c/em\u003e?\u0026rdquo; he asked.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI burst out laughing.   I must\u0026rsquo;ve laughed for fifteen seconds.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Does anyone answer \u0026lsquo;yes\u0026rsquo; to that question?\u0026rdquo; I replied, once I finally got a handle on it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Yes,\u0026rdquo; he replied flatly.  Apparently the part of therapy where they \u0026ldquo;hold space\u0026rdquo; includes pregnant pauses while they wait for you to do\u0026hellip;something.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Well then: No.  I \u003cem\u003edon\u0026rsquo;t\u003c/em\u003e like myself.\u0026rdquo;  Things you don\u0026rsquo;t stay to a therapist: Stop this train; I want to get off.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Alone"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m sitting here at desk AUS13 07.580.K3, and I\u0026rsquo;m tired.\nLast weekend, Whitney called an audible and sent me up to Abiline on Sunday and Monday to attend the ACU Presidential Scholars Reception and tour day.\nThis was also the day Maria decided ACU would be her undergraduate choice, culminating 2 years of college visits. I\u0026rsquo;m not 100% on this list, but I think she visited:\nBaylor (twice) ACU (4 times overall, including a summer program) TCU Texas A\u0026amp;M UT Dallas University of North Texas UT Arlington Texas Tech Duke (Summer Program) UNC-Chapel Hill (while @ Duke) Maria was resolved to attend a school in Texas so some of the schools we dangled before her (Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Alabama, Vandy, etc.) didn\u0026rsquo;t resonate at all. General feedback on preferences:\nMaria\u0026rsquo;s very smart, and approached this process with her head in addition to her heart. She knew we had $XX in her college fund, and she also knew there was 0% chance she\u0026rsquo;d get any needs-based financial aid. (Truly, we got the response from the FAFSA and apparently I could buy a Lamborghini a year according to them\u0026hellip;ha!). She dove in to essays, merit-based, and go significant five-figure offers form every private school. In the end, she went with the school with the best combination of school culture, financial sense, and practicality: Abiline Christian University.\nHaving attended 3 of 4 on-campus events, I agree with her. I went to a school that purported to be everything ACU really is. The difference is both immediate and startling.\nI\u0026rsquo;m tired. I\u0026rsquo;m going to miss my little girl when she goes on to her next phase of live. I love you, Maria. Daddy will always love you and be there as much as he can.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/02/tired-on-seven/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m sitting here at desk AUS13 07.580.K3, and I\u0026rsquo;m tired.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast weekend, Whitney called an audible and sent me up to Abiline on Sunday and Monday to attend the ACU Presidential Scholars Reception and tour day.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/images/2026/02/maria-acu.jpeg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis was also the day Maria decided ACU would be her undergraduate choice, culminating  2 years of college visits.  I\u0026rsquo;m not 100% on this list, but I think she visited:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBaylor (twice)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eACU (4 times overall, including a summer program)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTCU\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTexas A\u0026amp;M\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUT Dallas\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUniversity of North Texas\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUT Arlington\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTexas Tech\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDuke (Summer Program)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUNC-Chapel Hill (while @ Duke)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaria was resolved to attend a school \u003cem\u003ein Texas\u003c/em\u003e so some of the schools we dangled before her (Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Alabama, Vandy, etc.) didn\u0026rsquo;t resonate at all.  General feedback on preferences:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tired on Seven"},{"content":"Yesterday was about shock. Trying to gather information. Trying to simply comprehend.\nToday is the next phase: Anger. I know what happened. I can\u0026rsquo;t fathom why and the company I hired on to 10 years ago seems gone.\nStretching back to Lexmark days, every layoff has been either about (1) culling low performers or (2) axing large swathes of people from a failed strategy. Those make sense, and one can even predict them. For about 5 years there, Lexmark didn\u0026rsquo;t even manage low-performers at all, so layoffs were the only way Bob down the hall who couldn\u0026rsquo;t code his way out of a Perl script was going to go away.\nI became callous and immune to them, because deep down inside, they needed to happen.\nYesterday? I don\u0026rsquo;t know man. The rhyme or reason escapes me.\nIf you want to compete you want your best people happy, challenged, and motivated. You want them to feel like they have autonomy, that they\u0026rsquo;re moving towards mastery of their profession (status!), and that there\u0026rsquo;s purpose to their work. They\u0026rsquo;re not just diggig a ditch and filling it in at the end of the day to no purpose.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re really moving away from all the above. Since 2023, managers have been taking attendance of all reports. Recently that same dashboard is flagging people that aren\u0026rsquo;t in the office long enough. Everywhere I\u0026rsquo;ve worked it\u0026rsquo;s been \u0026ldquo;manage your own time\u0026rdquo; (read: work loads of uncompensated overtime because we won\u0026rsquo;t manage your time). Fair enough, but that\u0026rsquo;s not the messaging I see.\nMastery: Then Don\u0026rsquo;t fire the most talented SDE we have.\nPurpose: We had a purpose in my organization\u0026ndash;customer satisfaction. We were proud of it. We\u0026rsquo;ve been told that purpose is garbage based on the metrics and KPIs.\nOh well, the above is predictable based on working for a cost center in a corporation, not a profit center. I made the same mistake at Lexmark (Software and Drivers always got cut. Every. Damned. Year.).\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/01/layoffs-the-anger-stage/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/01/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-layoff/\" title=\"Layoff Day\"\u003eYesterday\u003c/a\u003e was about shock.  Trying to gather information.  Trying to simply \u003cem\u003ecomprehend\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday is the next phase: Anger.  I know what happened.  I can\u0026rsquo;t fathom why and the company I hired on to 10 years ago seems gone.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStretching back to Lexmark days, \u003cem\u003eevery\u003c/em\u003e layoff has been either about (1) culling low performers or (2) axing large swathes of people from a failed strategy.   Those make sense, and one can even predict them.   For about 5 years there, Lexmark didn\u0026rsquo;t even manage low-performers at all, so layoffs were the only way Bob down the hall who couldn\u0026rsquo;t code his way out of a Perl script was going to go away.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Layoffs: The Anger Stage"},{"content":"So this happened.\nYep. Sixteen thousand Amazonians lost their jobs today. This follows 14k layoffs last October, for a nice, round 30k in 4 months.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a play-by-play\nTuesday\n10:00pm - Notice you\u0026#39;re a little anxious 11:00pm - Attempt to go to bed, surf Blind incessantly because there was already a leak of an email \u0026#34;Following-up on Beth\u0026#39;s email\u0026#34; Wednsday\n12:00am - Finally fall asleep 05:00am - Wake up stark awake, check phone, notice that 0 emails have shown-up. No text messages either 06:00am - Alarm goes off. Stumble through morning routine, notice an email from HR. Understand I\u0026#39;m not actually fired but 16,000 people are. 08:00am - head to work. 09:00am - Arrive to work, get coffee with PM. Looks like at least some of the PM group is laid-off. Send slack message to group saying we\u0026#39;re all safe. From there, it\u0026rsquo;s slowly understanding that this one hasn\u0026rsquo;t passed us by. At all. Hallway conversations ensue\u0026ndash;a favorite QA person is gone. Several Product Managers. Some tech teams have lost SDEs, then the bombshells start.\nOne of our most-tenured SDMs is gone, along with his whole mission. Then\u0026hellip; Our director has been let go. All his reports now report one level above to a guy who already has 15 reports. Chaos. Our MOST TALENTED SENIOR ENGINEER who had a remote work exception is gone. Dear reader, I\u0026rsquo;ve worked 27 years in corporate America. I can\u0026rsquo;t remember a day as increasingly bizarre as this one, aside from a couple of boondoggle junkets to Lenexa, Kansas that will remain undocumented.\nAt 3:45 I had a 15 minute meeting with my direct reports to take them through what I\u0026rsquo;d learned about all the changes under our Director, which I\u0026rsquo;d acquired THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE because no one would write anything down. This is not how you manage change. It\u0026rsquo;s ridiculous.\nI\u0026rsquo;m exhausted.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/01/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-layoff/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo \u003ca href=\"https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-layoffs-corporate-jan-2026\"\u003ethis happened\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep.  Sixteen thousand Amazonians lost their jobs today.  This follows 14k layoffs last October, for a nice, round 30k in 4 months.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a play-by-play\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eTuesday\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\u003ccode\u003e10:00pm - Notice you\u0026#39;re a little anxious\n11:00pm - Attempt to go to bed, surf Blind incessantly because there was already a leak of an email \u0026#34;Following-up on Beth\u0026#39;s email\u0026#34;\n\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWednsday\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\u003ccode\u003e12:00am - Finally fall asleep\n05:00am - Wake up stark awake, check phone, notice that 0 emails have shown-up.   No text messages either\n06:00am - Alarm goes off.  Stumble through morning routine, notice an email from HR.  Understand I\u0026#39;m not actually fired but 16,000 people are.\n08:00am - head to work.\n09:00am - Arrive to work, get coffee with PM.  Looks like at least some of the PM group is laid-off.  Send slack message to group saying we\u0026#39;re all safe.\n\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom there, it\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eslowly\u003c/em\u003e understanding that this one hasn\u0026rsquo;t passed us by.  At all.   Hallway conversations ensue\u0026ndash;a favorite QA person is gone.   Several Product Managers.   Some tech teams have lost SDEs, then the bombshells start.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Day in the Life of a Layoff"},{"content":"Amazon apparently has a mole.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a poster on TeamBlind who goes by the handle \u0026ldquo;QuickSuite\u0026rdquo; who\u0026rsquo;s been giving play-by-play since October on what\u0026rsquo;s going on with layoffs. The date\u0026rsquo;s moved from 1/26 -\u0026gt; 1/28 (per rumor) and numbers are up in the air. Feels like everyone below VP level is nervous.\nIn any case, quarterly earnings come out 2/5, so it\u0026rsquo;ll certainly be this week.\nI was speaking with a colleague last week who\u0026rsquo;s barely a year into Amazon, and he said, \u0026ldquo;I mean\u0026hellip;would it be so bad to get laid off?\u0026rdquo; That seems to be a common sentiment. I understand where he\u0026rsquo;s coming from\u0026hellip;the place can be a pressure cooker, especially for affirmation-seaking Type-A personalities. The joke within is: \u0026ldquo;This is the place where smart people come to feel bad about themselves.\u0026rdquo;\nMeanwhile, Winter Storm Fern came to town this weekend. It spared central Texas a truly horrific ice storm, bestowing that upon central Tennessee where Nashville is seeing trees grenade left and right and powe out everywhere.\nFor us, it\u0026rsquo;s been mostly a \u0026ldquo;cold\u0026rdquo; event eent, with temperatures below freezing since 8am Saturday and us covering doors with blankets to staunch the drafts from \u0026ldquo;This Old house\u0026rdquo;. So far, so good\u0026ndash;power and internet working fine with the girls off school today. Well\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;homeschool day\u0026rdquo; with the next in-person day for Wednesday.\nWatched The Social Network for the first time. I\u0026rsquo;ve seen clips of course\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s hard to be in \u0026ldquo;Big Tech\u0026rdquo; and miss them. They get the mania of that era of tech very, very right. Justin Timberlake (?!) delights as the Devil/Angel investor on Zuck\u0026rsquo;s shoulder. Andrew Garfield is the emotional center of the film and acts rings around everyone else.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/01/quicksuite-and-fern/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAmazon apparently has a mole.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a poster on \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonemployees/comments/1qninp6/on_behalf_of_quicksuite_from_team_blind_layoffs/\"\u003eTeamBlind\u003c/a\u003e who goes by the handle \u0026ldquo;QuickSuite\u0026rdquo; who\u0026rsquo;s been giving play-by-play since October on what\u0026rsquo;s going on with layoffs.  The date\u0026rsquo;s moved from 1/26 -\u0026gt; 1/28 (per rumor) and numbers are up in the air.  Feels like everyone below VP level is nervous.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn any case, quarterly earnings come out 2/5, so it\u0026rsquo;ll certainly be this week.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was speaking with a colleague last week who\u0026rsquo;s barely a year into Amazon, and he said, \u0026ldquo;I mean\u0026hellip;would it be so \u003cem\u003ebad\u003c/em\u003e to get laid off?\u0026rdquo;  That seems to be a common sentiment.  I understand where he\u0026rsquo;s coming from\u0026hellip;the place can be a pressure cooker, especially for affirmation-seaking Type-A personalities.   The joke within is: \u0026ldquo;This is the place where smart people come to feel bad about themselves.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"QuickSuite and Fern"},{"content":"They used to say that war was \u0026ldquo;Months of boredom interpspersed with moments of sheer terror\u0026rdquo;\nThat\u0026rsquo;s been work since I got back from Universal.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been so\u0026hellip;eerily normal. Daily standups. Sprint planning. Bug fixes. Small, slight Operations changes.\nHonestly, it\u0026rsquo;s like we looked at December when everyone was on leave and said, \u0026ldquo;Umm\u0026hellip;.yeah, just do that for a few weeks. We\u0026rsquo;ll get back to you.\u0026rdquo; Product Managers have been kibbutzing away from the rest of us. Plans within plans within obscure plans.\nSo\u0026hellip;.what does that all mean?\nWell for one thing there\u0026rsquo;s the obvious: The rumored layoffs will probably be Monday or Tuesday. We\u0026rsquo;ve \u0026ldquo;known\u0026rdquo; that there were a complementary set of cuts coming after last October, but there\u0026rsquo;s no ground-level information. So, we\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nThe second for my group, there\u0026rsquo;s probably a re-organization (\u0026ldquo;re-org\u0026rdquo;) coming. These changes are banal and typically amount to middle-managers yelling \u0026ldquo;MINE!\u0026rdquo; until someone higher-up tells them to behave.\nUntil then, one of the rare times at Amazon when I\u0026rsquo;m somewhat bored.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/01/boredom-and-bouts-of-terror/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThey used to say that war was \u003ca href=\"https://quoteinvestigator.com/2025/08/21/war-boredom/\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Months of boredom interpspersed with moments of sheer terror\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s been work since I got back from Universal.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been so\u0026hellip;eerily normal.   Daily standups.  Sprint planning.   Bug fixes.   Small, slight Operations changes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHonestly, it\u0026rsquo;s like we looked at December when everyone was on leave and said, \u0026ldquo;Umm\u0026hellip;.yeah, just do that for a few weeks.  We\u0026rsquo;ll get back to you.\u0026rdquo;  Product Managers have been kibbutzing away from the rest of us.  Plans within plans within obscure plans.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Boredom and Bouts of Terror"},{"content":"Contrary to popular opinion, I do go on vacation. This is a narrative of what happened and what I liked and didn\u0026rsquo;t like.\nIntroduction: Universal Orlando \u0026amp; TLDR I haven\u0026rsquo;t had a family vacation since June 2019. We haven\u0026rsquo;t taken a Florida vacation since 2016, two weeks before I joined Amazon. It\u0026rsquo;s telling I have blog entires about neither. Both were PM (Pre-meds) and I went kicking-and-screaming. With my wife and I finally on the same page about finances, we agreed to take a trip to Orlando before Maria was out of our house.\nHaving been to disney 3 times before, we decided to go for Universal Orlando and its constellation of 4 parks. Some top-line things to communicate:\nThis has a more teen/adult feel than disney. The thrill rides scale up to \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; coasters and very intense motion control experiences. It\u0026rsquo;s shocking how much more \u0026ldquo;chill\u0026rdquo; Universal felt versus Disney. Disney has a well-known playbook, and people go yearly (See the \u0026ldquo;Disney Adult\u0026rdquo; phenomenon). Universal basically appropriated Disney\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Fast Pass\u0026rdquo; system from back when it was good Staying \u0026ldquo;On Property\u0026rdquo; can be very reasonable, depending on when you go. We got off-season rooms for $152 / night apiece Bus transportation among the parks is fine. For certain properties, you can also go by small ferry-boats. Security moves along well. They\u0026rsquo;ve implemented a facial-recognition for park entry and fastpass that\u0026rsquo;s great\u0026hellip;when it\u0026rsquo;s operational. Still some kinks to iron out. Bathrooms are wholly inadequate. Be warned. There might be 1 bathroom in a given \u0026ldquo;land\u0026rdquo; and half the stalls or urinals will be out of operation. It\u0026rsquo;s telling in their latest property (Epic Universe) there seems to be 2x the number of bathrooms. Prepare to get stuck. All the motion control rides are unreliable, especially those that are \u0026ldquo;robot arms with 4 person cars attached\u0026rdquo;. You could be stuck upside down, facing an 8\u0026rsquo; spider. Anyway, let\u0026rsquo;s get into it.\nThe Hotel: Cabana Bay We stayed at Cabana Bay, just south of Islands of Adventure park.\nThis is one of the \u0026ldquo;value-oriented\u0026rdquo; resorts near the property, but from our perspective it couldn\u0026rsquo;t be better: ~$150 / night for twin queens, splendid amenitities, and it\u0026rsquo;s adjacent to both the Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios parks, and adjacent to Volcano Bay the massive waterpark.\nOur rooms each had a kitchenette with a sink, fridge, and microwave, which we used to eat at least 1 meal / day in the room. We used instacart to order that food the Saturday we arrived.\nThe Parks There are four parks available in the constellation of Universal parks in Orlando:\nUniversal Studios Orlando: This is the original park, themed as though it\u0026rsquo;s a studio backlot. It includes theming around sets one might shoot on: New York, London, San Francisco, Hollywood. Woven into these are rides and experiences like Simpsons-land, Mummy\u0026rsquo;s Revenge, Men-in-Black. The original Harry Potter \u0026ldquo;Diagon Alley\u0026rdquo; is here. Universal Islands of Adventure: This second park is\u0026ndash;as the name implies\u0026ndash;a more \u0026ldquo;Adventurous\u0026rdquo; place. It draws from Universal IP to make discrete \u0026ldquo;lands\u0026rdquo; instead of shooting locations. Jurassic Park forms the center of the park and Harry Potter\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Hogsmeade\u0026rdquo; sits at the back. The train from Hogsmeade to London King\u0026rsquo;s Cross station forms the bridge between the two parks. Volcano Bay: As Noted\u0026ndash;we didn\u0026rsquo;t go here; it was max 70 degrees. I despise water parks anyway, so this was no big deal. Epic Universe: The newest park, Epic just opened in May 2025. It\u0026rsquo;s massive and segments into discrete \u0026ldquo;lands\u0026rdquo; with portals for entry. Day 1: Epic Universe Epic Universe was about a 20 minute bus-ride Southeast of our hotel. We ended-up on an overful bus of eager, perfume-doused travellers, standing room only.\nWe resolved to never ride standing again.\nWe reached the park and went through security where we found that Epic Universe has ubiquitous facial recognition. If you\u0026rsquo;ve registered your face with the serviceable mobile app, Epic will just recognize you, including at security. On the Sunday of our first day, we breezed through to move through the park. We progressed through Nintendo World, Dark Universe, 1920\u0026rsquo;s Paris (Harry Potter), and Berk.\nThis was a \u0026ldquo;ramp-up\u0026rdquo; day. We weren\u0026rsquo;t really used to that much walking (~6 miles) and time flew. Before we knew it, it was twilight and then dark. The centerpiece of the world is the Celestial Carousel, and it\u0026rsquo;s simply magical\u0026ndash;especially at night. They change up the music from whimsical, to orchestral, to club mix. Club Mix is the best.\nI got to ride the excellent \u0026ldquo;Stardust Racers\u0026rdquo;. This is a double launch coaster that\u0026rsquo;s killed at least 1 person. The first launch leads to a perfect U shaped hump with TONS of airtime. The remainder of the ride is a blur, but the second launch leads to a lovely spiral around both duelling tracks. It\u0026rsquo;s a magical experience.\nThe Girls got wands and the over-the-top French wand shop and we nearly got on Ministry of Magic, but it broke for the 4th time in that day. The theming on the ride needs to be seen to be believed: It\u0026rsquo;s a 1:1 recreation of the hall of the Ministry to incredible detail. However, the ride itself is both ambitious and disappointing (see below)\nQuick run through the lands:\nNintendo: Immersive theming. Bowser\u0026rsquo;s castle is a great augmented reality ride in cars for 4. The land is very claustrophibic and if you\u0026rsquo;re sensitive to perfume/cologne, you\u0026rsquo;ll simply die. There\u0026rsquo;s no air circulation, and approximately 50k kids in this land at all times. Dark Universe: Incredible, particlarly at night. Monster\u0026rsquo;s unchained is probably the zenith of the 4-person-car motion control ride pioneered in the OG Harry Potter ride. Curse of the Werewolf is a legit coaster with spinning cars and forward/backward motion. HUGE recommend on this one at night. We ended up eating at \u0026ldquo;Das Stakehouse\u0026rdquo; greeted by the servers with \u0026ldquo;Greetings humans\u0026rdquo;. And the black bread and meat was good. Don\u0026rsquo;t miss Igor and the other characters in this land! Wizarding World: Ministry of Magic: Incredibly mixed on this land. It\u0026rsquo;s 1920\u0026rsquo;s France. All the signage, etc. is in French. Dining, shops, butterbeer\u0026ndash;all exist here. The two marquee experiences are Ministry of Magic which breaks all the time, and Cirque Arcanus which is next-level puppetry in the Newt Skemander universe. Neither live up to the other HP experiences in other parks, and seem like massive wastes of money for Universal. Berk (How to Train Your Dragon): Just\u0026hellip;.joy. This is everything you want in a theme park \u0026ldquo;land\u0026rdquo;: Immersive, Great Theming, doesn\u0026rsquo;t take itself too seriously. We spent lots of time here, and bought merch. Hiccup\u0026rsquo;s Wing Gliders is a legit launch coaster for most ages, with a nice roll-back element on its second launch. Celestial Park: This is the magical central location that brings everything togther. Highlights are the Stardust racers (see above) and the super-chill Celestial Carousel that you must ride at night Day 2: Islands of Adventure Islands of Adventure feels like a \u0026ldquo;regular\u0026rdquo; theme park, similar to Six Flags. There two mainline coasters, Incredible Hulk and Velocicoaster.\nThe queues to move in around open move glacially. This was our first \u0026ldquo;prepaid breakfast\u0026rdquo; experience at Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade. Because of our food allergies, it\u0026rsquo;s always a chore to eat in-park, but Universal was solid throughout: Everyone was trained from those taking orders to the cooks. They could accomodate our lengthly list of allergies everywhere we went within reason. (For example: We didn\u0026rsquo;t go to a straight seafood restaurant. That\u0026rsquo;d be death for Whitney.)\nWe powerwalked through the super-cute Dr. Seuss land, through the Lost Continent (which is essentially shut-down for re-theming), and past the left turn to Albuquerque Jurassic Park to hit Hogsmeade. Breakfast at Three Broomsticks was good. I went for pancakes, which turned into a massive mistake given my motion-sickness and gluten sensitivity.\nFrom there we hoped on \u0026ldquo;Harry Potter Forbidden Journey\u0026rdquo;. I was already queasy from breakfast and this is the OG \u0026ldquo;4 people in a car on a robot arm\u0026rdquo; ride. It\u0026rsquo;s jerky and, well, we got stuck somewhere over the Quidditch Field.\nStuck like that for ~3-4 minutes, we moved on.\nThen we rode \u0026ldquo;Flight of the Hippogriff\u0026rdquo; a kid-targeted coaster that runs a single train on a short-run track. It\u0026rsquo;s darling and punches way above its weight. Great theming and a gentle introduction to kids to a true thrill ride experience.\nAt this point I tried conventional butterbeer, and I found it disgusting: Viscous and cloyingly sweet.\nThe real gem is Hagrid\u0026rsquo;s Magical Creatures, a wonderful launch-coaster with two experiences: On the motorbike (the preferred) and in the sidecar (still tons of fun)\nBy this point, my body really felt the past 18 hours\u0026ndash;full day at Epic Universe, then an early wakeup to get breakfast, then more rides. I was both nauseated and had GI issues, so I sat underneath the Velocicoaster double-helix for a solid hour in a stupor while the girls did awesome Jurassic Park stuff.\nTaking a bit of a break, we did the Dr. Seuss People mover ride, which moved much faster than we expected.\nThen we went over to Marvel land and did the Spiderman motion-control ride. I was almost certain I was going to to hurl halfway through, but kept it together. By the end, both Whitney and I both felt dizzy so we hung in the \u0026ldquo;family room\u0026rdquo; for it to subside.\nAs the sun set, we decided to ride the Hogwarts Express over to London (in Universal Studios), and we hung-out there until park close around 9. The girls enjoyed using their wands and embarking on the quests (don\u0026rsquo;t call it MagiQuest\u0026hellip;) that they needed to do to level-up. Parts of the area like Nocture Alley were legitimately creepy and the front projection and animatronic effects would do Disney Proud.\nDay 3: Universal Studios Orlando Since we ended the day at Universal Studios, we began our day there the next day. In reality both Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios feel like \u0026ldquo;one park\u0026rdquo; because they share a bus terminal, parking area, and security gateway, and you need to walk through City Walk to get to either. We weren\u0026rsquo;t obsessed about going super-early but rolled in about 10:30. Lines were short, and would remain so the rest of the day.\nThat was good, because we genuinely found some of our favorite experiences in this park.\nUniversal Studios really leans into the \u0026ldquo;Studios\u0026rdquo; part of theming, focusing on the properties and IP making blockbuster film and TV franchises\nWe started in Minion/Despicable Me land after a quick stop in the Wicked shop. We tried the \u0026ldquo;Minon Blaster\u0026rdquo; ride and it\u0026rsquo;s an ADHD nightmare, taking you on a moving rubberized walkway while you blast away at enemies from the Despicable Me universe. The Actual Minion motion-control experience is cute but again\u0026ndash;queasy. I didn\u0026rsquo;t struggle this time because I was on fairly empty stomach.\nFrom there the day is a blur. We did the Transformers which was a simulated \u0026ldquo;car\u0026rdquo; similar to the Spider-Man ride. Whitney and I seemed to enjoy that more than the girls. Then we found our real love in the park: Revenge of the Mummy\nLadies and Gentlemen, your \u0026ldquo;Space Mountain\u0026rdquo; has arrived. Revenge of the Mummy is an indoor coaster with terrific theming (including fire and water effects) coming from the 1990\u0026rsquo;s The Mummy franchise. It\u0026rsquo;s terrific fun, and I think we road it 6 times among the 4 of us.\nThe Men-in-Black Ride was\u0026hellip;.fine? Lines were short and it\u0026rsquo;s at the very back of the park. You get to shoot things.\nDay 4: No Parks, but City Walk We\u0026rsquo;re human. We decided to take a day off in the middle.\nSo, naturally, we went and worked-out in the hotel gym for like 2 hours, then we did 75 minutes of bowling, then in the evening we went shopping at City Walk.\nAll told, on our \u0026ldquo;day off\u0026rdquo; we did about 8 miles.\nDay 5: All 3 parks (redux) So, day 5, we started revisiting the parks on a \u0026ldquo;cleanup\u0026rdquo; trip, watching shows and hitting our favorite attactions again. I finally rode Velocicoaster after feeling so zonked on Day 2, and it was a sweetheart: Very \u0026ldquo;normal\u0026rdquo; from the first launch and series, and an absolute BEAST from the second launch into the double helix and the \u0026ldquo;oh wait we\u0026rsquo;re just going to hang you upside down\u0026rdquo; inversions on the back side.\nOf Note:\n\u0026ldquo;Stomp\u0026rdquo; at Universal Studios is a great street show outside The \u0026ldquo;Marilyn Monroe\u0026rdquo; revue is cool in the Hollywood area Really enjoyed the Jason Bourne Experience in Universal Studios The Animations on the Hogwarts Express are different depending on which direction you\u0026rsquo;re going. Cute experience to ride both ways if you can. We ended-up doing breakfast at Hogsmeade, doing plenty of Universal Orlando activities, riding the train to Hogsmeade, doing Islands of Adventure \u0026ldquo;best of\u0026rdquo;, then going over to Epic Universe to finish the day on the Carousel, a 3 Park day with 8.8 miles and 20k steps.\nDay 6: Finishing at Epic Universe For the last day, we sort of turned the girls loose. They were at Epic Universe early-ish and Whitney and I came later. Day 5 had exhausted us, really. The girls did more Dark Universe rides, Nintendo land, and had a very poor experience trying to get food at Nintendo.\nSummary This isn\u0026rsquo;t intended to be guide\u0026ndash;there\u0026rsquo;s plenty of those out there. This is just a journal of how we did it:\nTwo separate rooms, adjoining rooms at Cabana Bay 5 Day park-hopper (or whatever they\u0026rsquo;re called) tickets 5 day any-park express passes pre-bought breakfasts on 2 of the days We used the Universal App to navigate and find ride wait times, leveraged the express passes when wait times were \u0026gt; 30 minutes, and used Life360 to keep tabs on one another if we separated. Ratings Would I go back? Absolutely. Honestly, I prefer to Disney at this point. Who\u0026rsquo;s the park for? I\u0026rsquo;d say older kids (8 and up) and older Who shouldn\u0026rsquo;t go? Younger kids, people unfamiliar with the franchises/IP, people looking for \u0026ldquo;magic\u0026rdquo; Biggest Surprise? Character encounters were delightful. We ran into Scooby-Doo in our hotel lobby, for example. Biggest Disappointment? The Pork Sandwitch at the Minion Cafe is inedible ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/01/review-universal-orlando/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eContrary to popular opinion, I \u003cstrong\u003edo\u003c/strong\u003e go on vacation.  This is a narrative of what happened and what I liked and didn\u0026rsquo;t like.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"introduction-universal-orlando--tldr\"\u003eIntroduction: Universal Orlando \u0026amp; TLDR\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI haven\u0026rsquo;t had a family vacation since June 2019.  We haven\u0026rsquo;t taken a Florida vacation since 2016, two weeks before I joined Amazon.  It\u0026rsquo;s telling I have blog entires about neither.  Both were PM (Pre-meds) and I went kicking-and-screaming.  With my wife and I finally on the same page about finances, we agreed to take a trip to Orlando before Maria was out of our house.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Universal Orlando"},{"content":"What happened in 2025?\nFamily My Dad is still alive and doing well. My mother died December 8, 2024. The next 30 days were a complete blur, so one could consider all of 2025 the hangover. Dad has a girlfriend, is working every day, and continues his building projects on the 92-acre farm where I grew up. Yes, even at 73.\nPersonally, I hear half the things he does and at 47, I need a nap.\nI lost my mind in January. Again, as I have periodically for 20+ years. I am self-destructive and I see that accelerating as I age.\nI still have no relationship effectively with my eldest child, \u0026ldquo;Noir.\u0026rdquo; We\u0026rsquo;ve spoken over chat a few times in the past year. I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen them in person since 2018.\nThis has been the year of concerts, from Two-Step Inn in Georgetown in March, to 4 (!) K-Pop concerts, incluidng a spur-of-the-moment mini-vacation to Chicago for Whitney and Myself. Chicago is one of my favorite cities. It\u0026rsquo;s like NYC without the pretention.\nWork 2025: It\u0026rsquo;s 2023 all over again. Let\u0026rsquo;s get into it.\nI began the year as a Senior Software Engineer, with an apparent poor rating based on my stock grant. Amazon has a scale of 1 -\u0026gt; 5, with 5 being the best. Given my stock grant I was likely a 2, on the edge of a 1. Combined with my terrible rating (likely a 2 again) from 2023, I saw my compensation go down to 60% of what was in 2024.\nThe above is indicative I work at Amazon: It\u0026rsquo;s transactional. The company makes no illusions it cares about you, so it\u0026rsquo;s all about driving your career path, acollades, and TC (\u0026ldquo;Total Compensation\u0026rdquo;). At a level it\u0026rsquo;s disgusting, because it self-selects for people only after money. If you\u0026rsquo;re in sales or finance, that makes perfect sense. If you\u0026rsquo;re in Engineering, you drive away the top talent because the loud-talkers + self-promoters get the accolades.\nAnyway\u0026hellip;.\nSo I started the year somewhat lost. I was on a team stuck with multiple hard, interesting problems to solve that had 0 measurable impact on customers. That\u0026rsquo;s not a great place to be. Then in February, I got the opportunity to work on our revamp of our customer service homepage portal (link), and at the same time become a manager again. I\u0026rsquo;d get to build my team and begin delivering customer-facing features again.\nI was terrified. The last time didn\u0026rsquo;t go so well.\nHonestly, it\u0026rsquo;s been great since March. I started off with 1 person on my team, and at one point I was managing 6 + 3 adjuct developers. As it stands now I have 7 on my team and I feel it\u0026rsquo;s a great team.\nThe overriding issue has been Layoffs. As AI/GenAI cam into the industry, Amazon has absorbed massive CapEx costs to build out our infrastructure. (This is all public information announced in our last quarterly statment). We\u0026rsquo;ve been working to reduce regular expense (read: Headcount). There was a cut in October, likely there will be another one this month. My organization had 2 smallish re-orgs in Q4 2025. A massive one will come along with layoff, or at least that\u0026rsquo;s what the rumor-mill says.\nOpen questions:\nHow much longer can I keep doing this? How much longer will my job function (Software Engineering) exist? Health I\u0026rsquo;m increasingly unhealthy and sedentary. I get out of breath and dizzy easily. I have trouble concentrating.\nCars We exited the year with the same stable of vehicles as we entered:\n(Mileage noted in parentheses)\n2016 Lexus GX 460 (130k) 2021 Lexus ES 300h (70k) 2021 Toyota Tundra (21k) 2023 Toytoa Corolla (21k) Whitneys GX is now 10 model years old, though its tracked resale value remains stable. We have incurred a couple of costs keeping it up:\nNew set of tires: ~$1200 New Valley Plate: $1100, installed. We\u0026rsquo;ve used dealer service exclusively, except for the last, where we used an independent shop in Pflugerville. It was a third the cost of dealer service, so I expect we\u0026rsquo;ll go that way again.\nAs a minor upgrade, I did replace all the interior lights on the GX with LEDs. That\u0026rsquo;s a fun, easy upgrade that improves quality-of-life, particulary if you need to read something at night.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve delighted in the ES as a daily-driver, putting on 35k miles since we bought it in 2024. I barely drive the Tundra at all, but\nHouse The house maintenance continues anon. At the very beginning of the year, we did a full re-roof of our house and well-house.\nFrom there, we had to do a re-cap of the chimney as it developed a leak.\nAs we ended the year, I redid the vent fans on 2 of the bathrooms.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve had ongoing issues with our Spectrum internet, so we\u0026rsquo;re still paying to be Starlink customers. Somehow a constellation of satellites orbiting 400km in space is more reliable than a fiber optic cable.\nPolitics It was a simply terrible year for politics in the united states. We\u0026rsquo;ve pissed off all our allies throughout the world, and divided ourselves at home.\nTech As a manager, I don\u0026rsquo;t get to do as much coding as I want anymore.\nI\u0026rsquo;m writing this on a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 GB of RAM on the same 27\u0026quot; monitor I bought when we moved to Georgetown in 2017. This is the age of austerity. I upgraded to a Kinesis Freestyle Pro a few years ago and I use the mechanical switch version at home and the softer touch one at work.\nMy daily driver at work in a Macbook Pro M3 with 36GB of ram and a 14\u0026quot; screen. I\u0026rsquo;m running MacOS 26.x, whatever that\u0026rsquo;s called currently.\nGiven the amount of GenAI we use at work, we use a mix of proprietary tools at work and plugins for VS Code. It is the editor that seem to be eating the world.\nHonestly, coming into 2026, given the prevalence of Generative AI and the expectation for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), it\u0026rsquo;s hard to see what our form of \u0026ldquo;Engineering\u0026rdquo; looks like going forward.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2026/01/2025-year-in-review/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat happened in 2025?\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"family\"\u003eFamily\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy Dad is still alive and doing well.  My mother \u003ca href=\"https://deatonfuneraljackson.com/wp/obituaries/dottie-lou-combs/1445/\"\u003edied\u003c/a\u003e December 8, 2024.  The next 30 days were a complete blur, so one could consider all of 2025 the hangover.  Dad has a girlfriend, is working every day, and continues his building projects on the 92-acre farm where I grew up.  Yes, even at 73.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePersonally, I hear half the things he does and at 47, I need a nap.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2025 Year in Review"},{"content":"Some people mark milestones of the \u0026ldquo;Christmas they got a bike,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Christmas I got an XBox.\u0026rdquo; That never mattered to me, particularly. My spoiled self often got those things too, but my real, burning desire was computers.\nAs a member of GenX, I was fortunate enough to surf the tidal wave of personal computing. From my earliest memory in the mid 1980\u0026rsquo;s, we had a \u0026ldquo;keeping up with the Joneses\u0026rdquo; TI-99x in our household. I remember it having a super-clicky keyboard and playing games on cartridges. But that one wasn\u0026rsquo;t mine.\nFrom 1984-1986, our family was chasing my father\u0026rsquo;s obsession with having land, buying a run-down 92-acre farm in Lee County, Kentucky with a ~1000 sq ft house on it. Originally this was going to be a pure remote endeavor, as the farm was 15 minutes west of the only house I\u0026rsquo;d known. That plan didn\u0026rsquo;t surive contact with the enemy, so we moved to the farm, to a house with no room for my toys or really half our stuff, period.\nAnyway, some lean Birthdays and Christmases followed. I got a card table and chairs for my birthday right after we moved. Christmas was pretty modest that year.\nThe next year changed all that.\nGateway Drug: The Tandy 1000 EX DOS 2.11 (we called it \u0026lsquo;miss-dose\u0026rsquo; those first few days), a 360k 5 1/4\u0026quot; floppy drive\u0026ndash;and an external \u0026lsquo;B\u0026rsquo; drive. Only 256k of RAM. A \u0026ldquo;Tandy 16 color\u0026rdquo; monitor. These were heady times. I was 10, I think, so this was Christmas of 1988.\nThe oddity was\u0026ndash;it was like a UFO had dropped out of the sky\u0026ndash;I had no idea how to use it. DOS 2 was user hostile, and the \u0026ldquo;Tandy Deskmate\u0026rdquo; shell wasn\u0026rsquo;t much better. I don\u0026rsquo;t particularly remember any specific program with this machine that kept my interest. For a time, it gathered dust, but a procession of games drew me back in. I became a regular user, but chafed at the limitations of the machine itself. I needed more.\nHeroin: The Tandy 1000 TL/2 DOS 3, originally. A 12 Mhz 286 processor. A 40 MB HARD DRIVE, meaning I could install things and avoid swapping disks. Real expansion slots. 640k of memory. Tandy EGA graphics AND mulitmedia sound capabilities.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s where you learn how much of a jerk I really am: I nearly cried in frustration when I opened this computer. I devoured every PC buff book out there. I knew the 386SX and full 386 machines were available, and they were \u0026ldquo;Only $3000, Mom!\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s what I wanted\u0026ndash;a bleeding edge computer, not this also-ran. (For those scoring at home, a \u0026ldquo;$3k\u0026rdquo; machine then would be $7,800 in modern money. I was an idiot)\nMy parents are better people than me. If my child had acted in such a manner, I\u0026rsquo;d probably have taken the computer, walked to the river adjoining our property, and thrown it in.\nAnyway, this was a true \u0026ldquo;buy your kid a beater car and let him fix it up\u0026rdquo; scenario. I got a copy of Norton Utilities and tuned and tweaked that machine. I defragged, compressed, used Stacker to increase disk size. Every hack I could make without being an actual programmer, I made. I even learned how to tap on the misbehaving HD to get it to spin again.\nMy game play exploded. I discovered \u0026ldquo;Railroad Tycoon\u0026rdquo; and lost days to building railroads in the virtual world, Microprose\u0026rsquo;s simulation software like F-15 Strike Eagle, EA\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;LHX\u0026rdquo;. So much fun.\nI also started doing my school work on the machine and got serious about learning to type. My consistend 90+ wpm I owe to that machine and it\u0026rsquo;s reluctant keyboard.\nToday: A Raspberry Pi From that Christmas as a 12 year old \u0026rsquo;til now, I\u0026rsquo;ve never received a computer of my own for Christmas. I\u0026rsquo;ve bought them on a needs-based basis, and I\u0026rsquo;ve been given \u0026ldquo;daily driver\u0026rdquo; computers by my employers.\nThat changed today\nI\u0026rsquo;m typing this on my brand-new 8GB Raspberry Pi, running PiOS 64-bit, inside of VS Code. Everything works so far and I\u0026rsquo;m thrilled. I\u0026rsquo;ve had to sudo apt install most of the afternoon to get things ready, including hugo which the publication engine for this blog.\nHonestly, I haven\u0026rsquo;t been this giddy about a computer probably since I got real with that Tandy 1000 TL/2 back in the day. It\u0026rsquo;s so\u0026hellip;.raw. General experience so far:\nGetting the board itself into the enclosure was trival. Finding where to plug-in the cooling fan was not Initial set-up booted into a 32-bit version of the OS, which was a no-go. In particular, Signal won\u0026rsquo;t even install on a 32-bit Linux these days. I removed the SD card and installed a 64-bit version onto it using \u0026lsquo;Pi Imager\u0026rsquo;. This is the only part of the process that required using another computer. I tried installing Zed, my new editor I\u0026rsquo;ve been using, but it seemed to crash the frame buffer in GNOME. So, I downshifted to using VSCode. That\u0026rsquo;s a comfortable editor for me anyway. I continue to apt install as needed and it\u0026rsquo;s been working: Ruby, hugo, etc. I don\u0026rsquo;t really have a feel for the distribution itself, but it feels like a barebones debian which seems perfect for a hobbyist application.\nMy goal is to get a light NAS solution and completely remove any personal stuff off my work computer. I could just get a simple external drive and attach it directly\u0026ndash;probably my first step.\nOh. And I\u0026rsquo;ve installed dosbox and already played \u0026ldquo;Civilization\u0026rdquo;. \u0026ldquo;Railroad Tycoon\u0026rdquo; may be next!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/12/a-raspberry-pi-christmas/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome people mark milestones of the \u0026ldquo;Christmas they got a bike,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Christmas I got an XBox.\u0026rdquo; That never mattered to me, particularly.  My spoiled self often got those things too, but my real, burning desire was computers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs a member of GenX, I was fortunate enough to surf the tidal wave of personal computing.  From my earliest memory in the mid 1980\u0026rsquo;s, we had a \u0026ldquo;keeping up with the Joneses\u0026rdquo; TI-99x in our household.  I remember it having a super-clicky keyboard and playing games on cartridges.  But that one wasn\u0026rsquo;t \u003cem\u003emine\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Raspberry Pi Christmas"},{"content":"College barely makes sense these days. In particular, Private colleges are utterly preposterous.\nThis isn\u0026rsquo;t about \u0026ldquo;marketable degress\u0026rdquo; or pedagogy or woke/MAGA or any such crap. I\u0026rsquo;m talking about MONEY. Those decades of cost-of-college outpacing inflation have come home to roost, and combined with the demographics crash of the post-2008 cohort going to college, I\u0026rsquo;m seeing a death spiral.\nA Worked Example My daughter went Early Action at several colleges starting in August, getting a jump on the enrollment process and working to function as a \u0026ldquo;driver\u0026rdquo; not a \u0026ldquo;passenger\u0026rdquo; in her collegiate journey. She\u0026rsquo;s been incredibly active since her Sophomore year, and we\u0026rsquo;ve visited most colleges in Texas that might even be of interest. See some of those details in college search.\nAnyway I post today because I\u0026rsquo;m flabbergasted.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a certain private, medium-to-large private university to our north who sent Maria an acceptance letter this past week. As part of the letter, they communicated they intended to provide an XXX merit-based scholarship. This is almost the same as I received when I went to college, when I got a full-ride scholarship. I was very proud.\nMaria: \u0026ldquo;It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter.\u0026rdquo;\nAnd you know what? She\u0026rsquo;s right.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve saved in both girls\u0026rsquo; 529 plans since they were 3 months old. both of the 529 plans have $20k+ more than the scholarship value.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the hard truth: Attending this schoool is $80k per year. After the scholarship and her 529, she\u0026rsquo;d still graduate with $100k+ in student loans.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/11/the-boggle-of-higher-eduction/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCollege barely makes sense these days.  In particular, \u003cem\u003ePrivate\u003c/em\u003e colleges are utterly preposterous.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis isn\u0026rsquo;t about \u0026ldquo;marketable degress\u0026rdquo; or pedagogy or woke/MAGA or any such crap.  I\u0026rsquo;m talking about \u003cem\u003eMONEY\u003c/em\u003e.   Those decades of cost-of-college outpacing inflation have come home to roost, and combined with the demographics crash of the post-2008 cohort going to college, I\u0026rsquo;m seeing a death spiral.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"a-worked-example\"\u003eA Worked Example\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy daughter went Early Action at several colleges starting in August, getting a jump on the enrollment process and working to function as a \u0026ldquo;driver\u0026rdquo; not a \u0026ldquo;passenger\u0026rdquo; in her collegiate journey.  She\u0026rsquo;s been incredibly active since her Sophomore year, and we\u0026rsquo;ve visited most colleges in Texas that might even be of interest.   See some of those details in \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/10/october-2025/#college-search\"\u003ecollege search\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Boggle of Higher Eduction"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Huh. Looks like rain.\u0026rdquo;\nIndeed. We had a catastrophic flood this summer, and as we sit we\u0026rsquo;re still at about 40\u0026quot; of rain for the year. Average annual is about 35\u0026quot;, and most years we\u0026rsquo;ve lived here, it\u0026rsquo;s been more like 25-28\u0026quot;. Any way you slice it, it\u0026rsquo;s been a good year for rain.\nSo off-and-on today, it looked like low clouds, bright sunshine, thunderstorms, and everything in between.\nBook: Embers of War So after I couldn\u0026rsquo;t retain the will to live (see next review), I switched over to Gareth J. Powell\u0026rsquo;s excellent \u0026ldquo;Embers of War\u0026rdquo; book, the first of a trilogy\nThe jacket summary is solid:\nThe sentient warship Trouble Dog was built for violence, yet following a brutal war, she is disgusted by her role in a genocide. Stripped of her weaponry and seeking to atone, she joins the House of Reclamation, an organization dedicated to rescuing ships in distress. When a civilian ship goes missing in a disputed system, Trouble Dog and her new crew of loners, captained by Sal Konstanz, are sent on a rescue mission.\nMeanwhile, light years away, intelligence officer Ashton Childe is tasked with locating the poet, Ona Sudak, who was aboard the missing spaceship. What Childe doesn\u0026rsquo;t know is that Sudak is not the person she appears to be. A straightforward rescue turns into something far more dangerous, as Trouble Dog, Konstanz and Childe find themselves at the center of a conflict that could engulf the entire galaxy. If she is to save her crew, Trouble Dog is going to have to remember how to fight . . .\nThis was just the book I needed after this week of uncertainty, layoffs, and general work politics. We\u0026rsquo;ve been driving, hard at a delivery date in November (itself a no-no in Amazon\u0026rsquo;s calendar), and my people are fraying around the edges. I haven\u0026rsquo;t been sleeping, with new and vibrant nightmares each day. Latest was watching pitifully as one of my cattle tried to get to its feet, but its lower front leg was broken so it collapsed each time, injuring itself further.\nOne doesn\u0026rsquo;t have to be Freud to see the symbolism.\nIn any case, the book appeared suddenly in my Audible queue. I didn\u0026rsquo;t have to buy it; it was just THERE. As I started listening to it, I recognized it. I\u0026rsquo;ve apparently heard it before, but had zero recollection. Guess I need to journal more book reviews.\nThe central conceit is the \u0026ldquo;Trouble Dog\u0026rdquo;, a sentient ship. The \u0026ldquo;Dog\u0026rdquo; was part of a pack of ships fromt he \u0026ldquo;Carnivore\u0026rdquo; class where their AIs are a cyborg amalgam of human stem cells, dogs/wolves, and high-level machine AI. The ships they control can house up to 300, but really require \u0026lsquo;0\u0026rsquo; since the AI can run the ship.\nThis first book in the series balances a boatload for universe-building and a central through-line chase plot with several heel-turn moments. It times at about 9 hours of audiobook, but it just moves. Some of the characters work, and others are more background for future entries in the series.\nThe plot centers on a planet-side evade-and-survive narrative, contrasted with the journey of the Trouble Dog. Both weave around the redemption narrative of beings following the genocide of an entire planet.\nBook: After Midnight by Daphne du Maurier I got suckered-in by an NPR \u0026ldquo;Fresh Air\u0026rdquo; review.\nThis is an awfully good book, and in the moment, I find it quite entertaining. Daphne du Maurier is the author that gave us the genesis for \u0026ldquo;The Birds\u0026rdquo; (adapted by Hitchcock) and Don\u0026rsquo;t Look Now. She\u0026rsquo;s prolific, and this book has a foreward by Stephen King himself.\nI used to think King\u0026rsquo;s penchant for short stories was odd. Now I just realize he was following in du Maurier\u0026rsquo;s well-worn footsteps.\nIn any case, the book is a collection of short stories. Listening, it\u0026rsquo;s 21 hours long, with each story being a 1 to 2 hour listen. Of 13 stories, I made it through\u0026hellip;.3?\nThese are unsettling, paranormal stories. If you have my brain chemsitry, they apparently make you start doubting reality. That\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip;.not good.\nI did enjoy \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t Look Now\u0026rdquo; quite a bit.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/11/a-rainy-saturday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Huh.   Looks like rain.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIndeed.  We had a \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/07/the-july-4th-texas-floods/\"\u003ecatastrophic flood this summer\u003c/a\u003e, and as we sit we\u0026rsquo;re \u003cem\u003estill\u003c/em\u003e at about 40\u0026quot; of rain for the year.  Average annual is about 35\u0026quot;, and most years we\u0026rsquo;ve lived here, it\u0026rsquo;s been more like 25-28\u0026quot;.   Any way you slice it, it\u0026rsquo;s been a good year for rain.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo off-and-on today, it looked like low clouds, bright sunshine, thunderstorms, and everything in between.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"book-embers-of-war\"\u003eBook: Embers of War\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo after I couldn\u0026rsquo;t retain the will to live (see next review), I switched over to Gareth J. Powell\u0026rsquo;s excellent \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Embers-War-Gareth-L-Powell-ebook/dp/B0719VDGLD\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Embers of War\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e book, the first of a trilogy\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Rainy Saturday"},{"content":"\nSo, by end of week Amazon May Be Smaller. No idea if I\u0026rsquo;m affected, but it helps me to write about it, so here we are.\nI spent seventeen years at a place with only one strategic move: Downsize. In that 17 years, there were constant rumors about \u0026ldquo;rightsizing\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;downsizing\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;aligning headcount\u0026rdquo;. The constancy made it gallows humor. It also made me erratic and flinty at home. As sole breadwinner\u0026ndash;by choice\u0026ndash;I knew that my growing family required me to have a job. There was no plan B.\nAnd in a literal sense, in Lexington, Ky, there wasn\u0026rsquo;t much of a job market for a Java programmer. \u0026ldquo;Where are you going to go?\u0026rdquo; seemed to be the management reposte, or simply \u0026ldquo;Well, there\u0026rsquo;s the door.\u0026rdquo;\nSo, from 1999 to 2016, we\u0026rsquo;d all listen anxiously to quarterly results and parse for the words \u0026ldquo;restructuring\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;reorganization\u0026rdquo;. Finally, I had enough\u0026ndash;in 2016 I took the \u0026ldquo;Voluntary Reduction Plan\u0026rdquo;. They paid me a week\u0026rsquo;s salary for every year served + $xxx and I bailed.\nComing here from 2016 to 2022 it was a hiring party that never ended. Every slide deck, presentation, paper, etc. ended with \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re Hiring\u0026rdquo;. We recruited mercilessly locally, nationally, and internally. We wanted people working with us. Sure, some wouldn\u0026rsquo;t work-out or chose to leave, but the general tenor was clear: \u0026ldquo;Always Be Hiring\u0026rdquo;\nThen 2022 changed all that. Amazon hadn\u0026rsquo;t seen a Reduction in Force (RIF) in over 15 years. Even then, it was hiring freezes + regular attrition, then back to hiring-as-usual. Not 2022\u0026ndash;then it was cuts handed down by above.\nI was a manager then, as I am now. I had no idea what was to come until the notification day-of. So, I\u0026rsquo;m walking into the dark as we stand here.\nI\u0026rsquo;m still that guy who\u0026rsquo;s the sole breadwinner, only now it\u0026rsquo;s college funds and private school tuition.\nI have a terrific wife, and she\u0026rsquo;s the \u0026ldquo;saver.\u0026rdquo; As noted, I got real and turned over the finances to her earlier this year. Now, we have an emergency fund, and the tuition saved for both daughters to go to school, both in HS and college. If needs be\u0026hellip;well, we\u0026rsquo;ll discuss that when the time comes.\n\u0026ldquo;Tech Winter\u0026rdquo; may come for me tomorrow, but we\u0026rsquo;ve prepared. Thanks be to my wife.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/10/the-sword-of-damocles/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Damocles-WestallPC20080120-8842A.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, by end of week \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/amazon-targets-many-30000-corporate-job-cuts-sources-say-2025-10-27/\"\u003eAmazon May Be Smaller\u003c/a\u003e.  No idea if I\u0026rsquo;m affected, but it helps me to write about it, so here we are.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI spent seventeen years at a place with only one strategic move: Downsize.  In that 17 years, there were constant rumors about \u0026ldquo;rightsizing\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;downsizing\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;aligning headcount\u0026rdquo;.  The constancy made it gallows humor.  It also made me erratic and flinty at home.  As sole breadwinner\u0026ndash;by choice\u0026ndash;I knew that my growing family required me to have a job.  \u003cem\u003eThere was no plan B\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Sword of Damocles"},{"content":"This is going to be a boring review. I listened to this audiobook, got to the end, found it so utterly unsatisfactory that it deleted itself from my memory.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s Katabasis for you.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s begin: I have a soft spot for Hell. I read the Cliffs Notes for Dante\u0026rsquo;s Inferno when I was 10, then the actual work many times since I was mid-teens. Orpheus, Hades Town, you name it\u0026ndash;I like people\u0026rsquo;s takes on Damnation.\nOn the whole, I find it much more reasonable than Heaven. Heaven seems boring. I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;ll come to regret those words someday.\nIn any case\u0026hellip;Katabasis.\nFurther on the \u0026ldquo;Harold with a mayfly brain\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;I have no memory of anyone recommending this book to me. It just showed-up on my Wishlist on Audible, likely from a NPR Fresh Air book recommendation. I consumed it over about a week, and it went through the full arc of (1) Neat Premise, (2) Obvious middle, (3) What\u0026rsquo;s even happening, to (4) Oh right, there needs to be an ending.\nNeat Premise In the novel, we open on the protagonist and narrator, American magical prodigy Alice Law, preparing to jump from a pentagram drawn on the floor of a room at Cambridge University to Hell/Hades to retrieve her Magick Studies Professor so he can approver her Doctoral status in magic. Just as she\u0026rsquo;s about to start the incantation, Peter Murdoch, her rival and \u0026ldquo;Golden Boy\u0026rdquo; student bursts in and insists on coming with.\nThe price to go to hell? Just half your remaining lifespan, assuming you ever get back out in the first place.\nOh well. They\u0026rsquo;re 22 and figure 30 years of their remaining lifespan is fine. They decide to make a soiree of it, and go together.\nObvious middle Once in Hell, they enter the first canto, Limbo and it\u0026rsquo;s not so bad. They encounter some familiar characters the way Dante would\u0026rsquo;ve. Various \u0026ldquo;levels\u0026rdquo; match Dante\u0026rsquo;s experience: Lust, Greed, Wrath, etc. Some have some novel representations and inhabitants.\nFor those who\u0026rsquo;ve read Dante, it\u0026rsquo;s interesting but not as zesty.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s even happening? So where things veer is when the main internal and external conflicts are introduced. Initially the rivalry between Peter and Eve takes the stage, but then an \u0026ldquo;evil\u0026rdquo; set of magicians in hell becomes the boogeyman, the \u0026ldquo;Terminator\u0026rdquo;-style pursuers that hound our protagonists.\nThings really fall off the wheels, and honestly I wonder if the author is trying to make us feel what it\u0026rsquo;s like to be listless in Hell itself. Because I just about put the book down.\nOh right, an ending So Eve reaches the city of hell, Dis, gets tempted, breaks free, meets umm\u0026hellip;Satan, I guess? It\u0026rsquo;s rushed, narrative threads get tied up.\nSummary Review Overall, Katabasis is like alot of Fantasy/Sci Fi I\u0026rsquo;ve been reading lately. It sets-up a terrific premise, and then the characters just don\u0026rsquo;t feel real. The book spends hours of en medias res flashbacks explaining just WHY two super-bright magicians are obsessed with going to Hell to retrieve a guy they both hate.\nUltimately it rings hollow and I wish I had the hours I spent listening back. There are some novel ideas here but they don\u0026rsquo;t go anywhere for me. I can\u0026rsquo;t recommend Katabasis, at all.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/10/review-katabasis/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is going to be a boring review.   I listened to this audiobook, got to the end, found it so utterly unsatisfactory that it deleted itself from my memory.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"https://www.audible.com/pd/Katabasis-Audiobook/B0DPJH7WXZ\"\u003eKatabasis\u003c/a\u003e for you.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51IZq3OFz0L._SL500_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s begin: I have a soft spot for Hell.   I read the Cliffs Notes for Dante\u0026rsquo;s Inferno when I was 10, then the actual work many times since I was mid-teens.  Orpheus, Hades Town, you name it\u0026ndash;I like people\u0026rsquo;s takes on Damnation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Katabasis"},{"content":"I don\u0026rsquo;t know where to start.\nPolitics So the US Government shut down at the end of the fiscal year, midnight on October 1st. Auspicious beginning, that. Both sides blame one another, and I\u0026rsquo;d give a slight edge to the R\u0026rsquo;s blaming the D\u0026rsquo;s for refusing to pass a continuing resolution. Neither side has its stuff together, particularly, but at least one side was going to keep public employees\u0026hellip;well\u0026hellip;employed.\nOur infant-in-chief has done other things since then but it\u0026rsquo;s more \u0026ldquo;flood the zone\u0026rdquo; crap. Demolishing part of the White House to build a gaudy ballroom named for himself on donated funds from those who bent-the-knee. Canceling negotiations with Canada (Canada?) because they ran an ad he didn\u0026rsquo;t like. Blowing Venezuelan boats out of international waters because we feel like it. Shelling California from the sea during the 250th Marine Corp Birthday, causing traffic on I-5 to back-up. Threatening to \u0026ldquo;cancel NASA\u0026rdquo;.\nHonestly, it\u0026rsquo;s day to day or hour-to-hour with this jackhole. Just chaos. This year has felt like a decade.\nNewest \u0026ldquo;fun\u0026rdquo; realization\u0026ndash;Food stamps (\u0026ldquo;SNAP benefits\u0026rdquo;) will start running out on November 1st. We\u0026rsquo;ll see how the masses will react to going hungry. Likely, it won\u0026rsquo;t be passive.\nWork In the corporate intrigue department, my Vice President \u0026ldquo;left to pursue opportunities outside effective yesterday\u0026rdquo; on 9/23. Then on 9/14, they announced a re-org. Havign been through approximately 127 reorgs in my 26 years, I can tell when it\u0026rsquo;s a transitional not a \u0026ldquo;final\u0026rdquo; one. This one was very transitional and intrigue continues.\nMore broadly, there are Layoff Rumors. My next stock vest is Nov 15/21, so one just hopes to make it past there. My vests for next year are garbage because of 2 years of bad ratings (one year was earned, tbf). We\u0026rsquo;re learning to live on less at my house.\nFor the actual WORK I\u0026rsquo;m doing, I\u0026rsquo;m loving it. I have six sharp developers on my team, ranging from Junior to Senior, and another Senior Engineer who\u0026rsquo;s been working closely since April. We\u0026rsquo;re making headway and there are more good days than bad. What we\u0026rsquo;re doing is customer-facing work with thousands of customers satisfied every day. I\u0026rsquo;m mentoring another manger who\u0026rsquo;s coming up as a peer, and my local group of managers is a neat team.\nCollege Search Colleges are falling like leaves.\nSo, M\u0026rsquo;s first choice remains Abilene Christian University. It\u0026rsquo;s odd, in that we first visited there when she was a Sophomore and we concluded it was a \u0026ldquo;meets needs\u0026rdquo; school (middle ranking between a \u0026ldquo;reach\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;safety\u0026rdquo;). Since then it keeps coming back into the discussion, particularly now that she\u0026rsquo;s looking to get into the Honors Program. As it stands, between her 529 and the scholarship money they\u0026rsquo;ve already offered, she can go to this private school with $0 in loans.\nAfter spending a week there in a summer program, she loves it and already has 6+ people committed to go.\nThis month we visited Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas. If the world came to an end, Lubbock wouldn\u0026rsquo;t know for approximately 3 hours\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s that remote. The water is terrible and the air smells (depending on the wind direction) like the world\u0026rsquo;s largest cattle feedlot or the oilfields from Post, TX to its South. There are frequent dust storms, and it\u0026rsquo;s in Tornado Alley at the bottom of the panhandle.\nBut still, the school seemed intriguing. It\u0026rsquo;s a state school, with lots of programs, beautiful architecture, successful sports team, and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t give out that \u0026ldquo;culty\u0026rdquo; vibe like Texas A\u0026amp;M. Honestly, M was intrigued.\nThen we showed up.\nBasically she and Whitney had allergic reactions to anywhere that had food. There were supposed to be allergy-free, dietition-approved meals, but airborne allergens prevented us from getting anywhere near them. All of the afternoon sessions the day we went were in the Student Center, and neither M nor W could approach the door.\nSo, Tech was out.\nNext us was TCU. Apparently they used to \u0026ldquo;Texas Christian University\u0026rdquo; but they dropped all that and they\u0026rsquo;re just \u0026ldquo;TCU\u0026rdquo;. Whitney and Maria went up last Sunday and Monday to Fort Worth to tour the campus. I don\u0026rsquo;t have firsthand knowledge, but from my understanding it\u0026rsquo;s a no because they just don\u0026rsquo;t offer the STEM stuff M is looking for, and it\u0026rsquo;s the \u0026ldquo;rich kid\u0026rdquo; school that we\u0026rsquo;d understood from its reputation.\nAs we sit the \u0026ldquo;In the Clubhouse\u0026rdquo; list is:\nACU Baylor (supposing a miracle happens and we get tons of scholarships) Southwestern in Georgetown, TX Roughly, that seems to be the order of precedence.\nThis has been a very fun process and I\u0026rsquo;m excited to see what M chooses. I\u0026rsquo;m glad the \u0026ldquo;visitation\u0026rdquo; portion is coming to a close.\nRelationships Dad has found someone. I\u0026rsquo;m glad for him. We\u0026rsquo;re coming up on 1 year since Mom died and it\u0026rsquo;s better he\u0026rsquo;s not alone.\nI\u0026rsquo;m lonely these days, but it is what it is.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/10/october-2025/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t know where to start.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"politics\"\u003ePolitics\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the \u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0m5yrll\"\u003eUS Government shut down\u003c/a\u003e at the end of the fiscal year, midnight on October 1st.   Auspicious beginning, that.  Both sides blame one another, and I\u0026rsquo;d give a \u003cem\u003eslight\u003c/em\u003e edge to the R\u0026rsquo;s blaming the D\u0026rsquo;s for refusing to pass a continuing resolution.  Neither side has its stuff together, particularly, but at least one side was going to keep public employees\u0026hellip;well\u0026hellip;\u003cem\u003eemployed\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur infant-in-chief has done other things since then but it\u0026rsquo;s more \u0026ldquo;flood the zone\u0026rdquo; crap.  Demolishing part of the White House to build a gaudy ballroom named for himself on donated funds from those who bent-the-knee.  Canceling negotiations with Canada (\u003cem\u003eCanada\u003c/em\u003e?) because they ran an ad he didn\u0026rsquo;t like.  Blowing Venezuelan boats out of international waters because we feel like it.  Shelling California from the sea during the 250th Marine Corp Birthday, causing traffic on I-5 to back-up.   Threatening to \u0026ldquo;cancel NASA\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"October 2025"},{"content":"So, let\u0026rsquo;s get it out of the way: Tron: Ares is a boondoggle.\nThis movie comes 15 years after its predecessor, Tron: Legacy, and forms more of a direct sequel to 1982\u0026rsquo;s Tron. Ares makes reference to Legacy but only in the sparest, \u0026ldquo;Let\u0026rsquo;s be in the same universe\u0026rdquo; way.\nIn any case, this is a $150 Million movie that, like Legacy will underperform. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t have broad appeal, but in the following paragraphs I\u0026rsquo;m going to defend why I actually LIKE this movie, and it might be worth a watch, even if you\u0026rsquo;re not sold on the Tron universe.\nPlot Summary The plot is fairly sparse and a pretext for various chases, similar to the first Terminator movie. We open on Julian Dillinger (Even Peters) of Evilcorp demonstrating his new tech for 3D printing\u0026hellip;umm\u0026hellip;I mean bringing items like tanks, fighter jets, and light cycles out of \u0026ldquo;The Grid\u0026rdquo; in seconds using laser. But, wow, it\u0026rsquo;s not just stuff\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s full AI android killing machines. They even make jokes.\nThing is, they only stay solvent for 29 minutes. After that they melt into nothingness.\nJump-cut to our female protagonist Eve Kim (Greta Lee) furiously loading 5 1/4\u0026quot; floppies into an IBM PC in a quonset hut in rural Alaska (?) looking for \u0026ldquo;The Permanence Code\u0026rdquo;. Once she finds it Encom\u0026ndash;of which she is CEO\u0026ndash;can do the same 3D printing trick with lasers, but the stuff doesn\u0026rsquo;t melt. Spoilers: She finds it after 4 days of looking. They try it out and make an orange tree bloom in Alaska. Not conspicuous, that. Couldn\u0026rsquo;t have tried a pine tree?\nSo they pack up and fly back to \u0026ldquo;Somewhere city\u0026rdquo; with the code on a flash drive. Starlink and ftp do not exist in this universe.\nFrom there it could be sort of a conventional McGuffin chase movie with Evilcorp trying to get the code from her. That\u0026rsquo;s 50% of it, but the other 50% is Ares (Jared Leto) himself. The ultimate killing machine and the ruler (Master Control Program) of Evilcorp\u0026rsquo;s version of \u0026ldquo;The Grid\u0026rdquo;, Ares begins developing a conscience. In researching Eve to find and kill her, he absorbs \u0026ldquo;Frankenstein\u0026rdquo; and understands he\u0026rsquo;s the creature. Eventually, he disobeys.\nThat disobedience and the need to resolve the permanance, combined with the \u0026ldquo;29 minute clock\u0026rdquo; animate the last act.\nWhy I liked this movie It\u0026rsquo;s exciting and chaotic. This is much more a popcorn flick than the Zen-like \u0026ldquo;Legacy\u0026rdquo;. Lt\u0026rsquo;s be honest, aside from Wilde\u0026rsquo;s Quorra and Sheen\u0026rsquo;s Castor/Zuse, the 2nd act of Legacy drags. All of the original Tron drags if we\u0026rsquo;re honest.\nGreta Lee She really carries the movie, forming its emotional heart and becoming the audience surrogate. I was really excited when she gets a moment on the Grid, but it\u0026rsquo;s only a moment. And, she\u0026rsquo;s no damsel in distress.\nJodie Turner-Smith as Athena. Her role is a trope, but she plays it with a clarity that steals every scene. Given the material, it\u0026rsquo;s amazing how much she\u0026rsquo;s able to get across in her character\u0026rsquo;s motivations and inner thoughts. She exhibits genuine menace and single-natured mission we haven\u0026rsquo;t seen since Arnold in T2.\nGillian Anderson as The Mom. Sometimes, you\u0026rsquo;ve created a monster. It\u0026rsquo;s sad when you realize it. This one slaps.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s beautiful, easily rivaling the cool aesthetic of \u0026ldquo;Legacy\u0026rdquo; with an overwhelming chaos that would benefit repeat viewing. One particular chase scene seems like an excuse to light $25 million on fire in rendering time alone. It\u0026rsquo;s all on the screen in 8k.\nSoundtrack. Intentionally not bold. It\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip;fine. I\u0026rsquo;m not a NIN fan, and arguably \u0026ldquo;Legacy\u0026rdquo; was a great Daft Punk album with a movie attached. This tries to be that. At times it succeeds.\nSummary Yes, Jared Leto produced this film and apparently put himself in the starring role. They ditched (?) the rest of the cast from Legacy aside from wheeling out Jeff Bridges in animated form one notch shy of Harold Ramis in \u0026ldquo;Ghostbusters: Afterlife\u0026rdquo;. They lost control during edit and some scenes switch from day to night in the space of 5 minutes. Many cool ideas get brushed aside. All that is true.\nHowever, it\u0026rsquo;s a fun time. Leto\u0026rsquo;s Machine -\u0026gt; Man transformation serves its purpose and he doesn\u0026rsquo;t chew the scenery, thank God for small miracles. The ensemble, no-name cast does a good job, and the visuals delight.\nI went in expecting to hate this movie, but I came out pleasantly surprised.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/10/review-tron-ares/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, let\u0026rsquo;s get it out of the way: \u003cem\u003eTron: Ares\u003c/em\u003e is a boondoggle.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"tron ares poster\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/image_2bb9d956.jpeg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis movie comes 15 years after its predecessor, \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/\"\u003eTron: Legacy\u003c/a\u003e, and forms more of a direct sequel to 1982\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827\"\u003eTron\u003c/a\u003e.  Ares makes reference to Legacy but only in the sparest, \u0026ldquo;Let\u0026rsquo;s be in the same universe\u0026rdquo; way.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn any case, this is a $150 Million movie that, like Legacy will underperform.  It doesn\u0026rsquo;t have broad appeal, but in the following paragraphs I\u0026rsquo;m going to defend why I actually \u003cem\u003eLIKE\u003c/em\u003e this movie, and it might be worth a watch, even if you\u0026rsquo;re not sold on the Tron universe.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Tron Ares"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m starting to get this blog into shape again. The transition to hugo was never fully complete, and I didn\u0026rsquo;t fully get the publishing workflow setup. The Blogger-to-jekyll script did scrape the comments into their own posts, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t actually get segregated and so many of my posts with comments just became the comments posts.\nI still don\u0026rsquo;t fully have the hang of the \u0026lt;\u0026lt; ref \u0026gt;\u0026gt; syntax, but I\u0026rsquo;m getting there. Zed has been a joy thus far. I\u0026rsquo;m fully off of VS Code and I don\u0026rsquo;t see compelling reasons to go back as it has MCP integrations of its own.\nBut now, the mechanics are out of the way: What to write? Do I even write?\nHonestly, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel like a choice\u0026ndash;some sing, some write poor poetry, some make viral videos. I write.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a melancholy journey getting this blog organized. It\u0026rsquo;s 21 years of my life. There was an earlier incarnation that was either NSFW or NSFL, depending on how you viewed it. In any case that one\u0026rsquo;s gone. (Thank God). I did manage to find my wife\u0026rsquo;s old blog on internet archive and it\u0026rsquo;s heartwrenching. She loved me so much. She was so open. How did I manage to screw that up so much?\nIn any case, what I actually wanted to be when I grew up: I wanted to be Brock Yates, and irascible staple of Car \u0026amp; Driver whose prose lit-up that august magazine each month. I\u0026rsquo;d check the mail EVERY DAY and look for that new issue. I\u0026rsquo;d smell it, feel the quality in the paper, leaf through the Tire Rack ad, and the Pirelli ad that always had some woman in a ridiculous racing suit draped over a sideview car.\nWhat mattered were the words. They described what it was like to drive a new 1994 Impala SS (\u0026ldquo;Mr. Vader, your car has arrived\u0026rdquo;), championed the nascent sport compacts like the B13 Nissan Sentra SE-R, and of course touted Honda and BMW until the cows came home. Any shootout featuring a Honda or BMW was over before it began.\nIt didn\u0026rsquo;t matter\u0026ndash;I wanted that writer\u0026rsquo;s life, to let my literal car mania loose, combined with my on-the-spectrum ability to memorize and bench-race. I styled that I\u0026rsquo;d be able to keep up with Pat Bedard (um\u0026hellip;no), or Don Schroeder (God rest his soul), or Csaba Csere.\nIn reality, I might as well have tried out for Vogue with Anna Wintour herself. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t gonna happen, and like many I consoled myself with great car boards in the 2000s like VWVortex, or The Truth About Cars. At least it was methadone to my addiction. I\u0026rsquo;d never drive or own these cars, but at least I could be next to the blowhards who\u0026rsquo;d own a VW Phaeton or a BMW 7-series or a Lambo Gallardo.\nThen things changed. Video appeared. Insufferable blowhards like Doug DeMuro and Tyler Hoovie got the clicks and the eyeballs, and that\u0026rsquo;s what every new person wanted to be: A Youtube car reviewer. Instead of days/weeks of carefully crafted prose capturing le mot juste, we\u0026rsquo;d see extemporaneous ravings from \u0026ldquo;personalities\u0026rdquo;.\nDavid E. Davis was a \u0026ldquo;personality\u0026rdquo;. He also didn\u0026rsquo;t suffer fools and he\u0026rsquo;d find this state of affairs disgusting.\nPrint media is dead. Publisher\u0026rsquo;s Clearinghouse declared bankruptcy this week. Every online \u0026ldquo;car site\u0026rdquo; is a eyeball-rending clickbait hub of ads just to stay solvent. The simple cleanliness of TTAC is long gone.\nBut, I still like words. So here they go. Shouted into the void, where no one cares, living safe in an Amazon S3 bucket until my credit card goes dormant.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/09/what-i-wanted-to-be/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m starting to get this blog into shape again.  The transition to hugo was never fully complete, and I didn\u0026rsquo;t fully get the publishing workflow setup.   The Blogger-to-jekyll script did scrape the comments into their own posts, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t actually get segregated and so many of my posts with comments just became the comments posts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI still don\u0026rsquo;t fully have the hang of the \u003ccode\u003e\u0026lt;\u0026lt; ref \u0026gt;\u0026gt;\u003c/code\u003e syntax, but I\u0026rsquo;m getting there.   Zed has been a joy thus far.  I\u0026rsquo;m fully off of VS Code and I don\u0026rsquo;t see compelling reasons to go back as it has MCP integrations of its own.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What I wanted to be"},{"content":"So, 20 years ago today, I got married. From three days in to the marriage I screwed things up, and have continued to do so since. My wife is honoring her commitment to me, but honestly she signed-up for none of this.\nIn this post, I\u0026rsquo;d like to enumerate some things I\u0026rsquo;d do differently if I had a time machine.\nI\u0026rsquo;d still get married. It must be said: I love my wife, and I was head-over-heels in love with her when we married. I firmly believe I would be dead or in prison if not for my wife. And of course I love all our children. No regrets.\nI\u0026rsquo;d get married at a different time. There were financial reason we rushed to get married after getting engaged in the Spring and married by September. Getting married the next spring/summer would\u0026rsquo;ve taken some stress off everyone\nI would\u0026rsquo;ve moved to Lousiville and lived in my wife\u0026rsquo;s apartment. Moving threw us into immediate mortage debt, and it uprooted my wife and son from their lives and support structure (grandparents and extended family). They moved to a place where they had nobody and I was always gone working.\nI would\u0026rsquo;ve insisted my wife finish her degree. She is genius-level intelligent, and through my blasé stupidity this happened.\nI would\u0026rsquo;ve insisted on a full 2-week honeymoon that was fully-planned to somewhere memorable. I screwed this up royally because I worked at 110% level right up until the day before my wedding. No bachelor\u0026rsquo;s party, barely any help to plan the wedding. Honeymoon was supposed to be my responsibility and I fucked it up, royally.\nI would\u0026rsquo;ve insisted my wife keep her wedding dress. I won\u0026rsquo;t go into the scenario, but it\u0026rsquo;s utterly my fault and it will follow me to the grave.\nI would\u0026rsquo;ve gotten full psychiatric therapy before even ENTERTAINING a relationship with a woman. I\u0026rsquo;ve been despicable to at least 2 great women in my life, most especially my wife. Out of 20 years, it\u0026rsquo;s really only been the last 1-2 where I\u0026rsquo;ve been steady. At all.\nWork. I really don\u0026rsquo;t know how to solve this\u0026ndash;I like to work. It\u0026rsquo;s really the only thing that makes me happy. But I\u0026rsquo;d (somehow) figure out how to establish boundaries with work and hold to them so that I could be there for my family. No more missing out on shows we HAD TICKETS FOR (Sarah Brightman), innumerable kids events, etc.\nWork Part 2: I would\u0026rsquo;ve quit. Multiple times, multiple companies. I stayed at one place 12+ years too long, to the point where I was called a \u0026ldquo;Company Man\u0026rdquo;. Passed up probably $1M in salary off the top.\nMore vacations. I hated vacations (brain chemistry+workaholism). I was always afraid I\u0026rsquo;d act-out and I usually did, to the point where my wife allocated day 3 of the Disney vacation as \u0026ldquo;Let\u0026rsquo;s hang out at the pool because Dad\u0026rsquo;s going to go nuts\u0026rdquo;. She was right. Provided there\u0026rsquo;s corrective meds, I can do just fine on a trip now.\nRunning. I never would\u0026rsquo;ve quit running. I pulled my Hamstring around 2008 or so and just stopped.\nSwimming. I picked-up swimming around 2014 and loved it. I was able to do 1/4 mile in the lap pool easily at the end. When we moved to Texas I quit.\nRacing. I never should\u0026rsquo;ve stopped racing. If we didn\u0026rsquo;t have the mortgage, I could\u0026rsquo;ve kept at it. It was my football/fishing/gambling. It\u0026rsquo;s really one of the few sustained activities of my adult life where I was happy. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t particularly talented, but I was good enough. I think resentment at giving this up drove a lot of my heart-of-coal behavior.\nWe could never afford our second house. We needed to move, undoubtedly\u0026ndash;meth house 2 doors down, and gangbangers doing the \u0026ldquo;finger gun\u0026rdquo; pointed at me from their lowriders. We could\u0026rsquo;ve picked a less expensive place, though\u0026ndash;new place was 2x mortgage and I was under stress every month.\nBring my wife into the finances. Substantially, I do things with money. Hide it. Kite it. I try to be clever, and that never goes well. I turned over our finances to my wife this year and we\u0026rsquo;ve immediately turned our finances around. Nineteen years a fool. smh.\nTake a more active role in church selection, school selection, family life in general. I spent the better part of 2 decades with a \u0026ldquo;Couldn\u0026rsquo;t be bothered\u0026rdquo; attitude. As a result, I\u0026rsquo;m just kinda \u0026ldquo;there\u0026rdquo; at home. I do stuff, take care of things. I\u0026rsquo;m not really a Dad, and I\u0026rsquo;m certainly not a Husband. I\u0026rsquo;m something else. Guess I earned that by that blasé attitude again.\nNever talk to a member of the opposite sex about your marriage. Enough said.\nLearn and respect the love language of your spouse, even if yours was burned-out by your overgifting parent.\nRealize your value isn\u0026rsquo;t your career. Making \u0026ldquo;L5\u0026rdquo; Software Engineer and being on the track of \u0026ldquo;Senior Member of Technical Staff\u0026rdquo; means nothing. That company will go private and then be bought out by the Chinese and get bled dry. Techno-Ozzymandias. \u0026ldquo;Look at my works, ye mighty, and despair\u0026rdquo;. One better: \u0026ldquo;All is vanity\u0026rdquo;\nWhat KILLS me about all the above is: Given my track record, it\u0026rsquo;s doubtful I apply any of these lessons. If I do, I can\u0026rsquo;t undo 20 years of screwing-up that broke at least 4 relationships.\nSo, dear reader, as my coworkers said 20 years ago after my honeymoon story: \u0026ldquo;Wow. Thanks for telling me. This was a great example of what not to do\u0026rdquo;\nIndeed.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/09/on-20-years-of-marriage/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, 20 years ago today, I \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/the-wedding-summation/\"\u003egot married\u003c/a\u003e.  From three days in to the marriage I screwed things up, and have continued to do so since.  My wife is honoring her commitment to me, but honestly she signed-up for none of this.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this post, I\u0026rsquo;d like to enumerate some things I\u0026rsquo;d do differently if I had a time machine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d still get married.  It must be said:  I love my wife, and I was head-over-heels in love with her when we married.  I firmly believe I would be dead or in prison if not for my wife.  And of course I love all our children.  No regrets.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On 20 Years of Marriage"},{"content":"So I quit some of my podcasts:\nPodcast Theme Review Bloomberg Hot Pursuit Cars It eventually got tiring to hear about what the 0.001% did, car-wise. Everyday Driver Car Debate Cars Just repetitive dreck. It Gets Late Early: Ageism in the Workplace Corporate Life We\u0026rsquo;re all getting older and the jobs aren\u0026rsquo;t. It sucks. It will continue to suck. Mayim Bialik\u0026rsquo;s Breakdown Psychology, Celebrities One too many episodes about crystals I\u0026rsquo;m trying to do more audiobooks. Probably some reviews soon\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/09/podcasts-2025-part-2/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo I quit some of my podcasts:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ctable\u003e\n\t\u003cthead\u003e\n\t\t\t\u003ctr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003cth\u003ePodcast\u003c/th\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003cth\u003eTheme\u003c/th\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003cth\u003eReview\u003c/th\u003e\n\t\t\t\u003c/tr\u003e\n\t\u003c/thead\u003e\n\t\u003ctbody\u003e\n\t\t\t\u003ctr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003ctd\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/podcasts/series/hot-pursuit\"\u003eBloomberg Hot Pursuit\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003ctd\u003eCars\u003c/td\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003ctd\u003eIt eventually got tiring to hear about what the 0.001% did, car-wise.\u003c/td\u003e\n\t\t\t\u003c/tr\u003e\n\t\t\t\u003ctr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003ctd\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.podcastone.com/everyday-driver\"\u003eEveryday Driver Car Debate\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003ctd\u003eCars\u003c/td\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003ctd\u003eJust repetitive dreck.\u003c/td\u003e\n\t\t\t\u003c/tr\u003e\n\t\t\t\u003ctr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003ctd\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.itgetslateearly.com/\"\u003eIt Gets Late Early: Ageism in the Workplace\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003ctd\u003eCorporate Life\u003c/td\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003ctd\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re all getting older and the jobs aren\u0026rsquo;t.  It sucks. It will continue to suck.\u003c/td\u003e\n\t\t\t\u003c/tr\u003e\n\t\t\t\u003ctr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003ctd\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/\"\u003eMayim Bialik\u0026rsquo;s Breakdown\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003ctd\u003ePsychology, Celebrities\u003c/td\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\u003ctd\u003eOne too many episodes about crystals\u003c/td\u003e\n\t\t\t\u003c/tr\u003e\n\t\u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m trying to do more audiobooks.  Probably some reviews soon\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Podcasts 2025, Part 2"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;You know, you could take some time off\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yeah, but I know myself well enough to know I won\u0026rsquo;t.\u0026rdquo;\nI awoke this morning knowing I had to make it to work for a 9:30 meeting\u0026hellip;in a former life that\u0026rsquo;d be laughably late, but now it\u0026rsquo;s early. Maybe I\u0026rsquo;ve finally become institutionalized to Austin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;10am at the earliest\u0026rdquo; culture, or maybe it\u0026rsquo;s the 45 to 60-minute drive, or just simple burnout. Since we returned to office 5 days per week this year, it\u0026rsquo;s just been a grind. Having the flexibility to work-from-home even 1 day a week helped. Now: This is life.\nIn any case, sitting in the dark at 6:45 I noticed myself scratching and saw hives from my index finger up to my elbow. Apparently grief + stress = hives now. Fun.\nOh, and about 10 minutes later, apropos of nothing, I just shouted \u0026ldquo;FUCK!\u0026rdquo; into the aether. So add Tourettes, I suppose.\nThe Rabbit Done Died So as noted, Joe passed away this week. We buried him on our property the same evening, as the sun set. He picked a good day\u0026hellip;it has me thinking what the day will be like when I die? Cold? Rainy? Snowy? Sunny?\nIn the end, the day is appointed, and I\u0026rsquo;m headed that way. Mom\u0026rsquo;s passing really hammered that point home.\nKirk\u0026rsquo;s death On the same day, September 10th, Political commemtator Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Orem, Utah, at Utah Valley University. As of today, the 12th, they\u0026rsquo;ve apprehended a suspect.\nI really have no commentary on the matter, other than: It\u0026rsquo;s 1968 again. Strap in. We seem to be silencing people with guns, now.\nACTUAL WORK STUFF So I\u0026rsquo;m a manager again. I have been since March. I haven\u0026rsquo;t bothered updating my linkedin because I find the LinkedIn performative thing exhausting.\nI love my team. They all joined me from other teams and wanted to work on the mission we have. They\u0026rsquo;re motivated, skilled, and honestly I have trouble keeping up with them. That\u0026rsquo;s always a good thing®.\nSo today, I sit writing documents, trying out our new internal GenAI tools for doing that and typing this on a new editor: Zed. For the past 5+ years I\u0026rsquo;ve been using these editors:\nvim: I need to edit a file in under a minute. I know what to change. Vim is basically a fancier version sed for my usecase, and you\u0026rsquo;ll pry it from my cold dead hands. This is my F-22 Raptor, a stone-cold killer. Can\u0026rsquo;t imagine doing production code in vim anymore though. there are better tools IntelliJ/Android Studio: this is the Antonov 225. Massive, bloated and can absolutely get the job done. For Java, Kotlin, or (ofc) Android, these Jetbrains behemoths with enough processor behind them are the best way. As Work buys us licenses for the pro version, and also M3+ Macbook Pros, an obvious choice. Much of our tooling assumes you\u0026rsquo;re using one of these tools. VS Code: Everything else. I write/wrote this blog in VSCode, did most of our GenAI experiements there (tooling support is easy), and did any edits of JavaScript/TypeScript/Python there. There\u0026rsquo;s always been a \u0026ldquo;tweener\u0026rdquo; market between a full IDE and an Editor and this was the natural successor to SlickEdit -\u0026gt; Sublime Text -\u0026gt; etc. Thing is I really fundamentally hate it. As an Electron app it\u0026rsquo;s basically a big webapp running inside a Chromium engine, and it eats resources. From the Middle 2010\u0026rsquo;s until now, it feels like every \u0026ldquo;app\u0026rdquo; is just a webapp running in a big, memory-hogging frame. So, fixing Slot #3 I\u0026rsquo;m giving VS Code a whirl. Purportedly it integrates with our GenAI goodies, and as a manager I dont\u0026rsquo; code as much anymore.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/09/friday-at-work/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You know, you could take some time off\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Yeah, but I know myself well enough to know I won\u0026rsquo;t.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI awoke this morning knowing I had to make it to work for a 9:30 meeting\u0026hellip;in a former life that\u0026rsquo;d be laughably late, but now it\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eearly\u003c/em\u003e.   Maybe I\u0026rsquo;ve finally become institutionalized to Austin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;10am at the earliest\u0026rdquo; culture, or maybe it\u0026rsquo;s the 45 to 60-minute drive, or just simple burnout.   Since we returned to office 5 days per week this year, it\u0026rsquo;s just been a grind.   Having the flexibility to work-from-home even 1 day a week helped.  Now: This is life.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Friday at Work"},{"content":"Our last bunny, Joe, died suddenly today. He was about 8 years old.\nAs we were preparing to walk out the door, I went in to feed Joe his morning pellets as usual and he was sitting in his hutch flaring his nostrils and biting at the air. It seeme like he was struggling to breathe. Well, that\u0026rsquo;s not good, I thought.\nGrace came in and picked him up, taking him to Whitney but he seemed desperate to get out of her arms. Looking back on it, I suppose he was smothering. He bounded down onto the kitchen table and hopped a few times. Then Grace picked him up again.\nThen he started screaming.\nRabbits only do this when they\u0026rsquo;re in extreme pain or they\u0026rsquo;re dying. He sprawled out immobile until the screaming subsided, then he seemed to twitch and loaf back to himself.\nI grabbed the carrier and Whitney put him in it, then I took off for the vet about 20 minutes away. He started screaming again a few miles down the road. I told him I was there with him and reached back to touch the front of his carrier. He twitched a few times.\nThen, it was quiet. I thought I heard some movement, but by the time I got to the vet he wasn\u0026rsquo;t breathing, lying with his head cocked to one side, unseeing eye rolled halfway shut. Joe was gone.\nIn a daze, I took him into the vet and the desk nurse grabbed the carrier and took him back immediately. I just sat down in a stupor. They called me back and told me he was gone.\nThey emphasized that likely something had happened making it difficult ot breathe, maybe fluid\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s hard to say. I told him he was fine yesterday; they said it\u0026rsquo;s good. He went quickly and didn\u0026rsquo;t suffer. when they enter the \u0026ldquo;death scream\u0026rdquo; phase they\u0026rsquo;re no longer conscious.\nSo, my bunny died today, likely marking the end of the bunny adventure that fulfilled a lifelong dream of Maria. Every member of our family game to care deeply for these lagomorphs and we miss them.\nJoe loved watching TV with me, listening to me type on my mechanical keyboard, and hiding in the upper floor of his enclosure that he slowly chewed to oblivion.\nHe will be missed.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/09/thus-ends-joe/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOur last bunny, Joe, died suddenly today.  He was about 8 years old.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"bunnies\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/images/2025/09/bunnies.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs we were preparing to walk out the door, I went in to feed Joe his morning pellets as usual and he was sitting in his hutch flaring his nostrils and biting at the air.  It seeme like he was struggling to breathe.   Well, that\u0026rsquo;s not good, I thought.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGrace came in and picked him up, taking him to Whitney but he seemed desperate to get out of her arms.  Looking back on it, I suppose he was smothering.  He bounded down onto the kitchen table and hopped a few times.  Then Grace picked him up again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thus Ends Joe"},{"content":"You really don\u0026rsquo;t appreciate how attached you are to spending money until you can\u0026rsquo;t.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve been on a financial diet at my house since February. Last year, between salary and stock, I made X amount of money. I paid nearly 30% of X in taxes, which I found funny, since it was more than I was making before I took a job here in 2016.\nIn any case, this year I\u0026rsquo;m on track to make about 60% of X. While that will make filing my 1040 easier, it\u0026rsquo;s made living a skosh harder from a Cash Flow perspective. On top of that add:\nA new roof ($30,000) A new chimney cap ($4,000) A few, a lot of concerts since February (Priceless) So in sum, I live on a 10 acre ranch that\u0026rsquo;s worth roughly 2 times \u0026ldquo;X\u0026rdquo; from above, with roughly \u0026ldquo;X\u0026rdquo; in equity, I entered the year with roughly 20% of \u0026ldquo;X\u0026rdquo; in emergency savings, and an overall net worth of 4 times \u0026ldquo;X\u0026rdquo;.\nAll that to say: Depending how you look at it, I\u0026rsquo;m broke.\nI\u0026rsquo;m living the Dave Ramsey anecdote about \u0026ldquo;money comes in, money goes out\u0026hellip;only the names are changed to protect the innocent.\u0026rdquo; Eat out? Seldom. Movies? Nah. Buying stuff? Out of the question.\nEvery discretionary expense is audited and axed.\nThis is me in 2025: Making \u0026ldquo;X\u0026rdquo; and asking why?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/09/solve-for-x/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou really don\u0026rsquo;t appreciate how attached you are to spending money until you can\u0026rsquo;t.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve been on a financial diet at my house since February.   Last year, between salary and stock, I made X amount of money.   I paid nearly 30% of X in taxes, which I found funny, since it was more than I was making before I took a job here in 2016.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn any case, this year I\u0026rsquo;m on track to make about 60% of X.   While that will make filing my 1040 easier, it\u0026rsquo;s made living a skosh harder from a Cash Flow perspective.  On top of that add:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Solve for X"},{"content":"Nine months is a long time\u0026ndash;Plenty of time for a baby to be born, or for a cow to birth a calf. Enough time for a madman to be well on his way to dismantling the American Republic.\nIn my case it took nine months for me to feel\u0026hellip;anything about Mom dying. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t call her \u0026ldquo;Mom\u0026rdquo; even. Every discussion was \u0026ldquo;my mother,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;my mom.\u0026rdquo; Somehow this arms-length feeling helped me not feel. I desperately needed to avoid feeling.\nThe way I kept describing to those who\u0026rsquo;d listen, both professionals and laymen, was I was holding in a sneeze. You know what it\u0026rsquo;s like to feel a sneeze coming? To know it has to be expressed, but feel helpless to let it out.\nNow, do 9 months of that.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know what jarred me lose\u0026ndash;probably the double bill of my parent\u0026rsquo;s Anniversary on 8/10 and my mom\u0026rsquo;s birthday on 8/18 (she would\u0026rsquo;ve been 73). I walked around, and it started somewhere in my solar plexus, a sort of ache. Then it spread up to my heart and just stayed there. Honestly, I haven\u0026rsquo;t felt that since my future wife and I broke up in 1999. It\u0026rsquo;s a sort of gnaw and absence, a scarring sort of wound that seems to be expelling the poison, if not closing yet.\nBut somehow, at my next appointment, I could say \u0026ldquo;Mom.\u0026rdquo; Not arms-length. \u0026ldquo;My guy\u0026rdquo; recommends I sit with the grief, make time for it. Make \u0026ldquo;Grief appointments\u0026rdquo;.q\nI can only reflect how utterly ridiculous Mom would find the concept.\n\u0026ldquo;They\u0026rsquo;re DEAD! Find a pine box and stick\u0026rsquo;em in a hole for all I care. I despise funerals. Utter waste of time! Please do the same when my time comes.\u0026rdquo;\nOf course, we didn\u0026rsquo;t do that. God decided Breathitt County needed a snow day December 11, 2024, when the bore Mom to her resting place at Combs cemetary, up Highway 30 West, where the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River comes together with the road to Canoe (\u0026ldquo;COO-knew\u0026rdquo;) and Old Buck.\nFrom her grave, you can see the spot where I was baptized.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/09/on-feeling-again/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNine months is a long time\u0026ndash;Plenty of time for a baby to be born, or for a cow to birth a calf.   Enough time for a madman to be well on his way to dismantling the American Republic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn my case it took nine months for me to feel\u0026hellip;anything about \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/01/2024-year-in-review/#tragedies\"\u003eMom dying\u003c/a\u003e.  I couldn\u0026rsquo;t call her \u0026ldquo;Mom\u0026rdquo; even.   Every discussion was \u0026ldquo;my mother,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;my mom.\u0026rdquo;   Somehow this arms-length feeling helped me not feel.  I desperately needed to avoid feeling.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Feeling Again"},{"content":"Many pithy sayings exist about possessions:\n\u0026ldquo;A Boat is a hole in the water you throw money in\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Boat is an acronym that stands for Break Out Another Thousand\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;If it has wheels or wings, it\u0026rsquo;s trouble\u0026rdquo; (There\u0026rsquo;s another variant, but this is polite company) To this I\u0026rsquo;d suppose to add: \u0026ldquo;A House is a mechanism to kill you, but at least you get to sleep there. That\u0026rsquo;s why it\u0026rsquo;s called a \u0026lsquo;mortgage\u0026rsquo;.\u0026rdquo;\nI\u0026rsquo;m still workshopping it, but the past month or so has been tough.\nBlessings and Curses We were extraordinarily lucky during the Texas Floods, mostly from my wife and I having a healthy respect for water. We chose a property that drained well AND which sat on top of a hill. We weren\u0026rsquo;t near a stream or a river. Even the 10\u0026quot; of water we got in 6 hours didn\u0026rsquo;t really phase our proprerty.\nThat being said, it certainly stress-tested our house. We\u0026rsquo;d just gotten a new roof in January and several contractors had callouts bout the chimney cap, as in \u0026ldquo;look into getting that replaced.\u0026rdquo; But they followed-up with \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;ll only become an issue if we have a REALLY insane amount of rain.\u0026rdquo;\nWell, cue July 4th-5th.\nI get a call from Whitney we had a leak in our roof. I get out my handy moisture gauge, stick it in the ceiling and the drywall besite the chimney read 75% moisture.\nYaaaaaaaaay.\nSo, the roofing contractor comes out, complete with open carry sidearm with which he enters my house with only my wife at home, caulks the chimney cap, tells my wife his life story for 2+ hours, and so far that\u0026rsquo;s that.\nAs we sit today, we haven\u0026rsquo;t had a follow-up second opinion. Yet.\n\u0026ldquo;It. Doesn\u0026rsquo;t. Start\u0026rdquo; It\u0026rsquo;s the call every parental unit wants: \u0026ldquo;Car won\u0026rsquo;t start\u0026rdquo;\nHer 2023 Corolla was doing the \u0026ldquo;rur-rur-rur\u0026rdquo; dance. Candidly, I always wondered what the push-button start brigade of cars would even DO if there was a low battery. Now we know.\nAnyway, I came home and attached my volt meter to the car. Ten volts. That\u0026rsquo;s NOT going to cut it, so I jumped it with the Tundra (whee\u0026hellip;) and then drove it to autozone for the inevitable diagnosis.\nThe diagnosis that did not come. \u0026ldquo;Your battery is fine. Your starter is fine. Your alternator is fine.\u0026rdquo;\nWell, something wass leading to this thing with a low-volt condition, but I said okay. Maybe one of the kids left a light on or something (but, doubtful\u0026hellip;interior lights are all LED these days and use less power than a lightningbug fart).\nIn the following 2 days, Maria reported increasing trouble with the car starting leading me to take it to Cedar Park Toyota last Wednesday.\nBy Wednesday evening, they\u0026rsquo;d diagnosed the battery (bad cell) and also a problem with the infotainment leading to a reflash. Picked-up Thursday afternoon for $0 (even the battery was covered under warranty)\nNeeding to vent This one\u0026rsquo;s short, except for \u0026ldquo;I hate ladders\u0026rdquo;.\nAs readers of this blog may remember I have a phobia of ladders. Somehow when I was 8 I managed to get on a platform between two ladders about 10-15 feet in the air while my Uncle Donnie was helping paint our polebarn. I got stuck. Like, frozen. Anyway, from that day until now I\u0026rsquo;m not good on ladders. Or roofs.\nWhitney wanted replaced ment of all the 12\u0026quot;x8\u0026quot; registeres in the ceiling of our greatroom. The HVAC guys would probably charge $250 for the visit, so I said I\u0026rsquo;d do it.\nI bought the registers at Home Depot in Georgetown, and rented a solid aluminum 22\u0026rsquo; adjustable ladder. Sucker was HEAVY\nInstall was uneventful took maybe 15 minutes. Total cost: $100 for 4 registers, $46 for the ladder rental, probbly $16 for gas for the truck\nCutting Up So yesterday, I get a call at work asking me about this:\nBig yikes. All 4 tires are roughly 1/2 worn-out, so there\u0026rsquo;s really not a good option\nThis morning was deciding among 3 bad options\nBuy 1 tire: Possible, but this would lead to tires on the same axle having different diameters. That\u0026rsquo;s hard on front axle/differential. Buy 2 tires: This is what I was leaning towards, and would run about $500. Still, there\u0026rsquo;s be an axle set that would be significantly more worn than Buy 4 tires: This is what we ended up doing. We\u0026rsquo;re paying about $50 extra per tire doing it at the dealership, but they go us in immediately today and they have the same brand that came with the car. If the above seems odd, it is. I LOVE tires. I love researching and finding just the perfect tire and my tastes are Tiffany: Michelin, Bridgestone, Yokohama. However, Maria starts school Monday so we don\u0026rsquo;t have the time to mess around.\nIn any case, we\u0026rsquo;re blessed to have the savings to cover\nCan you hear me, Wifi? Our Wifi is\u0026hellip;.unh\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/08/a-couple-weeks-of-things-breaking/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMany pithy sayings exist about possessions:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;A Boat is a hole in the water you throw money in\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;Boat is an acronym that stands for Break Out Another Thousand\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;If it has wheels or wings, it\u0026rsquo;s trouble\u0026rdquo; (There\u0026rsquo;s another variant, but this is polite company)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo this I\u0026rsquo;d suppose to add: \u0026ldquo;A House is a mechanism to kill you, but at least you get to sleep there.  That\u0026rsquo;s why it\u0026rsquo;s called a \u0026lsquo;mortgage\u0026rsquo;.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Couple Weeks of Things Breaking"},{"content":"In many ways, water frames my life. It\u0026rsquo;s an obsession of mine.\nThe Weather Obsessive Goes Soft The winter of 1977-1978 dumped feet of snow on Kentucky. One notable blizzard led to my birth 9 months later.\nAs a child, the floods throughout eastern Kentucky were just a fact of life: It rained too hard, and the rivers backed-up, usually in the community of Wolverine. People who lived there would get flooded at least once a year for days. Then in 1991, former governor Bert T. Combs died when he tried to drive home. People would drown.\nTo a degree, living in Eastern Kentucky is sort of like living in the bay of Naples: You know Vesuvius is right there. You know what\u0026rsquo;s happened before. But life sort of goes on, you know?\nSo I became obsessed with weather. Not quite to the degree my roomate Chris would be\u0026ndash;Chris could quote the forecast from any weatherstation in the US on demand\u0026ndash;but I became obsessed with following the forecast, the risks that were coming, the percentages. Living in Kentucky, this is something of a survival skill, especially with flooding, tornadoes, ice storms, derechoes.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t realizing how much anxiety was there until I moved to Texas. After that, it sort of\u0026hellip;evaporated.\nCentral Texas Weather TL;DR: I stopped paying attention to the weather once I moved here. It\u0026rsquo;s just not that interesting:\nSummer (May -\u0026gt; October): It\u0026rsquo;s hot and doesn\u0026rsquo;t rain. There may be African Sahara dust, but it\u0026rsquo;s usually just bright sunshine 15+ hours a day. Winter (October -\u0026gt; April): It\u0026rsquo;s cooler and can rain. Cruicially, on the years we\u0026rsquo;ve been here it\u0026rsquo;s averaged about 17 - 27 of rain. Remember that number\nJuly 3rd: The Setup It\u0026rsquo;s Thursday. We\u0026rsquo;re on week two of a relocation at work, with our facilities folks playing \u0026ldquo;Traffic\u0026rdquo; with hundreds of engineers across multiple buildings. It\u0026rsquo;s not gone particularly well\u0026ndash;two weeks earlier we\u0026rsquo;d stayed home for 3 days, only to arrive on Monday to find things off, broken, or just plain missing. Moreover, they\u0026rsquo;d managed to sit well-intentioned \u0026ldquo;meeting attenders\u0026rdquo; (Program Managers, Product Managers, and Executive Assistant) in the same aisle as my engineers.\nSo after a shortened week of this, I was on edge. I told my folks they could go home at 3pm and I stayed until 5. I was looking forward to sneaking away to watch F1: The Movie sometime over the long weekend, which I had to admit was configured perfectly. Friday off, then a Saturday and Sunday. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s like Two Saturdays,\u0026rdquo; I thought.\nIt\u0026rsquo;d been raining all day, sometimes hard. Around noon, my wife sent over Signal to our group chat, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s raining again! I\u0026rsquo;m so excited about it!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yeah, rain in July is pretty much unheard-of,\u0026rdquo; I replied. I didn\u0026rsquo;t think much about it.\nLittle did we know how \u0026ldquo;unheard-of\u0026rdquo; the next 48 hours would be. Some of the forecasters had an inkling, but the atmospheric models seemed unbelievable: FOURTEEN inches of rain? How was that even possible?\nA few things to note how this was a \u0026ldquo;perfect storm\u0026rdquo; scenario:\nThis is a holiday weekend. Many were off work, away from home, enjoying RV parks or at sleepaway camp. In general, many found themselves in unfamiliar surroundings without instinctive or ready means for escape The energy for the rain came from a dead hurricane, shockingly similar to Junger\u0026rsquo;s account in \u0026ldquo;The Perfect Storm\u0026rdquo;. As we\u0026rsquo;ll see, the storm didn\u0026rsquo;t behave like any model predicted. As I write this, it still isn\u0026rsquo;t. This is the Texas Hill Country: The terrain seduces. the \u0026ldquo;Flat\u0026rdquo; areas here are floodplains or alluvial formations. In reality, this particular areas is an extension of the very Appalachian mountains and piedmont I grew up in. The soils is thin, and the rock beneath pitches to slough-off water, not absorb it. In both cases that follow this happened at night. July 4th: The First Catastrophe People often think of the Texas Hill Country as a San Antonio phenomenon, but it\u0026rsquo;s a large area, stretching from Northeast of Austin, far west out to I-10, and then south to SA, making a triangle. The night of Hell began in places with pleasant names like Kerrville, Comfort, Mountain Home, and\u0026ndash;heartreakingly\u0026ndash;Camp Mystic. These all sit on Creeks and tributaries of the Guadelupe \u0026ldquo;river\u0026rdquo;. I put that in quotes, because the Guadelupe, like most rivers in Central Texas, might have a foot of water during its non-drought seasons. The tributary creeks you could walk across.\nThen fourteen inches of rain fell.\nThey all became 25 foot walls of water, hundreds of yards wide. And they did it in under 30 minutes. At this point, we don\u0026rsquo;t know exactly what happened next. Some people got out, some were swept away. There were heros who sacrificed themselves to save others. Many of them were teenagers at camps like Camp Mystic. I watched an interview with a guy who was at the RV camp something to this effect:\nI saw them go. I saw their RV just wash away down the stream. I heard the children scream. There was nothing I could do.\nWe awoke to this.\nFriends and family of mine reached out\u0026ndash;Are you okay? Are Whitney and the girls okay? \u0026ldquo;Yes, but about 50 miles away people aren\u0026rsquo;t.\u0026rdquo; I mechanically got out started doing chores. It\u0026rsquo;s a ranch\u0026ndash;there\u0026rsquo;s always something needing doing. I let the goats out, made sure they had water, did some badly needed weed-whacking around our mailbox.\nThen it started raining. I knew that rain\u0026hellip;it wasn\u0026rsquo;t normal Texas rain which often feels chilly. I even thought to myself, \u0026ldquo;If I\u0026rsquo;m gonna get soaked, glad it\u0026rsquo;s this warm stuff.\u0026rdquo; Looking back I should\u0026rsquo;ve realized, I\u0026rsquo;ve felt rain like that before. Twice in the Philippines (Two Typhoons) and once in Texas\u0026ndash;during Hurricane Harvey.\nMy daughter had a shift at her job that night and it was simply pouring out, so I offered to drive her in the afternoon. It kept raining. Then I came back in the evening to get her. It hadn\u0026rsquo;t sopped raining. We were already at 2\u0026quot; of rain, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t think much about it.\nAs is tradition, we all watched Independence Day and went to bed about 11 or so. Whtitney seemed uneasy but I\u0026ndash;per usual zonked out.\nThen the weather radio started going nuts. Repeatedly. Hell had come to western Williamson County, where I live.\nJuly 5th: Attack on the Bridges We have a Midland weather radio. We have it set to go off only under 3 circumstances\nSevere Thunderstorm Warning Tornado Warning Flash Flood Warning I learned a new level on July 5th about 2am:\nFLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY\nThen my iPhone joined in\nWhen I stagged outside my bedroom to my living room, I really couldn\u0026rsquo;t believe my weatherstation.\nWe\u0026rsquo;d started the day with 1.21\u0026quot; of rain on the month. We had\u0026hellip;rather more than that.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s 9 inches of rain since around 9pm. I looked through the records and we recorded rain rates of 5\u0026quot; to 6\u0026quot; per hour at points. Just as with the storm over Camp Mystic, the storm remained stationary for 6+ hours.\nI knew this would be bad, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t know just how bad. As of this writing, we still don\u0026rsquo;t know, fully.\nSaturday was largely shock and denial. I slept maybe 2 hours and got up acting like everything was normal. Our proparty was fine, afterall. I insisted on going out in my 4WD Toyota Tundra to see if the roads were passable and make an H-E-B run that we\u0026rsquo;d scheduled for 11:30 am.\nI drove north and then East on a small one-lane road towards a bridge I knew might be dodgy. I saw all the normal debris we see after a gully-washer: branches, twigs across the road. I saw ponding water upstream but not downstream (should\u0026rsquo;ve been a clue\u0026hellip;), then I sighed in relief when I saw the approach to the bridge was clear.\nThen I got halfway over the bridge.\nThe bridge is normally 20+ feet above the North San Gabriel river. As I got there it was about 5\u0026rsquo; over the N. San Gabriel. I\u0026rsquo;d seen this before, in Eastern Kentucky. This was a river full of anger and extra energy, not a river that\u0026rsquo;d crested. But I figured I could get to H-E-B and get back before it became an issue.\nYeah\u0026hellip;.about that\u0026hellip;.\nSo I got back 90 minutes later with groceries to the sight of cars going the other way flashing their lights. Wanting to see it for myself, I pushed on, and saw: The bridge itself was still fine, but the West approach was now\u0026hellip;the river.\nSo, I backtracked into Liberty Hill and came up my normal route, across two bridges that looked like extras out of \u0026ldquo;The Road Warrior\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;they were intact and structural, but missing swathes of pavement, guardrails, and adorned with all sorts of debris from being overtopped in the torrents overnight.\nFrom there, I just stayed put the rest of the day, mostly from what I laughingly termed as Whitneys \u0026ldquo;If he doesn\u0026rsquo;t die, I\u0026rsquo;ll kill him!\u0026rdquo; concern for my wellbeing.\nFrom there it\u0026rsquo;s been the general rollercoaster lived out on social media:\nSome of the missing girls have been found alive, 2 miraculously this afternoon clining 27 feet up a tree. Wild speculation. At one point there was a post where they\u0026rsquo;d \u0026ldquo;Found the camp director and all the girls alive\u0026rdquo; that proved false. There\u0026rsquo;s been a meta-argument going on about: People saying this is Karma for Texas voting republican Others horrified by the above asking them to piss off. Others who can\u0026rsquo;t undertand why either of the other two groups are speaking at all The biggest difference with the today\u0026rsquo;s flooding is its attack on vital infrastructure. US183 is a key corredor from Austin to North Central Texas. For periods yesterday, 2 bridges over the North and South San Gabriel were blocked as \u0026ldquo;Officers can see through 2 inch cracks in the bridge to the water below\u0026rdquo;. They\u0026rsquo;ve reopened. The same happened with bridges in Georgetown at Austin Avenue and Ronald Reagan Boulevard in Williamson County.\nJuly 6th: The Aftermath? Church this morning was a wake, a collection of people in shock. We don\u0026rsquo;t quite know who\u0026rsquo;s dead, who\u0026rsquo;s alive, and who needs help. County services are swamped but they\u0026rsquo;re trying. They\u0026rsquo;ve asked people to stay home.\nAs I write this, it\u0026rsquo;s 5:35 pm. We\u0026rsquo;ve received another Flash Flood Warning and it\u0026rsquo;s raining at 2.93\u0026quot; per hour on my weather station. There\u0026rsquo;s just word of another (unidentified) body found at 1869, and still the other shoe to drop of the many missing. At this point, we\u0026rsquo;re looking at at least 75 dead.\nWde\u0026rsquo;ve received 11.5\u0026quot; since July 4th. It\u0026rsquo;s still raining.\nAnd we\u0026rsquo;re still hoping.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/07/the-july-4th-texas-floods/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn many ways, water frames my life.  It\u0026rsquo;s an obsession of mine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"the-weather-obsessive-goes-soft\"\u003eThe Weather Obsessive Goes Soft\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe winter of 1977-1978 dumped feet of snow on Kentucky.  One notable blizzard led to my birth 9 months later.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs a child, the floods throughout eastern Kentucky were just a fact of life:  It rained too hard, and the rivers backed-up, usually in the community of Wolverine.   People who lived there would get flooded at least once a year for days.  Then in 1991, former governor \u003ca href=\"https://www.weather.gov/lmk/bert_t_combs_flood_death\"\u003eBert T. Combs\u003c/a\u003e died when he tried to drive home.  People would drown.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The July 4th Texas Floods"},{"content":"So, we have a new phenomenon thanks to Return to Office: \u0026ldquo;Coffeebadging\u0026rdquo;\nAs the wiki article indicates:\n(Coffeebadging) is the practice of employees clocking in for a brief period at the office, typically long enough to grab a coffee, before departing to work from elsewhere. This is done to fulfill office attendance requirements by hybrid and remote workers which arose following the return to in-person work following the COVID-19 pandemic.\nHonestly, the team I\u0026rsquo;m on is doing pretty well. Seems like most people keep about 6 hours in the office at least. I\u0026rsquo;m a fart who does a full 8, maybe more, because I despise driving home for 45 to 60 minutes then doing more work.\nTopic the second: Getting Sick\nTime was we had a bit of\u0026hellip;slack\u0026hellip;at work. There was enough overhead that if Bob got sick, Sue could take up the work and there was continuity. We insisted on cross-training to sufficiency. Sue might not be exper as Bob at a task, but she was more then capable of doing it. Let\u0026rsquo;s take that in 2025:\n\u0026ldquo;Oh, Bob\u0026rsquo;s OOTO. He\u0026rsquo;s sick.\u0026rdquo;\n(PM/TPM/Manager) \u0026ldquo;Have you called him?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;He\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip;sick. He\u0026rsquo;s off work today.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Well, let me know what he has to say by EOD.\u0026rdquo;\nThis is the shitty straw that breaks the camel\u0026rsquo;s back for many. It\u0026rsquo;s not the grind, the burnout\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s the \u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t do anything about _______\u0026rdquo; and the company still expects me to perform.\nObligatory: Boo-hoo corporate employee. You\u0026rsquo;re paid to sit in an office and think and type. I WEEP for you /s. Yeah, I get that too.\nBut, there was a time where \u0026ldquo;work-life balance\u0026rdquo; was so much the norm it didn\u0026rsquo;t have a term.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/02/coffee-badging-and-never-getting-sick/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, we have a new phenomenon thanks to Return to Office: \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_badging\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Coffeebadging\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.barniescoffee.com/cdn/shop/articles/beverage-break-breakfast-brown-414630.jpg?v=1588357578\u0026width=480\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs the wiki article indicates:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Coffeebadging) is the practice of employees clocking in for a brief period at the office, typically long enough to grab a coffee, before departing to work from elsewhere. This is done to fulfill office attendance requirements by hybrid and remote workers which arose following the return to in-person work following the COVID-19 pandemic.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Coffee Badging and Never Getting Sick"},{"content":"So, the US had its first measles death in 10 years yesterday. We\u0026rsquo;ve had a scare recently with exposure near austing between San Antonio and San Marcos, and now there are cases in Kentucky.\nMMR vaccines are good for about 10 years, apparently, so 3 of 4 of us at home are vulnerable right now. It\u0026rsquo;s airborne transmissable, and highly contagious.\nAnd then, another \u0026ldquo;_______ night massacre\u0026rdquo; in the government as 1,200 NOAA Employees got the axe by EOD today.\nWhat does it all add up to?\nHaving worked somewhere we were (a) relatively underpaid and (b) had layoffs hanging over our heads all the time, it means work just grinds to a halt and people leave. I suppose the latter is the whole point\u0026ndash;sour the government teat enough that underpaid, unappreciated Civil Service workers just say \u0026ldquo;fuck this noise\u0026rdquo;.\nsmdh.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/02/here-comes-the-measles/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, the US had its \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/first-us-measles-death-reported-west-texas-outbreak-affects-more-than-130-people-2025-02-26/\"\u003efirst measles death in 10 years\u003c/a\u003e yesterday.  We\u0026rsquo;ve had a scare recently with exposure near austing \u003ca href=\"https://www.tpr.org/public-health/2025-02-23/breaking-news-possible-measles-exposures-in-san-antonio?fbclid=IwY2xjawIt3nRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHXs94xXL0sjTBQjYN3bEH152vn2ScYySexJUTihGhyQUkoEC_R4SGeP9gQ_aem_3PkyPW92yk6Buhqn82ZKBgm\"\u003ebetween San Antonio and San Marcos\u003c/a\u003e, and now there are cases in Kentucky.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMMR vaccines are good for about 10 years, apparently, so 3 of 4 of us at home are vulnerable right now.  It\u0026rsquo;s airborne transmissable, and highly contagious.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd then, another \u0026ldquo;_______ night massacre\u0026rdquo; in the government as 1,200 \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/27/trump-noaa-cuts-climate\"\u003eNOAA Employees\u003c/a\u003e got the axe by EOD today.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Here Comes the Measles"},{"content":"From time to time, I like to pause and update what\u0026rsquo;s going on with our car fleet. As of last May, we\u0026rsquo;re a 100% \u0026ldquo;Toyota\u0026rdquo; Family so it\u0026rsquo;s interesting. For 2 of the 3 I have long-term fuel economy I track via the excellent Fuelly app, so I can represent long-term ownership costs\nAs an aside, I really wish I had a license plate this cool:\nThe Hanger Queen \u0026ndash; 2016 Lexus GX460 Seems like yesterday we went to San Antonio and picked-up this 2016 Lexus GX460 CPO, then immediately took it on a 3000 mile round trip to Estes park colorado with a Stowaway hanging from the rear hitch and a Thule bag strapped to the top.\nAt that point, it had ~35,000 miles, and as we speak it\u0026rsquo;s crested 125k, yielding roughly 18mpg on premium fuel. The \u0026ldquo;Premium only\u0026rdquo; is a hotly-debated topic among the GX community, as the 4.6 is the same engine in the ~2007 tundra and that engine runs fine on regular. I\u0026rsquo;ve put regular in it and it does, indeed, run okay.\nThe GX has full-time AWD with a lockable center differential and is basically the best-kept secret in the Toyota lineup for both on-road and off-road. If you\u0026rsquo;re looking used, consider a GX over the 4Runner. The V8 power is really worth it, as is the standard AWD.\nAfter 6 years and 90k miles, the GX has retained 46% of its value. Overall cost-per mile is about 19-cents per mile on premium. We\u0026rsquo;ve had only one major repair, where a rock (or something) cracked the radiator, which we replaced out of warranty for $3,000, including labor. We also installed a set of new struts on the front suspension at around 100k miles.\nThe Ranch Truck \u0026ndash; 2021 Toyota Tundra I guess my version of \u0026ldquo;You Bought a Zoo?\u0026rdquo; is We bought a ranch. As part of that we leased a 2021 Toyota Tundra, the very last year of the gas-guzzling, ancient, 2nd gen tundra platform I\u0026rsquo;d excoriated as a \u0026ldquo;Dead Stick\u0026rdquo; lo these many years ago.\nWhat can I say: $219 / month, zero-down lease on an incredibly solid truck was too good to pass up.\nWe don\u0026rsquo;t drive this truck. It\u0026rsquo;s now 4 model years old, and just now crested 20k miles. Reasons:\nIt rides like a brick It gets laughably poor fuel economy The 2nd gen tundra is a suite of contradictions: It has an \u0026ldquo;old fashioned\u0026rdquo; V8\u0026hellip;that has double overhead cams (DOHC) like a race engine. Mine lacks climate controls, but it does have radar cruise control and Apple CarPlay. ZERO nods toward economy or efficiency, and yet each trip pops up with your \u0026ldquo;economy\u0026rdquo; at the end of the drive on your center display in the dash.\nOurs is the CrewMax in which the back seat seems larger than the front. It\u0026rsquo;s been popular on runs to camp with my daughters.\nAfter 4.5 years and 20k miles, this Tundra retained 67% of its value. The 3rd gen Tundra has been disastrous, with 100k trucks recalled for full long-block engine replacements due to cost Toyota $2 Billion or more. People WANT these older Tundras, despite them driving like a 3/4 ton Ford from the 1990s.\nThe Tundra costs between 20 and 25 cents per mile (yes, really) on regular fuel. It\u0026rsquo;s had no repairs aside from oil changes. It will need new tires in the next 18 months.\nThe Daily \u0026ndash; 2021 Lexus ES300h There comes a time in every man\u0026rsquo;s life when he just wants a car like a couch.\nI drive 35-45 miles one way each day to work. Austin traffic isn\u0026rsquo;t bad by NY, LA, DC standards, but it has its own flavor of annoying: Random stop-and-go, with people unable to navigate anything but sunshine. My 2016 Civic was killing me as a daily, as much as I enjoyed its K20 engine. So last May I upgraded\nWe bought used, and again Certified Pre-Owned (\u0026ldquo;L/Certified\u0026rdquo; in Lexus parlance). I\u0026rsquo;d convinced myself to get the ES350 as I liked the V6 and the sounds it made, but at the last minute, I did some pretty stark math\nBasically, it went like this: The Hybrid was cheaper long-term, and my experience has calibrated with that. I\u0026rsquo;m seeing 6 to 7 cents a mile, and I drive the snot out of this car.\nIs it exciting to drive? No. Acceleration is anemic with ~200 total system horsepower, but it\u0026rsquo;s a quiet place to be. Riding in it causes nausea for my kids if we ride 4-up, but longer trips with Maria in the front and Grace in the back save 15-cents a mile compared to my wife\u0026rsquo;s GX. The backseat room is spectacular and hearkens to sedans from when I was growing up.\nSo far I\u0026rsquo;m averaging 43.5 mpg on regular fuel. After 14k miles in under a year, the ES300h retained 83% of its value.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/02/fleet-update-2025-edition/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom time to time, I like to pause and update what\u0026rsquo;s going on with our car fleet.  As of last May, we\u0026rsquo;re a 100% \u0026ldquo;Toyota\u0026rdquo; Family so it\u0026rsquo;s interesting.  For 2 of the 3 I have long-term fuel economy I track via the excellent \u003ca href=\"https://www.fuelly.com/\"\u003eFuelly\u003c/a\u003e app, so I can represent long-term ownership costs\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs an aside, I really wish I had a license plate this cool:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/images/fleet-update/tcpip.jpeg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"the-hanger-queen--2016-lexus-gx460\"\u003eThe Hanger Queen \u0026ndash; 2016 Lexus GX460\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeems like yesterday we went to San Antonio and picked-up this 2016 Lexus GX460 CPO, then \u003cem\u003eimmediately\u003c/em\u003e took it on a 3000 mile round trip to Estes park colorado with a Stowaway hanging from the rear hitch and a Thule bag strapped to the top.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fleet Update 2025 Edition"},{"content":"As Thomas Paine coined in The American Crisis\nThese are the times that try men\u0026rsquo;s souls.\nFebruary is near done. Spring comes, but what Spring will that be? The Spring of destitution? The warm rebirth of tyranny?\nPaine would be laughing at us now, handing over our country to either side, frankly. To the feckless Democrats unable to govern, or to the bald-faced Republicans governing only for the \u0026ldquo;Techn-Anarcho-Fascist Oligarchs\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;either way he\u0026rsquo;d be disgusted.\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;m trying. I\u0026rsquo;m trying to get healthier, walking at least a mile each day for the last 2 days. I\u0026rsquo;m trying to learn and take agency for what is within my control, which is precious little.\nOn the lighter side, one of my podcasts clued me in to this site: Death Clock. A spectacular 14 years left!\nWeird to think 3/4 of my life is over, at least according to this silly site. Seems obvoius if I don\u0026rsquo;t cut my BMI (currently 36.5), I\u0026rsquo;m sort of doomed.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/02/trying/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs Thomas Paine coined in \u003ca href=\"https://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-01.htm?srsltid=AfmBOooT-q3pcYaEJYAw54Lt-xCRLyzRY6uMpSV6-1X1jSTwYRbGDzd3#google_vignette\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe American Crisis\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese are the times that try men\u0026rsquo;s souls.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFebruary is near done.   Spring comes, but what Spring will that be?   The Spring of destitution?  The warm rebirth of tyranny?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePaine would be laughing at us now, handing over our country to either side, frankly.   To the feckless Democrats unable to govern, or to the bald-faced Republicans governing only for the \u0026ldquo;Techn-Anarcho-Fascist Oligarchs\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;either way he\u0026rsquo;d be disgusted.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trying"},{"content":"I maintain the second half of February, after Valentine\u0026rsquo;s day is just\u0026hellip;depressing.\nAbove: the Author\u0026rsquo;s house back in Kentucky 10 years ago today\nThe Superbowl is over. This year\u0026rsquo;s was a terrible game in which the Eagles ran roughshod over the KC Chiefs until the 4th quarter. College basketball\u0026rsquo;s March Madness hasn\u0026rsquo;t begun. Kentucky men\u0026rsquo;s basketball has overperformed this year, but they\u0026rsquo;re going to get slaughtered in both the SEC tournament and NCAA. Every game is usually exciting, at least. Kentucky Women\u0026rsquo;s basketball are firing on all cylinders and may be in the hunt for a National Championship. The weather is just\u0026hellip;awful. Texas veers from 85+ one day to 25 the next. We\u0026rsquo;ve survived one cold snap in January and it looks like another coming this week. My hometown is underwater for the 3rd time in 5 years. Extesive swathes of land freeze under ice and snow. At work, we\u0026rsquo;re in the silly season somewhere between layoffs, promotions, and pay increases (if any are forthcoming). The outlook doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem great. I\u0026rsquo;d write about DOGE and the collapse of our government, but plenty of other people are ahead of me. Seems you wring your hands, threaten revolution, or stick your head in the sand to some degree.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll just say this: When the representative body of a purportedly representative government refuses to act for\u0026hellip;carry the one\u0026hellip;twenty five years, there\u0026rsquo;s one of: (1) A popular uprising, (2) a military coup, or (3) the executive asserts itself. We\u0026rsquo;re in the latter in a combination of:\nOligarchy: The rich are ruling. Kleptocracy: The rulers stole the government. Techno-anarchy: \u0026ldquo;Libertarians\u0026rdquo; might like this one. The government is receding, and nothing will fill the vacuum but technology/corporations. Read Snowcrash and it\u0026rsquo;ll make sense. Authoritarianism: I refuse to say \u0026ldquo;Fascism,\u0026rdquo; but power flowing from a central figure looks to be the reality of 21st Century America. Bush, Obama, and Trump all practiced some flavors. Lord willing, these words don\u0026rsquo;t earn me a gulag appointment (or worse) someday.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/02/tail-end-of-february/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI maintain the second half of February, after Valentine\u0026rsquo;s day is just\u0026hellip;depressing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/472715579_10170872812300158_830408730319097637_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107\u0026ccb=1-7\u0026_nc_sid=aa7094\u0026_nc_ohc=NRd1JEIdLSYQ7kNvgFk5JMd\u0026_nc_oc=AdhVHwJED8Zav_cNnAWnPc76aPcCjGgxpZu9OWTonxBntHITEDU_j3gG5DHe6ijAsDA\u0026_nc_zt=23\u0026_nc_ht=scontent-sea1-1.xx\u0026_nc_gid=A5_0BhiwBUy2ypicriEqzXs\u0026oh=00_AYCPB2izbjdk7OGNct_WMMZXqpBp7UqOheFdvH9JW15C-g\u0026oe=67B91C72\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAbove: the Author\u0026rsquo;s house back in Kentucky 10 years ago today\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Superbowl is over.  This year\u0026rsquo;s was a terrible game in which the Eagles ran roughshod over the KC Chiefs until the 4th quarter.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCollege basketball\u0026rsquo;s March Madness hasn\u0026rsquo;t begun.  Kentucky \u003cem\u003emen\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/em\u003e basketball has overperformed this year, but they\u0026rsquo;re going to get slaughtered in both the SEC tournament and NCAA.  Every game is usually exciting, at least.  Kentucky \u003cem\u003eWomen\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/em\u003e basketball are firing on all cylinders and may be in the hunt for a National Championship.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe weather is just\u0026hellip;awful.   Texas veers from 85+ one day to 25 the next.   We\u0026rsquo;ve survived one cold snap in January and it looks like another coming this week.  My hometown is underwater for the 3rd time in 5 years.   Extesive swathes of land freeze under ice and snow.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAt work, we\u0026rsquo;re in the silly season somewhere between layoffs, promotions, and pay increases (if any are forthcoming).  The outlook doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem great.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d write about DOGE and the collapse of our government, but plenty of other people are ahead of me.  Seems you wring your hands, threaten revolution, or stick your head in the sand to some degree.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tail End of February"},{"content":"Nic-Fit I got my first taste of office life when I worked a Summer in the basement of the Breathitt County Courthouse as a gopher/assistant for my paternal Aunt Lena. Her office, like that of my maternal Aunt Lenora, handled paying people. That cigarette-smoke infested basement was so bad that one weekend I had nicotine withdrawl, and I wasn\u0026rsquo;t a smoker. But, everyone was congenial enough, a group of women who got along on a molecular level. They covered for each other, looked out for people in trouble, and generally had a \u0026ldquo;work to live\u0026rdquo; attitude.\nI learned an office could be a supportive place where people were somewhere between cynical and real with one another. That proved a life-long lesson\nInternship My second taste of office life was as an intern at Lexmark from 1999 to 2001, where I shared an office with Darren and Brian. This was my first professional programming gig, and I was way, way out of my depth. Our job was to write custom applications to support the 400+ mechanical engineers using a piece of software called I-DEAS running on Silicon Graphics workstations. To that point, I\u0026rsquo;d only ever interected with unix via Telnet to HP-UX at my college. Day One, they sat me down at one of these jewels:\nIn front of me was a 19\u0026quot; (or maybe 21\u0026quot;?) Sony Trinitron flat-screen CRT monitor.\n\u0026ldquo;How much does this setup cost?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Oh, that\u0026rsquo;s the cheap one. It\u0026rsquo;s only about $10k retail.\u0026rdquo;\nMy car wasn\u0026rsquo;t worth that much. So I had to learn: IRIX, XWindows, Vi, Motif, C++ (this was pre-ISO standard stuff), PERL 5.x, awk, sed, SQL, MySQL, and every command line hack imaginable.\nDarren and Brian were insanely patient, because aside from having CS fundamentals from Pascal, one (bad) C++ course under my belt, and the ability to touch type, I was just this side of fucking useless. Every day was exhausting. I was learning constantly but the work piled up faster. Still, imposter syndrome was tough.\nThen, I got hired for real.\nMy Real Job In 2001, I interviewed with 4 separate groups at Lexmark. It never occurred to me to interview anywhere else or go to grad school. I wanted \u0026ldquo;that bag\u0026rdquo; as the kids say these days, and in truth, making the unimaginable sum of $11 / hour as an intern had made me like the finer things in life. I bought myself the Valentine One radar detector I always wanted. It accurately detected the laser shot from the Kentucky State Police that nailed me going 75 in a 55, but it (probably) kept me out of a few tickets. I also bought a 866 Mhz Pentium III Dell computer I could use as a programming/gaming machine. It came with Windows Me. I don\u0026rsquo;t think I ever played games on it.\nIn any case I chose to join the MarkVision Professional (\u0026ldquo;MVP\u0026rdquo;) team based on a recommendation of another personal connection, Joel. They put me in a 10x10 office shared with a great guy named Patrick, who became a true friend as the years wore on. We didn\u0026rsquo;t always get along, but he cared enough to call me out when my ego and mouth were bigger than my capabilities. I got to put those skills I\u0026rsquo;d learned from Darren and Brian to use: Writing Perl scripts to automate drudgery, reading and worshipping \u0026ldquo;The Pragmatic Programmer\u0026rdquo; and its dictums. The cast of characters on the hall were esoteric and interesting: A recovering physicist who did differential equations by hand for fun, a hockey player who never smiled, a lady with a truly awful cackle but a great heart, an ultramarathoner. Then of course there were Jeff and David, both of whom had senses of humor that still make me smile.\nAnd finally we come to my reason for writing today: Let\u0026rsquo;s call him Dean. Every office has a \u0026ldquo;Dean\u0026rdquo;.\nThe \u0026ldquo;Dean\u0026rdquo; of it All Dean was our Cassandra, the prophet of doom. Any time any sort of email, rumor, chat message, or carrier pigeon came by, you could count the seconds until Dean beat a path to the door for Patrick and myself to hear his theory on why the sky was falling. Layoffs! Reorg! Reinstituted the Draft!\nIt was demotivating, because Dean needed us to soothe him. He couldn\u0026rsquo;t self-soothe. It got tough, because Patrick was both incredibly nice, and he had really high standards for \u0026ldquo;rub some dirt on it.\u0026rdquo; That last was something I appreciated. Myself, I\u0026rsquo;m a people-pleaser and I want to find a path for people to be happy. There wasn\u0026rsquo;t happy for Dean; he wanted to be miserable.\nAs time went on, re-orgs did happen and I no longer worked with Dean, but I never forgot him and how he made me feel: Generally demotivated.\nDie a Hero or\u0026hellip; So goes the saying \u0026ldquo;Die a Hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the Villain\u0026rdquo;. Yesterday was that moment of clarity.\nTypically near the end of the day, most people have left the office. Remaining were my longsuffering desk-mate Eric, my friend Luke who works on a sister team, and another group of people across the knee wall to another line of desks. Since the Inauguration/Coronation/Anschluss, I\u0026rsquo;ve made a point to avoid the news while at work. It provokes a \u0026ldquo;WTaF?!\u0026rdquo; response and it takes me 30-60 minutes for me to get back into flow state. So a coworker said something about another stupide DOGE move or another.\nI lost it. Well, I maybe 50% lost it. Me 100% losing it likely means building security involvement and getting fired.\nAnyway after a 5 minute rant where I somehow got to include \u0026ldquo;THIS IS HOW MY UNCLE NEVER LEARNED TO READ AND DROPPED OUT OF SCHOOL IN 4th GRADE!\u0026rdquo; I got a grip, shut up, and packed up my things. There really isn\u0026rsquo;t coming back from that.\nAs I was walking out, I stopped by Luke\u0026rsquo;s desk and mused: \u0026ldquo;I had this coworker named Dean once. Dean would always rant at every little thing. And now\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo;\nLuke: \u0026ldquo;Uh-huh.\u0026rdquo;\nWell, shit.\nI just find it impossible to concentrate when we\u0026rsquo;re in a constitutional crisis and no one cares\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/02/on-becoming-that-guy/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"nic-fit\"\u003eNic-Fit\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI got my first taste of office life when I worked a Summer in the basement of the Breathitt County Courthouse as a gopher/assistant for my paternal Aunt Lena.   Her office, like that of my maternal Aunt Lenora, handled paying people.  That cigarette-smoke infested basement was so bad that one weekend I had nicotine withdrawl, and I wasn\u0026rsquo;t a smoker.  But, everyone was congenial enough, a group of women who got along on a molecular level.  They covered for each other, looked out for people in trouble, and generally had a \u0026ldquo;work to live\u0026rdquo; attitude.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Becoming That Guy"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s certainly been an interesting nine days since Trump\u0026rsquo;s indoor inauguration on Jan 20th.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s been a flurry of executive orders, followed by freezes to federal funding, and gaffes around international relations including doubling down on the idea that Gazans should just abandon Gaza.\nYesterday (still just Januaray 28th, mind) hit the trifecta:\nTrump offered a voluntary reduction program (read: buyouts) to all 2 million Federal employees, with the goal of reducing expenses by $100 Billion There\u0026rsquo;s word that \u0026ldquo;loyalty questions\u0026rdquo; are part of employment at the whitehouse. Real cancer studies and federally funded jobs (like civil engineers that insepct bridges) are impacted. No idea where this is going, but we\u0026rsquo;re still not up to double digit days under this regime.\nAnd make no mistake: It\u0026rsquo;s a regime. I\u0026rsquo;m fully on the record that we elect a King every 4 years, and it seems we finally have one that\u0026rsquo;s decided to act like a dictator from day one\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/01/nine-days-in/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s certainly been an interesting nine days since Trump\u0026rsquo;s indoor inauguration on Jan 20th.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s been \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/01/28/nx-s1-5276293/trump-executive-orders\"\u003ea flurry of executive orders\u003c/a\u003e, followed by \u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/29/trump-federal-spending-freeze-project-2025-007378\"\u003efreezes to federal funding\u003c/a\u003e, and gaffes around international relations including \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/28/trump-repeats-suggestion-palestinians-should-leave-gaza-for-egypt-and-jordan\"\u003edoubling down on the idea that Gazans should just abandon Gaza\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYesterday (still just Januaray 28th, mind) hit the trifecta:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTrump offered a voluntary reduction program (read: buyouts) to all 2 million Federal employees, with the goal of reducing expenses by $100 Billion\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s word that \u0026ldquo;loyalty questions\u0026rdquo; are part of employment at the whitehouse.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eReal cancer studies and federally funded jobs (like civil engineers that \u003cem\u003einsepct bridges\u003c/em\u003e) are impacted.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo idea where this is going, but we\u0026rsquo;re still not up to double digit \u003cstrong\u003edays\u003c/strong\u003e under this regime.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nine Days In"},{"content":"So this is going to be odd coming from a guy working at a place with a Leadership Principle saying \u0026ldquo;Speed matters in business\u0026rdquo;\nIf I\u0026rsquo;m doing my job right, I consider myself to be a \u0026ldquo;slow\u0026rdquo; developer.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve watched the recent explosion across my social feeds about AI SUPERCHARGED DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS! like Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, Claude, and Warp Terminal. They all seem neat, and this seems like a Nova (if not a Supernova) of dev tooling we haven\u0026rsquo;t seen since Netbeans/Eclipse/IntelliJ battled it out 15 years ago to see who could make IT departments upgrade from 512 MB developer machiens fastest.\nStill, they don\u0026rsquo;t solve a key problem: I\u0026rsquo;m not thinking any faster. Well, I\u0026rsquo;m not thinking faster correctly.\nSo a \u0026ldquo;feature\u0026rdquo; of my brain chemistry is a euphoric flow state. It feels\u0026hellip;well, it\u0026rsquo;s hard to describe. Imagine feeling like you can conduct an entire orchestra inside your own head, only you\u0026rsquo;re writing all the parts in realtime, one measure of music ahead of the players. Further, imagine you having the sheer hubris to imagine you can do that with a full orchestra just waiting on you to fart out perfection. To you, it\u0026rsquo;ll seem like \u0026ldquo;This. is. SO. Brilliant.\u0026rdquo; To everyone else, it will seem like \u0026ldquo;This guy is a raging lunatic.\u0026rdquo; So that maniacal flow state is me thinking \u0026ldquo;fast\u0026rdquo;. To a degree\u0026ndash;that sort of impetus is me writing today. I took a notion on the way to work, and I\u0026rsquo;m compelled to write it down. Like, I can\u0026rsquo;t not do it.\nThis euphoric hubris has had some hilarious side effects in my career. I\u0026rsquo;ll just give one example because I\u0026rsquo;d like to be remain employable: I used to program a printer fleet management tool at my previous employer when I was a junior engineer. This was in the days of installed software that was burned onto a CD-ROM. As part of that we had weekly builds that progressed from Alpha -\u0026gt; Beta -\u0026gt; Gold Candidate. I decided that our network scanning/discover subsystem was \u0026ldquo;wrong\u0026rdquo; and decided to rewrite it from scratch over a weekend\u0026hellip;on the 3rd Gold Candidate. That was a \u0026ldquo;fun\u0026rdquo; meeting with the team lead, manager, project manager, and PROGRAM MANAGER.\nAnyway, the point is: I can be fast. I can do the right thing. I can rarely do them both at the same time. Many times, I\u0026rsquo;ve walked in at 8am, coded like mad for 6 hours, then just thrown the git branch away in disgust. Why didn\u0026rsquo;t I just spend 15 minutes THINKING ABOUT IT?\nTo mitigate, as I\u0026rsquo;ve progressed in my career, I\u0026rsquo;ve become more deliberate. I intentionally slow-down, but I don\u0026rsquo;t feel I\u0026rsquo;m less productive:\nI tend to think about what I\u0026rsquo;m doing, why I\u0026rsquo;m doing it, and the best way to do it. I\u0026rsquo;ll reach for a scripting language like Ruby, Node, or Bash instead of C++, Go, or Java. Example: This website is generated-on-push from Github and Hugo. I\u0026rsquo;m sure WP would be \u0026ldquo;fun\u0026rdquo; (maybe?), but my purpose here is to have a web-presence without massive ecosystem lockin, with minimal lift using tech I understand. AWS + Github + articles written in Markdown is tech I understand. Said a different way, I don\u0026rsquo;t know that AI tools are going to be the step-function improvement we all expected. I don\u0026rsquo;t know that literature improved markedly from Jane Austen writing in longhand to typewriters to word processors. Hemmingway was more than happy to avoid conjunctions without modern conveniences. (No, I\u0026rsquo;m not Hemmingway. Just an illustration.). I do agree IDEs jumped productivity and democratized programming. There were a certain breed who could hold all the symbols in libc inside their head, and know \u0026ldquo;le mot juste\u0026rdquo; while hacking in vim. But that was a narrow group, and they created great UNIX Kernels, not the best user applications.\nFor me, I\u0026rsquo;d say the logarithmic growth curve has been:\nHardwired plugboard computers. Yikes Switch-programmed computers. Barely less likes. Punchcards: Associated with programming languages like FORTRAN and COBOL, these were a gamechanger Online editors: Vim, Emacs, etc. No more punchcards! Windowing/refactoring editors: I have to give Smalltalk its due here. Really wish it\u0026rsquo;d made it out of Xeroc PARC. IDEs: Visual Studio felt like cheating, especially once IntelliSense came around Refactoring IDEs: Be Honest, the first time you used \u0026ldquo;Extract Method\u0026rdquo; in IntelliJ, wasn\u0026rsquo;t that a good day? AI Tools: Omnipresent co-development pair programmer. So, I\u0026rsquo;ll continue to be \u0026ldquo;slow\u0026rdquo; but with better tooling.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/01/on-being-a-slow-developer/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo this is going to be odd coming from a guy working at a place with a \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles\"\u003eLeadership Principle\u003c/a\u003e saying \u0026ldquo;Speed matters in business\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf I\u0026rsquo;m doing my job right, I consider myself to be a \u0026ldquo;slow\u0026rdquo; developer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve watched the recent explosion across my social feeds about \u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/@murdercode/supercharge-dev-with-ai-my-productivity-setup-db07eef3fea6\"\u003eAI SUPERCHARGED DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS!\u003c/a\u003e like Copilot,  \u003ca href=\"https://www.cursor.com/\"\u003eCursor\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://codeium.com/windsurf\"\u003eWindsurf\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://claude.ai/\"\u003eClaude\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.warp.dev/\"\u003eWarp Terminal\u003c/a\u003e.  They all seem neat, and this seems like a Nova (if not a Supernova) of dev tooling we haven\u0026rsquo;t seen since Netbeans/Eclipse/IntelliJ battled it out 15 years ago to see who could make IT departments upgrade from 512 MB developer machiens fastest.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Being a Slow Developer"},{"content":" All the Leaves are Brown\nAnd the sky is grey\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been for a walk\nOn a Winter\u0026rsquo;s Day\nMy college roommate Chris died last week. He was 46 years old, the same age as me. I have no idea what he died of. I was a groomsman in his first wedding in Orlando, Florida, though I don\u0026rsquo;t remember what year that was\u0026ndash;early 2000\u0026rsquo;s likely 2001-2002. Chris was a guest at my own wedding in 2005, and likely would\u0026rsquo;ve been a groomsman if it was a larger affair. Chris \u0026amp; Jessica stayed in contact with Whitney and myself until they divorced, though again I don\u0026rsquo;t remember when that was\u0026hellip;the latter part of the 2000\u0026rsquo;s.\nChris was a complicated person, and you never quite knew him. He was always transcendently intelligent\u0026ndash;he could (and did) memorize anything. As the obituary notes, he knew the weather forecast for the entire United States\u0026hellip;daily. He was game for about anything, and lots of fun.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve found out secondhand that at least two women in his life didn\u0026rsquo;t hold the same opinion. At least two (probably 3) women would say the same about me. Taking a stab, I think Chris and I suffered alot of the same challenges mentally. Per the obit, he\u0026rsquo;d found a new wife, and had another son. I hope he\u0026rsquo;d found some peace in those years.\nSo, he\u0026rsquo;s gone. It\u0026rsquo;s been a tough 18 months in that regard.\nStopped into a church\nI passed along the way\u0026hellip;\nYou know I GOT DOWN ON MY KNEES\nAnd I pretend to pray\n(Random: I\u0026rsquo;d always understood that line to be \u0026ldquo;began to pray\u0026rdquo;. The actual lyric is so much more nuanced)\nRoll calling it:\nAn elementary-high school friend Jason Henson died in February 2023. Jason was an amazing, intense, intelligent guy who never got out of our hometown and the drugs and despair got him. My high school friend David Jones passed in August 2023. David was one of the best of us, gone too soon due to colon cancer that he fought for 5 years. I got to see him in May 2022 when he came to San Antonio for a clinical trial, but the pain finally got the better of him. My mom very nearly died in winter 2023-2024. She was admitted to the hospital and \u0026ldquo;given up fer dead\u0026rdquo; (as the family tells it), but rallied and came out of it. She got COVID 2x, and pneumonia once. Mom did pass away on December 8, 2024. She\u0026rsquo;d been under the care of a new doctor, a classmate of mine from High School, and she\u0026rsquo;d been doing so much better. Her cancer screens were clean. She\u0026rsquo;d been out for Thanksgiving Dinner a few days prior with friends. She felt poorly that Sunday, and dad went out to get breakfast. When he came back she seemed confused and he helped her walk to the bathroom. She collapsed and stopped breathing. Despite efforts from paramedics, she was pronounced at the scene. (more to say about mom in another post, I promise) A mid-20\u0026rsquo;s son of a family close to us died in an Emergency Room waiting room in Missouri seeking care. They didn\u0026rsquo;t triage him as \u0026ldquo;urgent,\u0026rdquo; and from my understanding he coded in his chair. Unspeakable tragedy and indictment on our medical system as a whole, IMO. Jason\u0026rsquo;s mom, Brenda, passed away this past week. Jason was always the apple of her eye. Chris passed as described above. My eldest daughter remarked, \u0026ldquo;What is it with us that the people around us keep DYING?\u0026rdquo;\nI mean, I get it. It can seem like a \u0026ldquo;bad luck comes at once\u0026rdquo; situation, but my rational mind reminds us\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;ve been living a pretty charmed life. I went to a funeral every other month in Kentucky from the time I was a toddler until was about 10 (that was mom\u0026rsquo;s parents\u0026rsquo; generation dying), then it stopped. Aside from a tragic death of my cousin at 16 and my own grandmother\u0026rsquo;s death when I was 22, there hasn\u0026rsquo;t been much. My cohort in school was relatively healthy from 20-40.\nBut as Mordo says, \u0026ldquo;The bill comes due.\u0026rdquo; For those of us who grew up drinking water with mine tailing mercury in it, some of our cells will do interesting things. My parents\u0026rsquo; generation are 68-85 now.\nMy Dad and I are learning to communicate by text, and we\u0026rsquo;ve even progressed pass \u0026ldquo;Yes\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;No\u0026rdquo; answers.\nThings really won\u0026rsquo;t be the same again after Mom\u0026rsquo;s passing. Just writing that sentence still seems weird. It still feels like she\u0026rsquo;s going to pop-up on FB messenger and ask me, \u0026ldquo;How are you, Sonny?\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Do you need help with anything.\u0026rdquo;\nNo, Mom. We\u0026rsquo;re fine, thanks for askin\u0026rsquo;. We all love you. Take care of yourself, okay? I\u0026rsquo;ll talk to you later.\nIf I didn\u0026rsquo;t tell her\nI could leave today (\u0026hellip;I could leave today-AY)\nCalifornia Dreamin'\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/01/california-grievin/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAll the Leaves are Brown\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eAnd the sky is grey\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been for a walk\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eOn a Winter\u0026rsquo;s Day\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy college roommate Chris \u003ca href=\"https://www.kerrbrothersfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Christopher-Robin-Brown?obId=34359694\"\u003edied last week\u003c/a\u003e.  He was 46 years old, the same age as me.   I have no idea what he died of.   I was a groomsman in his first wedding in Orlando, Florida, though I don\u0026rsquo;t remember what year that was\u0026ndash;early 2000\u0026rsquo;s likely 2001-2002.  Chris was a guest at my own wedding in 2005, and likely would\u0026rsquo;ve been a groomsman if it was a larger affair.  Chris \u0026amp; Jessica stayed in contact with Whitney and myself until they divorced, though again I don\u0026rsquo;t remember when that was\u0026hellip;the latter part of the 2000\u0026rsquo;s.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"California Grievin'"},{"content":"So Los Angeles is burning. Hurricane force winds up to 100mph fanned firestorms West, Northwest, and Norht of Los Angeles proper, with significant portions of Santa Monica under evacuation.\nAs of this writing, 10 people confirmed dead.\nIt seems undeniable, the planet is angry with us.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/01/los-angeles-on-fire/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/10/los-angeles-wildfires-victims\"\u003eLos Angeles is burning\u003c/a\u003e.  Hurricane force winds up to 100mph fanned firestorms West, Northwest, and Norht of Los Angeles proper, with significant portions of Santa Monica under evacuation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/140f56724c8cf76a42a90f310be2d58b469f0acf/0_0_5760_3840/master/5760.jpg?width=620\u0026dpr=1\u0026s=none\u0026crop=none\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs of this writing, 10 people confirmed dead.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt seems undeniable, the planet is angry with us.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Los Angeles on Fire"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;The day\u0026hellip;.the Music Threads\u0026hellip;Died\u0026rdquo;\nZuck gave us a present this morning.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s time to get back to our roots around free expression and giving people voice on our platforms. Here\u0026rsquo;s what we\u0026rsquo;re going to do:\nReplace fact-checkers with Community Notes, starting in the US. Simplify our content policies and remove restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are out of touch with mainstream discourse. Change how we enforce our policies to remove the vast majority of censorship mistakes by focusing our filters on tackling illegal and high-severity violations and requiring higher confidence for our filters to take action. Bring back civic content. We\u0026rsquo;re getting feedback that people want to see this content again, so we\u0026rsquo;ll phase it back into Facebook, Instagram and Threads while working to keep the communities friendly and positive. Move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US content review to Texas. This will help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content. Work with President Trump to push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more. The US has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world and the best way to defend against the trend of government overreach on censorship is with the support of the US government. It\u0026rsquo;ll take time to get this all right and these are complex systems so they\u0026rsquo;ll never be perfect. But this is an important step forward and I\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to this next chapter!\nIt\u0026rsquo;s weird that you can almost hear the saliva hit the floor after all these tech icons are through servicing the new Overlords. Money can\u0026rsquo;t buy you self-respect, folks.\nSo, another layer of grief. Every \u0026ldquo;adult\u0026rdquo; community I\u0026rsquo;ve ever been a part of is once again gone:\nThree or Four churches, one of which was the structure of our family social life for 7 years. VWVortex.com, the nitromethane to my car addiction My Autocross friends. It was too painful to participate after I stopped racing. Twitter, which was my refuge from 2007 to Musk\u0026rsquo;s buyout. Granted this KILLED my blog output, so it was a mixed bag but the shouting into the void was cathartic. Now Threads, in which Meta has gone completely off the deep end. The loneliness of middle age continues. It\u0026rsquo;s a dark winter, indeed.\nI\u0026rsquo;m glad this place exists and only I have the password. self.shout_into(void)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/01/the-day-zuck-ruined-threads/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The day\u0026hellip;.the \u003cdel\u003eMusic\u003c/del\u003e \u003cem\u003eThreads\u003c/em\u003e\u0026hellip;Died\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.threads.net/@zuck/post/DEhgYx4JbEG?xmt=AQGz634ze1Q45V1B1nUh1qW-mgPaWZKvTcHSPneTgyXC4A\"\u003eZuck gave us a present this morning.\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s time to get back to our roots around free expression and giving people voice on our platforms. Here\u0026rsquo;s what we\u0026rsquo;re going to do:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eReplace fact-checkers with Community Notes, starting in the US.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSimplify our content policies and remove restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are out of touch with mainstream discourse.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChange how we enforce our policies to remove the vast majority of censorship mistakes by focusing our filters on tackling illegal and high-severity violations and requiring higher confidence for our filters to take action.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBring back civic content. We\u0026rsquo;re getting feedback that people want to see this content again, so we\u0026rsquo;ll phase it back into Facebook, Instagram and Threads while working to keep the communities friendly and positive.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMove our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US content review to Texas. This will help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWork with President Trump to push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more. The US has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world and the best way to defend against the trend of government overreach on censorship is with the support of the US government.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;ll take time to get this all right and these are complex systems so they\u0026rsquo;ll never be perfect. But this is an important step forward and I\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to this next chapter!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Day Zuck Ruined Threads"},{"content":"Since moving 45 minutes north of Austin in 2020, I drive at least 90 minutes every work-day. Some days (especially if it\u0026rsquo;s raining), that can total 2 hours. This year mark\u0026rsquo;s Amazon\u0026rsquo;s return to 5 Days per week in-office so that will be 10 hours a week on the road, 50 or so weeks a year.\nTo maintain sanity, I did two things:\nI traded-in my 2018 Honda Civic 6MT for a fancy toyota (A used Lexus ES300h). Let\u0026rsquo;s be honest: It\u0026rsquo;s a couch on wheels and a quiet place to be for those 90 minutes. Look for details on that coming later. I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten very acquainted with podcasts and audiobooks. I\u0026rsquo;ve loved podcasts for a long time. Here\u0026rsquo;s my list from 2012 They\u0026rsquo;re the soundtrack to me doing things: Yardwork, ranchwork, driving, travel. In general they ease the loneliness that is modern life\u0026ndash;Someone\u0026rsquo;s voice in your ear, helping you learn or laugh.\nSo this is my current list. I use Pocketcasts on iPhone16 and I\u0026rsquo;ve been quasi-satisfied with it. I don\u0026rsquo;t really like it compared to old Overcast, but the Overcast rewrite in 2024 burned me so I switched.\nPodcast Theme Review Accidental Tech Podcast Technology (Mac Focused) Every Week, John, Marco, and Casey talk about what\u0026rsquo;s in the tech news, usually in the Mac ecosystem. Aftershow is often car-related (\u0026ldquo;Neutral\u0026rdquo;). Age of Napoleon History (Napoleonic era) Monthly, an incredible deep-dive into a sequential narrative of Napoleon\u0026rsquo;s rise to and fall from power. Currently up to 1809 and the war of the 5th Coalition AWS Morning Brief Tech (AWS focused) Corey Quinn\u0026rsquo;s irreverant take on what my colleagues on the AWS side have done (or failed to do) in the past week or so Bloomberg Hot Pursuit Cars Did you think you needed a car podcast from Bloomberg that often features CEOs from Ferrari and Racers from around the world? No? Well, it\u0026rsquo;s certainly a slice into how the other half (read: Finance bros) live Decoder Ring Theatre Radio Drama Nearly dead now, but this was the entertainment I raised my kids on: The Red Panda, Blackjack Justice, and many tales of Derring-Do Diary of a Cartoonist Vlog First of many shows from Scott Johnson on this list, this is a single-voice feed of him musing about being a podcast host, grandfather in his mid-50s, enjoyer of Salt Lake City, and general progress in life Everyday Driver Car Debate Cars Newest of my subscriptions, weekly take on listener questions on \u0026ldquo;what should I buy\u0026rdquo;. Answers are often interesting, and the hosts\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;radio voices\u0026rdquo; impress. Fall of Civilizations Podcast History INCREDIBLY detailed, well-produced, feature-length documentaries of the rise and fall of civilzations in history. These put most history courses to shame. Film Sack Film Another Scott Johnson endeavor, this is a weekly film podcast where 4 friends watch and review a film (some old, some new). They have 670+ episodes in the back catalog so likely ANY film you want is there NPR Fresh Air Interview Massive turnaroudn from 2012: This is the ONLY NPR podcast I subscribe to now. Terry Gross is still a wonderful interviewer and her guests delight. History That Doesn\u0026rsquo;t Suck\u0026quot; History Sequential pass through American History. Currently up to the moment the Great Depression started. Exciting and it\u0026hellip;.doesn\u0026rsquo;t suck :D It Gets Late Early: Ageism in the Workplace Corporate Life Tackles Ageism in the worplace. It\u0026rsquo;s a Thing Pop Culture, Tech Discuss the latest in\u0026hellip;well \u0026ldquo;Things\u0026rdquo;. Hosted by Molly Wood and Tom Meritt of \u0026ldquo;Buzz Out Loud\u0026rdquo; fame Know a Little More Tech Deep Dives, again from Tom Meritt on various topics in tech Martyrs And Missionaries Christianity, History History of various martyrs and missionaries in Christianity Mayim Bialik\u0026rsquo;s Breakdown Psychology, Celebrities Celebrities and otehrs come on Mayim\u0026rsquo;s podcast to discuss their lives. Mayim and her cohost discuss various ways to confront life\u0026rsquo;s challenges. The Sackoff Show Celebrities, Interviews Katee Sackoff (Batlestar Galactica, The Mandalorian) brings her irreverence to the interview format, with her friends along for the ride. I\u0026rsquo;ve been pretty impressed with the content and candor on this show SKIM: The Scott and Kim Show Another Scott Johnson joint, this is a (roughly) weekly show of scott and his wife. They discuss life and answer listener questions TFL Car Chat Cars Roman Micra and the rest of The Fastlane (TFL) crew chat about news in the car world, their vehicles under review, etc. TFL Talkin\u0026rsquo; Truck Cars André and others from the Truck side of TFL talk about the latest. That One Show with Bryan Combs Variety My cousin\u0026rsquo;s podcast! He\u0026rsquo;s had some great episodes, including a terrific retrospective on Jackson, KY\u0026rsquo;s own Sturgill Simpson. Honorable mention goes to Scott Johnson\u0026rsquo;s The Morning Stream. This was my daily companion podcast since 2020, but I finally felt the need to break free midyear last year. If you\u0026rsquo;re looking for a daily podcast with humor, news, and music, these guys are (literally) in the Podcasting hall of fame.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/01/podcasts-2025-edition/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSince moving 45 minutes north of Austin in 2020, I drive at least 90 minutes every work-day.  Some days (especially if it\u0026rsquo;s raining), that can total 2 hours.  This year mark\u0026rsquo;s Amazon\u0026rsquo;s return to \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/16/amazon-jassy-tells-employees-to-return-to-office-five-days-a-week.html\"\u003e5 Days per week in-office\u003c/a\u003e so that will be 10 hours a week on the road, 50 or so weeks a year.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo maintain sanity, I did two things:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI traded-in my \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/05/two-week-review-2018-honda-civic-lx-6mt/\" title=\"Civic Review\"\u003e2018 Honda Civic 6MT\u003c/a\u003e for a fancy toyota (A used Lexus ES300h).  Let\u0026rsquo;s be honest: It\u0026rsquo;s a couch on wheels and a quiet place to be for those 90 minutes.  Look for details on that coming later.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve gotten \u003cem\u003every\u003c/em\u003e acquainted with podcasts and audiobooks.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve loved podcasts for a long time.  \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/04/podcasts-ragequit-some-stuff-this-weekend/\" title=\"2012 podcasts\"\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s my list from 2012\u003c/a\u003e They\u0026rsquo;re the soundtrack to me \u003cem\u003edoing things\u003c/em\u003e: Yardwork, ranchwork, driving, travel.  In general they ease the loneliness that is modern life\u0026ndash;Someone\u0026rsquo;s voice in your ear, helping you learn or laugh.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Podcasts, 2025 Edition"},{"content":"So, it was quite a year, of some advances and pain. I\u0026rsquo;m still here, so let\u0026rsquo;s get into it.\nProfessional Life A Door Closes Last January was probably the lowest I\u0026rsquo;d been in many years. I was looking for a new job. I managed 6 people in Seattle from an office in Austin, I\u0026rsquo;d been converted in January 2023 officially from Software Development Engineer (SDE) to Software Development Manager (SDM), though I\u0026rsquo;d been doing the job from April 2022. (This will become important later).\nMy organization in Amazon announced they were contracting from having \u0026ldquo;Hub\u0026rdquo; offices in Seattle, Denver, and Austin to just Seattle and Denver. They announced this in October 2023, and it threw everyone into chaos: Would they move? Would they quit? Would they take internal transfer?\nWell, I wasn\u0026rsquo;t moving to Seattle. I moved to Texas not for Amazon, but for the climate because our family can\u0026rsquo;t handle cold. Literally the last 2 years we were in Ky from November to March, we were stuck inside by a roaring fire to stave off respiratory issues. So, relocatin was out (Though, in truth, I like the Seattle Area and have done since I interviewed there in 2009).\nSo I canvassed internal and external job openings during the worst Tech Winter since 2001. Every job had dozens of applicants, with one internal hiring manager telling me, the n00b SDM, \u0026ldquo;Look, I have people with 20 years of management experience appling for this job, why should I consider you? You have ONE year of experience.\u0026rdquo; (Also, my answer to \u0026ldquo;Why do you want to be a manager?\u0026rdquo; wasn\u0026rsquo;t acceptable\u0026ndash;another blog on that scenario forthcoming)\nFor the past two years, I\u0026rsquo;d averaged a week-long trip to seattle every 6-7 weeks, and hadn\u0026rsquo;t slept soundly the whole time. I averaged getting home from the office at 8pm, often much later than that. \u0026ldquo;No Meeting Fridays\u0026rdquo; were the days I could attempt to catch up the other 50 things I hadn\u0026rsquo;t done firefighting during the other 6 days a week. (Yes 6 days). I was cresting 300 pounds and got winded walking from the car to the elevator.\nSo reviewing:\nHealth in the toilet My family no longer knew me Mental Health in the toilet Job satisfaction nonexistent Every \u0026ldquo;way out\u0026rdquo; seemed shut Eventually, Whitney staged an intervention saying: \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re dying. Figure this out.\u0026rdquo;\nBy the end of January, I asked my old boss if he wanted a slightly used SDE. He said \u0026ldquo;Yes.\u0026rdquo; So from March 4, I would take off the mantle of management and go back to writing code.\nUm yeah, but\u0026hellip;18 months out of practice is no bueno. Being a software developer is a skill you have to hone.\nThe Long Road Back So I landed on a team in my old organization that does, basically, everything: Frontend, backend, mobile, embedded proprietary. Coding in (\u0026hellip;deep breath\u0026hellip;): Java, Kotlin, Objective-C, Swift, JavaScript, React, C++, and lots of proprietary tech. And it\u0026rsquo;s a sharp team, also\u0026ndash;developer who\u0026rsquo;d go on to be promoted to Senior by End-of-Year, and 3 others who\u0026rsquo;d all earn promotions. I had a blast, but there were some flatly embarrasing days:\nRemembering how git worked. Like with vim, my fingers remembered the commands but I needed to setup my aliases again. Getting our tooling back under my fingers (some things are easy, most aren\u0026rsquo;t). Primary tools like programming languages and IDEs aren\u0026rsquo;t the issue. Instead it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Where\u0026rsquo;s the button in this UI that did _____ 2 years ago?\u0026rdquo; followed by Understanding the whole organization had \u0026ldquo;moved on\u0026rdquo; from where it was in 2022 when I left. Everyone is more mature. I was the FNG again, not some sort of knowledgeable Yoda. The initial project (embedded C++) is roughly 12 years advanced from the last time I did C++ professionally. Obviously, \u0026ldquo;The Road Back\u0026rdquo; is a post its own, but summarizing: It\u0026rsquo;s a work-in-progress. Never lose your edge if you\u0026rsquo;re in Tech. Getting it back suuuuuucks.\nPersonal Life Headlines: Grieving recently. Proud of my kids. Managed to cash-flow full rennovations of our Kitchen, bathrooms due to undisclosed toxic mold from the seller on our property. Just cash-flow\u0026rsquo;d a new roof for the house. Still married.\nStill keeping my head above water on brain chemistry issues. I\u0026rsquo;ve learned considerably more about that, but society\u0026rsquo;s stigma is still there, so the details won\u0026rsquo;t be here. Suffice to say: It\u0026rsquo;s both genetic and manageable.\nTriumphs My eldest daughter attended a pre-collegiate experience at Duke University in June, helping her understand that (1) she loved psychology and neuroscience, and also (2) that she hated the hoity-toity folks associated with Duke. She decided she liked UNC-Chapel Hill in Raleigh, though. Our college search has continued since, with visits to Abilene Christian University, Texas A\u0026amp;M, and two visits to Baylor. Looks like she wants to stay in Texas for her education, and there are lots of options small to immense, both public and private.\nDuring that June trip, I flew with her to North Carolina, hung around a day, then took a side trip up to Kentucky to see my parents and stay for most of a week. I\u0026rsquo;m very glad I did, given what December would bring. I got to have longer 1-on-1 conversations with both my parents than I\u0026rsquo;d had in a decade, easily. My mother had been very ill through the previous winter, so much so that my uncle called me\u0026ndash;on condition of anonymity\u0026ndash;that Mom might not survive and that she was no longer herself. By June she\u0026rsquo;d recovered and we talked about many things. She showed signs of improvement from August until Thanksgiving, and we talked every day on Facebook Messenger.\nOnce school started, my eldested daughter achieved her capstone award in American Heritage Girls, the \u0026ldquo;Stars and Stripes\u0026rdquo; she received Labor Day weekend in 2024. For comparison, this equates to the \u0026ldquo;Eagle Scout\u0026rdquo; award from Boys Scouts of America. This culminated hundreds of hours of volunteering, planning, building a project with the help of the rest of her troop, and completing a rigorous board of review both locally and nationally. Her troop created FOUR S\u0026amp;S award winners in 2024, which is unheard-of.\nTragedies Our family had a pet bunny named \u0026lsquo;Clem\u0026rsquo; we\u0026rsquo;d had since 2020. He\u0026rsquo;d been ailing since January 2023: He kept having infected teeth, and we\u0026rsquo;d even paid for an expensive surgery + recovery + antibiotics to help him survive. Clem was all personality and part of our family, but this would be the end. By April, it was apparent that unless we did another surgery he wouldn\u0026rsquo;t survive and the pain and recovery from the previous was just selfish of us to continue. Some days he\u0026rsquo;d be trembling from the pain. We decided to put him down in May. He went peacefully in the vet\u0026rsquo;s office surrounded by us, and he\u0026rsquo;s buried just out back on our property with a set of limestones as a cairn.\nAnd then, on December the 8th\u0026hellip;I got the call you never want to get, \u0026ldquo;Harold Ray, your mom passed away about 30 minutes ago.\u0026rdquo; I remember everything so clearly: Two of us had gone to early service, and I\u0026rsquo;d come home to cook a package of bacon for the family. I was watching a \u0026ldquo;TFL Truck\u0026rdquo; Youtube video on my phone when I got the call. I held it together until we could hang-up, when Dad said the coroner was on the way after the EMS had left. He had been there when she collapsed. He was with her at the end.\nThen I hung up, my wife held my head to her torso and I just scream-cried for 15 minutes.\nWe drove up to KY for the funeral on the 11th, and it was\u0026ndash;as expected\u0026ndash;a huge affair for my small town. My mom was an institution: A teacher for multiple generations of two counties\u0026rsquo; middle-schoolers, a business-owner for 20+ years, and a pillar of the Faith community on local television. I intend to write a full eulogy for Mom on here when I get time.\nSummarizing \u0026amp; What\u0026rsquo;s next Mom died. I haven\u0026rsquo;t processed that yet, though some time off from Dec 25 -\u0026gt; Jan 6 has helped. I need to say more about her, likely here. I never processed the shift from SDM to SDE\u0026hellip;niggling at the back of my neck was that \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re a failure\u0026rdquo; self-talk and it\u0026rsquo;s time to process that too. Maybe I was a failure\u0026ndash;another good thing to write an article about. My eldest daughter is in process of deciding what field of study she wants in college, and what college she wants to attend. It\u0026rsquo;s going to be an exciting 12 months or so, because she\u0026rsquo;s very smart, but I make too much money for her to qualify for any sort of need-based scholorship. \u0026ldquo;Paying for College\u0026rdquo; will be a theme here too. I read some great books in the past year\u0026ndash;posts coming about that too. An 1-2 hour commute each day guarantees I\u0026rsquo;ve plenty of time for books and podcasts. There was an election. I\u0026rsquo;ve deepened my \u0026ldquo;process wonk\u0026rdquo; knowledge witha few key podcasts in the past 4 years\u0026ndash;all ripe topics. I bought a car or two. I sold my Civic. Maybe let\u0026rsquo;s check-in how they\u0026rsquo;re doing? Periodically? I learned some new technologies I\u0026rsquo;ll probably blog about. So, as the tagline says: \u0026ldquo;Strap in. Let\u0026rsquo;s go\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/01/2024-year-in-review/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, it was quite a year, of some advances and pain.   I\u0026rsquo;m still here, so let\u0026rsquo;s get into it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"professional-life\"\u003eProfessional Life\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"a-door-closes\"\u003eA Door Closes\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast January was probably the lowest I\u0026rsquo;d been in many years.   I was looking for a new job.  I managed 6 people in Seattle from an office in Austin, I\u0026rsquo;d been converted in January 2023 officially from Software Development Engineer (SDE) to Software Development Manager (SDM), though I\u0026rsquo;d been doing the job from April 2022.  (This will become important later).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2024 Year in Review"},{"content":"My my how things have changed since I first moved this blog to AWS hosting. For one thing, my previous Hugo Theme is no longer compatible, and hugo itself moved from YAML to TOML for configuration language. So that\u0026rsquo;s been a fun afternoon.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been following these excellent instructions that should automate the full deploy from checkin to push. Syncrhonizing the Github action will be interesting, but that\u0026rsquo;s just it\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s INTERESTING.\nOnce I get this sorted, look for updates on the regular.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2025/01/bringing-blog-back/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy my how things have changed since I first moved this blog to \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/12/hello-world-devharryc/\"\u003eAWS hosting\u003c/a\u003e.  For one thing, my previous Hugo Theme is no longer compatible, and hugo itself moved from YAML to TOML for configuration language.  So that\u0026rsquo;s been a fun afternoon.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been following these \u003ca href=\"https://jeromethibaud.com/en/blog/deploy-hugo-site-to-s3/\"\u003eexcellent instructions\u003c/a\u003e that should automate the full deploy from checkin to push.   Syncrhonizing the Github action will be interesting, but that\u0026rsquo;s just it\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s INTERESTING.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOnce I get this sorted, look for updates on the regular.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bringing Blog Back"},{"content":"Am I still alive?\nYes.\nAre things rather different now?\nAlso yes.\nI live on a 10-acre ranch. As I type this, my neighbors are doing their regular Saturday target practice (pistol-calibre from the sound of it). I have a nearly 2.5 Year old Toyota Tundra, a tractor, a chainsaw, and two rabbits.\nI bought, raised, and sold (for a terrific tax-writeoff loss) 4 Aberdeen steers.\nI’m somehow still married with diagnosed mental-health issues that are okay with medication (more on that later). We’ve been through 3 Texas ICE/Snow events and managed to survive.\nI’m also a manager now, having transitioned in April 2022.\nThe world turned upside down. More to come.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2023/02/test-am-i-still-alive/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAm I still alive?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYes.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAre things rather different now?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAlso yes.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI live on a 10-acre ranch. As I type this, my neighbors are doing their regular Saturday target practice (pistol-calibre from the sound of it). I have a nearly 2.5 Year old Toyota Tundra, a tractor, a chainsaw, and two rabbits.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI bought, raised, and sold (for a terrific tax-writeoff loss) 4 Aberdeen steers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m somehow still married with diagnosed mental-health issues that are okay with medication (more on that later). We’ve been through 3 Texas ICE/Snow events and managed to survive.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Test Am I Still Alive?"},{"content":"\nIf I add up all the maladies/mishaps/accidents I’ve had in my life, I should be:\nFunctionally blind Half-deaf Missing half my teeth Dying of Colon Cancer in 2019 Dying of Skin Cancer in 2012 Lying dead under a crashed car somewhere in Eastern Kentucky in 1996 or so. Decapitated by a drainpipe in a creekbed in 1984 That’s just off the top of my head. Modern med’cine has been good to me. The rest is, variously: Probability, Luck, Fate, or Divine Providence. Take your pick.\nMy time should be done, but it’s not. Thus, Bonus Time.\nI smiled a bit more this weekend. There was a lift in my step, and a little less “What Fresh Hell is This?” in my attitude. I’ve acted entitled my whole life, though my life’s been laughably easy. Each roadblock or inconvenience lamented, often in this forum.\nMaybe I’ve finally come around. This is Bonus Time. Time to live that way.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2021/04/bonus-time/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://media.giphy.com/media/jaFzmFu7J9k08/giphy.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf I add up all the maladies/mishaps/accidents I’ve had in my life, I should be:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFunctionally blind\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHalf-deaf\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMissing half my teeth\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDying of Colon Cancer in 2019\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDying of Skin Cancer in 2012\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLying dead under a crashed car somewhere in Eastern Kentucky in 1996 or so.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDecapitated by a drainpipe in a creekbed in 1984\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s just off the top of my head. Modern med’cine has been good to me. The rest is, variously: Probability, Luck, Fate, or Divine Providence. Take your pick.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bonus Time"},{"content":" \u0026ldquo;When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.\u0026rdquo; - 1 Corinthians 13:11 (KVJ)\nI\u0026rsquo;ve had a subscription to some sort of car magazine, blog, etc. since I was ten years old. I used to covet and read car magazines like more well-adjusted boys used to secret Playboy magazines. (November 1994 was a classic of that particular tome, but I digress.)\nFor thirty two years, I\u0026rsquo;ve had some form of magazine, internet forum, website, RSS feed, or podcast I consumed about cars. At one point I subscribed or bought: Car and Driver, Road and Track, Automobile, Autoweek, Grassroots Motorsports, Roundel and even (God help me) Motor Trend. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get enough. I was like a crack addict with zero biological limitations.\nAll that to say: No more; I\u0026rsquo;m done.\nI unsubscribed from the last vestige of my fandom, the WheelBearings Podcast this past week. Their female voice, Rebecca Lindland is bowing-out to (re-)start her career somewhere in corporate america and it was time to take a step back.\nI have a carefully cultivated list Twitter list, CarTwitter I\u0026rsquo;ve added to over the years. I\u0026rsquo;m hiding it in TweetDeck today.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know if today\u0026rsquo;s the day I became \u0026ldquo;old\u0026rdquo; or what, but it just is what it is. I\u0026rsquo;ve spent inordinate amounts of time memorizing, dreaming about cars. It just didn\u0026rsquo;t amount to much. They\u0026rsquo;re just things\u0026hellip;increasingly irrelevant things in what remains of my life.\nI still love a good rev-match downshift. I still love lateral g and the squeal of tires. Just time to turn the page.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2021/03/ragequit/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.\u0026rdquo; - 1 Corinthians 13:11 (KVJ)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve had a subscription to some sort of car magazine, blog, etc. since I was ten years old. I used to covet and read car magazines like more well-adjusted boys used to secret Playboy magazines.  (November 1994 was a classic of that particular tome, but I digress.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ragequit"},{"content":"Poor sleep last night.\nSo the Daylight Savings Time switch was this weekend, so everyone felt fully capable of staying up until midnight watching movies. This weekend we watched Raya and the Last Dragon on Friday, the final episode of Agent Carter and the first in the Hobbit trilogy on Sunday.\nI\u0026rsquo;m uneasy. I have my second (well, final) cataract surgery on Wednesday\u0026ndash;as luck would have it St. Patrick\u0026rsquo;s Day. I went to bed before Whitney and Maria and when they went to bed I woke up with my mind swimming from flashbacks from the last cataract surgery: The immense anxiety. The claustrophobia of being draped with just your eye poking out. The general fear of the smells of a surgical center.\nObjectively, I understand that this procedure is waaaaay less invasive than others I\u0026rsquo;ve had. In particular, I\u0026rsquo;ve had a gum-graft surgery that really ought to cause more flashbacks. But\u0026hellip;.no. This one freaks me out.\nAge is becomeing a thing. I get aches in my hips when the weather changes now. Both eyes will have been done after this. My memory continues to degrade, much to my wife\u0026rsquo;s chagrin when asking me to recall incidents from 10-15 years ago.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not that I\u0026rsquo;m misremembering, darling. I just don\u0026rsquo;t remember. I honestly don\u0026rsquo;t. Our four years in our second house in Georgetown, KY, evaporates from my memory more each day. I remember our first house (2005-\u0026gt;2012) much better, oddly(https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5109280/) on Friday, the final episode of Agent Carter and the first in the Hobbit trilogy on Sunday.\nI\u0026rsquo;m uneasy. I have my second (well, final) cataract surgery on Wednesday\u0026ndash;as luck would have it St. Patrick\u0026rsquo;s Day. I went to bed before Whitney and Maria and when they went to bed I woke up with my mind swimming from flashbacks from the last cataract surgery: The immense anxiety. The claustrophobia of being draped with just your eye poking out. The general fear of the smells of a surgical center.\nObjectively, I understand that this procedure is waaaaay less invasive than others I\u0026rsquo;ve had. In particular, I\u0026rsquo;ve had a gum-graft surgery that really ought to cause more flashbacks. But\u0026hellip;.no. This one freaks me out.\nAge is becomeing a thing. I get aches in my hips when the weather changes now. Both eyes will have been done after this. My memory continues to degrade, much to my wife\u0026rsquo;s chagrin when asking me to recall incidents from 10-15 years ago.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not that I\u0026rsquo;m misremembering, darling. I just don\u0026rsquo;t remember. I honestly don\u0026rsquo;t. Our four years in our second house in Georgetown, KY, evaporates from my memory more each day. I remember our first house (2005-\u0026gt;2012) much better, oddly.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2021/03/nerves/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePoor sleep last night.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the Daylight Savings Time switch was this weekend, so everyone felt fully capable of staying up until midnight watching movies.  This weekend we watched \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5109280/\"\u003eRaya and the Last Dragon\u003c/a\u003e on Friday, the final episode of \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3475734/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0\"\u003eAgent Carter\u003c/a\u003e and the first in the Hobbit trilogy on Sunday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m uneasy.  I have my second (well, \u003cem\u003efinal\u003c/em\u003e) cataract surgery on Wednesday\u0026ndash;as luck would have it St. Patrick\u0026rsquo;s Day.  I went to bed before Whitney and Maria and when they went to bed I woke up with my mind swimming from flashbacks from the last cataract surgery:  The immense anxiety.  The claustrophobia of being draped with just your eye poking out.  The general fear of the smells of a surgical center.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nerves"},{"content":"Today (well, tomorrow) makes it a year. On 3/13 last year I left my office, picked up my kids from Grace Academy for Spring Break\u0026hellip;and the great upside down world of CoViD 2020 happened. Example: WFH Day 2\nI was a reliable journalist for awhile, then in June I just\u0026hellip;stopped. Overwhelmed didn\u0026rsquo;t really cut it; I was paralyzed by how much the world was changing.\nThe 2015-era computer I wrote those blogs on is gone, replaced by another coporate laptop from my employer after the battery decided to die. The house I wrote those in is gone, replaced by a 10.11 acre rance property with cows, rabbits, a tractor, and a new (LEASED!) Toyota tundra.\nAll that remains of my previous house (Sold in October 2020) are a few odds and ends in a storage unit that I pay $100 to keep climate controlled for no good reason. Just one of a thousand TODOs that owning property accretes, I guess.\nSummarizing June 2020 until now seems impossible, but hitting the hightlights:\nWe closed sale on our 10 acre ranch property in July, after a stressful 4 months (for my wife: 18 months) of shopping for a unicorn property. The place was turnkey ready for animals and met most of our requirements. It\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;only\u0026rdquo; 45 minutes away from my office and the internet speed is 15 mbps. Yaay. For about 2 months, I\u0026rsquo;d sleep at the property and then come back to our subdivision house in Georgetown, Texas to work using the \u0026ldquo;gigabit ethernet\u0026rdquo; to do my work. In the middle of that we moved in mid august. We used movers; my days of schlepping huge pieces of furniture by myself have been over since 2012. The girls did not return to their private school in the Fall. We\u0026rsquo;re once again homeschooling. It didn\u0026rsquo;t rain from July until November. October\u0026ndash;usually one of the wettest months\u0026ndash;was nearly parched. November saw the election. In November, we took a 2000 mile roundtrip to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee to visit with some of Whitney\u0026rsquo;s friends, and also rendezvous with both sets of grandparents for a week. In December, my father and his cousin delivered a John Deere 3038e tractor, front-end-loader, and rear blade attachment to my house, making the full round trip from Kentucky in 3 days. I did something like that once. I was 20. My father is nearing 70. Also in december, I leased a 2021 Toyota Tundra CrewMAX SR5 4wd truck after trying (and failing) to find a reasonably priced used farm truck. Thanks to CoVID everyone bought: A gun, ammunition, and a truck. I managed to find, lease, and take home the Tundra in a 6 hour period one saturday, only visiting the dealership to take possession. It rides like a brick and gets gas mileage like my mom\u0026rsquo;s 1991 F-250 4x4, but it serves the purpose. January was\u0026ndash;of course\u0026ndash;the Storming of the Capitol on January 6th, with a mob fuelled by allegations that the election was stolen. To date, this is as close the a \u0026ldquo;Bastille\u0026rdquo; moment America has gotten, but it feels like the seal is brokent here. It won\u0026rsquo;t be the last. Also in January, we got CoViD, or at least we THINK we did. There was a full 2 weeks of convalescence. February saw tempreatures plunge in Texas to unprecedented levels\u0026hellip;.we had -3 F at my house one particular Monday, and it stayed below freezing for 144 hours, a record. We came very close to the electrical system in Texas failing completely and CATCHING FIRE. Filing my taxes this year included a Schedule \u0026ldquo;F\u0026rdquo; and ran 44 pages. Forty-four pages. Next Wednesday, I get my left eye cataract removed. I\u0026rsquo;m 42 years old. Even my Ophthalmologist is at a loss as to how this could\u0026rsquo;ve occurred. My lifelong suspicion that I\u0026rsquo;m actually 10 years older than my birth certificate age seems true. It\u0026rsquo;s been an interminable, depressing year\u0026hellip;and yet on a personal level, the most financially and personally rewarding of my life to date. I can\u0026rsquo;t square those two feelings. Thus the lack of updates.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2021/03/a-year-elapsed/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday (well, tomorrow) makes it a year. On 3/13 last year I left my office, picked up my kids from Grace Academy for Spring Break\u0026hellip;and the great upside down world of CoViD 2020 happened.  Example: \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/03/wfh-day-2/\"\u003eWFH Day 2\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was a reliable journalist for awhile, then in June I just\u0026hellip;stopped.  Overwhelmed didn\u0026rsquo;t really cut it; I was paralyzed by how much the world was changing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 2015-era computer I wrote those blogs on is gone, replaced by another coporate laptop from my employer after the battery decided to die.  The house I wrote those in is gone, replaced by a 10.11 acre rance property with cows, rabbits, a tractor, and a new (LEASED!) Toyota tundra.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Year Elapsed"},{"content":"This seems to be the question occupying those in power right now:\n\u0026ldquo;Is all this crap for real?\u0026rdquo;\nWhat follows is my attempt to frame the current socio-political situation in the United States, circa June 2020. Namely, weeks of daily protests and nightly riots about systemic racism.\nWhether those in power are stoking the fire or co-opting the mob for political agenda\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ll not name names there\u0026ndash;all those in established positions of authority seem to be asking that self-same question:\n\u0026ldquo;Is this for real?\u0026rdquo;\nI\u0026rsquo;ll attempt to argue why it probably is not, and then try to find some counter-examples why this may be it. Whatever \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rdquo; is.\nWhy This Too (Might) Pass Why might this all blow over?\nIn short: Because usually, it does. The vast majority of American citizens are ambivalent and don\u0026rsquo;t care about _____. That\u0026rsquo;s a true statement whether it\u0026rsquo;s whatever hot-button issue you like to name: Jobs, #MeToo, Racial Equality, or the Houston Astros cheating scandal. People. Do Not. Care. Movements like this fizzle. Let\u0026rsquo;s take some examples.\nIn recent memory, the best example has to be Occupy Wall Street. In September 2011, protesters gathered in the financial district of New York city to protest the obscene inequality in our country. There was lots of press coverage, but by November it was mostly over and by May 2012, it was very over. The movement bordered on self-parody\u0026ndash;Anybody remember \u0026ldquo;Down Twinkles?\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;and accomplished nothing.\nLooking farther back, people today cite 1968 as a time of unrest. And, it was: Riots in the streets, particularly in urban centers hollowed out by White Flight and boxed in by redlining. Shootings, looting, the Democratic Convention. Again, lots of coverage. Result? Richard Nixon in the whitehouse. Return to \u0026ldquo;normalcy\u0026rdquo; and a strong, manipulative man in charge.\nMass movements often have little effect, because without a clear goal and actual power, people still have to go back to their lives, jobs, etc.\nWhy It Might Not Pass In short: Social Media and People with Spare Time\nIt\u0026rsquo;s interesting to compare what\u0026rsquo;s happening right now to The Arab Spring, which incidentally was one reason people were so freaked out by Occupy Wall Street. At that same time, governments throughout the Middle East got toppled by grassroots efforts coordinated via technology: Twitter, Blackberry Messenger. People were angry at authoritarian regimes, repression, unemployment. They had time on their hands\u0026ndash;what, were they going to their Jobs? No.\nOur economy has turned to recession, as we thought it might. Millions are out of work, particularly in the service industry, travel, entertainment, and sports. People have time to consider 400 years of race-relations on this continent.\nBeyond that, the Occupy Wall Street sentiment still exists. Students of most revolutions (1917 Russia, 1789 France, 1932 Germany) typically point at income inequality as an underlying cause. People feel powerless, that \u0026ldquo;they\u0026rdquo; (whomever that might be) are keeping them down. A healthy middle class and social mobility is the generally accepted antidote to revolution. And our Middle Class dwindles, as 50 years of high-paying trades and manufacturing jobs went overseas.\nLast, people are just upset, having been locked away in their homes since March because of CoVid19. Prior to George Floyd, the nation was a powder-keg of anxiety already.\nSummarizing: People are broke, scared, and angry, with plenty of access to information that reinforces those sentiments. Occupy Wall Street was a joke for Boomers and GenX\u0026rsquo;ers, happy with their 401(k) and joking about Down Twinkles while sipping a Venti Latte from Starbucks® at their comfy job.\nThis feels different.\nSo What? This could blow-over, but the seeds for something bigger are there. Retrenchment back to \u0026ldquo;normal\u0026rdquo; won\u0026rsquo;t be normal. It will be authoritarian, with most of the trappings of the Constitution thrown-away. Some flavor of dystopia, where more and more energy goes towards holding \u0026ldquo;America\u0026rdquo; together by force, not by the consent of the governed.\nIf I had to lay odds, authoritarian rule is most likely, because it\u0026rsquo;s so in right now: Putin, Kim, Xie. All so very fashionble. And at least the rich get to stay rich.\nThe other option isn\u0026rsquo;t authoritarian, it\u0026rsquo;s anarchic far-left revolution, with increasing extremism and loyalty to ideology. The mob takes over, then the demagogues. Think the Bastille, then the Terror, then the Directory. (And then, likely a new Napoleon.) There\u0026rsquo;d be wealth redistribution at minimum, likely settling of scores with the formerly powerful much like happened under Stalin.\nSo what\u0026rsquo;s it to be, the Lady or the Tiger?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/06/the-lady-or-the-tiger/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis seems to be the question occupying those in power right now:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2c/TheLadyOrTheTiger.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Is all this crap \u003cem\u003efor real\u003c/em\u003e?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat follows is my attempt to frame the current socio-political situation in the United States, circa June 2020.  Namely, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice\"\u003eweeks of daily protests and nightly riots\u003c/a\u003e about systemic racism.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2020/06/09/ap_20157661051141_wide-0bf95e8fe1986c075693ffa4c0d453cf101d55cd-s1400-c85.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhether those in power are stoking the fire or co-opting the mob for political agenda\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ll not name names there\u0026ndash;all those in established positions of authority seem to be asking that self-same question:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Lady or the Tiger"},{"content":"It was going to be something.\nSomething was going to wake a nation of people who\u0026rsquo;ve been quarantined for 80+ days. People are bored, anxious, afraid, and simply tired.\nTurns out, that something was the death of George Floyd on 25 May, a week ago today. Today, an independent autopsy indicates he died of asphyxiation\nOne week. In that time, protests have broken-out in 140 cities, in particular in Louisville, Kentucky, my wife\u0026rsquo;s hometown. Each day, there are protests, and as night falls, they turn violent. Last night, police in Lousiville felt they were fired upon, and returned fire with live rounds, killing restaurant-owner David McAtee.\nIn that time, the president has insisted on authoritarian measures, finally using all that military gear that\u0026rsquo;s been flowing to police since 2001. (Hey, my small town police force has an MRAP handy, does yours?)\nLet\u0026rsquo;s be clear: This isn\u0026rsquo;t in particular about George Floyd, or Breonna Taylor, or David McAtee. This is about people who feel helpless, who are fed-up. It\u0026rsquo;s about police who feel like they\u0026rsquo;re under siege. This is about a nation that doesn\u0026rsquo;t know what it is or what it stands for anymore.\nAs I type this, the president is about to speak from the Rose Garden, and I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine it\u0026rsquo;ll be anything but vitriol for people to sit down, shut up, and know their place.\nTo that I can only say:\nStrap in, folks. Fear has turned to violence, as it inevitably must.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/06/the-violence-begins/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt was going to be something.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSomething\u003c/strong\u003e was going to wake a nation of people who\u0026rsquo;ve been quarantined for 80+ days.  People are bored, anxious, \u003cem\u003eafraid\u003c/em\u003e, and simply tired.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTurns out, that something was the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ajc.com/news/victim-police-encounter-had-started-new-life-minnesota/rMmT2wipeQFNnsypmh6oBL/\"\u003edeath of George Floyd\u003c/a\u003e on 25 May, a week ago today.  Today, an independent autopsy indicates he \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/george-floyd-family-calls-for-first-degree-murder-charges-against-cop.html\"\u003edied of asphyxiation\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne week.  In that time, protests have broken-out in 140 cities, in particular in Louisville, Kentucky, my wife\u0026rsquo;s hometown.  Each day, there are protests, and as night falls, they turn violent.  Last night, police in Lousiville felt they were fired upon, and returned fire with live rounds, \u003ca href=\"https://www.salon.com/2020/06/01/louisville-restaurant-owner-killed-after-police-and-national-guard-returned-fire-on-crowd/\"\u003ekilling restaurant-owner David McAtee\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Violence Begins"},{"content":"The world went to hell on 13 March 2020.\nWe\u0026rsquo;d been watching a slow-motion tidal wave from China come our way since January. We\u0026rsquo;d hoped it\u0026rsquo;d stop like SARS in mainland China, and we\u0026rsquo;d get to say \u0026ldquo;Whew! Close one.\u0026rdquo; Nope.\nWe saw it bloom in Europe, but hey\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;re still an ocean away from this thing, right? No.\nOn March 13, I got the email saying \u0026ldquo;Work from Home until further notice.\u0026rdquo; Then a few weeks later, it became \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;ll evaluate but stay home until May 1st at least.\u0026rdquo;\nAt that point\u0026ndash;March 26\u0026ndash;covid looked like this:\nTotal deaths in US just a bit over a thousand.\nThen they just gave up: \u0026ldquo;You may work from home until October 1st.\u0026rdquo;\nAt this writing, a May thunderstorm roiling outside at 9am, these are the stats:\nJust about to crest a hundred thousand people. The funny thing is, we thought a thousand deaths was terrible, the news marking the passing of each celebrity.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve definitely reached a new phase, as it\u0026rsquo;s just daily reports, with callouts if they didn\u0026rsquo;t die of CoVid19.\nSeventy four days of lockdown, and Americans are tired of it. Memorial Day just came and went, and the \u0026ldquo;reopening\u0026rdquo; wave is upon us. Bars and pools. People behaving like people, getting much closer than six feet apart at least. Texas led the way, and Texas is now blooming \u0026gt; 1k cases a day.\nThey\u0026rsquo;re talking about a way to play some sort of baseball season, and there are assurances from the powers-that-be that almighty FOOTBALL SEASON will continue unabated. As if that\u0026rsquo;s terribly important.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve kept busy here at home, relocating both my daughters\u0026rsquo; bedrooms and cleaning out the garage enough to get both cars in each night. There\u0026rsquo;s been a spate of petty theft in our middle-class neighborhood, complete with Ring® videos, but that seems to be the tip of the iceberg.\nAnywhere from one in four to one in three Americans are out of work. Hertz rent-a-car just filed for bankruptcy at midnight Friday.\nMy work is laughably behind and has been frustrating. I\u0026rsquo;m burned out, but there\u0026rsquo;s no way to take a vacation. I was up last night until midnight working on infrastructure-as-code work just to get a service to start. I\u0026rsquo;m easily 2 months behind schedule on what I\u0026rsquo;m doing.\nSo that\u0026rsquo;s Day 74. Still feels like the beginning; nowhere near the end.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/05/covid-day-74/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe world went to hell on 13 March 2020.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;d been watching a slow-motion tidal wave from China come our way since January.  We\u0026rsquo;d hoped it\u0026rsquo;d stop like SARS in mainland China, and we\u0026rsquo;d get to say \u0026ldquo;Whew!  Close one.\u0026rdquo;  Nope.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe saw it bloom in Europe, but hey\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;re still an ocean away from this thing, right?  No.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn March 13, I got the email saying \u0026ldquo;Work from Home until further notice.\u0026rdquo;  Then a few weeks later, it became \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;ll evaluate but stay home until May 1st at least.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CoVid Day 74"},{"content":"A Tale of Two Housing Transactions In 2012, I sold my house at Georgetown, Kentucky. If you look far back enough in this blog, you\u0026rsquo;ll find posts and pictures from that little builder-grade \u0026ldquo;story and a half\u0026rdquo; house on a corner lot sitting within dynamite\u0026rsquo;s distance from an active limestone quarry, two houses away from a meth house.\nQuite the neighborhood, that.\nIn any case, I sold that house via a realtor, and I never saw the people buying the house until we were at the closing table. Eight years on, I have no recollection of what the buyer looked like, his name, or his family situation. I know he bought the place on a 100%, no-down-payment VA loan. I also know that when I mistakenly had a package delivered to \u0026ldquo;my\u0026rdquo; old address, he refused to remit the package into my possession and strongly implied he had a firearm the other side of \u0026ldquo;his\u0026rdquo; door if I had a problem with that.\n\u0026ldquo;I never got no package.\u0026rdquo; :doorslam:\nThat\u0026rsquo;s right: I sold my house to a someone who probably didn\u0026rsquo;t make the neighborhood a nicer place.\nAll that to say: So what? His money spent just as well as someone who smelled of chocolate and wrote love sonnets in his spare time. Welcome to Capitalism.\nAnd then Today Happened So today, my wife and I went to look at a house on about 10 acres in a weird neighborhood in a weird little Texas town. Ordinarily, we\u0026rsquo;d go in with our realtor with the house empty, look around, and determine if we wanted to make an offer or not. If we did, our agent would contact their agent. There would be no indication of our race, religion, age, socio-economic status. Just our names on a contract with two blanks for the seller to sign if they accept.\nYeah, except that\u0026rsquo;s not what happened.\nSo, our realtor informed us yesterday that \u0026ldquo;we can only peek inside the house.\u0026rdquo; Yay, CoVid19? Not really.\nSo, we arrive to see our realtor\u0026rsquo;s Acura TLX\u0026hellip;and another person talking to her. Turns out, it\u0026rsquo;s the seller\u0026rsquo;s agent\u0026hellip;let\u0026rsquo;s call him Todd. Todd was quite loquacious. And tall. And loud. Oh, and Todd lived RIGHT ACROSS THE ROAD.\n\u0026ldquo;I pretty much founded this neighborhood,\u0026rdquo; Todd opines, wistful.\nOh.\nSo what follows is about 30 surreal minutes of the Potentate of Piss-Ant Lane interviewing us as he showed us around the house. Rattling off name after name of (confidential) information about people in the neighborhood. \u0026ldquo;Oh, I like you. You\u0026rsquo;ll fit in JUST FINE here,\u0026rdquo; he guffawed after I made a really lame joke.\nAt the end of the day, the property was nearly ideal, almost turn-key for what we wanted. The house was a disaster, having be relocated there from Somewhere Else® but \u0026ldquo;oh, B_____ really went through it all. Fixed almost everything.\u0026rdquo;\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s Wrong with this Picture? Let\u0026rsquo;s break this down.\nIt was a used car salesman schtick. I get you\u0026rsquo;re a realtor. Why are you here? I have a realtor. I like her. She\u0026rsquo;s under contract not to lie to me. Bar everything else, this was inappropriate.\nThis is why minorities can\u0026rsquo;t get housing. Sure, I pull up in my wife\u0026rsquo;s (paid-for, used) Lexus. We get out, and we happen to be so Caucasian we\u0026rsquo;re transparent. My voice has a pleasant Good Ole Boy nature. I\u0026rsquo;m \u0026ldquo;the right kind of person\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;fit in.\u0026rdquo; the neighbor hood that Todd controlls like J.D. Hogg controlled Hazzard County.\nThey wouldn\u0026rsquo;t let us in the house. Okay, I get that the Black Death Part Deux is in progress. If you accept a showing, sure\u0026hellip;make me weear some booties and some gloves and some masks. Let me in the house if you want me dropping that kind of money, okay?\nHousing in Texas is just surreal. I still can\u0026rsquo;t get over the whole \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve accepted your offer but I have a period where I can accept a higher one,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s rude to specify a limited term on an offer.\u0026rdquo;\nNo, it\u0026rsquo;s not rude, Walking Hairdo Southern Belle Realtor\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s Contract Law.\nThis place.\nSMH.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/04/equal-housing-is-a-lie/","summary":"\u003ch1 id=\"a-tale-of-two-housing-transactions\"\u003eA Tale of Two Housing Transactions\u003c/h1\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2012, I \u003ca href=\"/2012/05/on-other-side-of-moving-exhausted/\"\u003esold my house at Georgetown, Kentucky\u003c/a\u003e.  If you look far back enough in this blog, you\u0026rsquo;ll find posts and pictures from that little builder-grade \u0026ldquo;story and a half\u0026rdquo; house on a corner lot sitting within dynamite\u0026rsquo;s distance from an active limestone quarry, two houses away from a meth house.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQuite the neighborhood, that.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn any case, I sold that house via a realtor, and I never saw the people buying the house until we were at the closing table.  Eight years on, I have no recollection of what the buyer looked like, his name, or his family situation.  I know he bought the place on a 100%, no-down-payment VA loan.   I also know that when I mistakenly had a package delivered to \u0026ldquo;my\u0026rdquo; old address, he refused to remit the package into my possession and strongly implied he had a firearm the other side of \u0026ldquo;his\u0026rdquo; door if I had a problem with that.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Equal Housing Is a Lie"},{"content":"If the \u0026ldquo;Great Lockdown\u0026rdquo; or whatever history calls this thing had sight, smell, sound, taste, and feel, what would they be?\nFeel is easy: Tired. The feel of a not-so-early morning after a long night of binge-watching whatever (Mandalorian, Picard, Friends). Being tired for no particular reason, like the tired of a long road trip or transcontinental flight: You haven\u0026rsquo;t exerted yourself, but you\u0026rsquo;re exhausted, disoriented, and cranky.\nCoVid19 tastes like bad breath, that cottonmouth you get from dehydration after too late a night or far too early a morning. It also tastes like the Diet Coke® I secret away in my gun safe so my kids won\u0026rsquo;t drink any.\nThe sound of the lockdown is tromping footsteps, the sound of aimless walking on the sidewalk outside your house. People are taking more walks, but desperately trying to stay away from other people. It\u0026rsquo;s almost Orwellian if it weren\u0026rsquo;t so benign (for now).\nThe other defining sound is one of nature, of birds celebrating spring, of deer quietly eating and rustling through grass. Nature is loving having some turf back, and making the most of it.\nThe smell of quarantine is Epsom Salts, of my daughter desperately trying to stave off an ingrown toenail as we try to avoid taking her in for the inevitable nail removal. Non-emergent. Deal with it at home. Flatten the curve.\nThe sight is a grey overcast sky, slipping along to wherever, a melange of Mexican dust from where the Colorado used to be, the odd isotope still decaying from Fukushima, Chinese soot, and a world on pause.\nDoes the sight grow better or worse? Do we get out of this, and do we recognize ourselves after?\nNon Sequitur Snapshots My daughter Grace drank 3 (tea-)cups of coffee this morning. Watching her peak like a Tweaker the crash\u0026hellip;like a Tweaker, just trying to keep her mind moving gibberish at escape velocity. She could be another Kerouac, that one. Her mind moves that fast, like mine only does in a dream, or for fleeting moments when I\u0026rsquo;m coding when it feels like the machine\u0026rsquo;s taken over.\nMaria\u0026rsquo;s up and down. Many days she seems fine with seeing her friends on Zoom. Other times, she seems really down, emotions pouring out of her.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/04/covid-a-sensory-journey/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf the \u0026ldquo;Great Lockdown\u0026rdquo; or whatever history calls this thing had sight, smell, sound, taste, and feel, what would they be?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFeel is easy: Tired.  The feel of a not-so-early morning after a long night of binge-watching whatever (\u003cem\u003eMandalorian\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003ePicard\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eFriends\u003c/em\u003e).  Being tired for no particular reason, like the tired of a long road trip or transcontinental flight:  You haven\u0026rsquo;t \u003cem\u003eexerted\u003c/em\u003e yourself, but you\u0026rsquo;re exhausted, disoriented, and cranky.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCoVid19 tastes like bad breath, that cottonmouth you get from dehydration after too late a night or far too early a morning.  It also tastes like the Diet Coke® I secret away in my gun safe so my kids won\u0026rsquo;t drink any.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Covid: A Sensory Journey"},{"content":"So, phase one (shock/denial) appears to be over.\nOver 20 million people are out of work, roughly a 20% unemployment rate.\nThere are almost 700k total cases, and 32k deaths. This is just from people we know had the disease.\nWhatever \u0026ldquo;rainy day funds\u0026rdquo; most people had are exhausting. Quickly.\nIt seems clear, this is going to be somewhere between the \u0026ldquo;Great Recession\u0026rdquo; and the \u0026ldquo;Great Depression.\u0026rdquo; And honestly: There\u0026rsquo;s no end in sight.\nSchools are officially \u0026ldquo;distance learning\u0026rdquo; through the end of the school year.\nObservations Some observations so far:\n1: Cracks Widen On 9/11, we came together. The country wasn\u0026rsquo;t (yet) so split. We hadn\u0026rsquo;t had 20 years of unending overseas warfare, and while pundits made 3-hours-a-day of hay out Bill Clinton\u0026rsquo;s sex life and George W. Bush\u0026rsquo;s buffoonery, there was common ground. Many had lost significantly in their newfangled \u0026ldquo;401-Kay\u0026rdquo; plans in the dot-com bubble bursting. We were under attack, and \u0026ldquo;The Terrorists\u0026rdquo; didn\u0026rsquo;t care if you were a Rebpulican or Democrat.\nBlogging existed. MySpace existed. But \u0026ldquo;Social Media\u0026rdquo; as the always-on phenomenon we know today did not exist.\nWhat followed:\nThe War on Terror. Epilogue: We just gave Afghanistan back to the Taliban in 2020, tens of thousands of lives and ~5 trillion later. Cheap interest rates and lax lending guidelines led to a housing bubble, leading to the Collapses in the Fall of 2008. Massive Federal bailouts, largely helping the investor-class. The backlash against Republicans, leading to defeats in 2006 midterms and 2008. Democrats handed power in both executive and legislative branches, including a supermajority in the Senate. (That is: they could\u0026rsquo;ve passed anything remotely Constitutional. New New Deal, Single-payer healthcare) Obamacare flops. Mass shootings become a near-daily occurrence. Nobody cares, ultimately. Unemployment reaches ~10% \u0026ldquo;Globalization\u0026rdquo;, the Opioid crisis, the rise of Meth hollow-out the nation\u0026rsquo;s interior. Culture war begins on the airwaves (Fox -v- CNN/MSNBC), then gets personal on social media. Silos and echo chambers form. The \u0026ldquo;recovery\u0026rdquo; bifurcates the nation. The Stock market from 2009 -\u0026gt; 2020 goes on a simply ridiculous tear. Most are left behind with stagnant wages and (once again) rising cost-of-living. Donald Trump wins in 2016. There\u0026rsquo;s no one cause, but repudiation of Globalization\u0026rsquo;s effects on the interior clinches it via the Rust Belt. Any moderation in the Left or Right (I\u0026rsquo;ll not call them \u0026lsquo;Democrats\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;Republicans\u0026rsquo;) evaporates. Extremist wings of both parties whip both bases into frenzies not seen since the 19th century. A doomed impeachment attempt fails in January 2020; a triumphant Trump consolidates power with loyalists in all positions. So we went from a fairly centrist nation with braying extremist minorities to a polarized conglomerate of nations (Coasts -v- Flyover Country coallition) in 20 years. The \u0026ldquo;Cracks\u0026rdquo; were there.\nThen CoVid happened.\nLike a battering ram at the gates, CoVid continues to pound at the cracks. The white-collar class (me included) can continue \u0026ldquo;working from home,\u0026rdquo; earning our pre-pandemic paychecks while \u0026ldquo;essential workers\u0026rdquo; paid a pittance deliver our necessities (medicine, utilities, food). So far \u0026ldquo;society\u0026rdquo; remains intact because supply chains of food, power, and streaming video entertainment keep those on the \u0026ldquo;Great Lockdown\u0026rdquo; anesthetized.\nBut, March became April. April is going to turn into May. When does it end? When can we get back to work? Leading to observation 2\n2: What does the new phase look like? People are simply tired of being on house arrest.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve moved past the novelty of \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re all in this together alone,\u0026rdquo; sloganeering down to the reality. We\u0026rsquo;re all dependent upon the government, and the government has become the executive branch with dictatorial powers.\nOf itself, that\u0026rsquo;s not a bad thing. During a crisis, strong unified leadership saves lives, with examples dating back to Roman times. But the thing is \u0026ldquo;dictatorship\u0026rdquo; and the imperium that comes with it must be limited term. The \u0026ldquo;crisis\u0026rdquo; can\u0026rsquo;t continue indefinitely or you get North Korea. Or \u0026ldquo;V for Vendetta.\u0026rdquo;\nThere\u0026rsquo;s considerable angst about how open-ended this thing is. There\u0026rsquo;s no vaccine right now, and best-case estimates are next year.\nNext. Year.\nSo, some people have started rebelling, mildly. There have been protests in Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan. Some are shouting-down those with objections, aligning with the governors, reinforcing the slogans.\nThese protests are incompatible with the distancing guidelines\u0026hellip;.but they\u0026rsquo;re a Constitutional right. which leads me to\u0026hellip;\n3: This virus has hacked America Americans have the right to free speech, free assembly, free religion. The virus guidelines require we abrogate those rights to keep people safe. People can\u0026rsquo;t congregate or the R-sub-naught gets greater than 1 and we\u0026rsquo;re screwed.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s untenable.\nSo what? All that to say: We\u0026rsquo;re at a tipping point. The many possible futures yawn before us and each seems plausible:\nIt goes back the way it was. We peak, and we go down. We reopen the country for business. Demand returns and half the economy doesn\u0026rsquo;t just evaporate. Unemployment goes back under 10% and most people can find work. With people employed, the prime driver for our economy\u0026ndash;individual spending\u0026ndash;returns to pre-crisis levels. Businesses can profit again.\nWe cede dictatorial powers and it never ends. For the Napoleons, Peter Wiggins, and Hitlers of the world this is an IDEAL time to sieze power. Information isn\u0026rsquo;t flowing. Power is narrowed to an imperious executive worldwide, and people are both scared and tribal. They\u0026rsquo;ll happily bleat like the Sheep in Animal Farm: \u0026ldquo;Public gatherings baaaaad, following Leader beeeeeeeetter.\u0026rdquo; Or Hunger Games with the Capital and the Districts. Dystopia.\nSomething in between. Socialism of some ilk. Hyper inflation and the redistribution of wealth. Social upheaval. Likely the dissolution or transformation of the country into something unrecognizable.\nFrom where I sit, (1) seems like a pipe-dream.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the story from 15 April. Let\u0026rsquo;s hope it\u0026rsquo;s a better story by 15 May.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/04/covid-mid-april-update-the-new-phase/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, phase one (shock/denial) appears to be over.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOver 20 million people are out of work, roughly a 20% unemployment rate.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Unemployment\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/ATJX3O3BKNBKVLBFY2HXJ35ULI.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are almost 700k total cases, and 32k deaths.  This is just from people we \u003cem\u003eknow\u003c/em\u003e had the disease.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/images/Covid-2020-04-15.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhatever \u0026ldquo;rainy day funds\u0026rdquo; most people had are exhausting.  Quickly.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt seems clear, this is going to be somewhere between the \u0026ldquo;Great Recession\u0026rdquo; and the \u0026ldquo;Great Depression.\u0026rdquo;  And honestly: There\u0026rsquo;s no end in sight.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Covid Mid April Update: The New Phase?"},{"content":"So, it\u0026rsquo;s official as of today\n(Source. As an aside, this \u0026lsquo;worldometers.info\u0026rsquo; site is a clinic on how to present and visualize data at scale.)\nEight-three thousand cases, and no sign of let-up after 2 solid weeks of \u0026ldquo;shelter-in-place\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;stay-home-pretty-please\u0026rdquo;\nNew York is simply exploding, especially The City.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve taken to following a former member of disaster preparedness for Obama, @JeremyKonyndyk. Here\u0026rsquo;s his take as of today:\nWe\u0026rsquo;re not \u0026ldquo;flattening the curve.\u0026rdquo; We\u0026rsquo;re accelerating. We\u0026rsquo;re fighting our health care system.\nPOTUS 45 is doing his best impression of Der Furher in the bunker in \u0026lsquo;45, railing against his enemies and making little sense during daily embarrassments press briefings.\nThis is going to go on for a long, long time. Many more are going to die than need to.\nJust unable to focus again today. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s sick\u0026ndash;we hope it\u0026rsquo;s nothing\u0026ndash;and just couldn\u0026rsquo;t get \u0026ldquo;bite\u0026rdquo; into the work. I was able to make a breakthrough in infrastructure and get things working yesterday for a work thing. Pity that I needed that breakthrough to happen on March 5th, not March 25th. Some long days lie ahead, unaided by today\u0026rsquo;s low productivity.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/03/covid-19-america-takes-lead/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, it\u0026rsquo;s official as of today\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Covid Rates\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/images/Covid-2020-03-26.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(\u003ca href=\"https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries\"\u003eSource\u003c/a\u003e.  As an aside, this \u0026lsquo;worldometers.info\u0026rsquo; site is a clinic on how to present and visualize data at scale.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEight-three thousand cases, and no sign of let-up after 2 solid weeks of \u0026ldquo;shelter-in-place\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;stay-home-pretty-please\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNew York is simply exploding, especially The City.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve taken to following a former member of disaster preparedness for Obama, \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/JeremyKonyndyk\"\u003e@JeremyKonyndyk\u003c/a\u003e.  Here\u0026rsquo;s his take as of today:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re not \u0026ldquo;flattening the curve.\u0026rdquo; We\u0026rsquo;re \u003cem\u003eaccelerating\u003c/em\u003e.  We\u0026rsquo;re fighting our health care system.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CoVid 19: America Takes Lead"},{"content":"Well, at least yesterday was good, right?\nThe stock market went up by 2,000 points. The Congress seemed to agree on\u0026ndash;depending how you count it\u0026ndash;a SIX TRILLION DOLLAR (!) bailout package, that represents a quarter of the US annual GDP. This comprises:\n2 Trillion in relief for businesses and regular Folksy 4 Trillion in authority for the Fed to buy\u0026hellip;.stuff. REITs, ETF, Bonds, etc. Today has been less rosy.\nLast night, I was up with grace in immense pain until 11 or so, then I just collapsed in my bed. I finally got to work by 9am\u0026hellip;only to find that I had a mandatory 45-minute Mac OS Catalina upgrade (10.15.4, if you\u0026rsquo;r scoring at home) to do.\nFrom then until lunch, I banged my head on AWS/CDK. Just because I work for the darned company that makes both of those, doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean I get any special treatment. Nope. Actually, it\u0026rsquo;s frustrating because I have to map from our old system into the new AWS system. It\u0026rsquo;s a franeknstein, and it makes me feel like I\u0026rsquo;m 20 years old again. Not in a good way. In that \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m a fake and I can\u0026rsquo;t make this work\u0026rdquo; kind of way.\nLunch I discussed with my wife that our fridge may be ready to go out, just in time for us to have zero access to a grocery store. Not good.\nThey declared a shelter-in-place for Williamson County Texas yesterday. Taking a brief drive at noon, it appears traffic is worse. (::groan::)\nJust kind of exhausted, and in lots of back pain today. My new ergonomic chair can\u0026rsquo;t get here soon enough.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/03/new-week-blahs/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, at least \u003cem\u003eyesterday\u003c/em\u003e was good, right?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe stock market went up by 2,000 points.  The Congress seemed to agree on\u0026ndash;depending how you count it\u0026ndash;a SIX TRILLION DOLLAR (!) bailout package, that represents a quarter of the US annual GDP.  This comprises:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e2 Trillion in relief for businesses and regular Folksy\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e4 Trillion in authority for the Fed to buy\u0026hellip;.stuff.  REITs, ETF, Bonds, etc.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday has been less rosy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast night, I was up with grace in immense pain until 11 or so, then I just collapsed in my bed.  I finally got to work by 9am\u0026hellip;only to find that I had a mandatory 45-minute Mac OS Catalina upgrade (10.15.4, if you\u0026rsquo;r scoring at home) to do.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Week Blahs"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re choosing to watch the news. You can choose not to.\u0026rdquo;\nYesterday, made an excursion to Randall\u0026rsquo;s to get some supplies after I got my daughter\u0026rsquo;s medication in Cedar Park. The store had more than I expected, but the necessities had evaporated. Bottled water, paper goods, bread, milk. I saw a yuppie buying all the individual cereal containers, bragging about how he had \u0026ldquo;Fifteen Gallons of Milk\u0026rdquo; at home.\nFor himself.\nAs we both exited, I saw him loading up his (leased) BMW 320i and I threw-up in my mouth a little bit.\nMy body is adjusting to the work-at-home situation slowly. Ergonomically, it\u0026rsquo;s not great\u0026ndash;the seat is nowhere as good as my Amazon-provided Aeron chair, but the 24\u0026quot; monitor is serviceable, though I could certainly do with another one. I took to opening-up my laptop yesterday and using it as a smaller (13\u0026quot;) screen for non-core tasks like email and chat.\nEven with those adjustments, I was just in pain all afternoon, especially lower-back. I haven\u0026rsquo;t been drinking enough water, and I haven\u0026rsquo;t been getting up.\nMainly, it\u0026rsquo;s been a struggle to look away from the news, to distance from the massive implications and whipsaw governmental interventions. The border to Canada closed yesterday. They\u0026rsquo;re talking about $2000 checks to every adult. They\u0026rsquo;ve delayed the need to pay taxes 90 days past April 15th, but one still must file by then.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s news that several vaccines for Covid19 are in trials, and there was a rumor that a flu antiviral was somewhat effective. Glimmers of hope as the hailstones (meteorites?) seems to fall all around.\nThe world will be changed by this, but I can\u0026rsquo;t take time to consider or grieve. I\u0026rsquo;ll need to maintain my job as long as possible, and support my family. I\u0026rsquo;m trying to resurrect my chutzpah from 2008, when I put my head down and buried myself in work and excelled. I was able to pull away from the pack because I was able to compartmentalize.\nI\u0026rsquo;m no longer that guy. I hurt more. I have much more to lose. I\u0026rsquo;m twelve years older. Mentally, I\u0026rsquo;m a more integrated person. I don\u0026rsquo;t go to work and become another person; I\u0026rsquo;m just me. Right now that\u0026rsquo;s a huge roadblock on the road to getting through this.\nGod be with us all.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/03/day-4-heads-down/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re \u003cem\u003echoosing\u003c/em\u003e to watch the news.  You can choose not to.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYesterday, made an excursion to \u003cem\u003eRandall\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/em\u003e to get some supplies after I got my daughter\u0026rsquo;s medication in Cedar Park.  The store had more than I expected, but the necessities had evaporated.  Bottled water, paper goods, bread, milk.  I saw a yuppie buying \u003cstrong\u003eall\u003c/strong\u003e the individual cereal containers, bragging about how he had \u0026ldquo;Fifteen Gallons of Milk\u0026rdquo; at home.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor himself.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Day 4 Heads Down"},{"content":"It continues today. Every day feels like a week.\nAs of this writing, stocks are down 8%, just today. This a snapshot of the cnn.com headlines:\nNot good.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s news the executive is invoking War Emergency provisions to get priority production for necessities. Per my recollection, the last time that happened was in World War 2.\nYesterday was a better day; I was able to work a bit. Today has just been staring at headlines. I must stop. I must work.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/03/day-3-stocks-again/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt continues today.  Every day feels like a week.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs of this writing, stocks are down 8%, just \u003cem\u003etoday\u003c/em\u003e.  This a snapshot of the cnn.com headlines:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"cnn front page\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/images/cnn-2020-03-18.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot good.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s news the executive is invoking War Emergency provisions to get priority production for necessities.  Per my recollection, the last time that happened was in World War 2.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYesterday was a better day; I was able to work a bit.  Today has just been staring at headlines.  I \u003cem\u003emust\u003c/em\u003e stop.  I \u003cem\u003emust\u003c/em\u003e work.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Day 3 Stocks Again"},{"content":"And so it begins\nAs I write this, it\u0026rsquo;s 5pm on St. Patrick\u0026rsquo;s Day. I\u0026rsquo;m not wearing green. I\u0026rsquo;m sitting at home in our spare bedroom, with a 24\u0026quot; monitor ahead of me, and Amazon Basics® Keyboard instead of my beloved CODE Keyboard, and the world aflame.\nI agree with this tweet:\nBasically, the news since last week has been Through-the-Looking-Glass bad. A Quick rundown for posterity:\nStarting mid February, the stock market is down a third from its highs. February 19th, the Dow closed at 29,386. Today, it closed 21,237. Earlier today, it was under 20,000, briefly. Trillions of dollars of market value have been erased in six weeks. Yeterday in particular, the Dow lost 12% of its value, or about 3000 points. In one day.\nThe Covid-19 virus progressed from China, to Europe, to the US. The US currently recommends that nobody gather in groups larger than 10.\nThe list of major cancelations is too long to count: SXSW, Kentucky Derby\u0026hellip;everything is hit.\nPeople in most cities are banned from going into restaurants, with some enacting \u0026ldquo;Shelter in Place\u0026rdquo; such as San Francisco, and word today is New York City was considering the same. Literal deserted streets.\nThere are nightly curfews in New Jersey, with nobody allowed out between 8pm and 6am. Right out of a movie.\nThe disease continues an exponential growth curve, with the CDC prediting that 70% of the United States will be exposed. Mortality is running a steady 3% or so. The math there is\u0026hellip;staggering. Millions are going to die from this disease this year, and there\u0026rsquo;s no vaccine or antiviral as of this writing. My immediate family seems safe\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s mostly those over 60 affected. But, many of my loved ones are over 60.\nThey\u0026rsquo;re considering sending every taxy paying adult a $1000 stimulus check just to keep the economy moving. Millions will be out of work for a long time.\nThere have been runs on food, household supplies (especially toilet paper)\u0026hellip;and ammunition. Plenty of people are sitting around thinking \u0026ldquo;This may be it.\u0026rdquo; The country is not pulling together like after 9/11. There\u0026rsquo;s no sense of unity, just a disjoint bunker mentality, with us all in our homes and Social Media silos.\nThe medical/scientific community has set expectations: Even if they developed a perfect vaccine TOMORROW, it\u0026rsquo;s still about a year to get through trials. \u0026ldquo;Antivirals\u0026rdquo; are more of a sci-fi thriller plot point than a reality. Humans have NOTHING that really combats a virus, even a 100 years after their discovery.\nCompanies have sent their employees home. Amazon required Work-from-home (WFH) starting Monday (16 March) worldwide.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not dealing particularly well with the last. The enormity of what\u0026rsquo;s happening keeps washing over me, with random flashes of insight about what will be affected. I WORKED most of the day on September 11th, 2001. I\u0026rsquo;ve worked through blizzards, hurricanes, and babies screaming at 3am. I\u0026rsquo;m mentally paralyzed right now.\nThe travel/cruise/entertainment industry is toast. The whole economy, perhaps to follow.\nMom\u0026rsquo;s shop will have to layoff everyone, maybe. Hard to say.\nThing is: This isn\u0026rsquo;t that bad. A 3% mortality rate is nothing compared to what may follow this century.\nConcentrating on work seems impossible, and I\u0026rsquo;m falling further and further behind. Thinking even a few minutes about the next effects of this thing\u0026hellip;.it\u0026rsquo;s scary.\nKids are out playing. Spring is here. My family has over a year of expenses saved at current levels, perhaps 2 or 3 if we\u0026rsquo;re (very) conservative. We have no debt aside from our house. I have a great job, and Amazon\u0026rsquo;s announced its hiring 100,000 to work to meet the incredible demands.\nMaybe it\u0026rsquo;ll be okay. I rather hope so.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/03/wfh-day-2/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAnd so it begins\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs I write this, it\u0026rsquo;s 5pm on St. Patrick\u0026rsquo;s Day.  I\u0026rsquo;m not wearing green.  I\u0026rsquo;m sitting at home in our spare bedroom, with a 24\u0026quot; monitor ahead of me, and Amazon Basics® Keyboard instead of my beloved CODE Keyboard, and the world aflame.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI agree with this tweet:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, the news since last week has been Through-the-Looking-Glass bad.  A Quick rundown for posterity:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStarting mid February, the stock market is down a third from its highs.  February 19th, the Dow closed at 29,386.  Today, it closed 21,237.  Earlier today, it was under 20,000, briefly.  \u003cem\u003eTrillions\u003c/em\u003e of dollars of market value have been erased in six weeks.  Yeterday in particular, the Dow lost 12% of its value, or about 3000 points.  In one day.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"WFH Day 2"},{"content":"So, on the advice of @QuinnyPig on Twitter, I\u0026rsquo;ve started listening to \u0026ldquo;The Phoenix Project\u0026rdquo; on Audible.\nIn overview, this is a narrative allegory of an IT project gone wrong. I\u0026rsquo;m up through Chapter 5 as I write this and I\u0026rsquo;d like to posit a couple things the protagonist is doing wrong. This is one of those books that managers, CIOs, CTOs, and directors will read and treat as Holy Writ, so some perspective seems an order.\nThe book follows a guy \u0026ldquo;promoted\u0026rdquo; to be the newest Vice President at a hundred-year-old auto parts concern. Their stock is tanking at half the value before, and they\u0026rsquo;re getting their lunch eaten by competition. The CEO is under fire, and the previous CIO and VP of IT just got streeted under mysterious circumstances.\nWhat follows is so realistic, I feel like I worked with the guy. He gets promoted on a Tuesday and then learns:\nThe company has to fix its failed payroll run by 3pm\u0026hellip;that day. There\u0026rsquo;s no change control policy in place. Or, more precisely, there\u0026rsquo;s an ITIL-compliant policy in place, but nobody follows it. His two lieutenants are a process wonk \u0026ldquo;I told you so\u0026rdquo; and a shoot-from-the-hip Alpha Nerd There\u0026rsquo;s no master list of what is even being worked on Everyone in management has a pet IT guy he pings when he needs something. The head of the \u0026ldquo;miracle\u0026rdquo; project (the titular \u0026ldquo;Phoenix\u0026rdquo;) is a grandstanding, blame-shifting corporate lizard. Like Dilbert, this would be incredibly engrossing\u0026hellip;if I hadn\u0026rsquo;t worked on projects for organizations just like this. Everyone has.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s Wrong So, there are some things wrong with the book already.\nFirst, these people are waay too loyal. This company is a backwater hellhole and IT is way too fluid for them to retain talent. The main guys in IT would\u0026rsquo;ve left long ago.\nSecond, people magically get with the program. This happens exactly never, especially in IT. People have their own little kingdoms and generally don\u0026rsquo;t care if the rest of the world/company burns around them. Ask me over beer sometime and I\u0026rsquo;ll tell you about the woman from Managed Print Services with the big hair.\nMost damningly, this company should be out of business. Repeated inability to execute on IT doesn\u0026rsquo;t get you years and years of benign forbearance, it gets you fired and your assets sold off to competitors. That\u0026rsquo;s business.\nIn the end, I guess (?) I\u0026rsquo;m enjoying the book, but it\u0026rsquo;s turning into a preachy allegory about Lean/TPS. We\u0026rsquo;ll see where it goes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/03/the-phoenix-project-beginning/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, on the advice of \u003ccode\u003e@QuinnyPig\u003c/code\u003e on Twitter, I\u0026rsquo;ve started listening to \u0026ldquo;The Phoenix Project\u0026rdquo; on Audible.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"cover\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51zDZ1s4hCL._SY346_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn overview, this is a narrative allegory of an IT project gone wrong.  I\u0026rsquo;m up through Chapter 5 as I write this and I\u0026rsquo;d like to posit a couple things the protagonist is doing wrong.  This is one of those books that managers, CIOs, CTOs, and directors will read and treat as \u003cem\u003eHoly Writ\u003c/em\u003e, so some perspective seems an order.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Phoenix Project Beginning"},{"content":"Step right up, folks, it\u0026rsquo;s YEEEEEHAAW election time in Texas.\nUnlike the saner May primary in Kentucky, I\u0026rsquo;m now part of Super Tuesday, along with 13 other states.\nCutting to the chase, I intend to vote \u0026lsquo;Uncomitted\u0026rsquo; on my Republican Presidential ballot, and I plan to abstain from voting for Cornyn or John Carter. I\u0026rsquo;m an MJ Hegar Republican, you see.\nAnyway, I\u0026rsquo;m writing today to go over the 10 (yes, TEN) ballot propositions before me.\n1. Prayer in School Texas should not restrict or prohibit prayer in public school. (Y/N)\nAnalysis No, they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t. However, realize a side-effect of this is your kid\u0026rsquo;s kindergarten teacher can now say prayers to her Dark Lord Satan before each class. Or Zeus. Or a Flying Spaghetti Monster.\nRemember: The Establishment clause is not only freedom OF your religion. It\u0026rsquo;s freedom FROM anyone else\u0026rsquo;s.\nMy vote: Yes.\n2. Guns, Guns, Guns Texas should reject restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.\nAnalysis: Once again, Texas law means diddly squat compared to Federal and Constitutional law here. They might as well have said, \u0026ldquo;We are not like Virginia, agreed?\u0026rdquo;\nMy vote: No\n3. Ban The Lobbyists Texas should ban the practice of taxpayer-funded lobbying, which allows your tax dollars to be spent on lobbyists who work against the taxpayer.\nAnalysis This is a thing?\nMy Vote: Yes\n4. Build that Wall! Build that Wall! Texas should support the construction of a physical barrier and use existing defense-grade surveillance equipment along the entire southern border of Texas.\nAnalysis Whelp, the Feds ain\u0026rsquo;t gonna do it. We might as well. Pass the oil money.\nMy Vote: No.\n5. I own my kids until they\u0026rsquo;re 18 Texas parents of public school children under the ago of 18 should be the sole decision-makers for all their children\u0026rsquo;s healthcare decisions including pshychological assessment and treatment, contraception, and sex eduction.\nAnalysis Everyone thinks they know their own kids. They don\u0026rsquo;t. I have the police station receipts to demonstrate my point.\nMy vote: No\n6. No Trans Minors Texas should ban chemical castration, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital mutilation surgery on all minor children for transition purposes.\nAnalysis Trans people exist. Also, something like .1% of babies are gender-ambiguous at birth. It does seem odd that getting a tattoo\u0026ndash;a reversible procedure\u0026ndash;makes you wait until you\u0026rsquo;re of majority, but things like this don\u0026rsquo;t.\nMy vote: No.\n7. Stop Destroying Confederate Monuments Texas should protect and preserve all historical monuments, artifacts, and buildings such as the Alamo Cenotaph and our beloved Alamo, and should oppose any reimagining of the Alamo site.\nAnalysis Wrapping this in \u0026lsquo;Alamo\u0026rsquo; language is HILARIOUS. Sometimes, you find-out \u0026lsquo;monuments\u0026rsquo; are wrong and they get torn down. By this language, the statue of Joe Paterno would still stand in State College, PA.\nMy vote: No.\n8. Do your job, okay? Texas election officials should heed the directives of the Office of the Governor to purge illegal voters from the voter rolls, and verify that each new registered voter is a US Citizen.\nAnalysis If they\u0026rsquo;re going to ignore the law, I don\u0026rsquo;t see how this changes that. Also: Voter Suppression, table for one.\nMy Vote: No.\n9. \u0026ldquo;Legal, if Rich\u0026rdquo; Bail in Texas should be based only on a person\u0026rsquo;s danger to society and risk of flight, not that person\u0026rsquo;s ability to pay.\nAnalysis Things with fixed fines mean \u0026ldquo;Legal, if You\u0026rsquo;re Rich.\u0026rdquo; Enough of that.\nMy Vote: No.\n10. Term limits Texas should limit our state legislators\u0026rsquo; terms to 12 years.\nAnalysis Would be interested how Various case law will apply here. But in any cases\nMy Vote: YES\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/03/super-tuesday-ballot-items-rant/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStep right up, folks, it\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eYEEEEEHAAW\u003c/em\u003e election time in Texas.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnlike the saner May primary in Kentucky, I\u0026rsquo;m now part of \u003cstrong\u003eSuper Tuesday\u003c/strong\u003e, along with 13 other states.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCutting to the chase, I intend to vote \u0026lsquo;Uncomitted\u0026rsquo; on my Republican Presidential ballot, and I plan to abstain from voting for Cornyn or John Carter.  I\u0026rsquo;m an MJ Hegar Republican, you see.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, I\u0026rsquo;m writing today to go over the 10 (yes, \u003cstrong\u003eTEN\u003c/strong\u003e) ballot propositions before me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Super Tuesday Ballot Items Rant"},{"content":"\n\u0026ldquo;It seems like I should write something about coronavirus,\u0026rdquo; I thought to myself.\nI\u0026rsquo;m sitting in a very empty Amazon office in Austin, Texas on a Saturday. I\u0026rsquo;m trying to make-up for a day I took off on Wednesday to shuttle Grace to a Primary Care doctor who promptly told me to take her to Dell Children\u0026rsquo;s Hospital for possible appendicitis.\nI knew it wasn\u0026rsquo;t appendicitis, but meh. I needed some time away from work. There\u0026rsquo;s been a swizzle of what Amazon calls \u0026ldquo;Product,\u0026rdquo; meaning two new \u0026ldquo;Managers\u0026rdquo; came on my project. Now we have:\nSDM: Software Development Manager. Responsible for hiring, firing, and everyday operations of a two-pizza team. If I\u0026rsquo;d ever grow-up, this is what I\u0026rsquo;d be. TPM: Technical Project Manager. Responsible for inter-team coordination, of which there is much. Typically this is an experienced person who helps bring reality to schedules and interdependencies. Both the outgoing and incoming in question are excellent. PM: Program Manager. (Sometimes, there\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026lsquo;senior\u0026rsquo; prepended) This person is typically an MBA and accounts for the business-face of your ____________ (insert project here). Along comes Coronavirus Anyway, so we had a 2-day \u0026ldquo;summit\u0026rdquo; where people flew in. Right in the middle we get an email:\n\u0026ldquo;All non-essential travel is forbidden until further notice.\u0026rdquo;\nOoooookay.\nSo, segue: It\u0026rsquo;s Coronavirus time.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a hell of a week. The stock market is down about 10% so far. My personal net worth\u0026ndash;on paper\u0026ndash;is down about 4%. To be fair, any money I plan on using in the next 10 years is actually UP, and up significantly.\nEconomically, what seems to be occurring equates to an earthquake or a blizzard: People aren\u0026rsquo;t really thinking much beyond the current shaking. The impacts to the global supply chain, prices, companies, and jobs isn\u0026rsquo;t known, and can\u0026rsquo;t be known, because on top of these gyrations\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;people are dying. Mortality estimates vary widely, but anywhere from 2% to 8% of people who get Covid-19 seem to end up dead. All attempts at quarantine have failed, as they must do in any practical scenario. This virus was on planes from China and is on every continent except Antarctica by now. Incubation is long\u0026ndash;up to 14 days\u0026ndash;and that lets any modern person circle the globe and spread the contagion.\nTaking a hard look at it, at 2% mortality, assuming 30% of the US population gets this thing, we\u0026rsquo;re looking at up to 2 million people dying in America alone, with disproportionate impacts to the elderly. This will top the 1918 Flu Pandemic, though mostly from simple numbers. There are many more Americans now than there were 100 years ago.\nOf course, the CDC is working on a vaccine, but there\u0026rsquo;s no vaccine for the common cold, doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem likely we\u0026rsquo;ll bring one out of thin air for this.\nIn reality, this is Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), part 2. We had a warning when SARS brokeout in China, but this happening during Lunar New Year was like a perfect storm for a pathogen. Even the mighty Chinese government couldn\u0026rsquo;t contain it.\nIn reality, this isn\u0026rsquo;t that bad. This isn\u0026rsquo;t Ebola or Stephen King\u0026rsquo;s Super-Flu from \u0026ldquo;The Stand.\u0026rdquo; But, economic impacts will be massive and unpredictable. People will cease public activities, especially large events like sports, concerts, conventions. The travel industry will be devastated. People won\u0026rsquo;t want to go to stores.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s how it is on Leap Day, 2020: Waiting for the storm to break. Little to do but wait.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/02/leap-day-2020-sars-covid-19/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Random Virus Image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/200213175742-05-coronavirus-0213-exlarge-169.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;It seems like I should write something about \u003cem\u003ecoronavirus\u003c/em\u003e,\u0026rdquo; I thought to myself.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m sitting in a very empty Amazon office in Austin, Texas on a Saturday.  I\u0026rsquo;m trying to make-up for a day I took off on Wednesday to shuttle Grace to a Primary Care doctor who promptly told me to take her to Dell Children\u0026rsquo;s Hospital for possible appendicitis.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI knew it \u003cem\u003ewasn\u0026rsquo;t\u003c/em\u003e appendicitis, but meh.  I needed some time away from work.  There\u0026rsquo;s been a swizzle of what Amazon calls \u0026ldquo;Product,\u0026rdquo; meaning two new \u0026ldquo;Managers\u0026rdquo; came on my project.  Now we have:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Leap Day 2020: SARS Covid-19"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve grown remarkably tired of some things recently.\nPodcasts I have a favorite podcast application: Overcast. For the past 12+ years, I\u0026rsquo;ve listened to podcasts galore. My family/friends have come to loathe subjects I begin with \u0026ldquo;I was listening to a podcast the other day and\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nYeah, not anymore.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve dropped several podcasts and been selective with many more, and there\u0026rsquo;s been a general theme.\nThe Improv Comic Problem This all began when I started listening to the NSFW (NSFL?) podcast Why Won\u0026rsquo;t You Date Me? from Stitcher. I like @nicolebyer\u0026rsquo;s manic personality. I like things of the genre \u0026ldquo;dating horror stories\u0026rdquo; in that voyeuristic \u0026ldquo;Glad I don\u0026rsquo;t have to do that anymore\u0026rdquo; sort of way. Heck, I even like getting that coastal, entertainment-industry perspective, because God knows, that\u0026rsquo;s now how it is in Texas.\nThen it just became\u0026hellip;tiresome. That\u0026rsquo;s going to be a theme. So, \u0026ldquo;Unsubscribe\u0026rdquo; it was.\nNext up was the ribald How Did This Get Made?, a podcast that sends-up (bad?) movies. I\u0026rsquo;ve subscribed to this podcast since 2016, and I\u0026rsquo;ve generally enjoyed it, but again, the manic \u0026ldquo;we\u0026rsquo;re doing a bit\u0026rdquo; thing just got tiresome. Unsubscribe.\nWhat really showed me I was trending towards an unsub theme was Earwolf\u0026rsquo;s Blank Check with Griffin and David, a very topical exploration of (good and bad) movies where directors were given the proverbial \u0026ldquo;Blank Check\u0026rdquo; to make what they want. Griffin is a working actor (most recently on \u0026lsquo;The Tick\u0026rsquo; from Amazon Prime), and David is a film critic. I really appreciated their industry insights, and Griffin\u0026rsquo;s zaniness and endless riffing was engaging. Again\u0026hellip;until it wasn\u0026rsquo;t.\nAlright, so we\u0026rsquo;re working-up to a theme, and Overcast kept getting more and more empty. A thought emerged:\nI\u0026rsquo;m really tired of hearing people goof on other people\u0026rsquo;s stuff, particularly improv comics.\nAll three of the podcasts above feature improv comics riffing for 30 minutes to 2 hours on a topic. It\u0026rsquo;s basically the adult version of listening to stoned college students making themselves laugh at 3 o\u0026rsquo;clock in the morning and it\u0026rsquo;s not funny, or original. It\u0026rsquo;s just\u0026hellip;useless. It\u0026rsquo;s a waste of time.\nThe \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s American Life\u0026rdquo; Problem Long ago, I was your \u0026ldquo;Basic Podcast Listener.\u0026rdquo; I listened to \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s American Life,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Radiolab,\u0026rdquo; all the NPR Podcast lineage coming out of WNYC New York, WBEZ Chicago, and WHYY in Philly. I\u0026rsquo;ve listened to NPR all my life, the erudite escape from Eastern Kentucky coming to me on WEKU 88.9/WEKH 90.9 with its classical music, All Things Considered, and Car Talk.\nAnd yet\u0026hellip;.I just can\u0026rsquo;t stand to listen to that overproduced dreck anymore. Gimlet broke me. I was a Gimlet homer before Gimlet had a name. I listened to Startup and reveled in Alex Blumberg\u0026rsquo;s journey into making podcasting a Real Thing®. I listened to ReplyAll.\nThen I just couldn\u0026rsquo;t take it anymore. It\u0026rsquo;s like I took Chantix and became impervious to the NPR Nicotine. It was all fey, immature, a certain brand of humanity I couldn\u0026rsquo;t take.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s Left? So, What\u0026rsquo;s in Overcast now?\nBascially, a bunch of dead stuff. I\u0026rsquo;ll give you a rundown and quick review Now\nAccidental Tech Podcast - Alive Weekly A rundown of tech stuff in the Apple world. These guys don\u0026rsquo;t do bits or try to be funny, but they\u0026rsquo;re genuinely engaging, and genuine. Recommended. The Age of Napoleon - Alive bi-weekly. Simply a terrific exploration of the life of napoleon and events in the late 18th and early 19th century. HIGHLY recommended, if you like history Ask Me Another Alive? weekly Quiz show featuring hipsters from Brooklyn. Nowhere near as good since Art Chung quit being puzzle master. New final-quiz format is awful and confusing. Probably will unsubscribe soon. AWS Morning Brief Alive Weekly Corey Quinn makes AWS product announcements funny. No, really. If you work in AWS you NEED to be subscribed. Bubble Dead Bubble was a send-up of hipsterism and millenials. It offended itself out of existence, I guess. Does have the single funniest Judy Greer rant on bar-trivia in existence. Cocaine and Rhinestones Dead? David Allen Coe\u0026rsquo;s son tells it like it was. Simply terrific. Not sure how he hasn\u0026rsquo;t gotten sued out of existence, but appreciate it for what it is. Recommended. Daily Tech News Show Alive Free daily rundown of tech news across the industry. Essential listening and my companion each day as I drive home. Decoder Ring Theater Dead 15 Years worth of the best audio drama you\u0026rsquo;ve ever heard, including Black Jack Justice and The Red Panda. My kids have these all memorized by now. HIGHLY recommended. But yeah, Greg Taylor seems to have moved on. History on Fire dead GREAT history deep dive, but they got bought-out and now their stuff is behind a paywall. Boo. Recommended. My History Can Beat Up Your Politics Alive A podcast from 2006 forward with great snippets of history and politics. Recommended. Once and Future Nerd dead Content isn\u0026rsquo;t coming out much anymore, but a neat story of 3 kids from NE Pennsylvania getting sucked into a parallel universe. Looks like they won\u0026rsquo;t ever get to finish it at the pace they\u0026rsquo;re on. Pop Culture Happy Hour 2x weekly Alive Reviews of art, entertainment, and whatever is au courant. Recommended, but I don\u0026rsquo;t know how much longer it has. Road to Now alive History podcast from a history professor and a professional musician. one of them is also a standup comedian. They\u0026rsquo;re both Southern. It works. Upgrade. weekly Alive Jason Snell is like Merlyn Mann, but I don\u0026rsquo;t want him to spontaneously combust because I hate his personality. Myke Hurley\u0026rsquo;s english accent is great. Good rundown of recent events in streaming, movies, apple technology. Quite a bit of overlap with \u0026ldquo;ATP,\u0026rdquo; but usually worth it. Wait Wait Don\u0026rsquo;t Tell Me Alive A weely news quiz. Peter Sagal is a treasure and very funny. The Way I Heard It - Alive Mike Rowe doing Paul Harvey\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Rest of the Story.\u0026rdquo; Folksy and endering, very much worth the listen if only for Rowe\u0026rsquo;s dulcet tones. Wheel Bearings - weekly Alive the only automotive podcast I can stand to listen to, despite Sam Abuelsamid saying \u0026ldquo;Ya know\u0026rdquo; approximately 1000 times every 60 minutes. He\u0026rsquo;s from Michigan. I forgive him. After 100 episodes or so, you barely notice it, you know? Wooden Overcoats mostly dead. Disposable audio comedy form England. Antigone Funn is my spirit animal, though. So that\u0026rsquo;s, what? 10 or so podcasts, most of them at most weekly.\nCommonalities:\nThey\u0026rsquo;re genuine. They don\u0026rsquo;t try to be funny. They follow my actual interests: History, Audio dramas, pop culture. ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/02/tired-of-things/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve grown remarkably tired of some things recently.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/044/247/297.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"podcasts\"\u003ePodcasts\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have a favorite podcast application: \u003ca href=\"https://overcast.fm\"\u003eOvercast\u003c/a\u003e.  For the past 12+ years, I\u0026rsquo;ve listened to podcasts galore.  My family/friends have come to loathe subjects I begin with \u0026ldquo;I was listening to a podcast the other day and\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, not anymore.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve dropped several podcasts and been selective with many more, and there\u0026rsquo;s been a general theme.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"the-improv-comic-problem\"\u003eThe Improv Comic Problem\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis all began when I started listening to the NSFW (NSFL?) podcast \u003ca href=\"https://headgum.com/why-wont-you-date-me\"\u003eWhy Won\u0026rsquo;t You Date Me?\u003c/a\u003e from Stitcher.  I like \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Byer\"\u003e@nicolebyer\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s manic personality.  I like things of the genre \u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;dating horror stories\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e in that voyeuristic \u0026ldquo;Glad I don\u0026rsquo;t have to do that anymore\u0026rdquo; sort of way.  Heck, I even like getting that coastal, entertainment-industry perspective, because God knows, that\u0026rsquo;s now how it is in Texas.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tired of Things"},{"content":"Today is my daughter\u0026rsquo;s 13th birthday.\nThirteen years ago, I watched my wife attempt to deliver our child naturally via the Bradley method, then I watched my daughter get stuck at -2 station, her head caught on my wife\u0026rsquo;s pelvis, and I watched a sex-addicted doctor cut her open and finally bring my daughter into the world.\nMy account of that day\nWhat I left out, of course, was how utterly unprepared I was to be a father. Overwhelmed with emotion, between that 11pm and 11:30pm timestamp, I stood in the room where my wife had tried to push out our daughter, and I cried. I stood there and sobbed. I know now, those were sobs of crushing anxiety cresting into relief. They were both going to be okay.\nWhat I also left out is my stupidity in the days that followed. As I recall, I got back to work within a week. I spent very little time at home, and I was still checking email (Lotus Notes, yay?) and trying to operate the two teams I was leading while my wife was trying to recover from major surgery and my little daughter just needed me.\nI was somebody, damnit. Regular rules didn\u0026rsquo;t apply to me. I was 27, and on the fast-track to Senior Technical Staff. I had my career to think about.\nWhat was I? I was a damned idiot.\nTake. Paternity. Leave. So, that was 2007. Things have changed somewhat since then.\nBack then, my company didn\u0026rsquo;t have paternity leave. What leave you got, you typically burned vacation time for. Now, in truth, most good managers would give you like an extra week off-book, but still. The expectation was clear: YOU didn\u0026rsquo;t have that baby, your wife did. Get back to work, okay?\nThese days, most places offer 4-6 weeks of paternity leave. Some offer up to 6 months, just like Maternity. I think that\u0026rsquo;s terrific, and quite generous.\nWhat I think is ludicrous? Guys won\u0026rsquo;t take it.\nIf you come back after \u0026lt; 1 week off during which you never unplugged, you\u0026rsquo;re doing two things.\nYou\u0026rsquo;re an idiot (see above) You\u0026rsquo;re putting subtle pressure on everyone else to follow your lunacy. Nobody can tell you this, unfortunately. You must learn for yourself: You will NEVER get that time back. The first few weeks are essential for bonding you to that child. You need to re-orient your life away from self, and career, and you need to understand what it is to have another human utterly dependent on you.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t do that. I regret it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/02/birthdays-and-regrets/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday is my daughter\u0026rsquo;s 13th birthday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThirteen years ago, I watched my wife attempt to deliver our child naturally via the Bradley method, then I watched my daughter get stuck at -2 station, her head caught on my wife\u0026rsquo;s pelvis, and I watched a sex-addicted doctor cut her open and finally bring my daughter into the world.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/the-condensed-version-maria-coming-into-the-world/\" title=\"maria birth\"\u003eMy account of that day\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat I left out, of course, was how \u003cstrong\u003eutterly unprepared\u003c/strong\u003e I was to be a father.  Overwhelmed with emotion, between that 11pm and 11:30pm timestamp, I stood in the room where my wife had tried to push out our daughter, and I cried.  I stood there and sobbed.  I know now, those were sobs of crushing anxiety cresting into relief. They were both going to be okay.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Birthdays and Regrets"},{"content":"Looks like this will be a series. Welcome to Imperial America\nLooks like the sham \u0026ldquo;trial\u0026rdquo; ends today. Really the question was whether it ends now or ends in acquittal after whatever witnesses were called.\nThey needed 66 votes to convict and remove the president. They never had them.\n\u0026ldquo;I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose voters.\u0026rdquo;\nI don\u0026rsquo;t care particularly whether you have an ironic (D) or (R) next to your name, at this point neither party represents \u0026ldquo;Democracy\u0026rdquo; nor \u0026ldquo;Republic\u0026rdquo; in any form.\nWell, taking a deep breath: What now? What should we expect?\nWhat happenes next? Several scenarios present themselves, with historical evidence to back them up.\nInitially: You\u0026rsquo;ll be fine. So, as Republics lapse into Imperial Autocracies, the overwhelming result is things actually stabilize\u0026hellip;for awhile. Democracies and Republics whipsaw between different factions and the peasants citizens spend inordinate amounts of time with their eye off the ball. This is a pattern so predictable it\u0026rsquo;s almost boring.\nTaking a few examples:\nRoman Republic -\u0026gt; Empire. The 1st centry BC was unending Civil War. After Augustus consolidated power, the Pax Romana resulted, 300 years of stability and peace at the commoner level at least French Revolution -\u0026gt; Napoleon. So, 1775 -\u0026gt; 1803 was a simply terrible time in France. Starvation, anarchy, terror, lawlessness. After Napoleon\u0026rsquo;s ascension, things got much better for the average Frenchman. Really, France never regained that sort of national pride after 1815. Post-Communist Russia -\u0026gt; Putin. The Gangsters took over after 1992. Yeltsin and the legislature were ineffective. Putin straightened things out and restored Russian pre-eminence to near Soviet levels. This is a crapshoot, admittedly. For every good example, you have not \u0026ldquo;benevolent dictatorship\u0026rdquo; but \u0026ldquo;totalitarian nightmare\u0026rdquo;: Mao, Lenin/Stalin, Pol Pot. The middle class evaporates (or is jailed/eradicated).\nYou\u0026rsquo;re also at the mercy of the vagaries of personality. Trump is many things, but he\u0026rsquo;s not a psychopath bent on world domination. He likes self-aggrandizement, sure, but he\u0026rsquo;s a benign Boomer sterotype in the end. He\u0026rsquo;s greedy. He\u0026rsquo;s selfish. He\u0026rsquo;s emotional, brash, capricious. I suspect at heart, he\u0026rsquo;s a coward who hides behind bluster. But, he\u0026rsquo;s an easily-manipulated fool in a geopolitical sense.\nTaking historical precedent, he\u0026rsquo;s kind of like a Caligula or maybe Commodus. He causes no end of trouble for the ruling class, but for the average person? He\u0026rsquo;s immaterial. Life is good!\nThe Role of Corporations One thing is different from those ancient analogues: We have Corporations now. Corporations with greater resources and power than most nations\u0026rsquo; GDP.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s definitely a curveball, because people\u0026rsquo;s motivations are well mapped-out. Read Sun-Tzu, or Socrates, or Marcus Aurelius, or Machiavelli and it\u0026rsquo;s fairly predictable at scale. Corporations are \u0026ldquo;people\u0026rdquo; and seek profit.\nHowever, corporations have to exist within a Capitalistic framework to make sense, and it\u0026rsquo;s undefined how that works in Autocratic America. Likely, Corporations will have incredibly favorable environments with stability and latitude to operate like manorial fiefdoms. Companies may take on wholesale control over city/states like greater Seattle, Silicon Valley, Detroit, with their CEOs becoming new Manorial Lords.\nPretense Will Continue There will be the pretense that we have 3 functioning branches of government. Even when it\u0026rsquo;s gone, people will act like they\u0026rsquo;re still there.\nHeck, Constantine build a Senate chamber in Constantinople 300 years after that body had any power whatsoever. It gives the ruling class something to do, much like Parliament did in England until 1648 when they beheaded Charles.\nPeople will still swear the Oath of Office to protect the constitution. We\u0026rsquo;ll still pledge allegiance to the Flag, however many stars it may have.\nThe Coasting Ends Badly So, the Pax Romana ended when Roman wasn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;Roman\u0026rdquo; anymore. Barbarian tribes made up most of the military, and individual Legion commanders got ambitious. The military wised up and realized it could put whomever into power, leading to years with multiple Emperors, seated and deposed as the whims of the military changed.\nIn the end, it\u0026rsquo;s hard to see America not going this way. If/when the military becomes politicized, it\u0026rsquo;s well and truly over, and there will be inevitable conflicts, divisions, and the nation/state will cease to exist.\nTakeaways This has nothing to do with a call to Ukraine. America is sort of \u0026ldquo;done\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;with itself. We\u0026rsquo;ve a conglomeration of \u0026ldquo;Nations\u0026rdquo; that don\u0026rsquo;t particularly get along unless we have a common enemy.\nThis would be the same if Hillary were elected. See point (1).\nRegional alignments and differences are accelerating. Moreover, people are moving to be with their own kind, whatever that might be.\nPeople aren\u0026rsquo;t engaged/don\u0026rsquo;t care. Despite what those in the echo chambers on Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN may thing, none of this is terribly important to the common American.\nThe more I ponder Colin Woodard\u0026rsquo;s excellent American Nations the more I see 21st century America becoming a looser confederation if it\u0026rsquo;s going to sustain itself with any sort of democratic/republican ideals. Otherwise, we\u0026rsquo;re heading for a fragile \u0026ldquo;strongmen are best\u0026rdquo; rule out of a dystopian novel.\nAnd for the record, I hope I\u0026rsquo;m wrong.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/01/living-in-imperial-america/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLooks like this will be a series.  \u003ca href=\"/2019/10/welcome-to-imperial-america/\"\u003eWelcome to Imperial America\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLooks like the sham \u0026ldquo;trial\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/31/politics/impeachment-trial-vote-aftershocks/index.html\"\u003eends today\u003c/a\u003e.  Really the question was whether it ends now or ends in acquittal after whatever witnesses were called.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey needed 66 votes to convict and remove the president.  They never had them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose voters.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;\"\u003e\n\t\t\t\u003ciframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share; fullscreen\" loading=\"eager\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/iTACH1eVIaA?autoplay=0\u0026amp;controls=1\u0026amp;end=0\u0026amp;loop=0\u0026amp;mute=0\u0026amp;start=0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;\" title=\"YouTube video\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n\t\t\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t care particularly whether you have an ironic (D) or (R) next to your name, at this point neither party represents \u0026ldquo;Democracy\u0026rdquo; nor \u0026ldquo;Republic\u0026rdquo; in any form.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Living in Imperial America"},{"content":"Wait\u0026hellip;.what?\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;ve been gambling quite a bit lately. I\u0026rsquo;ve won and lost thousands of dollars on both blackjack and craps, and I want to write about it.\n::blink::\nBlackjack?\nCRAPS?\nKeep your pants on. I\u0026rsquo;ve been playing two particular iOS apps, learning about two popular casino games. There is but one conclusion:\nIf you Play long enough\u0026hellip;.you lose.\nSo if some of you read my post Regression to the Mean and thought: \u0026ldquo;Hmm\u0026hellip;.he seems to care A LOT about what the odds on dice are\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;. Bingo. Er\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;Winner, Seven!\u0026rdquo;\nThe Gateway Drug: Blackjack I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how this all started, but sometime in November, Youtube\u0026rsquo;s algorithm suggested this video by noted card counter Colin Jones How to Play and win at Blackjack. In the video, they talk about a thing called Basic Strategy. Blackjack is a very simple game.\nThe object is to get as close to 21 as possible without going over. You only play against the dealer The dealer has to deal more cards (\u0026ldquo;hit\u0026rdquo;) any time he has less than 16. He has to stop taking cards (\u0026ldquo;stand\u0026rdquo;) if he has 17 or more You start with two cards. The dealer shows one card (the \u0026ldquo;upcard\u0026rdquo;) You can hit or stay. You may also double your bet and take 1 more card. If you ahve two of the same cards, you may separate (\u0026ldquo;split\u0026rdquo;) and play 2 hands with the same stakes as the current. Seriously. It takes all of 5 minutes to teach someone to play Blackjack.\nAnyway, there was something SUPER attractive about all this around the Basic Strategy. It felt so soothing, so comfortable. One could play hundreds of rounds of blackjack on an app, with no risk. The Basic Strategy provided a framework for how to play the most advantageous way later.\nI did this for about 2 months. I played probably 2500-5000 hands. I\u0026rsquo;ve been up 20 to 50 THOUSAND (fake) dollars at a time. I unlocked all the perks on the app I was using, the virtual equivalent of being a high-roller.\nTwo interesting observations:\nZero Triggers While I was playing blackjack, none of my other addiction issues existed. AT ALL. I\u0026rsquo;ve battled addiction since adolescence and usually it\u0026rsquo;s like the proverbial monkey on my shoulder: \u0026ldquo;Do this,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;You want this,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;They\u0026rsquo;ll never know.\u0026rdquo; The desire for self-destructive behavior was always there, asking me to act-out. While I played blackjack it just wasn\u0026rsquo;t there. Talking with professional about it, the pathology seemed similar to methodone/heroin: The Gambling was occupying the same centers, so the addiction drivers were quiet. (Similar to methodone\u0026hellip;there\u0026rsquo;s the open question of whether the treatment is better than the addiction.)\nYou Go Broke So\u0026hellip;yeah. That whole \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m up 50,000 on the house\u0026rdquo;? Temporary. Very, very temporary. Eventually the house wins.\nIn the end, unless you learn to count cards, you\u0026rsquo;re going to lose @ blackjack. No, I didn\u0026rsquo;t learn to count cards.\nCraps So, I\u0026rsquo;ve never been a gambler, but in that way one acquires useless information, I\u0026rsquo;d learned that of all the casino games, Craps had the best odds. I had no idea what that meant, but unlike slots (worst), roulette, or blackjack, the \u0026ldquo;house edge\u0026rdquo; in craps was supposedly small, and there were \u0026ldquo;systems\u0026rdquo; that work.\nBig deal, HOW DO YOU PLAY THE FREAKING GAME?\nCraps is\u0026hellip;complicated. In overview, it\u0026rsquo;s a game played with two dice (6-sided cubes with point values 1-6 each) where a succession of people throw the dice. Beyond that, it\u0026rsquo;s pretty hard to explain. On the first roll, you roll either a 7 or 11 (winners), or a 2,3,12 (losers)\u0026hellip;or you roll a 4,5,6,8,9, or 10, in which case you roll again to try and match that same number again. You roll an unlimited number of times until you hit that number (\u0026ldquo;point\u0026rdquo;) or you roll a 7 (\u0026ldquo;seven out\u0026rdquo;).\nThat\u0026rsquo;s a mere overview, and it\u0026rsquo;s WAAAAY more complicated than that. The payouts are weird (\u0026ldquo;6 will get you 7\u0026rdquo;). There\u0026rsquo;s lots of jagon. The board itself is overwhelming.\nYoutube to the rescue, again. So I found a wonderful channel called \u0026ldquo;Color Up\u0026rdquo; where a kindly guy teaches his son how to play craps. Channel link. Like blackjack, I found an app right on the App Store where I could play.\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;m about 2 weeks into craps. Given it\u0026rsquo;s a game about rolling 2 dice, it\u0026rsquo;s surprisingly deep. Unlike Blackjack, where there\u0026rsquo;s an agreed-upon, mathematically proven Basic Strategy, craps has lots of different \u0026ldquo;systems\u0026rdquo; and ways to play. You can just bet the pass line. You can play the field (that\u0026rsquo;s where that term comes from, I guess). There\u0026rsquo;s the Iron-Cross, 3-2-1, lots of different ways to play, many of them explained on that Youtube channel.\nBetting is weird. Blackjack, you bet any amount above the minimum, and if you win you get paid 2:1, except blackjack which pays 3:2. Craps is like a statistician got drunk and just threw out numbers. Some things pay 30:1. Some pay 7:6. Pass line bets pay 2:1, but if you lay odds bets BEHIND the pass, they pay \u0026ldquo;true odds\u0026rdquo; for 4,5,6,8,9,10.\nCraps is also a very \u0026ldquo;social\u0026rdquo; game. One person is the shooter, and everyone else plays around, betting either with (Pass/Come) or against (don\u0026rsquo;t pass/don\u0026rsquo;t come) the shooter. Seems like it\u0026rsquo;d be fun to actually play on a casino floor.\nThings I\u0026rsquo;ve learned about craps:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not as intense as Blackjack. Blackjack, you might be splitting/doubling/whatever. There could be wild swings in your stake every hand. Not so with craps. You typically work whatever system you use, and sure\u0026hellip;.occasionally some shooter gets on a roll and there\u0026rsquo;s lots of money (\u0026ldquo;action\u0026rdquo;) on the table, but you\u0026rsquo;re rarely working in huge increments. Five dollars on the pass. Six dollars on 6,8. you might have anywhere from $5 to $35 on the table at any given time. It\u0026rsquo;s a longer-term game. You can play craps for a VERY long time with a modest sum. Start with $200 and play for an hour. you probably won\u0026rsquo;t be up/down very much with a reasonable system. You STILL lose. It\u0026rsquo;s still gambling. Otherwise, people would be taking their payroll to the casino and driving out in a Ferrari. Over enough time, you\u0026rsquo;re still. Going. To lose. So What? It\u0026rsquo;s been an interesting few months, gambling on iOS apps with no real money. It\u0026rsquo;s been an interesting exploration of my own brain chemistry. At this point, I find blackjack incredibly annoying and I don\u0026rsquo;t play. Craps seems like the gambling equivalent of chess or at least something with strategy, and seems no worse than playing CandyCrush or some other dumb diversion. As it stands, I\u0026rsquo;m keeping it around.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/01/what-i-learned-from-gambling/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWait\u0026hellip;.\u003cem\u003ewhat\u003c/em\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;ve been gambling quite a bit lately.  I\u0026rsquo;ve won and lost thousands of dollars on both blackjack and craps, and I want to write about it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e::blink::\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBlackjack\u003c/em\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.blackjackapprenticeship.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/how-do-you-play-blackjack.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCRAPS\u003c/em\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.gamblingsites.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/People-Playing-Craps-at-a-Casino-Craps-Table-Red-Dices.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKeep your pants on.  I\u0026rsquo;ve been playing two particular iOS apps, learning about two popular casino games.  There is but one conclusion:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you Play long enough\u0026hellip;.you lose.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if some of you read my post \u003ca href=\"/2020/01/regression-to-the-mean/\"\u003eRegression to the Mean\u003c/a\u003e and thought: \u0026ldquo;Hmm\u0026hellip;.he seems to care A LOT about what the odds on dice are\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;.  Bingo.  Er\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;Winner, Seven!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What I Learned From Gambling"},{"content":"Meta This chapter alone is SDE Mentoring 101. Many of my mentees through the years have struggled in these areas, and improvement is often following these principles, whether by design or by accident.\nThis is a \u0026ldquo;soft\u0026rdquo; skills chapter, yes. Later ones get much more technical. However, most tech ICs (and managers) don\u0026rsquo;t struggle with technology; we struggle learning these lessons ad-hoc, through experience.\n\u0026ndash; Harold, 08 January 2020\nForeward \u0026amp; Preface They don\u0026rsquo;t talk down to you. They don\u0026rsquo;t assume you are an expert. \u0026hellip; They take you as you are\u0026ndash;programmers who just want to be better.\nShip of Theseus\nWhat makes a Pragmatic Programmer Early adopter/Fast Adapter You have an instinct for technologies and techniques, and you love trying things out Inquisitive You tend to ask questions, and you\u0026rsquo;re a pack rat for little facts. Critical Thinker You rarely take things as given without first getting the facts. Realistic You try to understand the underlying nature of each problem you face. Jack of all trades You try hard to be familiar with a broad range of technologies and environments. Tip 1: Care About your Craft. We feel there is no point in developing software unless you care about it.\nThoughts? Can this be taken too far?\nHow is this similar and different from UncleBob\u0026rsquo;s Software Craftsmanship Manifesto?\nIs this similar or different to other professions, from your experience?\nTip 2: Think! About your work. Never be on autopilot. Constantly be thinking, critiquing your work in Realtime.\nAnybody have an example where you recently stopped, self-critiqued, and changed/improved what you were doing?\n(Stated) Rewards (p. xxi)\nMore active involvement in a job you love. Feeling of master over ranges of subjects Pleasing feeling of continuous improvement Teams become more efficient Write code that\u0026rsquo;s easier to maintain Spend less time in meetings (you had me at \u0026lsquo;Less time in Meetings\u0026rsquo; - HC )\nIndividuals \u0026amp; Large teams \u0026ldquo;Software is an engineering discipline that breaks down if individual(s)\u0026hellip;make decisions for themselves.\u0026rdquo; Agree or Disagree?\nThere should be engineering in software construction. However, this doesn\u0026rsquo;t preclude individual craftsmanship. (p. xxii)\nChapter 1: A Pragmatic Philosophy It\u0026rsquo;s Your Life Many developers we talk to are frustrated\u0026hellip;.Our answer is always the same: \u0026ldquo;Why can\u0026rsquo;t you change it?\u0026rdquo; (p.2)\nTip 3: You Have Agency (p.2)\nWhy do they say this is the most important tip in the book?\nThe Cat Ate My Source Code What are some \u0026ldquo;disasters\u0026rdquo; you can think of? How does this go to Earning (or Losing) trust?\nTrust in a team is absolutely essential for creativity and collaboration\nAgree? Disagree? Examples?\nTip 4: Provide Options, Don\u0026rsquo;t Make Lame Excuses\nThe Vendor didn\u0026rsquo;t come through The datacenter went drop Your drive crashed Always listen for the word \u0026ldquo;can\u0026rsquo;t\u0026rdquo;\nBefore you approach anyone to tell them why something can\u0026rsquo;t be done, is late, is broken, stop and listen to yourself.\nQ: What is \u0026ldquo;Rubber Ducking\u0026rdquo;? Have you done it?\nQ: What does providing options look like?\nQ: How does this align (or not) with how we do things @ Amazon?\nApplication (p.5) Tell about a time in life when someone came to you with a lame excuse. What was your opinion of that person? Follow \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t know\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;, but I\u0026rsquo;ll find out.\u0026rdquo; This is a great way to admit what you don\u0026rsquo;t know, but take responsibility. Software Entropy Software Rot Technical Debt Hopelessness can be contagious (p.6)\nTip 5: Don\u0026rsquo;t Live with Broken Windows\nQ: What is the broken windows theory and how does it (or doesn\u0026rsquo;t it?) apply to your team and Amazon?\nStrategies Fix each \u0026lsquo;broken window\u0026rsquo; as soon as discovered \u0026ldquo;Board it up\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Do No Harm\u0026rdquo;: Don\u0026rsquo;t break the rest of the software in fixing a \u0026ldquo;crisis\u0026rdquo; Application Choose two or three \u0026ldquo;broken windows\u0026rdquo; and discuss what you can do about them? Think about root causes for \u0026ldquo;broken windows\u0026rdquo;: ignorance, deadlines, laziness. Be honest. Consider what proactive steps you can make under those circumstances Stone Soup and Boiled Frogs Q: What is the moral of the \u0026lsquo;Stone Soup\u0026rsquo; story?\nIs this (or not) a template for effecting change? Anyone have an example?\nTip 6: Be a Catalyst for Change.\n\u0026ldquo;It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; Grace Hopper\nQ: What is the point of the Boiled Frog?\nSome examples:\nScope creep Schedule slippage Decisions postponed No Ownership Fear Tip 7: Remember the Big Picture\nApplication How aware are you of your surroundings? How many people are in this room? Do you even care? Is the door open or closed? Is anything out-of-place? Take time to be aware both of your surroundings and your project. How can you do this? What procedures/metrics do you have in place to detect \u0026ldquo;Boiled Frogs\u0026rdquo; syndrome? Is the Second System Effect an instance of Boiled frog? How are they alike and different? Good Enough software The real world just won\u0026rsquo;t let us produce much that\u0026rsquo;s truly perfect. (p.11)\nPerfect code never ships \u0026ndash; Software Advantages\n\u0026ldquo;Do you ever ask your users how good they want the software to be?\u0026rdquo; (p.11-12)\nConstraints:\nmarketing promises delivery schedule on-shelf DateTime cash-flow constraints \u0026ldquo;I know you needed this code last week for the rocket launch, but I insist I had to rewrite all 50,000 lines in Rust.\u0026rdquo;\nTip 8: Make Quality a Requirements issue\nApplication Define \u0026ldquo;Minimum Viable Product\u0026rdquo; (though I guess we hate that term now) Give users something to play with early, then let their feedback lead you better solutions Know when to stop Q: Why is stopping hard? Or is it easy for you?\nQ: How does this vary in embedded software, webapps, mobile. What effect does modularization or microservices have on this?\nQ: What Software is so bloated it\u0026rsquo;s almost unusuable (ECLIPSE!)\nQ: How do you deal with the \u0026lsquo;Have you thought about?\u0026rsquo; question from Senior SDE, PE reviews? Have you ever put explicit \u0026ldquo;constraints\u0026rdquo;/\u0026ldquo;won\u0026rsquo;t do\u0026rdquo; sections in your designs? Why or why not?\nYour Knowledge Portfolio Tip 9: Invest Regularly in your Knowledge Portfolio\napplication Invest Regularly Diversify Manage risk Buy low, sell high Review and Rebalance Strategies Learn a new programming language every year Read a technical book each month Read non-tech books Take Subclasses Participate in groups/meetups Experiment with different environments Stay current Critical Thinking Tip 10: Critically analyze what you Read and Hear\nAsk the \u0026ldquo;Five Whys\u0026rdquo; Who does this benefit? What\u0026rsquo;s the context? When or where would this work? Why is this a problem? Application Candidate Languages: Clojure, Elixir, Elm, F#, Go,Haskell, Python, Rust, Scala, Swift, TypeScript\nCommunicate A large part of our day is spent communicating, so we need to do it well.\nTip 11: English is Just Another Programming Language\nApplication Know your audience You\u0026rsquo;re communicating only if you\u0026rsquo;re conveying what you mean to convey. Know what you want to say Choose your moment Choose a style Make it look good Involve your Audience Be a Listener. Turn a meeting into a dialog Keep your promises to get back to people Tip 12: It\u0026rsquo;s both What you say and the Way you say it\nDocumentation Tip 13: Build Documentation in, don\u0026rsquo;t bolt it on (p.23)\nQ: How has \u0026ldquo;documentation\u0026rdquo; changed in our industry? Is there more or less than when you started?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/01/a-pragmatic-philosophy/","summary":"\u003ch1 id=\"meta\"\u003eMeta\u003c/h1\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis chapter \u003cstrong\u003ealone\u003c/strong\u003e is SDE Mentoring 101.  Many of my mentees through the years have struggled in these areas, and improvement is often following these principles, whether by design or by accident.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis is a \u0026ldquo;soft\u0026rdquo; skills chapter, yes.  Later ones get much more technical.  However, most tech ICs (and managers) don\u0026rsquo;t struggle with technology; we struggle learning these lessons ad-hoc, through experience.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ndash; Harold, 08 January 2020\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch1 id=\"foreward--preface\"\u003eForeward \u0026amp; Preface\u003c/h1\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey don\u0026rsquo;t talk down to you.  They don\u0026rsquo;t assume you are an expert. \u0026hellip; They take you as you are\u0026ndash;programmers who just want to be better.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Pragmatic Philosophy"},{"content":"Why is the world going to hell, Harold?\nIt seems a right of passage for people of a certain age\u0026ndash;typically over 40\u0026ndash;to look around them and ask certain questions:\n\u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s with kids these days?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Why aren\u0026rsquo;t things like they used to be?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Why is no one moral anymore?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Does NO ONE have any work ethic?\u0026rdquo;\nThis isn\u0026rsquo;t exaclty, new. Listen to this modern voice:\nThe children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.\nThat sage of modernity? Socrates, (470-399 BC). Only 2400 or so years ago.\nSo, it seems of the same tenor to posit: \u0026ldquo;Why is the world going to Hell?\u0026rdquo;\nFrom my historical perspective: It\u0026rsquo;s simply Regression Towards the Mean\nWhat is that? Regression towards the mean simply posits that, over time, results even out towards the less extreme. One can see this with dice. With one die, one has an equal chance of encountering any of its six faces. Things get slightly more interesting with two dice. Here\u0026rsquo;s a chart of probabilities for a single throw of two fair dice:\nTotal Probability 2 1/36 3 2/36 4 3/36 5 4/36 6 5/36 7 6/36 8 5/36 9 4/36 10 3/36 11 2/36 12 1/36 The something/36 works like this: There are 6x6=36 combinations out of two fair dice, the numerator (the something) is the number of combinations that make that total. For example, only two 1\u0026rsquo;s (\u0026ldquo;Snake Eyes\u0026rdquo;) can make a total of two, so it\u0026rsquo;s 1 out of 36. Likewise, only two 6\u0026rsquo;s (\u0026ldquo;Boxcars!\u0026rdquo;) can make 12. Seven is the most common result, since it can be 1+6, 2+5, 3+4, 4+3, 5+2, or 6+1, thus 6 out of 36.\nAnyway, if you throw dice a few times, you might expect get a 6,7, or 8 about half the time (44.44\u0026hellip;% to be exact). Writing a small program bears this out:\npackage main import ( \u0026#34;fmt\u0026#34; \u0026#34;math/rand\u0026#34; \u0026#34;time\u0026#34; ) const MAX_TRIALS = 10000000000 var outcomes = [...]uint64 { 2,12, 3, 3, 11, 11, 4, 4, 4, 10,10,10,5,5,5,5,9,9,9,9,6,6,6,6,6,8,8,8,8,8,7,7,7,7,7,7 } func main() { for i:=1; i \u0026lt; MAX_TRIALS ; i*=10 { runTrials(i) } } func runTrials(iterations int) { var sum = uint64(0) var k int seeded_rand := rand.New(rand.NewSource(time.Now().UnixNano())) for i:=0; i \u0026lt; iterations; i++ { //each time, choose a random index out of 36 k = seeded_rand.Intn(36) sum += outcomes[k] } fmt.Printf(\u0026#34;Iterations: %10d, Mean value: %1.10f\\n\u0026#34;, iterations, float64(sum) / float64(iterations)) } Results show that we quickly establish a mean close to 7 in as few as 10 iterations:\n» ./dice Iterations: 1, Mean value: 5.0000000000 Iterations: 10, Mean value: 5.7000000000 Iterations: 100, Mean value: 6.9100000000 Iterations: 1000, Mean value: 6.9840000000 Iterations: 10000, Mean value: 7.0034000000 Iterations: 100000, Mean value: 7.0012500000 Iterations: 1000000, Mean value: 7.0006190000 Iterations: 10000000, Mean value: 6.9994839000 Iterations: 100000000, Mean value: 7.0003509300 Iterations: 1000000000, Mean value: 7.0000477900 ZZZZZ\u0026hellip; Okay, so the point here is: Over big enough numbers, things become mediocre. I\u0026rsquo;d posit the same happens with Societies.\nThink about it: If you study ancient history or medieval history the line keeps appearing:\nLife was nasty, brutish, and short.\nRead: Life is usually bad. If it\u0026rsquo;s not, you\u0026rsquo;re by definition in an outlying condition. You\u0026rsquo;re living a \u0026ldquo;Snake eyes\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Boxcars\u0026rdquo; roll.\nThing is\u0026hellip;that can\u0026rsquo;t last forever, societally. Everything trends back towards mediocrity given long enough time.\nSo What? If your life is really bad right now, it will probably get better, with no input from you. The infamous \u0026ldquo;Bad luck comes in threes\u0026rdquo; is really no more surprising than rolling three successive double-6\u0026rsquo;s at Monopoly. It happens. It just doesn\u0026rsquo;t happen often, thanks to probability.\nSimilarly, if your life is really good right now, it won\u0026rsquo;t last. Setbacks and various chaotic things will affect you. This isn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily divine retribution, it\u0026rsquo;s just continuous rolls of the dice.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/01/regression-to-the-mean/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhy is the world going to hell, Harold?\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://image.businessinsider.com/5e0b7a19855cc255415eb3da?width=400\u0026format=jpeg\u0026auto=webp\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt seems a right of passage for people of a certain age\u0026ndash;typically over 40\u0026ndash;to look around them and ask certain questions:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s with kids these days?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Why aren\u0026rsquo;t things like they used to be?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Why is no one moral anymore?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Does NO ONE have any work ethic?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis isn\u0026rsquo;t exaclty, new.  Listen to this modern voice:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Regression to the Mean"},{"content":"So, Kives Out.\nThis is one odd film.\nOn the surface, it\u0026rsquo;s an old-fashioned Whodunnit? reminiscent of Agatha Christie\u0026rsquo;s works. In this take, we open to find the Patriarch of a WASP-y family of trust fund babies dead, apparently at his own hand. His nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) discovers him, and it seems simple enough.\nOh wait\u0026hellip;the guy is famous for writing detective novels, and all his kids and grandkids have a reason to kill him. And someone engaged the services of Benoit Blan (Daniel Craig) to \u0026ldquo;help\u0026rdquo; the dimwitted local police.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s not mince words. I hated this Rian Johnson written/directed film for 1 hour and 45 minutes of its runtime, then it completely won me over in the final 25 minutes. No film has ever sparked such a \u0026ldquo;I want to walk out\u0026rdquo; vibe then a complete reverse.\nWhy I hated it Daniel Craig\u0026rsquo;s Southern-Fried take on an Agatha Christie detective sports an uncanny-valley accent. He\u0026rsquo;s obviously doing an impression, but it\u0026rsquo;s from no discernable region of the South. There\u0026rsquo;s no \u0026ldquo;mystery\u0026rdquo; to the film. You know by minute 20 who the killer is and the next 75 minutes drags on interminably.\nThere are no likable characters, save for Armas\u0026rsquo;s Marta, the nursemaid for the 85-year-old patriarch, Harlan (Christopher Plummer). Harlan has 2 living children, the ball-busting neocon Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), and the hapless Walt (Micahel Shannon) who runs his publishing empire. Said empire, as we find out in the will is worth well north of $60 million.\nAlong for the ride is the daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette), who runs a GOOP-like lifestyle blog/skin care shill/instagram empire by suckling the teat of Harlan\u0026rsquo;s largess. As they used to say in the obituaries on 97.7 WJSN \u0026ldquo;A host of grandchildren survive,\u0026rdquo; most notably Ransom (Chris Evans), the ne\u0026rsquo;er-do-well scion of Linda and Richard (Don Johnson).\nCollete, in particular, is simply hard to look at, a skeletal shadow of her former self. Other peripheral characters are many, and bland stereotypes: The SJW Emo, the Alt-right repressed homosexual, the wilting Betty Draper beauty queen with pearls and outsized cocktail glass. Nobody here gets an arc. They\u0026rsquo;re just window-dressing.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s just the order of battle. Actually watching this cadre of WASP entitlement interact grates. It\u0026rsquo;s work. Perhaps that was Johnson\u0026rsquo;s intent, making us feel as defeated and deranged and Harlan did the night of his 85th birthday, right before he (apparently) slit his own throat rather than face the din of another \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re a Nazi\u0026rdquo; / \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re a Snowflake\u0026rdquo; rant from The Descendants downstairs.\nLikewise, the profanity in the movie is neither earned nor welcome. This isn\u0026rsquo;t Tarantino-level grotesque vulgarity for its own sake, nor is it inventive or memorable. It shows us nothing about the characters.\nWhy It (Almost) Redeems Itself Ana de Armas is like Cuban Audrey Hepburn. She\u0026rsquo;s luminous, vulnerable, honest, and her eyes do 90% of the acting in this film. Unlike most of her body of work to date, she chooses to keep her clothes on in this film. She holds things together by sheer force of will and charisma until the plot actually starts. As stated, that\u0026rsquo;s a full 105 minutes into the film.\nWhen the plot does start, it\u0026rsquo;s so jarring it\u0026rsquo;s like seeing a corpse move. It\u0026rsquo;s unexpected\u0026hellip;again, maybe that\u0026rsquo;s the point?\nFor the 25 minutes where there is a plot, Knives Out pulls the trick that your 3rd grade teacher did. It teaches you without you realizing it. When the threads start to weave together with 5 minutes of runtime left, it all clicks into place in your head. Blanc\u0026rsquo;s thundering finish is part Clue, part Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mocking Bird.\nThe movie isn\u0026rsquo;t gorgeous, but it\u0026rsquo;s shot with plenty of natural light, on-location.\nMy Thirteen year old daughter really wanted to see this film, capping a month heavy with movies. I regret taking her, but I did enjoy the \u0026ldquo;What WAS that?\u0026rdquo; discussion we had on the way out of the cinema.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/01/kives-out/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8946378/\"\u003eKives Out\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Knives Out\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5dd7430b2c886a0007ecbfe0/960x0.jpg?cropX1=0\u0026cropX2=677\u0026cropY1=0\u0026cropY2=381\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is one \u003cstrong\u003eodd\u003c/strong\u003e film.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the surface, it\u0026rsquo;s an old-fashioned \u003cem\u003eWhodunnit?\u003c/em\u003e reminiscent of Agatha Christie\u0026rsquo;s works.  In this take, we open to find the Patriarch of a WASP-y family of trust fund babies dead, apparently at his own hand.  His nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) discovers him, and it seems simple enough.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh wait\u0026hellip;the guy is famous for writing \u003cstrong\u003edetective novels\u003c/strong\u003e, and all his kids and grandkids have a reason to kill him.  And someone engaged the services of Benoit Blan (Daniel Craig) to \u0026ldquo;help\u0026rdquo; the dimwitted local police.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kives Out"},{"content":"What happened in 2019?\nI like to do year-in-review posts every year or after specific milestones, like changing jobs or having big projects finish.\nSo, if 2018 was a triumph, 2019 was its hangover.\nFamily Both my parents are still alive, and are ornery as ever.\nThroughout most of 2019, our relationship with our son was estranged, most acutely when we flew up to Kentucky in May to see him graduate Franklin County High School when he refused to see us before, during, or after graduation.\nThis year we found a Lyme specialist for W, M, and G, requiring 4 total trips to Louisiana, roughly 720 miles round-trip through East Texas backroads and past Fort Polk in Louisiana. We hope both girls will be in remission by June next year.\nJanuary through May were very hard; I\u0026rsquo;ll leave it at that. The end of 2018 showed incredible promise; this year was cold and hard.\nWe did execute a 2-week vacation to Estes Park, Colorado, which was wonderful. Whitney found us a spacious cabin to rent, and despite the July 4th \u0026ldquo;heat,\u0026rdquo; we often had to turn the heat on each night to stay warm. Rocky Mountain National Park is a treasure, and we\u0026rsquo;re planning to return next summer. In particular, Whitney and Grace found a love for fly-fishing our last few days there and want to explore further.\nMaria spent her second season in Volleyball this September and October, and Grace continues to ride at her stables each week.\nAs the year closed, Joey renewed his relationship with us, having joined the Army in August and reported to Advanced Infantry Training later in the Fall. He\u0026rsquo;s due for his first duty station in 1Q next year, and he spend Christmas with us, so that was a blessing.\nWork I changed teams, but I\u0026rsquo;m still at Amazon. I was working for Amazon Business, but now I\u0026rsquo;m working in Digital, Device, and Alexa Support. Basically, if you use any Amazon Digital App, my team provides your help experience.\nI made this change in July. Really, I\u0026rsquo;d wanted to move in January after returning from Kentucky, but I held-out in hopes of a promotion that never came. I was assured it would, but after the second round of \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s all but a sure thing,\u0026rdquo; I got off the train. Also, my skip-level manager, the VP of Tech, and the VP of the org left. Having been through similar things at Lexmark, I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to hang around for the inevitable re-org. People get awfully creative during re-orgs.\nIn the intervening 6 months, there was a big project that went nowhere and our team doing really amazing work getting our Ops house in order, culminating with our website going full continuous deployment (CD).\nI also got to go to Madrid for a week, my first trip to Spain, and my first time in Europe since going to UBS in 2006. It was an exhausting trip. I got to visit the Prado museum and walk about 10 miles a day (yes, really). The Plazas (\u0026ldquo;PLAT-zuhs\u0026rdquo;) are really vibrant, and going in April meant great weather for walking.\nTransitioning to the new team has been both easy and hard. Usually every team has a self-appointed jerk. This team does not have one, and has been very welcoming. I struggle with what my place is, though, because I don\u0026rsquo;t exactly fit. I\u0026rsquo;m not a mobile developer or embedded developer, though my web-dev skills came in very handy during my first project, which launched right after Thanksgiving.\nHealth No surgeries in 2019, unlike 2018, where I had a cataract replaced in my right eye.\nMy vision deteriorated noticeably, and I now sport \u0026ldquo;invisiline\u0026rdquo; bi-focal glasses, which has close-in vision possible once-again. My dominant eye wandered over to my right eye last year, but seems firmly in my left again after a prescription adjustment. Guess all that cognitive development in my brain for decades has to win-out.\nI have no regular exercise regimen, and my weight has hovered between 260-275 pounds, easily 60+ pounds overweight.\nI did have a spectacular neck sprain in May requiring ongoing physical therapy through June. It seems to have resolved itself, likely related to repetitive stress.\nCars We entered the year owning a 2018 Honda Civic and a 2009 Toyota Sienna. We exited with the same Civic (plus some upgrades!) and a 2016 Lexus GX460.\nThe Sienna was a perfect family truckster, but since the move to Texas, it\u0026rsquo;s required ~$2000 in repairs each year to keep on the road: Steering rack/CV boots, full new suspension, etc. Finally in May, we got a transmission growl that the dealer said required a transmission replacement. With these 700+ mile Louisiana trips and a pending 2000 mile trek to Colorado, something new(er) seemed appropriate.\nAfter some trips to Carmax, we settled that a GX460 was the perfect vehicle, and their rock-like depreciation and terrific suspension made them ideal for both our finances and long trips.\nFor the trip to Colorado, I purchased a StowAway2 cargo box and hitch mount for the GX\u0026rsquo;s receiver hitch, and a rooftop Thule cargo bag. The StowAway was the real star, holding most of our luggage, since we needed 2 of the fold-up back-seats for Maria\u0026rsquo;s bring-along friend.\nThus far, the GX has cost $0 to maintain, as we got it L/Certified from Lexus of San Antonio.\nThe Civic spent most of the year doing yeoman duty back-and-forth to work. By year\u0026rsquo;s end, I had over 31,000 miles on it, and I started getting the itch to do some mods. From Father\u0026rsquo;s Day forward, I started asking for car parts for the car, and worked with Maria to install them. Here\u0026rsquo;s what we did this year:\nLED interior lights LED trunk and license plate lights Smoked-grey turn signals AEM \u0026ldquo;Cold Air\u0026rdquo; intake w/cone filter Garmin 66W Dashcam, with a full hard-wire into the fuse-box. The AEM install deserves its own blog entry. Suffice it to say, modern engines don\u0026rsquo;t like vacuum leaks.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve restarted doing my own oil-changes for the Civic, starting to use the Amazon Basics 0w20 Full Synthetic after a fairly compelling result from Project Farm on Youtube.\nHouse We stayed in the same house through all of 2019. Lord willing, we\u0026rsquo;ll be into a new one by next year.\nBasically, we bought this house in expectation that Joey would be living with us. He\u0026rsquo;s now 18, and that didn\u0026rsquo;t happen, so we\u0026rsquo;re saddled with a 2-story house on a tiny plot of land, and we\u0026rsquo;d like to reverse that. We\u0026rsquo;re currently looking east of Georgetown, Texas at 1-story houses with under 2500 square feet on over 2 acres of land. Few houses meet that criteria.\nWe MAY be buying land and building a house from scratch. Who knows?\nPolitics I gave up on any sort of rational resolution to the political problems facing our nation. We\u0026rsquo;re barreling towards \u0026ldquo;Last Reason of Kings\u0026rdquo; territory. As a historian, this makes me sad, but seems inevitable.\nTech As the year closes, I finally took ownership of this blog away from Google.\nI\u0026rsquo;m writing this on a 34\u0026quot; monitor, running 3440x1440 resolution. I\u0026rsquo;m still using the same 2015 13\u0026quot; Macbook Pro I\u0026rsquo;ve had since joining Amazon, with 16 GB of memory and a 500 GB SSD. I\u0026rsquo;ve switch from an Amazon Basics mouse to a Kensignton Trackball (wired). I still run everything through a CalDigit Thunderbolt 2 dock, and I\u0026rsquo;m running MacOS Mojave as an OS. I\u0026rsquo;m still typing using a CODE keyboard with Cherry MX Clear switches, and it\u0026rsquo;s as satisfying as when I got it 5 years ago.\nLast year, I made 244 total commits, comprising 35,272 lines added and 8,417 lines removed. I made zero commits on Saturdays or Sundays.\nPrimarily I\u0026rsquo;m writing in Java, but I do lots of work in JavaScript, JSP, and CSS.\nI use IntelliJ for most Java-related tasks, but I write these entries using Atom.\nI\u0026rsquo;m using more AWS stuff every day. This year I learned about:\nKafka Kinesis Lambda / Serverless API Gateway CloudAuth ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2020/01/2019-year-in-review/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat happened in 2019?\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI like to do \u003ca href=\"/tags/year-in-review/\"\u003eyear-in-review\u003c/a\u003e posts every year or after specific milestones, like changing jobs or having big projects finish.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, if 2018 was a triumph, 2019 was its hangover.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"family\"\u003eFamily\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBoth my parents are still alive, and are ornery as ever.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThroughout most of 2019, our relationship with our son was estranged, most acutely when we flew up to Kentucky in May to see him graduate Franklin County High School when he refused to see us before, during, or after graduation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2019 Year in Review"},{"content":"\n(Image credit: Whit Bazemore, 2017 MotoGP @ Circuit of Americas)\nI love this picture. I\u0026rsquo;ve asked how to buy it, after seeing it on AutoExtremist. Peter M says he has no idea if there\u0026rsquo;s a print.\nSo, I deep copied it just to save it.\nHis eyes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/12/a-pure-image-of-motorsport/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Jorge Lorenzo\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/images/jorge-lorenzo.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Image credit: Whit Bazemore, 2017 MotoGP @ Circuit of Americas)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI love this picture.  I\u0026rsquo;ve asked how to buy it, after seeing it on \u003ca href=\"http://www.autoextremist.com/the-line1/2019/12/13/december-18-2019.html\"\u003eAutoExtremist\u003c/a\u003e.  Peter M says he has no idea if there\u0026rsquo;s a print.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, I deep copied it just to save it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHis eyes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Pure Image of Motorsport"},{"content":"Well, that didn\u0026rsquo;t take long.\nSo earlier, I mentioned trying to make the deployment workflow easier.\nYeah, Hugo already did that.\nThe steps go:\ninstall the AWS CLI Do aws configure with your bucket details, locally. follow the steps to setup. Here\u0026rsquo;s what I had to do in my config.yaml order: [\u0026#34;.jpg$\u0026#34;,\u0026#34;$.gif$\u0026#34;] targets: - name: \u0026#34;aws\u0026#34; URL: s3://www.devharryc.com?region=us-east-1 matchers: - pattern: \u0026#34;^.+\\\\.(js|css|svg|ttf)$\u0026#34; cacheControl: \u0026#34;max-age=31536000, no-transform, public\u0026#34; gzip: true - pattern: \u0026#34;^.+\\\\.(png|jpg)$\u0026#34; cacheControl: \u0026#34;max-age=31536000, no-transform, public\u0026#34; gzip: false - pattern: \u0026#34;^.+\\\\.(html|xml|json)$\u0026#34; gzip: true do hugo deploy Hugo Deploy takes care of doing a smart diff/deploy so you don\u0026rsquo;t breach yours S3 free tier.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/12/that-was-easy-hugo-deploy--aws-s3/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, that didn\u0026rsquo;t take long.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo earlier, I mentioned trying to make the deployment workflow easier.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, \u003ca href=\"https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hugo-deploy/\"\u003eHugo already did that\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe steps go:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003einstall the \u003ca href=\"https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-chap-install.html\"\u003eAWS CLI\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDo \u003ccode\u003eaws configure\u003c/code\u003e with your bucket details, locally.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003efollow the steps to setup.  Here\u0026rsquo;s what I had to do in my \u003ccode\u003econfig.yaml\u003c/code\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cpre tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\u003ccode class=\"language-deployment:\" data-lang=\"deployment:\"\u003eorder: [\u0026#34;.jpg$\u0026#34;,\u0026#34;$.gif$\u0026#34;]\ntargets:\n  - name: \u0026#34;aws\u0026#34;\n    URL: s3://www.devharryc.com?region=us-east-1\nmatchers:\n  - pattern: \u0026#34;^.+\\\\.(js|css|svg|ttf)$\u0026#34;\n    cacheControl: \u0026#34;max-age=31536000, no-transform, public\u0026#34;\n    gzip: true\n  - pattern: \u0026#34;^.+\\\\.(png|jpg)$\u0026#34;\n    cacheControl: \u0026#34;max-age=31536000, no-transform, public\u0026#34;\n    gzip: false\n  - pattern: \u0026#34;^.+\\\\.(html|xml|json)$\u0026#34;\n    gzip: true\n\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cpre tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\u003ccode\u003e\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003edo \u003ccode\u003ehugo deploy\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHugo Deploy takes care of doing a smart diff/deploy so you don\u0026rsquo;t breach yours S3 free tier.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"That Was Easy: Hugo Deploy + AWS S3"},{"content":"What is this? So, a confession: I\u0026rsquo;ve never owned a domain. Figured it was time that changed.\nFor the past 15 years, I\u0026rsquo;ve lived (sort of) at https://harvid.blogspot.com, but it\u0026rsquo;s been an uneasy relationship. Blogger is creaky, predating social media, then it tried having a relationship with it (via Google+ comments), and then it reverted back.\nIn the interim, AWS was born. Wordpress happened. Then, site generators like Jekyll came about. Most of all, Markdown happened, making HTML-publishing as simple as typing in vim (I\u0026rsquo;m typing this in atom right now, in fact.)\nThen, my ongoing flirtation with #golang led me to hugo. Hugo is a very fast website generator written in Go, with lots of downloadable templates. So at lunch today I decided today is the day.\nI\u0026rsquo;d given my friend Todd some advice on how to host a blog on the cheap, so I figured I\u0026rsquo;d take my own advice.\nHow\u0026rsquo;d I do it? Basically, I followed the advice here: Creating a Static Website in 4 Steps.\nI got a domain name from Namecheap I signed up for a free-tier AWS account I configured the S3 bucket as described, though the AWS Console UI has changed a bit. These two links were helpful: Hosting Websites on S3 Granting Insane access permissions I created a site in hugo as described in the quick start. I uploaded it to the bucket Updated the DNS records to point at my bucket (1 CNAME and 1 Redirect entry). After about 10 minutes, it worked like a charm.\nMigrating the Data Blogger makes it pretty easy to export your whole blog to a big XML file, so I did that first.\nFrom there, I used a Node.js script called blog2md to move things and it seemed to work well enough, moving over 1500 posts over to MarkDown in about 15 minutes.\nAfter that it was just:\nRun hugo Upload the contents of the /public folder to S3 bucket. What\u0026rsquo;s next So, I\u0026rsquo;m basically blind these days, so the font on this template is a bit small. Also, I\u0026rsquo;d really like to get email going to this domain so I can be harold@devharryc.com. I\u0026rsquo;ll need to do that some way that\u0026rsquo;s sensible.\nAlso, the publishing workflow is pretty rudimentary, the modern equivalent of \u0026ldquo;FTP your files to a server.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;ve seen plenty of guides out there for using CodeDeploy to automate checkin -\u0026gt; build -\u0026gt; update, so we\u0026rsquo;ll see.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/12/hello-world-devharryc/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"what-is-this\"\u003eWhat is this?\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, a confession: I\u0026rsquo;ve never owned a domain.  Figured it was time that changed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor the past 15 years, I\u0026rsquo;ve lived (sort of) at \u003ca href=\"https://harvid.blogspot.com\"\u003ehttps://harvid.blogspot.com\u003c/a\u003e, but it\u0026rsquo;s\nbeen an uneasy relationship.  Blogger is creaky, predating social media, then it\ntried having a relationship with it (via Google+ comments), and then it reverted back.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the interim, AWS was born.  Wordpress happened.  Then, site generators like\n\u003ca href=\"https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll\"\u003eJekyll\u003c/a\u003e came about.  Most of all, \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown\"\u003eMarkdown\u003c/a\u003e happened, making HTML-publishing\nas simple as typing in vim (I\u0026rsquo;m typing this in \u003ca href=\"https://atom.io/\"\u003eatom\u003c/a\u003e right now, in fact.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hello World devharryc.com"},{"content":"Roland Emmerich is famous for blowing things up.\nHe started small enough, just destroying the Whitehouse and several notable monuments\nHe got a bit more ambitious, destroying:\nNew York (Godzilla) Colonial America (The Patriot) New York\u0026hellip;again (The Day After Tomorrow), along with most of the Northern Hemisphere The entire SURFACE OF THE EARTH (2012) Where do you go after you basically bring about the Apocalypse? Do you weep, for there are no more lands left to conquer?\nNah, you attempt a passion project.\nSo, if you like blowing things up, war seems an appropriate topic. From the invention of gunpowder forward, any convenient war will provide plenty of KA-BOOM. And thus, we come to Midway. The movie should really be \u0026ldquo;The first year of World War 2 in the Pacific Theatre,\u0026rdquo; but that\u0026rsquo;s not catchy. It could also be called, \u0026ldquo;I saw Pearl Harbor and thought I could do better,\u0026rdquo; but we\u0026rsquo;ll get to that.\nIf this were a sane movie, what we have here is a dual-protagonist film, following Lieutenant Dick Best (Ed Skrein), fearless pilot of a dive bomber, and Captain Edwin Layton (Patrick Wilson) as they come to terms with how hopelessly outmatched America is under the onslaught of the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1941 and 1942. Layton tried to warn the powers-that-be that Pearl Harbor was coming, but lives with the guilt of being unable to stop it. Best sees friend after friend die at Japanese hands, and has to grow from a devil-may-care individualist to an inspiring leader of men.\nLord, if only that were the movie on the screen.\nWhat we get instead is an overlong mess of \u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t say no,\u0026rdquo; comprising an ensemble cast of most of the famous names involved in ANY WAY in 1942 Pacfic action. Just from memory, here are all the people you\u0026rsquo;re supposed to keep track of in addition to our two actual protagonists:\nChester Nimitz (an overmatched Woody Harrelson) Wade McClusky (a terrific Luke Evans) \u0026ldquo;Bull\u0026rdquo; Halsey (Dennis Quaid, whose only job is to \u0026lsquo;Look like Hell\u0026rsquo; because he has shingles) JIMMY FREAKING DOOLITTLE (Aaron Eckhart) Who does not belong in this movie Bruno Gaido (Nick Jonas) Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi George Gay, the only survivor of Torpedo Squadron 8 Admiral Nagumo Joseph Rochefort, the codebreaker who literally WON THE WAR in the Pacific with his abilities. Admiral Raymon Spruance, who sub\u0026rsquo;d in for the stricken Halsey at Midway Approximately 50 more Chinese, Japanese, and American characters and wives. You see the problem. I am not only a recovering history major, I\u0026rsquo;m a World War 2 fanatic. I memorized airplane specs at age 8. I can tell you the difference between an F4F Wildcat, F6F Hellcat, and F8F Bearcat, while understanding the inscrutable reasons why it\u0026rsquo;s an \u0026lsquo;SBD\u0026rsquo; not just a \u0026lsquo;Dauntless\u0026rsquo;.\nDespite my background, the movie Emmerich made is utter nonsense. The movie is simultaneously:\nA Pearl Harbor movie, like\u0026hellip;.Pearl Harbor A film about Midway, like the much-better 1975 Charlton Heston Midway. A Doolittle Raid movie, like Thirty Seconds over Tokyo. An exploration of the Japanese psyche and infighting, including Yamamoto\u0026rsquo;s mixed-feelings about the war. A \u0026lsquo;small guy\u0026rsquo; movie about enlisted men trying to survive, like Unbroken. Moments of a freaking submarine movie, like Das Boot. A Green-screen CGI spectacle, like so many Zach Snyder slogs like 300, 300 + Eva Green, etc. What\u0026rsquo;s frustrating: ANY of those movies is a better movie than this. By insisting on telling the entire story arc from Pearl Harbor to after Midway, nothing feels particularly real. Every conversation advances the plot or sounds contrived. All that being said, there are bright spots. The bare facts and heroism shine through. Bruno Gaido really did fend off a Kamikaze attack himself. Both McClusky and Best were larger-than-life characters, and Midway was a true miracle that shaved years off the war. Certain performances resonate, particularly the pair playing Yamamoto and Yamaguchi. The dramatization of Yamaguchi\u0026rsquo;s final moments is simply epic. Pity we didn\u0026rsquo;t have more time to understand the character, in the style of Eastwood\u0026rsquo;s excellent Letters from Iwo Jima. To a degree, I understand Emmerich\u0026rsquo;s conundrum. There\u0026rsquo;s no need to magnify the Battle of Midway; the question is what you leave out. His answer: nearly nothing. Along the way, let\u0026rsquo;s throw in Pearl Harbor, Battle of the Coral Sea, and the Doolittle Raid.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a mess, and nobody could carry it off. Emmerich certainly doesn\u0026rsquo;t.\nWatch the 1975 Midway, and glory in the same story, told better, with better actors.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/12/review-midway-or-fear-the-passion-project/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRoland Emmerich is famous for blowing things up.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/55/Midway_Movie_HD_Poster.jpeg/220px-Midway_Movie_HD_Poster.jpeg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/55/Midway_Movie_HD_Poster.jpeg/220px-Midway_Movie_HD_Poster.jpeg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe started small enough, just destroying the Whitehouse and several notable monuments\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/Id4whitehouse.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/Id4whitehouse.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe got a bit more ambitious, destroying:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNew York (Godzilla)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eColonial America (The Patriot)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNew York\u0026hellip;again (The Day After Tomorrow), along with most of the Northern Hemisphere\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe entire SURFACE OF THE EARTH (2012)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhere do you go after you basically bring about the Apocalypse?  Do you weep, for there are no more lands left to conquer?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Midway, or Fear the Passion Project "},{"content":"\nSo, my wife staged\u0026ndash;in love--a bit of an intervention this morning.\nYou need to keep your hair trimmed. You need to shave everyday. You need to care if your clothes are wrinkled and if you have food on them. Avoid wearing clothes that smell.\nIn other words, it\u0026rsquo;d be better if you acted like an adult.\nSo, first, she\u0026rsquo;s absolutely right. I\u0026rsquo;ve let myself go\u0026ndash;significantly\u0026ndash;since I\u0026rsquo;ve moved to Texas. When I got here, I was 240 lbs, and swimming 1/4 mile a day in the pool. I was comfortably in XL sized clothes, without vanity sizing. I was also 37, and I had more hair and less grey hair. I got regular haircuts and kept my buzz between 1/8\u0026quot; to 1/4\u0026quot;. You know\u0026hellip;tidy.\nToday, I\u0026rsquo;m 272 lbs, I\u0026rsquo;ve often gone 2 months between haircuts. I have an explosion of grey hair and look much older than my 41 years (as of this past Saturday). My face is sallow and jowly. I\u0026rsquo;m wearing progressive bifocals.\nWhat can I say, I\u0026rsquo;m a middle-age, sedentary Combs male.\nI write because it occurs to me that when I was at my most \u0026ldquo;successful\u0026rdquo; in my career, I was:\nEight years younger Eight-five pounds lighter. I could fit a \u0026lsquo;Large\u0026rsquo; shirt, which has never happened with me. Wearing contact lenses, instead of glasses Taking different meds than I take now. In short, I looked better. Was I better? Lord, no. I was growing more incompetent by the day, farther and farther from technology. I was \u0026ldquo;programming by powerpoint.\u0026rdquo;\nBut, I was on the fast-track. Some of it was dumb luck, but some of it was probably super-dumb lizard-brain stuff, like being presentable and attractive (for me, anyways)\nSo here I sit at 41, middle-age spread firmly in force, shaving every-other day, dressing down.\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;ll change. We\u0026rsquo;ll see how it goes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/11/fitness-and-grooming-@-41/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://imgix.ranker.com/user_node_img/3118/62341163/original/the-biggest-loser-season-7-tv-seasons-photo-u1?w=650\u0026amp;q=50\u0026amp;fm=pjpg\u0026amp;fit=crop\u0026amp;crop=faces\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://imgix.ranker.com/user_node_img/3118/62341163/original/the-biggest-loser-season-7-tv-seasons-photo-u1?w=650\u0026q=50\u0026fm=pjpg\u0026fit=crop\u0026crop=faces\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, my wife staged\u0026ndash;\u003cstrong\u003ein love\u003c/strong\u003e--a bit of an intervention this morning.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou need to keep your hair trimmed.  You need to shave everyday.  You need to care if your clothes are wrinkled and if you have food on them.  Avoid wearing clothes that smell.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn other words, it\u0026rsquo;d be better if you acted like an adult.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, first, she\u0026rsquo;s absolutely right.  I\u0026rsquo;ve let myself go\u0026ndash;significantly\u0026ndash;since I\u0026rsquo;ve moved to Texas.  When I got here, I was 240 lbs, and swimming 1/4 mile a day in the pool.  I was comfortably in XL sized clothes, without vanity sizing. I was also 37, and I had more hair and less grey hair.  I got regular haircuts and kept my buzz between 1/8\u0026quot; to 1/4\u0026quot;.  You know\u0026hellip;tidy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fitness and Grooming @ 41"},{"content":"As I write this, the White House is refusing to cooperate with an impeachment investigation. Allegedly, the President used the force and weight of the United States\u0026hellip;to help find dirt on a prospective 2020 election opponent, Joe Biden.\nThe calculus is thus:\nThe House has the votes to impeach him. In the senate, 20 non-Democrats need to vote to remove him from office. There\u0026rsquo;s ZERO evidence that even if \u0026lsquo;removed\u0026rsquo; from office, Trump would actually leave. He does, after all, command the military. The courts are impotent to actually DO anything, since they rely upon the Executive to\u0026hellip;execute. It seems we\u0026rsquo;re heading for a constitutional crisis here in America, since the founders never imagined:\nA truly BAD ACTOR would get elected, having gone through a campaign and the electoral college. The Legislature would have NOT THE WILL to vote to remove him upon reasonable evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors The general population would be SO APATHETIC to not care about this and watch Football. The historian in me sees Rome in this, of course, and I\u0026rsquo;d like to posit 3 Facts.\nFact 1: We\u0026rsquo;re already in an Imperial State. Think about it. The \u0026ldquo;Legislative\u0026rdquo; branch does precious little legislation these days. What does get passed is little more than presence. Governance rests wholly with the Executive, via his internal loci of powers, the Executive Order and the various federal agencies like Homeland Security. Externally, he commands the most powerful military not he globe, bar none. He has unlimited nuclear authority (see Issue 1. We thought of Eisenhower when we gave the \u0026rsquo;nuclear football\u0026rsquo; to a guy, not Trump).\nFact 2: We\u0026rsquo;ve been there since Franklin D. Roosevelt In a real sense, functioning US government didn\u0026rsquo;t survive the 1930\u0026rsquo;s. With the Great Depression, society started to unravel and people lost hope. With FDR\u0026rsquo;s election in 1932, hope returned\u0026hellip;and the executive power increased. The New Deal got the rubber stamp of the legislature, true, but short of Court Packing, FDR got whatever he wanted. And did he cede the Imperium\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;the Presidency after the customary two terms established by Washington?\nNo, he did not. The country needed him. Who said that? Augustus Caesar. The Senate insisted that he retain the imperium. He reluctantly agreed, but only wanted to be called \u0026ldquo;The First Citizen\u0026rdquo;\nThis was balderdash, of course. Caesar Augustus wanted unlimited power, and he got it. He defeated Marc Antony and killed Julius Caesar\u0026rsquo;s offspring via Cleopatra to make sure he retained it. He had the mouth of a statesman and the ruthless efficiency of a King.\nFDR was president until he died. Think about that for a moment.\nThe Cold War provided a veneer that the President wasn\u0026rsquo;t an Imperial Emperor. He had to operate within the confines of the branches, and we were better than those Godless Commies, surely. Ike was nice. Kennedy was handsome. LBJ bowed out gracefully.\nHeck, we kicked Nixon out, didn\u0026rsquo;t we?\nNo, we didn\u0026rsquo;t. He resigned. There\u0026rsquo;s ZERO evidence an impeachment and trial in the Senate would\u0026rsquo;ve led to removal. The constitutional mechanism\u0026hellip;.HAS NEVER WORKED.\nFact 3: We\u0026rsquo;re fine with that We dislike Congress. We find the process and rules associated slow, indirect, and rarely aligned with \u0026ldquo;what we all really think.\u0026rdquo; We relish the directness of a demagogue who talks directly to us and rules with Alpha-male swagger and (yes) relishes in his power. Just like Augustus did.\nSo, we elect a King every 4 years, just like Russia does. We want to give him unchecked power. This makes our lives easier, because we need not care about the minute of running a nation. WE don\u0026rsquo;t need to do it. Other people do it for us.\nThe 21st century will be the century of the Hegemon, of the Strongman. We\u0026rsquo;re just now realizing (too late) that that apotheosis began 88 years ago.\nFor what it\u0026rsquo;s worth, I hope I\u0026rsquo;m wrong. But when this all fizzles out and the President retains unchecked power, make no mistake: This is no longer a nation as envisioned by the Founders. It is an Imperium.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/10/welcome-to-imperial-america/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs I write this, the White House is refusing to cooperate with an impeachment investigation.  Allegedly, the President used the force and weight of the United States\u0026hellip;to help find dirt on a prospective 2020 election opponent, Joe Biden.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe calculus is thus:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe House has the votes to impeach him.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIn the senate, 20 non-Democrats need to vote to remove him from office.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s ZERO evidence that even if \u0026lsquo;removed\u0026rsquo; from office, Trump would actually leave.  He does, after all, \u003cstrong\u003ecommand the military.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe courts are impotent to actually DO anything, since they rely upon the Executive to\u0026hellip;\u003cem\u003eexecute\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt seems we\u0026rsquo;re heading for a constitutional crisis here in America, since the founders never imagined:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Welcome to Imperial America"},{"content":"We once were a nation that tolerated \u0026ldquo;intolerable\u0026rdquo; people, that balanced inhumanity with contrition and restoration of the contrite. All fall short.\nWe abided Daniel Webster AND John C. Calhoun, Billy Graham and Larry Flynt, MLK and George Wallace, the Black Panthers and the KKK.\nDid we particularly WANT TO? Of course not.\nWhy, then? Because tolerance of ideas is the price of freedom.\nI see that freedom ending soon. Emotion is truth. Outrage becomes mandate. Thoughts must not become a crime.\nAt the height of the Terror, a woman came to the journalist Marat in 1793 and enumerated a list of people that were secretly against the Jacobin regime. \u0026ldquo;Soon I shall have them all guillotined in Paris,\u0026rdquo; he replied confidently.\nMarat\u0026rsquo;s pen had the power to stoke outrage that led to the scaffold. Is today\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Cancel Culture\u0026rdquo; any different?\nhttps://newrepublic.com/article/155141/cancel-culture-con-dave-chappelle-shane-gillis\nI think when all this is over and we\u0026rsquo;re in some Khmer Rouge work-camp, we can all point to the day Richard M Stallman got canceled as a milestone on this journey. Thanks to the very systems he helped create via the Free Software Foundation, a wave of outrage forced his ouster.\nI remember as a child, reading about the McCarthy Era, about people getting blacklisted and thinking, \u0026ldquo;Nah, that can\u0026rsquo;t happen again.\u0026rdquo;\nSurprise.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/09/who-are-you-cancelling-yourself/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe once were a nation that tolerated \u0026ldquo;intolerable\u0026rdquo; people, that balanced inhumanity with contrition and restoration of the contrite. All fall short.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe abided Daniel Webster AND John C. Calhoun, Billy Graham and Larry Flynt, MLK and George Wallace, the Black Panthers and the KKK.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDid we particularly WANT TO?  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf course not.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy, then? Because tolerance of ideas is the price of freedom.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI see that freedom ending soon. Emotion is truth. Outrage becomes mandate. Thoughts must not become a crime.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who are you \"Cancelling\"?  Yourself"},{"content":"Hackathon (n)\n1. a design sprint-like event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers, project managers, and others, often including domain experts, collaborate intensively on software projects. The goal of a hackathon is to create usable software or hardware with the goal of creating a functioning product by the end of the event.\nI posit Hackathons are Crap. They are useless distractions from Actual Work® that have none of the intended outcomes for anyone involved.\nThe goal of most hackathons are these:\nProvide a break from regular work for \u0026ldquo;creatives\u0026rdquo; like programmers and graphic designers. Break the top-down product cycle and let said creatives make something that seems relevant to them. Provide useful ideas as fodder for the next strategic planning cycle. Provide useful features for customers. Let me take each in turn.\nIt is NOT a Break This is my major beef. \u0026ldquo;Hackathons\u0026rdquo; that randomly appear out of nowhere are not a break. Normal Software development is a 40-60 hour/week job, steady state. You have to react to changing requirements, insufficient/misisng documentation, and bugs that ALL start out as \u0026ldquo;ZOMG you must fix this!\u0026rdquo; without triage. This is \u0026ldquo;Agile\u0026rdquo; development, and it\u0026rsquo;s exhausting, particularly at a top-tier shop.\nNow let\u0026rsquo;s create a synthetic event where we say \u0026ldquo;you can work on whatever you like for 2 days.\u0026rdquo; Invariably these are two days at the end of the week, with a demo on Monday, with the STRONG implication that you should also work the weekend to Get. It. Done.\nSo, it\u0026rsquo;s not a break. It\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Please work Harder.\u0026rdquo;\nMoreover, during that 2-3 days, do your project deadlines move? No.\nBasically, Hackathons might as well be: \u0026ldquo;Take two or three days, make yourself exhausted as possible, and come back and work harder to make up the time.\u0026rdquo;\nNo, thanks.\nIt DOES NOT influence the Product Cycle I\u0026rsquo;ve worked hackathons for 15 years now. For every 1 idea that gets through, hundreds do not. As noted in the above, these happen within the product cycle.\nIt becomes a crutch that REPLACES Strategic Planning The most pernicious of these is possibly that Hackathons become crutches for Product to avoid doing their job. Bottoms-up ideas from the \u0026ldquo;troops\u0026rdquo; are often great. There are shining examples like Facebook\u0026rsquo;s \u0026rsquo;like\u0026rsquo; button that prove this.\nHowever, these are not the 10x to 100x ideas that become new lines-of-business. They don\u0026rsquo;t replace an organic growth strategy or a Mergers/Acquisition strategy. Gloming-on to some random engineer\u0026rsquo;s idea is fine, but it cannot replace real Strategy\nIt provides NOISE features for customers I can\u0026rsquo;t think of many products that benefit from MORE disjoint, undesigned features. Better: Think of what portions of your offerings you can end-of-life and simplify. Apple does this well. Nobody else does, because they have strong Product guidance.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;m not looking forward to next week. Not in the slightest.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/09/hackathons-are-crap/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackathon\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHackathon\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (n)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. a \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_sprint\"\u003edesign sprint\u003c/a\u003e-like event in which \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_programmer\" title=\"Computer programmer\"\u003ecomputer programmers\u003c/a\u003e and others involved in \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development\" title=\"Software development\"\u003esoftware development\u003c/a\u003e, including \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_designer\" title=\"Graphic designer\"\u003egraphic designers\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface_design\" title=\"User interface design\"\u003einterface designers\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_manager\" title=\"Project manager\"\u003eproject managers\u003c/a\u003e, and others, often including domain experts, collaborate intensively on \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software\" title=\"Software\"\u003esoftware\u003c/a\u003e projects. The goal of a hackathon is to create usable software or hardware with the goal of creating a functioning product by the end of the event.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI posit Hackathons are Crap.  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey are useless distractions from Actual Work® that have none of the intended outcomes for anyone involved.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hackathons are Crap"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s no such thing as bad publicity \u0026ndash; P.T. Barnum\nSo here we are. As I type this, the House of Representatives seems ready to cave-in to impeachment proceedings.\nAllegedly, the President negotiated with a foreign power to obtain dirt on a possible opponent in the 2020 election. To leverage that dirt, he withheld US foreign aid. So the story goes.\nI really dislike our President. Thankfully, in America, one can do that and not go to jail. I resent how he personally took over my political party like a virus, how he made America less than it is for his own gain.\nLooking forward, if this impeachment goes forward it will have the following effects:\nHe will not be removed from office. The Senate will NEVER vote him out. They\u0026rsquo;ve made that abundantly clear It feeds his narrative to his (minority) base that\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The Deep State\u0026rdquo; is against him because he won\u0026rsquo;t play \u0026ldquo;their\u0026rdquo; game. It will lead to another 4 years of Donald Trump. The center of the country will (once again) vote him in just to spite the Democratic party, which (once again) has abandoned the working class message of 1960\u0026rsquo;s for extremist, thought-policing rhetoric. The plausibly could lead to civil unrest in the United States, as citizens resist either the extreme Authoritarian regime that will emerge post-impeachment or the \u0026ldquo;thought crimes\u0026rdquo; regime of the other side.\nJust as post-revolutionary France vacillated between extremes, we\u0026rsquo;re looking at instability not seen since the Great Depression, or possibly the Civil War.\nGod help us all. We the People\u0026hellip;.are so broken.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/09/here-we-go-again/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s no such thing as bad publicity \u0026ndash; P.T. Barnum\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo here we are.  As I type this, the House of Representatives seems ready to cave-in to \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/24/politics/democrats-impeachment-strategy/index.html\"\u003eimpeachment proceedings\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAllegedly, the President negotiated with a foreign power to obtain dirt on a possible opponent in the 2020 election.  To leverage that dirt, he withheld US foreign aid.  So the story goes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI really dislike our President.  Thankfully, in America, one can do that and not go to jail.  I resent how he personally took over my political party like a virus, how he made America less than it is for his own gain.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Here We Go (Again)"},{"content":"I posted this to Facebook in October 2017 after the Las Vegas shooting. It remains valid after a weekend of carnage, and no end in sight. FWIW, I am for constitutional gun ownership.\nI am not for the capability of killing 30-50 people (not feral hogs) in under a minute.\nAfter today, I\u0026rsquo;m struggling to see the use in an AR-15 with a binary trigger and a 100 round drum magazine.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been next to a guy with a setup like that at the range. While not strictly speaking an automatic weapon, the purpose is clear: Sling as much lead as fast as possible downrange.\nLook, I\u0026rsquo;m a proud and safe gun owner. I support the right to bear arms, per our Constitution. But, if an event like today never happened again, I\u0026rsquo;d happily support outlawing semiautomatic weapons of any kind.\nIn all candor, any legitimate use you have for a firearm works fine with a bolt action rifle, pump shotgun, or revolver.\nCan you really not keep someone out of your house with a .44 or a .357 magnum?\nI\u0026rsquo;m willing to accept arguments to the contrary.\nHeck, I\u0026rsquo;ll start.\n\u0026ldquo;So, sure, let the bad guys have the real guns and I\u0026rsquo;m stuck with this J-frame .38?\u0026rdquo; Lower the tommygun, Clyde. The chance of you needing over 6-8 shots is vanishingly small. If you want to be that guy, they do make speedloaders.\n\u0026ldquo;But, what if ATF raids my house?\u0026rdquo; Then, you comply with the law and don\u0026rsquo;t resist arrest. Or, you die. Stop watching so many movies. They have drones and Hellfire missiles, you don\u0026rsquo;t. If \u0026ldquo;the gubmint\u0026rdquo; ever comes for you, you\u0026rsquo;re dead. Auspiciously, the government is by and for the People, so I\u0026rsquo;ll go ahead and say we should work within the constitution to make sure \u0026ldquo;they\u0026rdquo; (there\u0026rsquo;s that word again) don\u0026rsquo;t come for you.\n\u0026ldquo;But, I love my Glocks!\u0026rdquo; Finally, a real point. Well, so do I. However, your range toy, belt-accessory, and IPSA trophies aren\u0026rsquo;t worth 600 lives. No, sir.\n\u0026ldquo;It won\u0026rsquo;t stop there! That\u0026rsquo;s just the first step\u0026hellip;then they\u0026rsquo;ll come for everything else!\u0026rdquo; Maybe. \u0026ldquo;They\u0026rdquo; will probably just starve you out, honestly. Stockpile all the 10,000 rounds of .22LR (Seriously?) you want, nothing would prevent that.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s no practical way to do this. Yep, that\u0026rsquo;s the kicker. We\u0026rsquo;ve had semiautomatics since John Browning. it\u0026rsquo;s going to be impossible to do any of the above. There are just too many guns.\nThe Constitution says what it says. It says \u0026ldquo;The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.\u0026rdquo; Grenades are arms. Bazookas are arms. Can I possess them? No. Do I want the ATF to confiscate any that are out there? Yes. Does that violate the 2nd amendment?\nNo, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t. This is open to interpretation. The courts interpret the laws. The court could darn well decide the line is reasonable. Or better yet, Congress could pass a law, the Supreme Court could say \u0026ldquo;yep, seems good\u0026rdquo; and we\u0026rsquo;re safer.\nCrazies in this country often try to kill other people. The mental health system isn\u0026rsquo;t going to stop them. We need to deal with both the supply (semi-automatic weapons) and the demand (mentally unhinged people, often Domestic Terrorists).\nThis is our country and WE could decide to do that. WE just haven\u0026rsquo;t.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/08/on-outlawing-semi-automatic-weapons/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI posted this to Facebook in October 2017 after the Las Vegas shooting.  It remains valid after a weekend of carnage, and no end in sight.  FWIW, I am for constitutional gun ownership.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI am \u003cstrong\u003enot\u003c/strong\u003e for the capability of killing 30-50 people (not feral hogs) in under a minute.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter today, I\u0026rsquo;m struggling to see the use in an AR-15 with a binary trigger and a 100 round drum magazine.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Outlawing Semi-Automatic Weapons"},{"content":"\nDisclaimer: There\u0026rsquo;s probably a term for this, but I\u0026rsquo;ve this pattern in teams and I\u0026rsquo;d like to discuss it.\nScenario You have a high functioning team of 6-10 individuals. Team culture is great. Everyone is pulling in the same direction, and lots is getting done. Yet, in under 4 months half the team will be gone and the rest will be considering it. As a manager, you\u0026rsquo;ll realize you can\u0026rsquo;t deliver anything and it all seemed to crumble overnight. What happened?\nTeam Cascade failure happened\nDefinition I\u0026rsquo;m applying Cascading Failure from engineering to teams because I propose the same causes apply. Taking the definition from Wikipedia\nthe failure of one or few parts can trigger the failure of other parts and so on\nTeams get paid to produce. At my current employer, they\u0026rsquo;re paid to both produce and operate the things they produce. As time goes on, a given team will produce up to its natural carrying capacity, when the cognitive and schedule load equates to the people and talent on the team. This is hardly anything new; it\u0026rsquo;s the same theory in biology that species do with a given environment (link). Predictably, teams optimize. Certain team members become experts, knowledgeable about arcane or fussy pieces of a system, and the team is happy to let that knowledge live there, alone. Again, this isn\u0026rsquo;t remarkable: It\u0026rsquo;s what we do with RAID 0 or database partitioning. It\u0026rsquo;s too much load for all the team to know all the systems, so we keep it in one head.\nThose who\u0026rsquo;ve worked in industry know what\u0026rsquo;s coming next\u0026hellip;.\nProblem So, the team is working AT its carrying capacity, and expertise is striped across the team. Everything seems just perfect. As a manager, you\u0026rsquo;re likely patting yourself on the back\u0026ndash;this team is operating at perfect efficiency. It\u0026rsquo;s like a jet fighter at maximum speed, with thust and drag canceling out perfectly.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s extend that metaphor: If you have a jet aircraft in full afterburner at maximum speed, what happens when anything changes. Let\u0026rsquo;s say you need to change direction? Why, that aircraft has to slow down. And so will your team.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s counter-intuitive, but you NEVER want a team that is at 100% capacity and 100% efficiency. Becasue what I\u0026rsquo;m about to describe will happen.\nScenario: Sue\u0026rsquo;s Leaving So, let\u0026rsquo;s say you have a team of 8, a good Two Pizza Team®. Things seem perfect, as described above. Then, come Monday morning, Sue tells you she\u0026rsquo;s leaving the team and puts in her two weeks\u0026rsquo; notice. Sue happened to be the expert on the Frobulator system, and nobody else knows that codebase\u0026ndash;in fact, they were quite happy to NEVER open it. Also, Sue is going to drop out of your pager rotation, meaning everyone is about to be on-call more often.\n(By the way, this assumes Sue is leaving under ideal circumstances\u0026ndash;no burned bridges, no \u0026ldquo;FYIQ,\u0026rdquo; This is still best case, mind.)\nSue\u0026rsquo;s load is going to shift to everyone else. Are your deadlines going to change? No. Is everyone\u0026rsquo;s work/life balance going to improve? No.\nSue is the first domino and you\u0026rsquo;ve got precious little time to do anything before full Cascade Failure.\nEveryone on the team is using Sue\u0026rsquo;s departure to evaluate things. She\u0026rsquo;s leaving; should *I* leave? Do I really like this job? What\u0026rsquo;s management going to do about the workload?\nThe Nightmare What happens can be true Cascade Failure. One developer departure begets others feeling overworked, then they start falling off the team. At first, it might be burnout, absenteeism, but eventually they\u0026rsquo;ll leave too. At about 3 of 8 developers you\u0026rsquo;re barely able to keep the lights on. Once this starts happening, it will be quick.\nEvasive Action As a manager, your priority is: Don\u0026rsquo;t Get In this Situation. See below on some tips to avoid it. Let\u0026rsquo;s assume, though, this is the hand you\u0026rsquo;re holding. What now?\nI\u0026rsquo;ve seen this go well, and I\u0026rsquo;ve seen it go awry. Here\u0026rsquo;s what I\u0026rsquo;ve observed when it went well.\nShift schedules and priorities. You were running at high risk on your project (take a second and come to that conclusion.), and now you\u0026rsquo;re down a person at least. Talk with your leadership and see what you can drop. Not in a week, now. Talk to the individuals. You should be having 1-on-1\u0026rsquo;s with the team regularly. Map out what Sue was doing and who needs to own it going forward. Talk to the team. After you\u0026rsquo;ve figured out things with every individual, talk to the team. This brief sit-down has one purpose: I\u0026rsquo;ve got this. I understand Sue is leaving, but this happens, and we\u0026rsquo;ll be okay. You\u0026rsquo;re trying to instill confidence. Overall, take a key (\u0026ldquo;irreplaceable\u0026rdquo;) team member leaving as a wake-up call. Take steps to avoid it.\nAvoiding Cascade Failure Symptoms These are some surefire symptoms you\u0026rsquo;re vulnerable to cascade failure\nEveryone on your team is a specialist. Your team hasn\u0026rsquo;t hired much in years. \u0026ldquo;We can answer that question when Fred gets back from vacation.\u0026rdquo; \u0026lt;\u0026ndash; br=\u0026quot;\u0026quot; flag=\u0026quot;\u0026quot; huge=\u0026quot;\u0026quot; red=\u0026quot;\u0026quot; there=\u0026quot;\u0026quot;\u0026gt; Corollary: You have to schedule things around people\u0026rsquo;s vacations. Your job is to make sure people can go on vacation and unplug completely. Tasks have obvious owners. If everyone on your team can\u0026rsquo;t work on a task productively, watch out. You keep making new things, but your team isn\u0026rsquo;t splitting to handle the responsiblity. People seem burned-out, accepting things as \u0026ldquo;just the way things are.\u0026rdquo; Solutions As with many technical and organizational problems, this is predictable and avoidable. The summary here is read Tom DeMarco\u0026rsquo;s book Slack. He punctures the \u0026ldquo;Myth of Total Efficiency\u0026rdquo; quite well, and better than I can.\nSome thoughts I have:\nRun a thought experiment with yourself of \u0026ldquo;What if ____ got hit by a bus today?\u0026rdquo; How cratered would you be? Keep operational load well below maximum. Keep slack in every time commitment. Make sure 3/4 of the team can handle any one component/system. When (not if) Sue walks out that door there should be an obvious \u0026lsquo;understudy\u0026rsquo;. This is also great when people go on vacation. In summary, always run your team at about 80% efficiency. This gives you opportunity to change direction, absorb losses, keep everyone at reasonable work/life balance. You might get dinged for sandbagging by the new hotshot who\u0026rsquo;s running his team at 110% capacity, but you\u0026rsquo;ll dance on his grave when half his team quits and he has to de-commit all his projects in front of senior management.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/08/avoiding-team-cascade-failure/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.fraud-magazine.com/uploadedImages/Fraud_Magazine/Content/Articles/2009/dominos.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.fraud-magazine.com/uploadedImages/Fraud_Magazine/Content/Articles/2009/dominos.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eDisclaimer:\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cem\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s probably a term for this, but I\u0026rsquo;ve this pattern in teams and I\u0026rsquo;d like to discuss it.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"scenario\"\u003eScenario\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou have a high functioning team of 6-10 individuals.  Team culture is great.  Everyone is pulling in the same direction, and lots is getting done.  Yet, in under 4 months half the team will be gone and the rest will be considering it.  As a manager, you\u0026rsquo;ll realize you can\u0026rsquo;t deliver anything and it all seemed to crumble overnight.  What happened?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Avoiding Team Cascade Failure"},{"content":"Traffic in Austin seems almost reasonable during Summer.\nI live in Georgetown, Texas, and I work in The Domain, just off MoPac @ Burnett Rd. For the uninitiated, that means I have a commute of about 25 miles down one of the worst highways in America. It costs me about $2.50 in tolls to roundtrip to work, but often the toll section of MoPac is a parking lot between 8 and 10 am, and 5-7 pm. A full work-month means I\u0026rsquo;m putting about $70 depreciation, $100 in gas, and $50 in tolls out of my pocket. Call it $220 all-up.\nDuring the summer, this looks like me leaving the house around 8 and getting to work around 8:45 to 9. Sixty minutes to go twenty-five miles.\nBelieve it or not, that\u0026rsquo;s a GOOD day. Once the school year starts, the hour can easily be 90 minutes, meaning I\u0026rsquo;m on the road for 3 hours every day. What to do?\nThe most obvious thing is work-from-home regularly. Nothing about my job requires my physical presence on Alterra Parkway. That\u0026rsquo;s not my company\u0026rsquo;s culture, and studies have shown that facetime is still important. Still, I\u0026rsquo;m looking into it.\nGoing into the office off-peak probably makes the most sense. Most of my new team does this, electing to come to the office at 10am. Still yet, traffic is often awful, and remains so until almost 11.\nMoving closer is not an option. I made the devil\u0026rsquo;s bargain to have a longer commute so my family could live Not in Austin®.\nThe responsible thing to do is use mass transit. I understand this, but I conclude it\u0026rsquo;s not much of a bargain. A month\u0026rsquo;s commuter pass right now will cost me $92. The closest rail station in Leander is 17.2 miles away, call it a half-hour drive. From there, I\u0026rsquo;d be looking at a half-hour trip to the Kramer station by the domain, then a mile walk to work. The numbers sort of work out:\nRail pass: $92 Total time: 75 minutes Monthly car cost: $116 (notably, no tolls) Total cost: $208 On the surface, I\u0026rsquo;m coming out ahead by $12 bucks. I also get a built-in extra 2 miles of walking every day, and I avoid stop-and-go traffic which kills my anxiety (and my clutch leg).\nBut for that $12, my car isn\u0026rsquo;t with me at my office. If my wife calls and needs me to come home right away\u0026hellip;.best case it\u0026rsquo;ll take me 75 minutes to get there, when right now during the day (off peak) it\u0026rsquo;s about 35 minutes. Trains don\u0026rsquo;t always run on time, and sometimes they\u0026rsquo;re full. I might be standing that entire 30 minute trip because there are no seats.\nStill, especially during the Back-to-School period, I\u0026rsquo;m giving this a strong look. Traffic in Austin is terrible, and worsening every day since everyone seems to be moving here.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/08/id-like-to-use-mass-transit.-it-just-doesnt-seem-practical./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTraffic in Austin seems almost reasonable during Summer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI live in Georgetown, Texas, and I work in The Domain, just off MoPac @ Burnett Rd.  For the uninitiated, that means I have a commute of about 25 miles down one of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvue.com/article/money/economy/boomtown-2040/austins-i-35-among-nations-10-worst-highways-report-says/269-8179c142-d5a5-4c94-9a01-dbaafd2c1caf\"\u003ethe worst highways in America\u003c/a\u003e.  It costs me about $2.50 in tolls to roundtrip to work, but often the toll section of MoPac is a parking lot between 8 and 10 am, and 5-7 pm.  A full work-month means I\u0026rsquo;m putting about $70 depreciation, $100 in gas, and $50 in tolls out of my pocket.  Call it $220 all-up.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I'd like to use Mass Transit.  It just doesn't seem practical."},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m a 40 year old working software engineer.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not a program manager, project manager, team lead, architect, business analyst, sytems analyst, or whatever other term means \u0026ldquo;Doesn\u0026rsquo;t code anymore.\u0026rdquo;\nI make my living by telling machines what to do so the company I work for can make money (alot of it) and pay me money (a little of it, but an obscene amount still).\nAs I sit here, I\u0026rsquo;m 2 days away from ending a three year stint with one team, and picking up with another within the same company. The reasons aren\u0026rsquo;t complicated, but it\u0026rsquo;s impolitic to go into them. Suffice it to say, I\u0026rsquo;ve been looking around for about 6 months internally and it took about a month to get through the transition. Monday is \u0026lsquo;Go\u0026rsquo; day.\nSo I ponder: How many more of these do I have in me?\nIf I think really hard\u0026ndash;then give up and look at my CV\u0026ndash;I have had these jobs professionally:\nIT support (scripting, custom apps) for a group of 200 mechanical engineers Programming a Java-based client/server network management application. Developing the *next* version of that application\u0026hellip;which was still client/server and still in Java. But it cost alot more and did somewhat more. Writing some print driver code, badly. Very, very badly. Let me tell you about Overlapped I/O in Windows sometime. Developing on-printer Adobe Flash apps, and an App Store that went with it. Nobody used them. Developing an SDK so other people could write Adobe flash apps that nobody used on a printer nobody bought. Developing a Java library so thick applications could talk to all of our whiz-bang proprietary interfaces over the network. Intermission: Harold is miserable as an architect. Wrote an OAuth 2.0 Identity Provider with a small team to drive a new Microservice Architecture. I *kinda* think this worked, but I left before I\u0026rsquo;m sure. I did learn to hate Zookeeper\u0026hellip; I think I committed like 1 thing into the system that prints every label in a Safeway, Wegmans, Randall\u0026rsquo;s Grocery store. It also runs the eInk screens at Kohl\u0026rsquo;s and does the pricing changes. Won\u0026rsquo;t claim that one. At this point, I\u0026rsquo;d been programming for seventeen years Started my job in Amazon Business running their Account Management web interface. Simply a great team. So, like 11 discrete \u0026ldquo;Jobs\u0026rdquo; in 20 years, average tenure on one program was ~2 years. Longest was #2 at almost 5 years.\nI\u0026rsquo;m good at learning new things, but I wonder: How much longer can that continue?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/07/past-it-on-maybe-losing-a-step/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m a 40 year old working software engineer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not a program manager, project manager, team lead, architect, business analyst, sytems analyst, or whatever other term means \u0026ldquo;Doesn\u0026rsquo;t code anymore.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI make my living by telling machines what to do so the company I work for can make money (alot of it) and pay me money (a little of it, but an obscene amount still).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs I sit here, I\u0026rsquo;m 2 days away from ending a three year stint with one team, and picking up with another within the same company.  The reasons aren\u0026rsquo;t complicated, but it\u0026rsquo;s impolitic to go into them.  Suffice it to say, I\u0026rsquo;ve been looking around for about 6 months internally and it took about a month to get through the transition.  Monday is \u0026lsquo;Go\u0026rsquo; day.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Past it\"?   On (Maybe) Losing a Step"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m scared I won\u0026rsquo;t be able to see when I\u0026rsquo;m 50. If I make it to 50.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve always had poor vision, especially in my right eye. My misshapen head grew disproportionately on the right side, so my eye sockets elongated\u0026hellip;.blah blah blah. I\u0026rsquo;m functionally blind without glasses. Have been since I was 8.\nI learned to deal with it. I wore glasses reliably through all of my school (including college) and finally got a set of Toric contact lenses when I was 21, and I was had actual peripheral vision until I dispensed with the contacts around age 32. They were just too much trouble.\nFast forward to last year. Thirty nine years old, and \u0026ldquo;Wow, you have a HUGE cataract!\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;d noticed I had zero depth perception, and I increasingly just could not see at work. The last straw was a trip to KY where driving at night was, well, a nightmare. My eye dominance was effectively 95% left and 5% right. The Opthamologist was almost gleeful; I\u0026rsquo;d need surgery to replace the cataract lens with a synthetic lens immediately. He also managed to make my right eye better than my left, but not perfect. I still had massive astigmatism (football shaped eyeballs).\nIn any case, I thought things were better, horrible waking-anaesthesia of the procedure notwithstanding. (\u0026ldquo;LOOK DOWN, HAROLD!\u0026rdquo;)\nSix months on, I\u0026rsquo;m not so sure. I have no close-up vision any more. I have to take my glasses off to see anything up-close. My right eye continues to meander between good and WTF. I can\u0026rsquo;t read well any more. Trying to do anything in dim lighting up-close is a struggle.\nFunctionally, I\u0026rsquo;m farsighted now. Driving is fine. Things far-away are fine.\nThings on a screen are. Not. Fine.\nOops, that\u0026rsquo;s what I do to make a living.\nThis is an ongoing situation; we\u0026rsquo;ll see how things go from here.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/07/middle-age-where-i-actually-go-blind/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m scared I won\u0026rsquo;t be able to see when I\u0026rsquo;m 50.  If I make it to 50.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve always had poor vision, especially in my right eye.  My misshapen head grew disproportionately on the right side, so my eye sockets elongated\u0026hellip;.blah blah blah.  I\u0026rsquo;m functionally blind without glasses.  Have been since I was 8.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI learned to deal with it.  I wore glasses reliably through all of my school (including college) and finally got a set of Toric contact lenses when I was 21, and I was had actual \u003cem\u003eperipheral vision\u003c/em\u003e until I dispensed with the contacts around age 32.  They were just too much trouble.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Middle Age: Where I Actually Go Blind"},{"content":"So, I made some rocks for my daughters\u0026rsquo; rock ceremony last night.\nThe left, JOY, is for Grace (all-caps intentional) and the right Perseverance is for Maria. Then today, I got the \u0026ldquo;memory\u0026rdquo; of the rocks last year.\nThat was exactly 364 days ago (Understanding == Maria, Enthusiasm == Grace). As cliche as it sounds, it really seems like yesterday. I\u0026rsquo;m reminded of reading the Stephen King short story My Pretty Pony. The summary seems apt:\nThe man also \u0026ldquo;gives instruction\u0026rdquo; on the nature of time: how when you grow up, it begins to move faster and faster, slipping away from you in great chunks if you don\u0026rsquo;t hold tightly onto it. Time is a pretty pony, with a wicked heart.\nAnother year. I\u0026rsquo;ve hardly written, despite being a much changed man from a year ago.\nLast summer was our last with Joey. As I write this, he\u0026rsquo;s to graduate on Saturday, enlisted in the Army and moving with his father to Alabama before that. I did enjoy having him with us during the summer, as we went shooting, and hit up the farewell Warped Tour stop in San Antonio at the end of June\nJoe left; the school year began; and things began going wrong almost immediately. First, Maria\u0026rsquo;s teacher endure the slow death of her spouse, attending school maybe 1 of 5 days in a week, and the small private school she attends did a terrible job filling-in. She had multiple substitute teachers during the day\u0026ndash;often just other teachers rotating during their planning periods. The class stagnated, then regressed. Then the real challenge hit.\nWe\u0026rsquo;d noticed Maria getting a muscle tic and we responded like a hive of angry bees, shuffling her to doctor after doctor with no help in sight. Finally her primary care physician suggested, \u0026ldquo;Umm\u0026hellip;.I doubt this is Tourettes. Have you been tested for Lyme Disease?\u0026rdquo;\nHaving a diagnosis was great. Getting a treatment would take us months. We began with dietary changes, then we found a doctor, but he\u0026rsquo;s 375 miles away. For context, that\u0026rsquo;s like driving from Lexington, KY to Detroit, Michigan, and back in 2 days, with ZERO INTERSTATES. It\u0026rsquo;s a trial, but it\u0026rsquo;s helping. Oh, and he doesn\u0026rsquo;t bother with insurance. Fun.\nAmid all this, we got to go to Kentucky for Christmas, one of the most joyous visits anywhere I\u0026rsquo;ve ever had. We got to reconnect with old friends, do some of our Christmas traditions, and I got a righteous 40th birthday party.\nSegue: I turned 40 this year. I got my meds adjusted, and I got a handle on my anxiety. Well, most of the time. I still have my moments and my triggers, but I\u0026rsquo;m not an angry, bitter jerk most of the time with those that I love.\nI\u0026rsquo;d love to say \u0026ldquo;I finally have a handle on my health,\u0026rdquo; but it\u0026rsquo;s not so. As I sit here, I\u0026rsquo;m still 265 lbs, with a BMI teetering above 34. I had one major health scare last year (\u0026ldquo;Another 6 months and I\u0026rsquo;m sure this would\u0026rsquo;ve been cancer\u0026rdquo; are not words you like hearing), and there was the simple indignity of being 39 years old getting a cataract replaced. I can no longer see close-up with my glasses on, so I get to flip my glasses on and off like\u0026hellip;.well, like a 50 year old man.\nWork has been lucrative and personally rewarding. I love working here. I like the sharp tools we\u0026rsquo;re given, the latitude to use them, and the ownership for what we build, deploy, and operate. Product and Engineering largely work together. Some shakeups have happened in my department, so we\u0026rsquo;ll see. We\u0026rsquo;re still in the same house, but with Joe gone it\u0026rsquo;s grown much too large. We need about 1000 square feet less and no stairs. Three of four of us deal with chronic pain, and steps don\u0026rsquo;t help. We\u0026rsquo;d like land and some peace-and-quiet. That\u0026rsquo;s no small request in one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation, and that was before Apple announced a new HQ in Far-North Austin.\nI now have 20,460 miles on the Civic, 3/4ths of it in Austin traffic. I wanted a manual, and I\u0026rsquo;ve mostly dealt with the stop-and-go. That\u0026rsquo;s really a post unto itself, but with upgraded wheels/tires it gets an honest 31 mpg on regular with the A/C blaring against the ATX sunshine.\nWhitney\u0026rsquo;s van is on the way out, needing a new transmission at $8k for a van valued at $5k. At only 130,000 miles, I\u0026rsquo;m more than a little disappointed. So, in the next couple of weeks, we hope to trade it in on a used Lexus GX460, purportedly one of the few carved-from-a-steel-ingot Lexus models that remain. Yes, I\u0026rsquo;ve run the numbers and it\u0026rsquo;ll be an extra few hundred a month to operate.\nTomorrow, we fly up to Kentucky for Joe\u0026rsquo;s graduation. We\u0026rsquo;ve not exactly been invited, but so it goes.\nEpilogue: We Attended the graduation. He had nothing to do with us whatsoever \u0026ndash; HC, 2025\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/05/time-is-a-pretty-pony-with-a-wicked-heart/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I made some rocks for my daughters\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/BxuyyQFF5pn/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet\"\u003erock ceremony\u003c/a\u003e last night.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LaAYgfEgjcE/XOV-kBcdmpI/AAAAAAAAI6w/11SSBEi44i4Lgt3X6tCOsbYn6q9608dBACLcBGAs/s1600/2019-05-21_11-19-47_223.heic\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LaAYgfEgjcE/XOV-kBcdmpI/AAAAAAAAI6w/11SSBEi44i4Lgt3X6tCOsbYn6q9608dBACLcBGAs/s320/2019-05-21_11-19-47_223.heic\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe left, JOY, is for Grace (all-caps intentional) and the right Perseverance is for Maria.  Then today, I got the \u0026ldquo;memory\u0026rdquo; of the rocks last year.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iiVzAtk11y4/XOV-2viCYeI/AAAAAAAAI64/MBgh1UN429ox64RWY0HpD2WwPiEMG4r3ACLcBGAs/s1600/2018-05-22_14-52-08_442.jpeg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iiVzAtk11y4/XOV-2viCYeI/AAAAAAAAI64/MBgh1UN429ox64RWY0HpD2WwPiEMG4r3ACLcBGAs/s320/2018-05-22_14-52-08_442.jpeg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat was exactly 364 days ago (Understanding == Maria, Enthusiasm == Grace).  As cliche as it sounds, it really seems like yesterday.  I\u0026rsquo;m reminded of reading the Stephen King short story \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Pretty_Pony\"\u003eMy Pretty Pony\u003c/a\u003e.  The summary seems apt:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Time is a Pretty Pony, with a Wicked Heart"},{"content":"Having just ended my second trip through The Five Love Languages by Dr. Chapman, there are things I really wish I could get through my thick skull.\nApropos: We just got through Valentine\u0026rsquo;s Day and the occasion seems right.\n1. Being \u0026ldquo;In Love\u0026quot;Ends I remember my friend Dannah my freshman year. She was one of the strongest women I\u0026rsquo;d ever met. She had the grit and determination of her military dad, a sharp wit, and a heart as big as Dayton, Ohio. But there was one thing.\nDannah was terrified that her hometown beau, Tom, was going to \u0026ldquo;fall out of love with her.\u0026rdquo; They\u0026rsquo;d been in love for years, and with distance and experience, it seemed like that ooey-gooey feeling of \u0026ldquo;love\u0026rdquo; was going to stop.\nWell\u0026hellip;it did. The thing idiots like us didn\u0026rsquo;t realize was: IT ALWAYS STOPS.\nChapman argues in his book that the \u0026ldquo;in love\u0026rdquo; feeling that consumes you and spackles over every bump in your relationship might last about 2 or so years on average. After that, as my old pastor used to say, \u0026ldquo;Love is not a feeling, it\u0026rsquo;s a choice.\u0026rdquo;\nIn and of itself, this isn\u0026rsquo;t a bad thing. This \u0026ldquo;In Love\u0026rdquo; is like the steam catapult on an aircraft carrier, flinging your plane from zero to flight speed in no time. It gets you started.\nWhat nobody seems to tell you is: You\u0026rsquo;d better have your engines running once that initial boost is over.\nI did not. I was so happy to have found the love of my life again in 2001 that I surfed that overwhelming wave of oxytocin to the alter in 2005, right as \u0026ldquo;reality\u0026rdquo; was about to hit. I was a husband, a step-father overnight. Also, I was an overgrown baby inside.\nNo, seriously. I was an emotional infant. If I were an emotional toddler, I\u0026rsquo;d at least have had a vocabulary to express a few things. I simply did not.\nIntellectually, I understood the \u0026ldquo;in love\u0026rdquo; feeling would wear-off. But I\u0026rsquo;d been a serial monogamist through my 20\u0026rsquo;s. I was used to that feeling; I craved it. When it disappeared and the real work began I became bitter and resentful. I flailed about in dumb, selfish ways for over 7 years like that in one way or another.\nIn any case, everyone comes to the point where he decides: \u0026ldquo;Am I in or out?\u0026rdquo; If you haven\u0026rsquo;t, you will. Brace yourself.\n2. People Feel Love in Different Ways Okay, let\u0026rsquo;s not confuse \u0026ldquo;Love\u0026rdquo; for sex. Let\u0026rsquo;s also not confuse \u0026ldquo;Love\u0026rdquo; for \u0026ldquo;infatuation/being \u0026lsquo;in love\u0026rsquo;.\u0026rdquo; How do you FEEL LOVE? What makes you feel special, cared for, and simply belonging in a relationship?\nMore importantly, how does that work for your spouse? There\u0026rsquo;s only a small chance it\u0026rsquo;s like you. Let me explain with a little meeting I had the other day at work\u0026hellip;\nOn Cognition I was leading a discussion at work about how people use websites. In a book I\u0026rsquo;d read, the author described two ways of navigating websites:\nUsing the search bar function to get where you want Using the left-hand navigation to select from a category/sub-category tree. I found this ridiculous. \u0026ldquo;Any sane person will just use the search function. It\u0026rsquo;s the fastest way to get there.\u0026rdquo; I posed this question offhand to my book discussion group. The response shocked me.\nFully HALF the room NEVER used the search function, always using the categories on the left. The other HALF was basically like me. there was no one in the room of 12 who varied from either extreme. It was a huge \u0026ldquo;ah-ha\u0026rdquo; moment.\nPeople have very deep-seated, varied ways of doing things. Moreover\u0026ndash;germane to the discussion about love\u0026ndash;they don\u0026rsquo;t examine why they are that way.\nThe Five Love Languages So coming back to love, Dr. Chapman espouses 5 ways people give and receive love:\nAffirming words: Verbal appreciation from your Significant Other Quality Time: Being present with the person and sharing life at the same time: Couch time, dates, walks. Just generally being together Gifts: Exchanging physical tokens of affections you make, find, or buy. Acts of Service: Doing things the other person wants done, perhaps like washing her car or cooking meals for him. Physical Touch: Holding hands, hugging, touching. Skin-to-skin contact. Notably, sex is part of this, but it\u0026rsquo;s certainly not all. Learn yours\nMine (for example):\n11\nQuality Time\n9\nWords of Affirmation\n6\nActs of Service\n4\nPhysical Touch\n0\nReceiving Gifts\nThis makes perfect sense. Gifts mean very little to me, and I\u0026rsquo;m a tightwad. I\u0026rsquo;m making slow progress on both fronts.\n3. Seasons of Life, or \u0026ldquo;Reasonable Expectations\u0026rdquo; Your marriage is going to ebb and flow. There are going to be days where you\u0026rsquo;re 100% with your spouse, and other days where it\u0026rsquo;s a piece of paper between to very different (and hurting) people. Thus the vow: \u0026ldquo;For Better or Worse.\u0026rdquo;\nThere are going to be days where it\u0026rsquo;s not about you. That\u0026rsquo;s okay. Maybe years, when your spouse is finishing residency or on a deathmarch project for 18 months.\nHowever, what\u0026rsquo;s needed is communication. You spend 15 minutes a day and share your life with your spouse. What happened. What\u0026rsquo;s worrying you. What\u0026rsquo;s making you happy. Who you are today.\n4. Bonus: People Grow and Change I\u0026rsquo;m not married to the same woman I wed in 2005, even though she has the same social security number. She\u0026rsquo;s grown, changed, evolved. People DO NOT stagnate.\nYou get to learn this new person and fall in love with them again and again. That\u0026rsquo;s kind of wonderful.\nFinal Thoughts This book is just a model, but it\u0026rsquo;s a very \u0026ldquo;bottom up\u0026rdquo; model, derived from \u0026gt;20 years of practical counseling from Dr. Chapman. It really bursts the balloon of both the \u0026ldquo;In Love\u0026rdquo; feeling and the folly of chasing after it time and again. It won\u0026rsquo;t satisfy you; rather, a trusting relationship where both parties understand one another and make the most of showing love to their spouse.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2019/02/things-i-really-wish-i-knew-about-love/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHaving just ended my second trip through T\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Love-Languages-Secret-that-Lasts/dp/080241270X\"\u003ehe Five Love Languages\u003c/a\u003e by Dr. Chapman, there are things I really wish I could get through my thick skull.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eApropos: We just got through Valentine\u0026rsquo;s Day and the occasion seems right.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51ItBwnbJ6L._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51ItBwnbJ6L._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"1-being-in-loveends\"\u003e1. Being \u0026ldquo;In Love\u0026quot;Ends\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember my friend Dannah my freshman year.  She was one of the strongest women I\u0026rsquo;d ever met.  She had the grit and determination of her military dad, a sharp wit, and a heart as big as Dayton, Ohio.  But there was one thing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Things I Really Wish I Knew about LOVE"},{"content":"This is how I work in my career. Some of these are counter-intuitive and require explanation.\nShipping code wins. On schedules: Picking an arbitrary deadline is often more efficient than carefully planning things out. I\u0026rsquo;ve spend 20 years decrying this, but if you add up the time you spend planning, negotiating schedules, then executing, it\u0026rsquo;s less pain if you just work-to-deadline and throw features overboard in the process. On teams: A disciplined team of professionals cultivating mutual trust will outperform a team of talented jerks. There are exceptions, but only if you\u0026rsquo;re writing the Linux kernel or something requiring 10x insights daily. On technology selection: Always pick the technology 1 step behind the bleeding edge, because it\u0026rsquo;s mature and documented For example, when everyone was going to Rails, use Spring MVC. This will reduce your technical risk profile in every single case. Treat everyone as though they might be your boss someday. Code only exists if it\u0026rsquo;s checked-in to version control. If your team mostly cares about efficiency, run. Now. You don\u0026rsquo;t care about customers and growing. The truly insufferable don\u0026rsquo;t last long. Managers are much smarter than you think they are. Project managers can help, if you let them. You are not your code. You don\u0026rsquo;t own your code; your employer does. There are many more, but that\u0026rsquo;s off the top of my head. Mostly what I\u0026rsquo;ve learned in 20 years is \u0026ldquo;the people who came before us weren\u0026rsquo;t idiots.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/10/weird-software-engineering-proverbs/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis is how I work in my career.  Some of these are counter-intuitive and require explanation.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eShipping code wins.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOn schedules: \u003cstrong\u003ePicking an arbitrary deadline\u003c/strong\u003e is often more  efficient than carefully planning things out.  I\u0026rsquo;ve spend 20 years decrying this, but if you add up the time you spend planning, negotiating schedules, then executing, it\u0026rsquo;s less pain if you just work-to-deadline and throw features overboard in the process.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOn teams: A disciplined team of professionals cultivating mutual trust will \u003cstrong\u003eoutperform\u003c/strong\u003e a team of talented jerks.  There are exceptions, but only if you\u0026rsquo;re writing the Linux kernel or something requiring 10x insights daily.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOn technology selection: Always \u003cstrong\u003epick the technology 1 step behind the bleeding edge\u003c/strong\u003e, because it\u0026rsquo;s mature and documented For example, when everyone was going to Rails, use Spring MVC.  This will reduce your technical risk profile in every single case. \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTreat everyone as though they might be your boss someday.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCode only exists if it\u0026rsquo;s checked-in to version control.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIf your team mostly cares about efficiency, run.  Now.  You don\u0026rsquo;t care about customers and growing.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe truly insufferable don\u0026rsquo;t last long.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eManagers are much smarter than you think they are.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eProject managers can help, if you let them.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYou are not your code.  \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYou don\u0026rsquo;t own your code; your employer does.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are many more, but that\u0026rsquo;s off the top of my head.  Mostly what I\u0026rsquo;ve learned in 20 years is \u0026ldquo;the people who came before us weren\u0026rsquo;t idiots.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weird Software Engineering Proverbs"},{"content":"\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been tough to be a Whovian in the past few years.\nFirst there was the Clara denouement, in which show-runner Steven Moffat demonstrated he cannot write for women. Then, there was no Dr. Who in 2016, period, and we suffered through the rather uneven Series 10 and Bill the social justice warrior. Last, we\u0026rsquo;re in another break, as we wait for almost another year (October 2018) to see the first female doctor, Jodie Whittaker.\nTaking a look at the Revived Era, from 2005 on, we\u0026rsquo;ve gotten regular installments of the Madman in the Box since 2010, especially during the Matt Smith era. The irregularity of the Capaldi era removed the show from the cultural zeitgeist, and made it \u0026ldquo;that show we used to watch.\u0026rdquo;\nOne could plot New Who like a fired artillery shell, with the Eccleston series 1 as the beginning, the Tennant era as the meteoric rise, and the Matt Smith as the apex, and the Capaldi era as the fall to the target. Truly, at times during Series 9, it felt like the show had entered terminal velocity, with Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s announced exit as the last straw.\nSome of this is simple exhaustion, both of ideas and individuals. Moffat is done. Capaldi was done at the end of Series 9; they should\u0026rsquo;ve had a new Doctor and companion at that point.\nAll that to say: I predict Dr. Who will go on permanent hiatus soon, just as it did after the 7th Doctor. The energy seems to be gone, but I\u0026rsquo;m happy to be proven wrong.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/06/is-dr.-who-done/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://media.immediate.co.uk/volatile/sites/3/2018/02/Doctor_Who_Iconic_Logo_A3_Landscape_420x297mm_300dpi_CMYK_AW-c797cd9.jpg?quality=45\u0026amp;resize=710,472\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://media.immediate.co.uk/volatile/sites/3/2018/02/Doctor_Who_Iconic_Logo_A3_Landscape_420x297mm_300dpi_CMYK_AW-c797cd9.jpg?quality=45\u0026resize=710,472\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been tough to be a Whovian in the past few years.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst there was the Clara denouement, in which show-runner Steven Moffat demonstrated he cannot write for women.  Then, there was \u003cstrong\u003eno\u003c/strong\u003e Dr. Who in 2016, period, and we suffered through the rather uneven Series 10 and Bill the social justice warrior.  Last, we\u0026rsquo;re in another break, as we wait for almost \u003cem\u003eanother\u003c/em\u003e year (October 2018) to see the first female doctor, Jodie Whittaker.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Is Dr. Who Done?"},{"content":"Context: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2018/05/war-footing-toyota-ceo-unleashes-seven-samurai-bid-survival/#more-1625584\n“With our rivals and the rules of competition also changing, a life-or-death battle has begun in a world of unknowns,” [Toyota CEO] Toyoda said during a fiscal update last week. “Cost reduction is crucial. It is a fight to restore our original strength.”\nDear Toyota USA\nI read the article below and it sickens me. You are a great company well on the way to being FCA if you take your eye off product and think only of Expense controls.\nHaving worked for a company that cut expense for 17 straight years (when it wasn\u0026rsquo;t spending $3 Billion to buy companies it had no idea what to do with), let me be the first to say, this will not work, and it will drive your talent away.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not employees\u0026rsquo; fault that Tundra is a dead stick. Chevy makes oodles of cash off the Tahoe/Suburban line and you can\u0026rsquo;t move the metal. Your hybrid strategy is a money-losing mess. Your playboy CEO wants to go racing and no one\u0026rsquo;s been minding the store for nearly a decade.\nTo wit:\n- The Tundra is a distant 4th among full size trucks.\n- Scion lived for 5 years too long.\n- The FT86 was a vanity project.\n- You have a rebadged Mazda2 *and* a Yaris? Huh?\n- the Carbon-fiber @ scale stuff from the LF-A hasn\u0026rsquo;t paid off.\n- Hydrogen fuel cells are the _right_ answer, but the market wants BEVs, and you\u0026rsquo;re waiting _forever_ for your solid-state tech to mature.\nBut here we are. It\u0026rsquo;s time to \u0026rsquo;trim the fat\u0026rsquo;. Give me a break.\nIs this armchair quarterbacking? Sure. None of this is easy. You need *product* and you can\u0026rsquo;t trade on your name and reliability reputation forever. You need *profitable* products that don\u0026rsquo;t need incentives, and in the current climate that means trucks.\nThe new Camry is the definitive midsize sedan. The Taco is still good. The 4Runner is great and very profitable. Fix the Monstrosity that is the Tundra and the rest of this is academic, and kill the vanity projects.\n/rant\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/05/toyota-jumped-the-shark-today/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eContext: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2018/05/war-footing-toyota-ceo-unleashes-seven-samurai-bid-survival/#more-1625584\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e“With our rivals and the rules of competition also changing, a life-or-death battle has begun in a world of unknowns,” [Toyota CEO] Toyoda said during a fiscal update last week. “Cost reduction is crucial. It is a fight to restore our original strength.”\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDear \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/toyota/?fref=mentions\"\u003eToyota USA\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI read the article below and it sickens me. You are a great company well on the way to being FCA if you take your eye off product and think only of Expense controls.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Toyota Jumped the Shark Today"},{"content":"\nI\u0026rsquo;ve toyed with the idea of doing a video review of this car. If you\u0026rsquo;d like one, leave a comment\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;ve had a 10th Generation 2018 Honda Civic since April 24th. I had a little car trouble and found myself in need of a car.\nCrap. Nothing like buying a car in the middle of Spring, when everyone else is buying a car thanks to Tax Refunds. Middle of the model year. No incentives. Yaaaaay.\nMy short list went like this:\nRam 1500 GM half-ton with the 5.3 V8 Buick Lacrosse Lexus GS350 Honda Accord So basically:\nTruck or car? Practical or practical or practical. I needed something practical I could put my wife and girls in. I was driving around in a sweet full size Chevy Impala, so I was feeling a car again, hence the Lacrosse being on the list.\nI 86\u0026rsquo;d the GM as it drove too big, and Whitney homed in on the Ram and the Buick as her top 2. On April 23rd I took off work and we went driving during the morning and early afternoon. The accord was too stiff, but we drove some Civics and\u0026hellip;.love.\nSee\u0026hellip;the Civics came with a stick. We really forgot how much we loved manual transmissions.\nSo, for invoice price + 6.25% taxes I got a brand spanking new Honda Civic LX. Sharp-eyed readers will note this is the base model.\nThat was intentional. I wanted the simplest car I could get.\nSo\u0026hellip;instead of the EX-T\u0026rsquo;s 1.5L Turbo with its 192 horsepower, I got a 2.0L 158 hp K20C2 engine. Instead of HondaSense I got\u0026hellip;.er\u0026hellip;.cruise control. Instead of a touch screen + CarPlay + SirusXM I got an LCD display and bluetooth and\u0026hellip;.that\u0026rsquo;s pretty much it.\nSo, after 2 weeks, how\u0026rsquo;s it going?\nIn a word: Great.\nThe first day with the car was a baptism by fire. I hit an hour of Austin traffic down I-35 on the way in, then had a good slog on the way home. I was sore in places I didn\u0026rsquo;t remember. I missed the ease I\u0026rsquo;d had in the Impala and the spacious, coddling feeling. I wondered if I\u0026rsquo;d made a big mistake.\nAfter that, it got better. I continue to grow accustomed to the transmission and its dual throttle modes: In Regular mode, the engine zings to redline pretty easily (I mean it still has a heavy flywheel, but eh, street car.), making smooth shifts a challenge. In Eco Mode, the throttle is much more progressive, making it easy to seem like a star with the tranny.\nHeel-and-toe and double-clutch downshifts are a real pleasure, making me feel like I\u0026rsquo;m downshifting into a turn at Road Atlanta or something. Positives The engine is a sweetheart, particularly above 3k. The transmission is the reason I bought the car: Precise and light, but positive. The ride is a great compromise between comfort and sportiness. This is the reason we got the LX trim level Visibility is good Headroom is great, easily the same as my 2010 Fusion. Getting height-adjustable seats, bluetooth, power windows/doorlocks The \u0026lsquo;Brake hold\u0026rsquo; feature really works, though I\u0026rsquo;d still rather have had a real handbrake. Still in love with the color. I really missed having a car with actual color instead of White, Silver, or Grey. Negatives The car is a base model. There\u0026rsquo;s no getting around it. Some downsides:\nValue. Even $20k out-the-door, one could get a Mazda or Hyundai/Kia for much less. No center armrest in the back for my kids. Crucially, this leaves only the 12oz can sized cupholders in the doors No Apple Carplay, which is a pain. The bluetooth is easily as good as my 2010 Ford Fusion\u0026rsquo;s Sync system, though that\u0026rsquo;s faint praise The voice recognition is truly dismal. It simply doesn\u0026rsquo;t work. \u0026ldquo;Call Whitney Combs\u0026rdquo; has hilarious results. The Hankook tires are sturdy, but I likely won\u0026rsquo;t be keeping them. Some Enkei wheels and better rubber call my name. A/C is okay thus far, but indications are it\u0026rsquo;ll be pretty weak when the 100+ days of July and August come to bear. Ergonomics are taking some getting used to Not sure how to quantify this, but Honda\u0026rsquo;s taken a real step backward in switchgear feel. Back in 2003 and earlier cars, you could depend on the ways the switches\u0026hellip;well\u0026hellip;switched. They had a certain tactile feel that helped you know every piece was engineered to the last detail. The headlights are just halogens and they\u0026rsquo;re pretty weak when you\u0026rsquo;re used to LEDs from your wife\u0026rsquo;s van. Backseat is truly usable, but it\u0026rsquo;s no Accord. Given 95% of the time, I\u0026rsquo;m the only occupant, this car is great. It definitely fits my \u0026ldquo;simple\u0026rdquo; requirement, and I look forward to a decade of driving the wheels off it.\nAlso: Austin has Autocross events on Saturdays.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/05/two-week-review-2018-honda-civic-lx-6mt/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G1mQ_0EmEOc/Wu-yyPxxo-I/AAAAAAAAIoE/iLktlI9lVaMLFEHMM5Xdo1PFnEaADVo5gCLcBGAs/s1600/civic.jpeg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G1mQ_0EmEOc/Wu-yyPxxo-I/AAAAAAAAIoE/iLktlI9lVaMLFEHMM5Xdo1PFnEaADVo5gCLcBGAs/s320/civic.jpeg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve toyed with the idea of doing a video review of this car.  If you\u0026rsquo;d like one, leave a comment\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;ve had a 10th Generation 2018 Honda Civic since April 24th.  I had \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/04/an-open-letter-to-the-ford-motor-company-on-the-ford-fusion-hybrid-braking-system/\" title=\"open letter to ford\"\u003ea little car trouble\u003c/a\u003e and found myself in need of a car.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCrap.  Nothing like buying a car in the middle of Spring, when everyone else is buying a car thanks to Tax Refunds.   Middle of the model year.  No incentives.  \u003cem\u003eYaaaaay\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Two week review: 2018 Honda Civic LX 6MT"},{"content":"As the lights go up after a comic book movie, there are reactions one expects: Awed silence; various onomatopoetic words like \u0026ldquo;Whoa!,\u0026rdquo; or (in the DC Universe) grim reflections that it either did or didn\u0026rsquo;t suck as much as expected.\nOne does not expect seething, shocked anger like the gentlemen next to me, \u0026ldquo;Well, I\u0026rsquo;m glad I never saw Black Panther,\u0026rdquo; or the repeated, mindless exclamation of a teen across the auditorium.\nThis movie BROKE ME. This movie completely BROKE ME. I am Broken.\nTruly, after Infinity War, I think none of us will be the same again. Our happy childhood of origin stories and side quests is over. The reality (stone?) of us dutifully hitting the bar in our rat cages marked \u0026ldquo;comic book movie\u0026rdquo; with our $$$ since 2007 is coming to pass. Or, as Master Mordo said in a (much better) comic book movie: \u0026ldquo;The bill comes due.\u0026rdquo;\n(Note: I\u0026rsquo;ll try to avoid spoilers)\nToo Many Sorcerers\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;Characters The film opens with\u0026hellip;.genocide. There\u0026rsquo;s really no other word for it. Scores of Asgardians who survived Hela and Ragnorak, well\u0026hellip;.it sucks to be you. As an audience, we struggle through the next 5 minutes of death to set-up \u0026ldquo;Thanos: He\u0026rsquo;s a Bad Guy,\u0026rdquo; with umm\u0026hellip;\nThanos with shiny gauntlet and one (unexplained) stone in it. Thor Loki Hulk Hymdall er\u0026hellip;. Floaty wizard(??) guy who won\u0026rsquo;t shut up Ax wieldy strong guy who grunts another female Thanos follower who isn\u0026rsquo;t Gamora or Nebula? nameless henchmen This scene is a perfect microcosm of the movie and its duality: I have no freaking idea who those people are. I have no idea if their actions are reasonable. This movie is when the MCU drops all pretense that plebs/noobs/lusers/normies (or whatever the Comic Book intelligentsia call non-comic folk) can \u0026ldquo;keep up\u0026rdquo;\nFrom there, we\u0026rsquo;re treated to 2 hours and 20 minutes of a film that revels in callbacks and self-referential claptrap that would make Peter Jackson or an even-numbered Star Trek film blush. Representative piece of dialog:\nThor: \u0026ldquo;He\u0026rsquo;s going\u0026hellip;.nowhere\u0026rdquo; Rocket the Rabbit (nee \u0026ldquo;Racoon\u0026rdquo;): \u0026ldquo;Very funny, dickhead\u0026rdquo; Gamora: \u0026ldquo;No\u0026hellip;Nowhere is a place. A place we\u0026rsquo;ve been before. Why would we want to go back there?\u0026rdquo; Bingo. Unless you\u0026rsquo;ve seen Guardians of the Galaxy and internalized the place (\u0026ldquo;The head of a dead Celestial) from Act 2 of same, that dialog is nonsense.\nInfinity War continues the same raised-middle-finger tone right through the end credits and post-credits scene. You paid $11.50 for the grand experience of a film that laughs at you if you haven\u0026rsquo;t seen all eighteen (!) preceding films.\nYeah, but We can Wave our Hands and\u0026hellip; Another comic book trope: The past doesn\u0026rsquo;t really matter?\nThor: Ragnorak? Well, thanks for getting that Infinity Stone into space. Otherwise, don\u0026rsquo;t worry that all our characters are wounded, dead, or at best exhausted. Thor\u0026rsquo;s always good to go!\nCaptain America: Civil War? Well, thanks for getting Spiderman back. Otherwise, we\u0026rsquo;re all pals again. Also, we have these handy quinjets!\nAnt Man\u0026hellip;is powdering his nose.\nThat Nat/Bruce thing? \u0026ldquo;Hey Bruce.\u0026rdquo; Yes, seriously.\nWatch this movie with this in mind, \u0026ldquo;Why\u0026rsquo;s ____ happening? Because the plot needs it.\u0026rdquo;\nWhere are WE? You know what\u0026rsquo;s a bad sign: Title cards. I shouldn\u0026rsquo;t need a title card to tell me what city, state, country, or PLANET I\u0026rsquo;m on. It\u0026rsquo;s lazy narration.\nI lost count of the title cards in the first act alone, but I think I got to 7. Movies annoy when they give you no way to know:\nWhere you are Who is talking What is going on, in general Unearned Drama If Infinity War really eats it, it\u0026rsquo;s in trying to make sympathetic characters without investing any time to do so organically. (Amazingly, 18 films isn\u0026rsquo;t enough to do this, apparently)\nThere is a scene where one character realizes the ridiculousness of another character\u0026rsquo;s emotion and starts laughing. Like, \u0026ldquo;Are you freaking kidding me?\u0026rdquo; laughing. You\u0026rsquo;ll know it when you see it. That whole scene stops the movie, but not for the reason the screenwriter intended. It\u0026rsquo;s ridiculous.\nSecondly, there\u0026rsquo;s the Vision/Scarlet Witch thing. Given the supposed stakes in this film, the characters\u0026rsquo; choices boggle the mind. Last Star Lord/Gamora, really descending into Sam \u0026amp; Dianne from Cheers territory.\nIn all cases, the movie takes a pause and tries to be Shakespeare, trying to make us believe we\u0026rsquo;re watching some flavor of a Tragic King or Star-Crossed Lovers. It didn\u0026rsquo;t work for me.\nNone of this Matters\u0026hellip; Full disclosure: I\u0026rsquo;ve read the wiki summary of the comics\u0026rsquo; Infinity War story line, so I\u0026rsquo;ll just say this: I get the feeling this entire film has zero consequence. There exists a time stone that can do or undo any event. It\u0026rsquo;s a writer\u0026rsquo;s wet dream: I can write myself into a narrative corner, and then \u0026ldquo;whoopsie\u0026rdquo; undo it.\nLike Mordo said, though: The bill comes due. When you have that sort of narrative power, you lose your audience. When someone dies and it\u0026rsquo;s not permanent, what stakes are there, really?\nSo, It Sucked? Not entirely. Certain parts worked. In particular, the Russo brothers did what you have to do when facing a battalion of characters: They split them up, much like Guardians 2.\nDr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) almost rescues the mess by himself. His combination of gravitas, clarity-of-purpose, and strong choices re-center the movie, and give both Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr. ) and Spiderman (Tom Holland) a straight man. That other-worldly plot worked.\nWakanda delights, so much that when one character says, \u0026ldquo;I love this place!\u0026rdquo; it was like the entire audience nodded\u0026hellip;.vigorously.\nCameos delight as well. Plenty of reveals here not in the trailers.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s the Big Deal? The big deal is, we keep financing these abominations. We are the rats eating the cocaine instead of food. Much like people kept supporting abstract expressionism, \u0026ldquo;beat poetry\u0026rdquo;, and dodecaphonic music, we\u0026rsquo;re watching an art form skew to its own demise. Story disappears and spectacle remains.\nThis is the endgame of the \u0026ldquo;Blockbuster\u0026rdquo; phenomenon started by 1977\u0026rsquo;s Star Wars, when movies become events, then franchises, then universes. It\u0026rsquo;s sucking all the creative energy out of film, and the solid, character-driven film of even 20 years ago is dead. Can you imagine Good Will Hunting or Dead Poets\u0026rsquo; Society getting made today?\nWhere I Go from Here No more large team-up crap for me. I watched Spider Man: Homecoming and Dr. Strange after this mess, and it startled me how good they both were. Both told great stories, with sympathetic villains, while respecting the audience. I never really got into comics. I seem destined to reject the next evolution of comic book movies.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/05/on-avengers-infitnity-war/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs the lights go up after a comic book movie, there are reactions one expects: Awed silence; various onomatopoetic words like \u0026ldquo;Whoa!,\u0026rdquo; or (in the DC Universe) grim reflections that it either did or didn\u0026rsquo;t suck as much as expected.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne does \u003cem\u003enot\u003c/em\u003e expect seething, shocked anger like the gentlemen next to me, \u0026ldquo;Well, I\u0026rsquo;m glad I never saw \u003cem\u003eBlack Panther,\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e or the repeated, mindless exclamation of a teen across the auditorium.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"Avengers: Infitnity War\""},{"content":"Dear Ford Motor Company,\nMy 2010 Fusion Hybrid crashed today. No, I didn\u0026rsquo;t smash into anything\u0026hellip;the electric traction system in my car crashed in the computer sense as I was rolling towards a stop sign. I was left without power brakes. Thankfully this was at ~5 mph so just stomping really hard on the pedal yielded a stop.\nAs I approached the stop sign in electric drive mode (engine off), my dashboard lit up light a Christmas tree, displaying warning lights I didn\u0026rsquo;t know I even had. The display shouted \u0026lsquo;SERVICE ADVANCE TRAC SYSTEM\u0026rsquo; and my brake pedal went almost to the floor.\nTo fix this, I did the old IT trick: I turned it off and turned it back on. Problem \u0026ldquo;solved.\u0026rdquo;\nThis seems a rather serious failure mode, as without the engine running, there\u0026rsquo;s no vacuum to power the brakes. As the car can run with the engine off up to 45 mph, I\u0026rsquo;d rather not imagine stopping from that speed sans a brake booster.\nHaving been around embedded software, I can understand what likely happened. Something \u0026ldquo;impossible\u0026rdquo; happened in the PCM (probably a bad read from a sensor caused a divide by zero or overflow), and the electric drive system failed. Still, in a realtime system, a crash like that is unacceptable.\nNot quite sure what my next step is, but sending your product to a junkyard lest it kill someone is on the list. I\u0026rsquo;ve forwarded this to NTHSA for review.\nYours,\nHarold Combs\nGeorgetown, Texas\n140k mile Ford Fusion Hybrid Survivor\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/04/an-open-letter-to-the-ford-motor-company-on-the-ford-fusion-hybrid-braking-system/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDear \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/ford/?fref=mentions\"\u003eFord Motor Company\u003c/a\u003e,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy 2010 Fusion Hybrid crashed today. No, I didn\u0026rsquo;t smash into anything\u0026hellip;the electric traction system in my car crashed in the computer sense as I was rolling towards a stop sign. I was left without power brakes. Thankfully this was at ~5 mph so just stomping really hard on the pedal yielded a stop.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs I approached the stop sign in electric drive mode (engine off), my dashboard lit up light a Christmas tree, displaying warning lights I didn\u0026rsquo;t know I even had. The display shouted \u0026lsquo;SERVICE ADVANCE TRAC SYSTEM\u0026rsquo; and my brake pedal went almost to the floor.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"An Open Letter to the Ford Motor Company on the Ford Fusion Hybrid Braking System"},{"content":"Martin Lomasney, an old West End political boss from Boston, is best remembered for his warning to young politicians everywhere — “Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink”.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/04/on-communication/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMartin Lomasney, an old West End political boss from Boston, is best remembered for his warning to young politicians everywhere — “Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink”.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Communication"},{"content":" So yeah, let\u0026rsquo;s spend 20 minutes flying around Pandora from Avatar but let\u0026rsquo;s leave off the part that makes the plot work\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;There is such a thing as a tesseract\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; Miss WhatsIt\nI\u0026rsquo;ll never forget the day I read Madeline L\u0026rsquo;Engle\u0026rsquo;s A Wrinkle in Time for the first (and thus far only) time. I was in 4th grade\u0026ndash;11 years old\u0026ndash;and I was in my Aunt Norie\u0026rsquo;s house in Highway 205. My mom dropped me off, and I was alone for hours. I can\u0026rsquo;t remember the occasion exactly, and especially the reason for my solitude, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t matter.\nI had a book. I had the book. I had A Wrinkle in Time.\nOver the next six or so hours, I devoured the book. I don\u0026rsquo;t remember eating lunch or going to the bathroom. L\u0026rsquo;Engle created not just a world, but a Universe, a story that spanned a galaxy and plumbed the depth of Love, Light, and Freedom. I talked my poor mom\u0026rsquo;s ear off about the book, then never mentioned it again.\nThe Nineties can have Harry Potter. \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re a wizard, Harry!\u0026rdquo; can never match \u0026ldquo;There is such a thing as a tesseract\u0026rdquo; spoken by a former star. (yes, as in a celestial object).\nThus, I just saw A Wrinkle in Time.\nIs it any good?\nWell\u0026hellip;It tries to be. Roughly one third of it is. It\u0026rsquo;s not really worth your time, sadly.\n** Mild Spoilers ahead **\nThings begin poorly when director Ava DuVernay appears just before the movie, speaking directly to camera giving us, \u0026ldquo;I hope you enjoy this movie. We enjoyed making it.\u0026rdquo; I found this intro, with behind-the-scenes footage quite literally preposterous, in the sense that it\u0026rsquo;s reversed. Peter Jackson made Lord of the Rings as a labor of love, filming something once thought unfilmable. Did his Hobbitness show up before the opening credits? Nope\nThe plot falls into roughly three acts:\nAn after-school special about tween life. A brief Hero\u0026rsquo;s journey with lots of spectacle (and a very large Oprah Winfrey), but little challenge or substance. The climax that takes place (essentially) in the pit of Hell (\u0026ldquo;A place of pure evil\u0026rdquo;), with a redemption narrative, cathartic reunion, and an ending that (sadly) makes no sense because they cut out the part that would\u0026rsquo;ve made it sensible. It Starts\u0026hellip;well, it starts In the first act, we\u0026rsquo;re introduced to the Murray family, streamlined to only 2 kids instead of four, comprising genius NASA astrophysicist Mr. Murray, genius quantum physicist Mrs. Murray, tween Meg, and kindergarten prodigy Charles Wallace. As the movie opens, Mr. Murray\u0026rsquo;s been missing without a trace for 4 years, and we find his family in shambles. Meg has rebelled to the point of delinquency, Charles Wallace has turned inward, and Mrs. Murray hasn\u0026rsquo;t moved on from her husband\u0026rsquo;s disappearance.\nInto this walks Hagrid\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;I mean a flaming, frenetic redheaded Reese Witherspoon clothed in sheets named \u0026ldquo;Mrs Whatsit.\u0026rdquo; After thoroughly freaking-out the Murray\u0026rsquo;s, she delivers that brilliant plop, \u0026ldquo;There is such a thing as a tesseract.\u0026rdquo; We then meet Mindy Kaling, in a surprising dramatic turn as Mrs Who, and finally a 60 foot tall beneficent Oprah Winfrey as Mrs. Which.\nAlong the way we meet Calvin, a boy from school in love with Meg, in that way only a 14 year old boy from literature can, chastely with a dash of Pygmalion complex. You see, he things she\u0026rsquo;s amazing. She thinks she\u0026rsquo;s a monster.\nIn a sense, all the above jives with the book, but the book does it so much faster. The first act of this movie is painfully slow, with so many badly framed close-ups it borders on self-parody. In particular, there\u0026rsquo;s a shot with Principle Jenkins where his forehead cuts off out-of-frame. I\u0026rsquo;ll give the screenwriters and DuVerne this much: They at least adhere to \u0026ldquo;Show, don\u0026rsquo;t tell.\u0026rdquo; We don\u0026rsquo;t get narration, an opening scroll, or anything like that. We\u0026rsquo;re introduced to Principle Jenkins with a zoom shot from his desk nameplate over to his face. Points for that, at least.\nThen, it Stinks The second act of the movie is spectacular, yet pointless. Nothing happens, aside from incredibly expensive special effects, more closeups (eyes, in particular), and Oprah looking Oprah-like and delivering aphorisms like \u0026ldquo;You need to be one with the universe, then you\u0026rsquo;ll see.\u0026rdquo;\nIn honesty, I considered walking out of the movie at that point. On the bright side, you\u0026rsquo;ll have lots of moments where you can excuse yourself for a bathroom break. You\u0026rsquo;ll be missing nothing.\nThen It Finds Itself The last act on Camazotz almost salvages the whole overblown enterprise. Things get seriously good\u0026ndash;like Kubrick\u0026rsquo;s The Shining good. There\u0026rsquo;s a famous scene from the book where kids are bouncing red balls all in rhythm, and it\u0026rsquo;s perfect here. Simply, perfect. I felt the same as Charles Wallace, unnerved and desperate to not hear those poor, enthralled kids (demons?) bounce those balls.\nMichael Pena plays against type as Red\u0026ndash;the eponymous Red Eyed Man of the book\u0026ndash;and he\u0026rsquo;s fabulous, enthralling us along the way until we realize (just as the characters do) that it\u0026rsquo;s too late. What follows is a heartwarming reunion, a desperate choice, and a final showdown.\nJust one thing: The final showdown doesn\u0026rsquo;t make sense. I won\u0026rsquo;t spoil the end, but ask yourself, \u0026ldquo;Does the hero have the emotional intelligence and self-awareness to make that choice?\u0026rdquo;\nNo, she doesn\u0026rsquo;t. She needed to learn something, something she learned in the book, that she couldn\u0026rsquo;t for two _three _reasons:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s unfilmable. It happens in a place with no light, with creatures that lack eyes. That part of the book \u0026ldquo;stops\u0026rdquo; the book, in a very Zen way. The first round on Camazotz is a mini-climax, and then the book pivots. L\u0026rsquo;Engle punked us, and good for her! It would require introducing characters in the third act. American films don\u0026rsquo;t do that, and this movie is already two hours long. So yeah, let\u0026rsquo;s spend 20 minutes flying around Pandora from Avatar but let\u0026rsquo;s leave off the part that makes the plot work.\nSummary In summary, there are some things to like, mostly around characters and performances. Chris Pine\u0026rsquo;s Mr. Murray is round, complex, and flawed, a welcome change from the mere sketch he is in L\u0026rsquo;Engle\u0026rsquo;s book. Charles Wallace alternates from sunshine to pure evil, and it\u0026rsquo;s effective\u0026ndash;a great performance from Deric McCabe. Storm Reid delights as Meg, and when she\u0026rsquo;s given sensible things to do, she shines. As noted, the scenes on Camazotz affect a conformist hellscape of perfection and control, just how I\u0026rsquo;d imagined from the novel.\nDownsides abound. Editing towards spectacle leaves the film both too long and too short, leaving us bored for an hour, and confused at the end. Oprah is just\u0026hellip;there, relaying the same new-age, power-of-acceptance-and-positivity gospel, showing none of the chops she had in The Color Purple, for instance. Mindy Kaling glows, but has little to do.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s difficult to find an audience for this film. Even at \u0026lsquo;PG\u0026rsquo;, it\u0026rsquo;s too scary on Camazotz for little kids, and will bore teens and adults who\u0026rsquo;ve been through all this crap in their lives. Tweens should love it, but tweens alone can\u0026rsquo;t support a $100+ million budget. Fantasy continues to underperform in the post LOTR and Harry Potter world, and A Wrinkle in Time will do nothing to reverse that trend.\nI encourage you to grab the book and read it at a sitting as I did. That\u0026rsquo;s only 3 more hours\u0026rsquo; investment than this film, and trust me, the pictures in your head will be much better than those on this screen, leaf-dragon Reese Witherspoon notwithstanding.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/03/review-a-wrinkle-in-time/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSo yeah, let\u0026rsquo;s spend 20 minutes flying around Pandora from Avatar but let\u0026rsquo;s leave off the part that makes the plot work\u0026hellip;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://images.macmillan.com/folio-assets/macmillan_us_frontbookcovers_1000H/9780374309428.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://images.macmillan.com/folio-assets/macmillan_us_frontbookcovers_1000H/9780374309428.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;T\u003cstrong\u003ehere \u003cem\u003eis\u003c/em\u003e such a thing as a \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tesseract\" title=\"w:tesseract\"\u003etesseract\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; Miss WhatsIt\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nI\u0026rsquo;ll never forget the day I read Madeline L\u0026rsquo;Engle\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eA Wrinkle in Time\u003c/em\u003e for the first (and thus far only) time.  I was in 4th grade\u0026ndash;11 years old\u0026ndash;and I was in my Aunt Norie\u0026rsquo;s house in Highway 205.  My mom dropped me off, and I was alone for hours.   I can\u0026rsquo;t remember the occasion exactly, and especially the reason for my solitude, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t matter.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: \"A Wrinkle in Time\""},{"content":"The following come to mind for being 39 years old ( I turn 40 in November )\n\u0026ldquo;Killing yourself, one M\u0026amp;M at a time.\u0026rdquo; Bonus points if you sing this to a \u0026ldquo;Fugees\u0026rdquo; tune and your coworker thinks you\u0026rsquo;re having a stroke.\n\u0026ldquo;The Advil Years\u0026rdquo;. Significant things cause you to be sore the next day. Like walking.\n\u0026ldquo;Remember when _____ didn\u0026rsquo;t hurt all the time?\u0026rdquo; Knees\u0026hellip;.how did these things pass design review?\n\u0026ldquo;Yep, that\u0026rsquo;s me.\u0026rdquo; You not only recognize the face in the mirror, you come to accept him.\n\u0026ldquo;Remember when we didn\u0026rsquo;t yell?\u0026rdquo; Deafness. Yep, that\u0026rsquo;s what it is. Suuuure.\n(Before Noon) \u0026ldquo;Coffee fixes\u0026hellip;.everything.\u0026rdquo; (After 6pm) \u0026ldquo;Wine fixes\u0026hellip;everything else.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Teenage me was so naive.\u0026rdquo; Well, he was.\n\u0026ldquo;Twentysomething me was so egotistical.\u0026rdquo; Yep.\n(Tech-specific) \u0026ldquo;Remember the first two times they invented this same thing?\u0026rdquo; It grows tiresome to write the same logic in a different framework/language/whatever just because somebody thought Kotlin/Go/D/Whatever is the solution to all problems.\nYeah, I\u0026rsquo;m tired today. I\u0026rsquo;ve earned it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/03/age-39-catchphrases/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe following come to mind for being 39 years old ( I turn 40 in November )\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Killing yourself, one M\u0026amp;M at a time.\u0026rdquo; Bonus points if you sing this to a \u0026ldquo;Fugees\u0026rdquo; tune and your coworker thinks you\u0026rsquo;re having a stroke.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Advil Years\u0026rdquo;.  Significant things cause you to be sore the next day.  Like walking.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Remember when _____ didn\u0026rsquo;t hurt all the time?\u0026rdquo;  Knees\u0026hellip;.how did these things pass design review?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Age 39 Catchphrases"},{"content":"\nA programmer dies and goes to heaven, meeting a rather stern St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.\n\u0026ldquo;You do know we have a record of every sin you\u0026rsquo;ve committed?\u0026rdquo; Peter says.\n\u0026ldquo;Sure, whatever\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ve got nothing to hide. I lived a very clean life.\u0026rdquo;\nPeter continued: \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;and your full git history of every commit.\u0026rdquo;\nThe programmer just smiled. \u0026ldquo;Great! I\u0026rsquo;m quite proud of everything. I practiced Clean Code.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;and the full DAG. No rewrites of history in Heaven.\u0026rdquo;\nProgrammer: NOOOOOOOOOO!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/03/git-the-hence-a-programmer-dies-and-goes-to-heaven.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/23/75/e92375ef7d701ffd02ad30197cba7168.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/23/75/e92375ef7d701ffd02ad30197cba7168.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA programmer dies and goes to heaven, meeting a rather stern St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You \u003cem\u003edo\u003c/em\u003e know we have a record of every sin you\u0026rsquo;ve committed?\u0026rdquo; Peter says.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Sure, whatever\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ve got nothing to hide.  I lived a very clean life.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePeter continued: \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;and your full git history of every commit.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe programmer just smiled.  \u0026ldquo;Great!  I\u0026rsquo;m quite proud of everything.  I practiced \u003cem\u003eClean Code.\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;and the full DAG.  No rewrites of history in Heaven.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Git The Hence: A Programmer Dies and Goes to Heaven..."},{"content":"\nI\u0026rsquo;m exhausted.\nYes, I know all the motivational crap about The 40% Rule. I can (and shall) push through this, Lord willing, creek don\u0026rsquo;t rise, coffee maker don\u0026rsquo;t fail.\nSome things to highlight for future reflection:\nI\u0026rsquo;ve crested 270 pounds. I\u0026rsquo;m nearly 90 pounds up from where I was in 2012, and 30 more than when I moved here in 2016. I\u0026rsquo;m eating myself to death. My exercise routine is nonexistent. My sleep metrics seem good, but I get no rest. I don\u0026rsquo;t read regularly. I don\u0026rsquo;t have any effective hobbies. I basically work, sleep, repeat. \u0026hellip;and yes, I happen to be on-call for my current team this week. I begin to wonder (far too late, I suspect) that the above is unsustainable. Other people seem to do this life thing well, and I\u0026hellip;.don\u0026rsquo;t. I seem to just work.\nForgive my conceit, but I begin to wonder if my \u0026ldquo;life\u0026rdquo; is all just a fever dream of me lying in a hospital bed, lamenting I chose work over everything else.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/03/gassed/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://threequartersandcounting.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/exhausted-woman-at-computer.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://threequartersandcounting.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/exhausted-woman-at-computer.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m exhausted.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, I know all the motivational crap about \u003ca href=\"https://thehustle.co/40-percent-rule-navy-seal-secret-mental-toughness\"\u003eThe 40% Rule\u003c/a\u003e.  I can (and shall) push through this, Lord willing, creek don\u0026rsquo;t rise, coffee maker don\u0026rsquo;t fail.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome things to highlight for future reflection:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve crested 270 pounds.  I\u0026rsquo;m nearly 90 pounds up from where I was in 2012, and 30 more than when I moved here in 2016.   I\u0026rsquo;m eating myself to death.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMy exercise routine is nonexistent.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMy sleep metrics \u003cem\u003eseem\u003c/em\u003e good, but I get no rest.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t read regularly.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t have any effective hobbies.  I basically work, sleep, repeat.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026hellip;and yes, I happen to be on-call for my current team this week.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI begin to wonder (far too late, I suspect) that the above is unsustainable.  Other people seem to do this life thing well, and I\u0026hellip;.don\u0026rsquo;t.  I seem to just work.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gassed"},{"content":"So, a colleague brought in an espresso machine, a burr grinder, and some beans.\nSo, now I know how to make espresso.\nBrilliant Idea: I need to setup an espresso bar beside a cardiologist\u0026rsquo;s office and take 10% of their profits. My EYEBALLS ARE VIBRATING.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/02/re-espresso/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, a colleague brought in an espresso machine, a burr grinder, and some beans.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, now I know how to make espresso.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBrilliant Idea: I need to setup an espresso bar beside a cardiologist\u0026rsquo;s office and take 10% of their profits.  My EYEBALLS ARE VIBRATING.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Re: Espresso"},{"content":"So, I\u0026rsquo;ve left Twitter and Facebook. I had a flirtation with Blind that I\u0026rsquo;ve also given-up.\nDetox has been weird. I was used to having a hardwired line into the pulse of the internet. Between my 4 (!) twitter lists updating constantly and watching Tweetdeck incessantly, I was a straight-up information junkie.\nSo\u0026hellip;.what\u0026rsquo;s the methadone for this heroin?\nInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/devharryc/\nThus far, Instagram has a much different personality than either Twitter or Facebook.\nTwitter: Unvarnished snark, though blessedly brief. Facebook: ALL THE DRAMA. Political ranting. Divorces in progress. Passive Aggressive, Aggressive, Martyrs. After a week off of it, looking at it is unbearable. Google+: A nightmare that\u0026rsquo;s the perfect example of why Google doesn\u0026rsquo;t get human beings. At all. Then, what about Instagram? Basically, it\u0026rsquo;s a trifling place, devoid of politics. It\u0026rsquo;s default-public (like Twitter), and people seem to share just moments from their lives (like Facebook). It seems like there\u0026rsquo;s a great hardcore photography community on there, so I\u0026rsquo;m enjoying that.\nTheir app thus far is sheer nonsense to me. I don\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;get\u0026rdquo; what Instagram Stories are and the algorithm for picking what to show me doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to make sense.\nThat being said, as methadone, it seems to be working. It\u0026rsquo;s not a place to get \u0026ldquo;lost\u0026rdquo; like Facebook or Twitter, but it\u0026rsquo;s engrossing enough that I feel like I can (maybe) find a home there.\nAnd hey. Photos. I like photos.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/02/instagram-is-weird/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;ve \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/02/on-leaving-twitter-and-facebook/\" title=\"leaving twitter facebook\"\u003eleft Twitter and Facebook\u003c/a\u003e.  I had a flirtation with \u003ca href=\"https://www.teamblind.com/\"\u003eBlind\u003c/a\u003e that I\u0026rsquo;ve also given-up.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDetox has been weird.  I was used to having a hardwired line into the pulse of the internet.  Between my 4 (!) twitter lists updating constantly and watching Tweetdeck incessantly, I was a straight-up information junkie.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/matrix/images/e/e4/Jacking_In.png/revision/latest?cb=20130724005530\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/matrix/images/e/e4/Jacking_In.png/revision/latest?cb=20130724005530\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo\u0026hellip;.what\u0026rsquo;s the methadone for this heroin?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInstagram:\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/devharryc/\"\u003e https://www.instagram.com/devharryc/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThus far, Instagram has a much different personality than either Twitter or Facebook.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Instagram is Weird"},{"content":"Well, as I sit here in 2018, it seems social media is an utter failure. Given that I\u0026rsquo;ve been on internet chatrooms since 1993, this frustrates me.\nThis was basically the moment I knew I needed to get off twitter\nDon\u0026rsquo;t lie and say you care about the school shooting today.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been 1,866 days since Sandy Hook.\nSince then: 1,576 Mass Shootings, including Las Vegas.https://t.co/LCwT6fLedK\nRestate: You *may* care. WE THE PEOPLE don\u0026rsquo;t.\n— Harold Combs (@miniharryc) January 23, 2018\nYeah, that was the school shooting after Las Vegas, but before the one in Florida. I\u0026rsquo;d had it.\nHaving Tweetdeck open every waking minute I was at my desk was making me genuinely crazy.\nThen, the next week, Florida happened. I posted the same screen on Facebook, and it was the same fricking arguments we all had after Las Vegas. Same banal polarized arguments.\nI\u0026rsquo;m done.\nNo more twitter.\nNo more Facebook.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll keep accounts there, but I\u0026rsquo;m going dark.\nEnough is enough.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/02/on-leaving-twitter-and-facebook/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, as I sit here in 2018, it seems social media is an utter failure.  Given that I\u0026rsquo;ve been on internet chatrooms since 1993, this frustrates me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis was basically the moment I knew I needed to get off twitter\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDon\u0026rsquo;t lie and say you care about the school shooting today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been 1,866 days since Sandy Hook.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince then: 1,576 Mass Shootings, including Las Vegas.\u003ca href=\"https://t.co/LCwT6fLedK\"\u003ehttps://t.co/LCwT6fLedK\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRestate: You *may* care. WE THE PEOPLE don\u0026rsquo;t.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Leaving Twitter and Facebook"},{"content":"I say this after 19 years making software: There\u0026rsquo;s always a date. Get over it.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve lived through the Agile Revolution, and various schemes to sell consulting named: Spiral, Rational Unified Process, eXtreme Programming, Scrum, Kanban, and the Scaled Agile Framework.\nThrough it all, there\u0026rsquo;s always some sort of date. Words like:\nMilestone Need by date Deadline Start of Production Promise Date Customer Promise Statement of Work Honestly, if they\u0026rsquo;re not there, you should probably be worried. Projects of significance require planning and planning requires dates. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t seen a date in quite sometime, you might want to join the rest of us getting paid oodles of money to ship features to customers who\u0026rsquo;ll pay us.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s stipulate to one thing right now: You may abhor this concept. The people writing your paycheck live with both the concept of dates and the concept of missing them. People exist who understand resource planning to the same degree you understand the Big-O notation of Quicksort in the normal and degenerate case (N Lg N and N^2 if you\u0026rsquo;re keeping score). Those people are project managers. These people are the Keepers of Truth that Rands spoke about in 2010. And\u0026hellip;.they\u0026rsquo;re not going anywhere.\n* * *\nWhy does this come to mind today?\nBecause my team setup our shiny new Kanban board last Friday.\nMy tweak? The story cards HAVE DUE DATES on them.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/02/get-over-it-theres-always-a-date/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI say this after 19 years making software:  There\u0026rsquo;s always a date.  Get over it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve lived through the Agile Revolution, and various schemes to sell consulting named: Spiral, Rational Unified Process, \u003cem\u003eeXtreme Programming\u003c/em\u003e, Scrum, Kanban, and the Scaled Agile Framework.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThrough it all, there\u0026rsquo;s always some sort of date.  Words like:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMilestone\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNeed by date\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDeadline\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStart of Production\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePromise Date\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCustomer Promise\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStatement of Work\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHonestly, if they\u0026rsquo;re \u003cstrong\u003enot\u003c/strong\u003e there, you should probably be worried.  Projects of significance require planning and planning requires dates.  If you haven\u0026rsquo;t seen a date in quite sometime, you might want to join the rest of us getting paid oodles of money to ship features to customers who\u0026rsquo;ll pay us.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Get Over It; There's Always a Date"},{"content":"In sum, here\u0026rsquo;s my problem: I\u0026rsquo;ve joined a Baptist Church, but I\u0026rsquo;m no Baptist.\nIn detail it goes like this:\nBaptists come from the Calvinist tradition. You may have heard of \u0026ldquo;free will baptists.\u0026rdquo; These are not those.\nCalvinism is a very well reasoned Protestant doctrine based on Calvin\u0026rsquo;s Institutes of the Christian Religion. It further comes from the sole scrirptura tradition of the Reformation, in that it solely derives from points in the canonical scriptures, especially the New Testament.\nThere are 5 major points to Calvinism, encapsulated in the acronym TULIP.\nTotal Depravity\nUnconditional Election\nLimited Atonement\nIrresistible Grace\nPersistence of the Saints\nWhen I queried the pastor, he reaffirmed he \u0026ldquo;believes in God\u0026rsquo;s sovereignty,\u0026rdquo; furthermore the sermon that same day had the theme that \u0026ldquo;God is the Author of History,\u0026rdquo; leaning on the person of God as an omniscient and omnipotent active force in His creation. A follow-up visit from the assistant pastor affirmed that he is a \u0026ldquo;3 Point Calvinist,\u0026rdquo; denying Limited atonement and (I suppose) something else.\nIn every logical sense, Calvinism is the most mature, consistent Protestant doctrine. It is the logical conclusion of \u0026ldquo;Sole Scriptura,\u0026rdquo; the outright rejection of any sort of church tradition above the (inspired) word of scripture. Furthermore, it\u0026rsquo;s a rejection of any \u0026ldquo;Doctrine of Works,\u0026rdquo; which aligns with the Pauline interpretation of our works being \u0026ldquo;as filthy rags.\u0026rdquo;\nSo far, so good? What\u0026rsquo;s the issue?\nWell, if you\u0026rsquo;re elect, then it\u0026rsquo;s no big deal. You live your life\u0026ndash;it may be great, it may suck\u0026ndash;and you go to Heaven. \u0026ldquo;Free will is an illusion,\u0026rdquo; but in the end, thanks to good old irresistable grace, it\u0026rsquo;s winner, winner, chicken dinner. The troubling part about it is\u0026hellip;what if you\u0026rsquo;re not elect? Well, then, basically, you were damned from the moment your immortal soul was created, whatever (undefined) mechanism that is. Nothing you can do (works) can change that. You were created to burn in Hell. Choice is an illusion, buddy.\nFrom that, I don\u0026rsquo;t really understand Baptists, at least evangelical Baptists. Why in the world would you call the process of salvation \u0026ldquo;making a decision?\u0026rdquo;\nThere was. No. Decision. You simply followed your destiny.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve posited this sort of things to pastors for 20 years now, and most wave their hands at it. \u0026ldquo;If you\u0026rsquo;re asking this question, it\u0026rsquo;s no big deal. You\u0026rsquo;re in the elect. Why worry about it?\u0026rdquo;\nI think Calvinism has a basic misunderstanding of who God is because of its slavish devotion to what \u0026ldquo;scripture must be saying,\u0026rdquo; similar to the aberrations of the Pharisees in Christ\u0026rsquo;s day.\nThey, too, tried to put God in a box. That didn\u0026rsquo;t work out well.\nFor the moment, I\u0026rsquo;ll leave it be (just as I always have). The church we\u0026rsquo;ve joined is doctrinally sound, missional, and preaches Truth.\nIn general, I\u0026rsquo;ll love God. I\u0026rsquo;ll love people. I\u0026rsquo;ll never be a Baptist.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/01/tulip-again.-or-why-ill-never-be-a-baptist-in-my-heart/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn sum, here\u0026rsquo;s my problem:  I\u0026rsquo;ve joined a Baptist Church, but I\u0026rsquo;m no Baptist.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn detail it goes like this:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBaptists come from the Calvinist tradition.  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou may have heard of \u0026ldquo;free will baptists.\u0026rdquo;  These are not those.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCalvinism is a very well reasoned Protestant doctrine based on Calvin\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutes_of_the_Christian_Religion\"\u003eInstitutes of the Christian Religion\u003c/a\u003e.  It further comes from the \u003cem\u003esole scrirptura\u003c/em\u003e tradition of the Reformation, in that it solely derives from points in the canonical scriptures, especially the New Testament.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"TULIP, again. (Or, why I'll never be a Baptist in my Heart)"},{"content":"Things seem\u0026hellip;.bad.\nOffhand, enumerating the things that seem broken in my country right now:\nOur government isn\u0026rsquo;t really functioning. The Constitutional Republican Democracy of 1787 seems like a failure at scale. We\u0026rsquo;re more tribal than we\u0026rsquo;ve been since segregation, a process that\u0026rsquo;s accelerating. We\u0026rsquo;re in unending, global guerrilla war against people willing to kill themselves for an idea incompatible with our existence as a nation. We have roughly one mass shooting per day. Yesterday, there was one in Kentucky. We\u0026rsquo;ve lost our ability as a society to dream of something bigger: The moon, world peace, whatever. That seems like a 1960\u0026rsquo;s fever dream at this point. What can I do about any of the above? Nothing. I mean, I guess I can argue with people on the internet about it, for all the good that does. I could retain crushing anxiety about what might happen, much like when I was a kid having watched The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, convinced the world was ending. While meds help, stewing in anxiety triggers all day (Twitter) doesn\u0026rsquo;t help.\nI could \u0026lsquo;prep,\u0026rsquo; caching food, ammunition, and supplies for the coming devolution and collapse of civilization at 10 billion person scale. Suuuuure.\nOr, I could recognize my helplessness, my hilarious insignificance. I could accept the coming storm like someone in Pompeii in AD 79 saw that pyroclastic cloud inbound. Could he stop it? Of course not!\nLikewise, can I do anything about those bullet points above? No.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve lived all of my life with an inflated, entitled sense of self-importance and my own agency. I felt like if I complained and cajoled, enough that I could make a difference. I\u0026rsquo;ve come to apprehend that at scale in this climate that\u0026rsquo;s likely nothing more than hubris.\nI can love my family, be a human being to those around me, and beyond that, it\u0026rsquo;s just out of my control. Maybe that\u0026rsquo;s the growth. I\u0026rsquo;ve long posed the dichotomy to myself that either I stick my head in the sand (denial) or struggle against whatever wrong there might be (anger/bargaining). Perhaps, now comes acceptance. I will one day be dead, as will everyone I\u0026rsquo;ve ever known and every material thing I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen will be (at best) dust, pulverized and forgotten. There was evil in this world before I came, and perhaps more after I leave. As the Book says, \u0026ldquo;[He] sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.\u0026rdquo; (Mat 5:45)\nIt\u0026rsquo;s time to focus away from myself, and stop deluding myself that at scale I can do anything. My attachment to \u0026ldquo;people I\u0026rsquo;ve never met\u0026rdquo; as my wife says must go away. My anger and frustration at the omnipresent wrongs does nothing but distance me from those I actually care about.\nSo, that\u0026rsquo;s what I want to do. I\u0026rsquo;m considering dropping Twitter and Facebook and just being present. I\u0026rsquo;d certainly do better at my primary responsibilities.\nIs that equivalent to giving up? I don\u0026rsquo;t think so. I consider it getting real with what my actual sphere-of-influence is.\nWill I do it?\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll see.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/01/option-accept-my-own-insignificance/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThings seem\u0026hellip;.bad.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOffhand, enumerating the things that seem broken in my country right now:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOur government isn\u0026rsquo;t really functioning.  The Constitutional Republican Democracy of 1787 seems like a failure at scale.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re more tribal than we\u0026rsquo;ve been since segregation, a process that\u0026rsquo;s accelerating.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re in unending, global guerrilla war against people willing to kill themselves for an idea incompatible with our existence as a nation.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe have roughly one mass shooting per day.  Yesterday, there was one in Kentucky.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve lost our ability as a society to dream of something bigger: The moon, world peace, whatever.  That seems like a 1960\u0026rsquo;s fever dream at this point.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat can I do about \u003cem\u003eany\u003c/em\u003e of the above?  \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Option: Accept My Own Insignificance"},{"content":"So, 2017 is past.\nAs luck would have it, we decided today would be a good day for midwinter cleaning, as I\u0026rsquo;m halfway through my 2 week stint off work. I dug through a box I had from our move back in June, and within was my first Employee Evaluation from Amazon. I got to look at what I thought would be my 2017 and got to compare it to what I actually accomplished.\nWhat an interesting idea. So, let\u0026rsquo;s do that for 2017.\nHere are some things I wanted to do in 2017. These are not New Year\u0026rsquo;s Resolutions, but, meh.\nGet out of that Rental. We were paying 2k / month for a rather crappy rental with little insulation. It leaked air like a sieve, had a back yard full of fire ant mounds, and had a property management company with all the integrity of your average Nixon advisor. Status: Achieved. We were out by June 30th. Get out of Austin. I like Austin. Sort of. I dislike the concrete and traffic, but it\u0026rsquo;s a place with style all its own. That being said\u0026hellip;.the northern suburbs in Williamson County are everything wrong with urban sprawl. Made-up municipalities with no civic identity. Find somewhere that\u0026rsquo;s a real place. Status: Achieved. We found Georgetown, Texas. I once again live in georgetown. Wow. Get the girls in school. We were staunch homeschoolers for 4 years. My wife was really good at it, but we both felt that the Lord was leading us in a different direction. Status: Achieved. We found Grace Academy in Georgetown, and went through a lengthy application and interview process. Both girls are flourishing. For example, they sang Silent night in the Christmas cantata\u0026hellip;in German. Buy a house. Subservient to \u0026ldquo;get the girls in school\u0026rdquo; was \u0026ldquo;find a house\u0026rdquo;. That is, the location of one would drive the location of the other. Status: Achieved. So, we settled in Georgetown, a few miles from their school. There was plenty of drama: We were negotiating on the house next door to ours, and the builder sold it out from under us, for less money. Buy a new car. Yeah, no. This was more of a dream than a goal. So, all told, a very successful year.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2018/01/closing-2017/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, 2017 is past.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs luck would have it, we decided today would be a good day for midwinter cleaning, as I\u0026rsquo;m halfway through my 2 week stint off work.  I dug through a box I had from our move back in June, and within was my first Employee Evaluation from Amazon.  I got to look at what I thought would be my 2017 and got to compare it to what I actually accomplished.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Closing, 2017"},{"content":"After a brief spate of car fever, I did some research on (say) a Chevy Cruze Diesel or a Chevy Volt. What with the recent flooding in Houston, I convinced myself that buying used might be a bad idea, so I decided to check out incentives and options out there.\nThe short version: Math doesn\u0026rsquo;t lie.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s say you finance a $30,000 at 0% interest for 5 years. That\u0026rsquo;s 60 months, so the math\u0026rsquo;s rather obvious: $30,000 / 60 == $500 / month.\nOuch.\nThe reality is, like a good Dave Ramsey acolyte, I\u0026rsquo;ll likely be buying used again. I haven\u0026rsquo;t bought a new car since 2004, and one can generally save thousands / tens of thousands of dollars that way.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/10/continued-car-musings/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter a brief spate of car fever, I did some research on (say) a Chevy Cruze Diesel or a Chevy Volt.  What with the recent flooding in Houston, I convinced myself that buying used might be a bad idea, so I decided to check out incentives and options out there.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe short version: Math doesn\u0026rsquo;t lie.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s say you finance a $30,000 at 0% interest for 5 years.  That\u0026rsquo;s 60 months, so the math\u0026rsquo;s rather obvious: $30,000 / 60 == $500 / month.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Continued Car Musings"},{"content":"\nMy friend Dannah (Russell) Jones died this past Friday morning, after collapsing following exercise the night before. She was thirty-eight years old.\nI met Dannah when we were freshmen at Georgetown College in 1997. She was a self-proclaimed \u0026ldquo;military brat\u0026rdquo; lately of Dayton, Ohio. She had a spark of life, humor, and intelligence. She made some friends, but she wasn\u0026rsquo;t a \u0026ldquo;joiner.\u0026rdquo; If Dannah didn\u0026rsquo;t like you, you\u0026rsquo;d know about it.\nThat entire freshmen year, Dannah and her roommate Crystal hung out often with me and my roommate Charlie. We\u0026rsquo;d knock around the greater Lexington, KY area in her Hyundai Accent 2-door hatchback, Charlie and I smashed into the back seat. The first (and only) time I ever saw Titanic we went in her car.\nAs people do, we parted ways. I decided to bury my heart in work, where it would stay for the next 15 years and Dannah apparently went to to a career at NASA and other concerns in Alabama.\nShe loved her family like she loved everything: Fiercely, and beyond reason. Dannah was the kind of individual who\u0026rsquo;d stand in front of a bullet for anyone\u0026hellip;.anything\u0026hellip;she loved.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;ll close with one small anecdote:\nOne night driving on US-25 from Georgetown, Dannah and Crystal happened upon a cat hit by a car. Most folks would\u0026rsquo;ve driven straight by, but they stopped.\nThe cat was mortally wounded and wouldn\u0026rsquo;t last long.\nDannah wasn\u0026rsquo;t okay with that. No sir.\nShe scooped up the cat and put its broken body into her high school letterman jacket that she wore often. She then threw Crystal the keys and said, \u0026ldquo;Get us to an animal hospital.\u0026rdquo;\nThey went to the Vet office on 25 in Georgetown. It was like 11pm, so no one was there and there wasn\u0026rsquo;t an oncall number or anything like that. So, they did a hazard-flashers-blazing banzai run as fast as that Accent would go down to Lexington. Along the way they got pulled over.\n\u0026ldquo;Can I see your license, ma\u0026rsquo;am?\u0026rdquo; posed the officer, flashlight in hand at the door.\n\u0026ldquo;LOOK,\u0026rdquo; bellowed Dannah, \u0026ldquo;I have a DYING CAT HERE, and I NEED TO GET IT TO A DOCTOR, OKAY?!\u0026rdquo;\nPer my understanding, by sheer force of will, Dannah got that cat a police escort to the 24-hour vet clinic, where despite heroic measures it died.\nThat was Dannah. Anyone that knew her probably has ten stories just like that.\nGoodbye, Dannah, until we meet again. God bless your family; I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine the hole in their lives now.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/09/a-word-about-dannah/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cIQeG9SKssA/WcgaXwhmZUI/AAAAAAAAIFA/1Wkpwe5Mjfo9B_Nl2hNLKur8YB7QVJkZwCLcBGAs/s1600/Dannah.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cIQeG9SKssA/WcgaXwhmZUI/AAAAAAAAIFA/1Wkpwe5Mjfo9B_Nl2hNLKur8YB7QVJkZwCLcBGAs/s320/Dannah.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy friend Dannah (Russell) Jones \u003ca href=\"http://www.laughlinservice.com/memsol.cgi?user_id=2011788\"\u003edied this past Friday morning\u003c/a\u003e, after collapsing following exercise the night before.  She was thirty-eight years old.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI met Dannah when we were freshmen at Georgetown College in 1997.  She was a self-proclaimed \u0026ldquo;military brat\u0026rdquo; lately of Dayton, Ohio.  She had a spark of life, humor, and intelligence.  She made some friends, but she wasn\u0026rsquo;t a \u0026ldquo;joiner.\u0026rdquo;  If Dannah didn\u0026rsquo;t like you, you\u0026rsquo;d know about it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Word About Dannah"},{"content":"Much as it takes a symphony in multiple movements to fully exercise an orchestra, Edgar Wright\u0026rsquo;s Baby Driver fully exercises film as a systemic input to your brainstem. I left exhausted, happy, and eager to see it again.\nAct I, Take Me Away! Act 1 is Wright\u0026rsquo;s original concept writ large: \u0026ldquo;Baby\u0026rdquo; is a getaway driver, and we see a contender for the best getaway scene in film set perfectly to a soundtrack. This is the overture, the who, what, and where. There\u0026rsquo;s almost no dialog\u0026ndash;just searing \u0026ldquo;wow\u0026hellip;.Wow\u0026hellip;.WOW!!!!!\u0026rdquo;\nThen from that allegro, an adagio: A minutes-long scene shot as a SINGLE FOLLOWING SHOT with lyrics from a song visually embedded throughout. Once my brain got it, it was this surreal joy, all from an unassuming kid going for coffee down a street.\nPer IMDB, this shot took 28 takes to get, and it seems a miracle it took that few.\nAct 1 closes with the divvying up of the money, the thieves going their separate ways, with John Hamm\u0026rsquo;s greasy, coke-head hedonist saying, \u0026ldquo;Next time Doc calls, Baby\u0026hellip;.don\u0026rsquo;t pick up.\u0026rdquo;\nAnd then, the first hiccup in this Mozart: \u0026ldquo;One more job and I\u0026rsquo;m done.\u0026rdquo;\nOh\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s going to be *that* kind of picture? That \u0026ldquo;Gone in 60 Seconds\u0026rdquo; cross/double-cross BS we\u0026rsquo;ve all seen 50 times?\nWell, yes, and no.\nAnd Now, The Plot Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a cypher. \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve talked more to you today than I\u0026rsquo;ve spoken to anyone in a month,\u0026rdquo; he tells his crush-cum-soulmate, Debra (Lily James) Verbally, it\u0026rsquo;s hard to figure out anything about his story and his motivations. However, as with the rest of the film, he communicates with music. He\u0026rsquo;s obsessed with it.\nThanks to some nifty \u0026ldquo;show, don\u0026rsquo;t tell\u0026rdquo; scenes in Act 2, we learn Baby was orphaned in an accident that left him with tinnitus he smothers with music, and he\u0026rsquo;s obsessed with music because of his dead mother, whom he venerates much like Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy.\nI really appreciated Elgort\u0026rsquo;s performance: He\u0026rsquo;s a virtual prisoner to Doc, with such Stockholm Syndrome that he\u0026rsquo;s convinced himself that \u0026ldquo;This is fine\u0026hellip;I can handle this.\u0026rdquo; He has his compartmentalized life, with \u0026ldquo;Work\u0026rdquo; being his driving and \u0026ldquo;home\u0026rdquo; being his deaf, infirm foster Dad.\n(By the way, his foster Dad steals Every. Freaking. Scene.)\nEnter Jamie Foxx. He\u0026rsquo;s everything Baby is not: Worldly, cold, homicidal. He\u0026rsquo;s the ugly, nihilistic reality of a life of crime. Ultimately he forces Baby to realize that he\u0026rsquo;s chosen to be here. That being said, he\u0026rsquo;s terrific in the role, just short of a caricature of Thug Life.\nFrom there it\u0026rsquo;s by-the-numbers: A love story. A threat. A response. A choice. The consequences.\nRealization: This thing is spitting distance from a classic Tragedy.\nAlas, it\u0026rsquo;s not to be.\nWith a Day\u0026rsquo;s Perspective\u0026hellip;. With 24 hours\u0026rsquo; distance, does the film hold up to deep examination?\nIn a word, no.\nThis is not The Godfather. Certain characters and character motivations appear out of nowhere, usually in service of that ending. The good guys have terminal Stormtrooper Aim. Kevin Spacey is uneven at best, phoning-it-in at worst.\nAnd Then, The Violence The violence-averse should avoid this film. The \u0026ldquo;butcher\u0026rdquo; scene is gratuitous, and I\u0026rsquo;ll leave it at that. It\u0026rsquo;s almost like Wright felt the need for a Tarantino bloodbath. IMO, he didn\u0026rsquo;t. We were deep into the falling action by that point: Baby had made his decision, and we pretty much knew Bats was a psychopath.\nThe Ending\u0026hellip;What Might Have Been Last, the ending is treacle, quite close to dreck. So much so that it seems like a fever dream\u0026hellip;.or the last thoughts of a dying man ;) . A little Peyton Farquhar action, perhaps?\nAlas, anyone expecting \u0026ldquo;Vanishing Point\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Butch Cassidy\u0026rdquo; should just watch those instead. I do wonder if there\u0026rsquo;s a different ending somewhere.\nSo\u0026hellip;? This film is art. Artwork means different things based on the viewer. Popcorn-chewing action-movie fans leave satisfied. Nihilists nod, approving. Hopeless romantics will sigh with contentment. Pasty, put-upon introverts may hope anew they\u0026rsquo;ll find the perfect girl and she\u0026rsquo;ll run away with them.\nBut, that\u0026rsquo;s real art for you. It will challenge you and reflect who you are.\nEveryone gets something different from Beethoven\u0026rsquo;s 9th, and so it is with Wright\u0026rsquo;s Baby Driver.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/07/review-baby-driver/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMuch as it takes a symphony in multiple movements to fully exercise an orchestra, Edgar Wright\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BabyDriverMovie/?fref=mentions\"\u003eBaby Driver\u003c/a\u003e fully exercises film as a systemic input to your brainstem. I left exhausted, happy, and eager to see it again.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8e/Baby_Driver_poster.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8e/Baby_Driver_poster.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"act-i-take-me-away\"\u003eAct I, Take Me Away!\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAct 1 is Wright\u0026rsquo;s original concept writ large: \u0026ldquo;Baby\u0026rdquo; is a getaway driver, and we see a contender for the best getaway scene in film set perfectly to a soundtrack. This is the overture, the who, what, and where. There\u0026rsquo;s almost no dialog\u0026ndash;just searing \u0026ldquo;wow\u0026hellip;.Wow\u0026hellip;.WOW!!!!!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Baby Driver"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve just been having a rough time lately.\nI\u0026rsquo;m like an overstuffed Tupperware and me trying to close the lid and put one foot in front of the other isn\u0026rsquo;t working so well in the past few days.\nThis is me attempting to talk that out, to myself.\nTo begin: My sixteen-year-old stepson chose not to live with us, and the Kentucky judiciary has supported that decision. Months of preparation and legal wrangling resulted to a seven minute conversation in chambers. That was a month ago, June 8th, and the reality of it settles upon me a little more each day. It\u0026rsquo;s all just sadness and anger, and it comes out at inconvenient times for no apparent reason.\nSometime in August, I\u0026rsquo;ll put the kid I swore to love on a plane and send him back to a bad situation because ultimately he chose that over being part of our family. Maybe if I write that sentence a thousand times I\u0026rsquo;ll understand it.\nEveryone in my family has accepted the above reality, and I\u0026rsquo;ve had a year to get ready for it. Mentally, I have. Our lawyer laid this out as the likely scenario. Mentally, I understand this is likely the best scenario for everyone involved. Part of me is glad that all involved have agreed this \u0026ldquo;was the last time.\u0026rdquo;\nAll involved made it clear that I had no standing in any of the above, anyway.\nReality: We\u0026rsquo;re not promised tomorrow.\nIt\u0026rsquo;d be better if I was glad of the decade I had with him. I could learn from it and pour out into the two children with which I do have standing. It still hurts like hell.\nAt the same time, a week back in Kentucky reminded me how much I miss it. I\u0026rsquo;ve travelled all over the world, and I always enjoyed coming back to Kentucky. In the year I\u0026rsquo;ve been here, I\u0026rsquo;ve had the \u0026ldquo;crushing it\u0026rdquo; mentality: \u0026ldquo;How are things going?\u0026rdquo; people would ask.\n\u0026ldquo;CRUSHING IT!\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;d think and give some glowing reviews of Texas and Austin.\nReality: Austin is a traffic nightmare with tons of fake people. I\u0026rsquo;m cautiously hopeful our move to Georgetown, Texas will help that somewhat.\nWork is still great.\nJust\u0026hellip;.I\u0026rsquo;m tired all the time. I shifted from the stress of the Joey situation to prepping for a move, to moving, to (slowly) setting up house. Whitney has been wonderful throughout, but every day I go to work in a daze. The commute\u0026rsquo;s 50 miles round-trip now, so that\u0026rsquo;s 60-90 minutes on the road each day.\nAtop that, deadlines loom.\nReality: Deadlines always loom. I need to take care of myself, or it\u0026rsquo;s going to come out at my family and at work. Yesterday was not a good day at the office.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s more, but there\u0026rsquo;s no sense in discussing it. We\u0026rsquo;ve gotten through much worse, and things are looking up on many fronts\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/07/down/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve just been having a rough time lately.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m like an overstuffed Tupperware and me trying to close the lid and put one foot in front of the other isn\u0026rsquo;t working so well in the past few days.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is me attempting to talk that out, to myself.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo begin: My sixteen-year-old stepson chose not to live with us, and the Kentucky judiciary has supported that decision.  Months of preparation and legal wrangling resulted to a seven minute conversation in chambers.  That was a month ago, June 8th, and the reality of it settles upon me a little more each day.  It\u0026rsquo;s all just sadness and anger, and it comes out at inconvenient times for no apparent reason.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Down"},{"content":"I haven\u0026rsquo;t bought a car for myself since 2008, at which time I bought an eighteen year old car I never should have sold.\nIn the intervening ten years, I\u0026rsquo;ve had two cars, both welcome hand-me-downs from my wife: The Camry-of-Doom and Sparky, my current 2010 Ford Fusion.\nHaving moved to Austin, paid-off my wife\u0026rsquo;s Sienna minivan, and begun to sock-away some funds for a new ride, it seems time to consider what\u0026rsquo;s next.\nIdly checking KBB.com, I noticed my Fusion\u0026rsquo;s worth has nose-dived from around $9000 during the $4/gallon fuel days to roughly $2000. There are other things:\nSome electrical gremlins are popping up. The traction control system was inoperative for an entire day, then fixed itself. The tire pressure systems likewise seems to be dying. Likely this is just dying batteries in the in-wheel sensors, but still. The Sync system seems more an more reluctant to work with my iPhone. Every iPhone firmware update makes this worse, it seems It\u0026rsquo;s not as safe as a newer car. This platform was originally a 2003 Mazda6, and was designed in the late 1990\u0026rsquo;s. There\u0026rsquo;s some rust in the rear driver\u0026rsquo;s side wheel arch. Not surface rust; this has perforated from behind. (Residual of its life spent in Ky with road salt, no doubt.) The brakes have a weird pulse in them under 10mph, like the regenerative and friction brakes are having a battle and the whole car is losing. The trunk remains horrible, the penalty for driving a hybrid. That being said, it\u0026rsquo;s still a great commuter even with 124,000 miles on the clock. I got 39.2 mpg on my 24 mile journey to the office today, much of it spent north of 70 mph on I-35. It\u0026rsquo;s paid-off. It still drives quite well, though it could use some new dampers all-around.\nLastly, the hybrid powertrain is renowned for going 300,000+ miles in fleet service. Ford over-engineered this powertrain. Out of 42 million cells in the manufactured fleet, only five have ever shown an issue. Not 5 million or 5 thousand. FIVE.\nLegitimately, I may have lucked into the modern-day equivalent of a Volvo 240. If that\u0026rsquo;s the case, I\u0026rsquo;d be a fool to get rid of it.\n* * *\nSupposing I did, these are these are what I\u0026rsquo;m looking at\nContenders Accord Hybrid\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t really liked any Accord since ~2003, but the tech in the Accord Hybrid is undeniable. It\u0026rsquo;s likely good for 35-50 mpg, too.\nChevy Bolt\nYeah, it\u0026rsquo;s ugly as sin, but the Bolt is a real car, developed by a real manufacturer (read: Not Tesla®), and I have faith it\u0026rsquo;d actually function. Living in Georgetown, Texas, all our energy comes from wind turbines, so this would be a supremely green choice. At \u0026gt; 200 miles, this thing would realistically do all the driving I need to do and I can install a level 2 charger at home for the remainder.\nThis is (or it\u0026rsquo;s brother the Volt) are likely the smartest choices.\nGMC Canyon\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been in love with these since they came out. In duramax diesel form, these check nearly every box I can think of:\nRoom for 4 (5 in a pinch) Could tow a (small) camping trailer easily Rugged. Diesel. Great visibility Diesel resale value should be great. Operating costs would be higher than the 2 above, but at some point, you just have to get with the Texas program. People drive trucks here, even in the Democratic People\u0026rsquo;s Republic of Austin.\nThese were the 3 of practicality. Now on to insanity.\nSubaru WRX (not STI) I had an opportunity to buy a fresh-off-the-boat 2002 WRX in March 2001. It was $24k and the VW Jetta 1.8T I bought was $21k. Cheapskate me went with the \u0026lsquo;Dub, and regretted it.\nThing is, a Subaru is a complete waste in Texas. It barely rains here, so AWD is just a bunch of parasitic drag and lots more rotating mass to break. :sigh:\nFiesta ST (1st gen)\n:sigh:\nThis car is acclaimed as the best driver\u0026rsquo;s car out there, but being realistic\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s too small for me. They also break quite alot. I\u0026rsquo;d still love to have one. I drove one on a test drive 3 years ago and at the EcoBoost challenge 2 years ago, and nothing I\u0026rsquo;ve driven since my R50 MINI made me smile more.\nAnd last, if I actually were intelligent but didn\u0026rsquo;t want an EV or PHEV\u0026hellip;.\nLexus GS\nIn short, this is a BMW 5-series that will be actually reliable. It\u0026rsquo;s RWD, which is my preference and perfectly fine in Texas. Safe, reliable, roomy, huuuuge trunk, respectable mileage.\n:) target acquired, I guess. Though, still wouldn\u0026rsquo;t mind having a GMC Canyon Duramax right beside it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/06/the-reality-of-the-next-car-purchase/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI haven\u0026rsquo;t bought a car for myself since 2008, at which time I bought an \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/sweet-e30-in-cincy/\" title=\"e30 in Cincy\"\u003eeighteen year old car\u003c/a\u003e I never should have sold.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the intervening ten years, I\u0026rsquo;ve had two cars, both welcome hand-me-downs from my wife:  \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/01/in-which-the-fusion-and-camry-of-doom-parley-amid-the-snow/\" title=\"fusion camry of doom\"\u003eThe Camry-of-Doom and Sparky, my current 2010 Ford Fusion\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHaving moved to Austin, paid-off my wife\u0026rsquo;s Sienna minivan, and begun to sock-away some funds for a new ride, it seems time to consider what\u0026rsquo;s next.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The reality of the next car purchase"},{"content":"I kid you not, this is like the Winston Churchill \u0026ldquo;never give up\u0026rdquo; speech for me.\nWow.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/06/fathers-never-give-up.-never-surrender./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI kid you not, this is like the Winston Churchill \u0026ldquo;never give up\u0026rdquo; speech for me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWow.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fathers: Never Give up.  Never surrender."},{"content":"\n\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;ve lost the bite in the bit!\u0026rdquo; my dad yelled.\n\u0026ldquo;Huh?\u0026rdquo;\nI was about nine and we were installing a swinging gate on our farm, drilling two holes in this gigantic post my father sunk into the ground in front of our tobacco barn. I was excited to be helping him, since I was a general doughy screw-up (his pre-conversion past time was calling me \u0026lsquo;Lardy\u0026rsquo;).\nAnyway, I\u0026rsquo;d been using the brace and bit apparatus because we were probably 100 yards from the nearest electrical outlet. It was a neat hand tool: You basically put the drill bit where you wanted a hole, put your shoulder to the knob at the back, then turned it until you bored the hole desired\u0026hellip;.\n\u0026hellip;unless, that is, unless the drill bit lost its \u0026lsquo;bite\u0026rsquo;. The front of the bit had to be cutting fresh wood. Mine was spinning uselessly. There was little to do but withdraw the bit from the hole, clear out the debris, and begin again while pressing much harder.\n* * *\nAll that to say: That\u0026rsquo;s kind of how I feel today. It\u0026rsquo;s been a whirlwind week: Planning a trip to KY, transferring more money than I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen in my life to a title company, closing a house, arranging logistics. Oh, and I was on-call at work most of that time.\nBasically, I just want to hide in a dark corner for about a day and press the (unavailable) \u0026lsquo;RESET\u0026rsquo; button my my brain.\nOh well. At least I\u0026rsquo;m off-call now and have a quiet(er) two days before the trek back to the Eastern Time Zone.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/05/no-bite-today/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.qy1.de/img/bohr312247b.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.qy1.de/img/bohr312247b.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;ve lost the bite in the bit!\u0026rdquo; my dad yelled.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Huh?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was about nine and we were installing a swinging gate on our farm, drilling two holes in this gigantic post my father sunk into the ground in front of our tobacco barn.   I was excited to be helping him, since I was a general doughy screw-up (his pre-conversion past time was calling me \u0026lsquo;Lardy\u0026rsquo;).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, I\u0026rsquo;d been using the brace and bit apparatus because we were probably 100 yards from the nearest electrical outlet.  It was a neat hand tool: You basically put the drill bit where you wanted a hole, put your shoulder to the knob at the back, then turned it until you bored the hole desired\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"No 'Bite' today"},{"content":"\nSo, after the dirge that was series nine\u0026ndash;Clara\u0026rsquo;s gone, yay!\u0026ndash;we waited.\nWe waited since DECEMBER 25, 2015. We noticed there\u0026rsquo;d be a new companion and she\u0026rsquo;d be \u0026ldquo;cool and different\u0026rdquo;. We heard Moffat was leaving. We noted Capaldi was bowing-out. None of these were good signs.\nThis sounded much like Poochie had come to the Whoniverse\nThus far, it would seem that\u0026rsquo;s entirely wrong. Bill\u0026rsquo;s a (slightly unintelligible) delight, and Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s Twelfth Doctor is now\u0026hellip;.well\u0026hellip;.spry. Wiping his memory clean of dour Clara seems like it made him whole again, like he\u0026rsquo;s once again the madman in the box, with all of Time and Space.\nWant to take a ride? For the first time since Matt Smith\u0026rsquo;s 11th hung-up his bowtie and fez, the answer seems to be: \u0026ldquo;YES!\u0026rdquo;\nThe first two episodes have been small, almost in the way that Series 1 and its zero-budget was small. In \u0026ldquo;The Pilot,\u0026rdquo; we\u0026rsquo;re largely stuck on earth, learning who the doctor is with Bill the new companion. Bill is young, fearless, and curious. That is: She\u0026rsquo;s Doctor catnip. The Doctor\u0026rsquo;s masquerading as a professor at some appropriately stodgy university in Britain, and catches Bill sneaking into his lectures. Bill\u0026rsquo;s a worker at the commissary, and her job is to dole out French Fries to the paying customers\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;students. The Doctor decides to tutor Bill, free of charge and we follow them for the better part of a year as they grow closer and Bill\u0026rsquo;s curiosity eventually leads her to learn The Doctor\u0026rsquo;s true nature. He\u0026rsquo;s a 2000+ (ouch\u0026hellip;11 and 12 has been a thousand years, roughly) year-old Time Lord, and he has this box that\u0026rsquo;s bigger on the inside. The Doctor saves her from a random alien menace/stalker, then they\u0026rsquo;re Facebook official as it were.\nBy the time we get to \u0026lsquo;Smile\u0026rsquo; we\u0026rsquo;re into the first true Doctor + companion adventure, into the future, on an earth colony. All is not as it seems\u0026ndash;is it ever?\u0026ndash;and we get a tiny plot that\u0026rsquo;s mostly Bill and Twelve talking. Here\u0026rsquo;s the kicker: That\u0026rsquo;s great. Their dialog can hold-up an entire episode, like a production of \u0026ldquo;Our Town\u0026rdquo; with 2 props. Their chemistry\u0026rsquo;s genuinely great, in a way that JLC and Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s never was. The ending\u0026rsquo;s not satisfactory in \u0026ldquo;Smile,\u0026rdquo; but that almost seems right. This is a new companion. She needs to get used to The Doctor pulling some magnificent deus ex machina late into the final act. That\u0026rsquo;s who he is.\nIn sum, this series seems really promising and light, and both the leads are putting in the work. I\u0026rsquo;m quite happy to see that and look forward to the next 10 episodes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/04/dr-who-series-10-bill-saves-the-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://i2.wp.com/blogtorwho.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/DW-Series-10-Cinema-Poster-US.jpg?fit=997%2C1470\u0026amp;ssl=1\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://i2.wp.com/blogtorwho.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/DW-Series-10-Cinema-Poster-US.jpg?fit=997%2C1470\u0026ssl=1\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, after the dirge that was series nine\u0026ndash;Clara\u0026rsquo;s gone, yay!\u0026ndash;we waited.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe waited since \u003cem\u003eDECEMBER 25, 2015\u003c/em\u003e.  We noticed there\u0026rsquo;d be a new companion and she\u0026rsquo;d be \u0026ldquo;cool and different\u0026rdquo;.  We heard Moffat was leaving.  We noted Capaldi was bowing-out.  None of these were good signs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis sounded much like Poochie had come to the Whoniverse\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsons/images/1/1b/Poochie_Large.png/revision/latest?cb=20150819035256\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsons/images/1/1b/Poochie_Large.png/revision/latest?cb=20150819035256\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThus far, it would seem that\u0026rsquo;s entirely wrong. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBill\u0026rsquo;s a (slightly unintelligible) delight, and Capaldi\u0026rsquo;s Twelfth Doctor is now\u0026hellip;.well\u0026hellip;.\u003cem\u003espry.\u003c/em\u003e  Wiping his memory clean of dour Clara seems like it made him whole again, like he\u0026rsquo;s once again the madman in the box, with all of Time and Space.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dr Who Series 10: Bill Saves the Day?"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ll never forget M.\nM was my mentor, and we didn\u0026rsquo;t always get along. I chose him as a mentor because we didn\u0026rsquo;t get along. I needed someone who had different perspectives than I did.\nAnyway, one of our early meetings, I talked about people at work I admired. I expressed that I admired a guy we\u0026rsquo;ll call Brad.\nBrad was a guy I\u0026rsquo;d worked with many times. He was part of senior leadership, and he still found time to write code, on the evenings and weekends if necessary. At the time, his architecture team was embroiled in doing the scut work of rolling-out \u0026ldquo;Agile Development\u0026rdquo; to a hardware-development organization. (Another really long post for another day\u0026hellip;.)\n\u0026hellip;.but M wasn\u0026rsquo;t so happy about it. M was a Principal Engineer (there\u0026rsquo;s another name for it there, but let\u0026rsquo;s just call it \u0026lsquo;Principle\u0026rsquo;) and he took a dim view of people that wrote code at that level.\n\u0026ldquo;Do you really think Brad should be writing so much code?\u0026rdquo; he asked.\n\u0026ldquo;Umm\u0026hellip;..yes.\u0026rdquo; I was slightly dumbstruck.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;m not so naive that I didn\u0026rsquo;t get M\u0026rsquo;s point. He was thinking opportunity cost. Brad was paid 10-20x what developers in our offshore developer offices pulled down every year. From a total cost perspective, it made more sense to have him lead 20, 40, or 100 developers and optimize their stuff and the overall systems architecture, versus him mashing a keyboard 8 hours a day pounding out embedded C code.\nI get that. It makes sense, logically, but there are several fallacies there.\nOutsourcing Almost from the beginning, this blog has been about the massive outsourcing in the United States in the late 1990\u0026rsquo;s. Companies viewed their IT departments and programmers as a cost center, and so they sought to outsource to consulting firms like IBM Global Services, or they spun up their own development centers worldwide and outsourced to their. My former employer did the latter, spinning up shops in Kolkata, India, and Cebu City, Philippines.\nCharitably, results were mixed. In two clauses, India got expensive and insubordinate (not that I blame them!), and Cebu had to sustain 40% turnover year to year. Neither was entirely tenable. On a spreadsheet, it certainly seems better to have 100 developers instead of 10, or pay 1/10th the price for the same widget. It just never quite works out that way, you need either. \u0026ldquo;Making outsourcing work\u0026rdquo; with a Business Analyst / Remote Dev team model is possible, with enough detailed specs. However, this adds years to your product cycles and eventually you lose. Your competitor with a colocated development arm will destroy you.\n\u0026ldquo;Growing Beyond Coding\u0026rdquo; We\u0026rsquo;ve all met this guy. We\u0026rsquo;ve interviewed him occasionally: \u0026ldquo;Oh, yeah, I\u0026rsquo;m certainly good enough at the tech stuff, but what I really want to do is get into Management and Architecture, the place where the real decisions are made.\u0026rdquo; Go vomit. I\u0026rsquo;ll wait.\nIMO, anyone you want anywhere near your product will never espouse that attitude. We get into this business because we love solving problems, and we generally like the thrill of making computers do our bidding in the most efficient and AWESOMESAUCE way possible. I don\u0026rsquo;t think you grow out of that.\nCounterpoint: Another (unofficial) mentor of mine, A, once told me, \u0026ldquo;You know who the real architects are? They\u0026rsquo;re guys like Bill, and Seth, and Brandon\u0026hellip;.guys who make 100 decisions a day about how to do stuff in the system. They\u0026rsquo;re the people _implementing things. _That\u0026rsquo;s real architecture.\u0026rdquo;\nIf you can\u0026rsquo;t tell, I agree with A very much.\n* * *\nThe New Model (Developer) Army What\u0026rsquo;s really changed since the Architect / Business Analyst / Peon Programmer model arose in the 1960\u0026rsquo;s is the tooling. We now have high-level programming languages, IDEs, and test/integration tools that allow one developer to do the work of 20 from 1990 and perhaps 5 from 2000 when I started. It\u0026rsquo;s entirely practical for a two-pizza-box team to deliver significant function, and that\u0026rsquo;s the model most startups follow today.\nIn sum, don\u0026rsquo;t take your \u0026lsquo;Brad\u0026rsquo; developers and take them away from the code. They need it, and you need them to stay in it. Consider how you might rearrange things so they\u0026rsquo;re still influencers across the organization and they\u0026rsquo;re still making daily commits. I believe you\u0026rsquo;ll like the results.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/04/let-brad-code/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll never forget M.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eM was my mentor, and we didn\u0026rsquo;t always get along.  I \u003cem\u003echose him\u003c/em\u003e as a mentor because we didn\u0026rsquo;t get along.  I needed someone who had different perspectives than I did.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, one of our early meetings, I talked about people at work I admired.  I expressed that I admired a guy we\u0026rsquo;ll call Brad.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBrad was a guy I\u0026rsquo;d worked with many times.  He was part of senior leadership, and he still found time to write code, on the evenings and weekends if necessary.  At the time, his architecture team was embroiled in doing the scut work of rolling-out \u0026ldquo;Agile Development\u0026rdquo; to a hardware-development organization.  (Another really long post for another day\u0026hellip;.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Let Brad Code"},{"content":"Herein, I shall commit heresy.\nI\u0026rsquo;m going to suggest that \u0026ldquo;Software Strategy\u0026rdquo; is useless: Enabling success involves the very large, and the very small, leaving \u0026ldquo;Strategy\u0026rdquo; in the useless middle.\nWho am I to say this? I\u0026rsquo;ve been in software for 18 years, and I\u0026rsquo;ve been in a leadership role for the last 8. I\u0026rsquo;ve spent innumerable hours in \u0026ldquo;Strategy\u0026rdquo; meetings. I\u0026rsquo;ve had just about enough of that and I\u0026rsquo;d like to suggest a better way.\nWhat I\u0026rsquo;m Not Saying I\u0026rsquo;m not saying that \u0026ldquo;Business Strategy\u0026rdquo; is useless. Knowing what your business is and (more importantly) what it is not is a key to success.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not saying that perfecting your tactics and logistics will lead to success. I said they \u0026ldquo;enable\u0026rdquo; success. That being said, I shall try to show that concerning just strategy without caring for tactics or logistics will lead to failure no matter how good the strategy.\nDefinitions So, some working definitions:\nTactics as in the military sense are \u0026ldquo;the art of disposing armed forces in order of battle and of organizing operations, especially during contact with an enemy.\u0026rdquo; Tactics are what you do when you\u0026rsquo;re doing the \u0026ldquo;thing\u0026rdquo;. This is how you actually develop the software: What language you use, what processes your organization follows, and your general principles. Armies drill until they perform automatically under . Your development teams should, too. Strategy is bigger than tactics: \u0026ldquo;A plan for military operations and movements during a war.\u0026rdquo; One battle has tactics. A whole war has strategy. Grant\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Anaconda Plan\u0026rdquo; was a strategy. In the software context, strategies are like \u0026ldquo;Move fast and break things,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Fast follow,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;You never get fired for choosing ______.\u0026rdquo; Logistics is the biggest of them all. \u0026ldquo;the organization of moving, housing, and supplying troops and equipment.\u0026rdquo; Sans logistics your army will starve to death. (Yes, Xenophon and Sherman, blah, blah, blah. Outliers!) In the software context, this is the supply of people (hiring), development sites (facilities), and deploying them in the right place at the right time. Briefly, on Tactics and Logistics I\u0026rsquo;ve written at length on both these topics, but to summarize: You must cover these bases.\nIf you haven\u0026rsquo;t tactics, you can\u0026rsquo;t execute. You can\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;Do the thing.\u0026rdquo; Do all your teams know how to decompose, design, write, build, deploy, and sustain That Thing you Do? If not, stop reading and get them there. Be that bastard George McClellan in 1862 when he whipped the Army of the Potomac into shape. No considerations beyond that matter. Whether you have a team of 5 or 5000, they must *all* be competent in all phases, or else you\u0026rsquo;re vulnerable. Sun-Tzu shame on you, because you knew better and you didn\u0026rsquo;t take the time to do it.\nTaking it to the other extreme, let\u0026rsquo;s say your whole team quits tomorrow. Have you any hope of replacing them? Do you have a pipeline of talent and expertise coming your way? I pose the question that way because I assume your team is entirely mortal, so in some time they\u0026rsquo;ll all either die, quit, or you\u0026rsquo;ll let them go. Think of your best developer and imagine he just doesn\u0026rsquo;t come in tomorrow. How boned are you?\nSo Why the Hate for Strategy? It gets old, and it turns into a game for Middle Managers.\nLook, let\u0026rsquo;s peel back the curtain for a minute. The reason \u0026ldquo;Strategy\u0026rdquo; occupies so much time for middle and upper managers is: \u0026ldquo;This is how we\u0026rsquo;re going to spend our money.\u0026rdquo; Assuming you work for any company above 10 or so people, you\u0026rsquo;ll have a separation between what you can do and what you can afford to do. This has many second- and third-order effects.\nAt the tail end of that is the government agency or the cost-center organization. For those unlucky schmucks (of which I was one for 17 years), \u0026ldquo;strategy\u0026rdquo; time means: \u0026ldquo;We need to justify our existence for another year.\u0026rdquo; What follows is the boring budget process where some middle manager has to count on his hands the number of \u0026ldquo;Bob\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Sue\u0026rdquo; individual he\u0026rsquo;ll need to let go to make his budget.\nAt the front end is the \u0026ldquo;Tiger Team,\u0026rdquo; those golden boys and girls who get (seemingly) unlimited budgets and ridiculous deadlines to hit, usually because ParentCompany is embarrassed and needs to catch-up to a competitor. I\u0026rsquo;ve been on these. They\u0026rsquo;re great: Money is coming from everywhere, ad funding requires a stroke of a pen. Strategy is bad here because the leader of said group is usually empire-building and loves the attention s/he is getting.\nIn the middle is the regular line-of-business org, doing both delivery and operations for something that makes a significant amount of money. One needs to figure out how to maximize the profit from what their activities. What\u0026rsquo;s bad about that? Well, nothing except:\nIt takes a fricking long time. It takes everyone\u0026rsquo;s eye off the ball. Let me show you\u0026hellip;\nStrategy Funnel Hell I worked at a middle-sized multinational corporation. The division president was an former salesman, and he loved things in a \u0026ldquo;funnel,\u0026rdquo; with broad ideas at the top and polished, actionable things at the bottom. It looked like a sales funnel to him, so it was comfortable and rational. Things either moved down or out of the funnel. So far, so good. In concept, there\u0026rsquo;s nothing wrong with it.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the catch: The funnel began in JANUARY and ended roughly in AUGUST. That\u0026rsquo;s right, in any given year, the \u0026ldquo;strat cycle\u0026rdquo; occupied 2/3rd of the year. Gaze at your navel for 8 months and see if you compete effectively, huh?\nIt gets worse. Let\u0026rsquo;s say a great idea pops up in May or June. Too bad, wait for next year. Actually it was worse than that. Out the end of the funnel would pop a project that R\u0026amp;D would be tasked with developing for delivering sometime the next year. Worse case scenario: we got an idea in 2010, we executed on it in 2011, and the soonest it would see the light of day was 2012.\nLastly, there was absolutely no incentive for anyone in that structure to rock that boat. Managers\u0026rsquo; bonuses depended upon delivering what came out of that funnel, customers be damned. Whole career were built on faithfully executing on funnel ideas while sabotaging others who did things to satisfy customers while missing arbitrary dates coming out of the Strat Cycle.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s why I loathe that sort of ivory tower strategy: It\u0026rsquo;s a transparent game of middle-management looking for power and prestige, and it affects both the regular employees and the customers. A Better Way What\u0026rsquo;s better, then, smartypants?\nLogistics and tactics, of course.\nLogistics: Place your people in ready-made strategic organizations, aligned around big goals. Those organizations have clear mandate that doesn\u0026rsquo;t change year-to-year. You might go harder at one customer need or another, but you avoid treating any group as a fungible \u0026ldquo;developer pool\u0026rdquo;. Get a pipeline of hiring and personnel development going within those organizations, and then allow people to move to another org if they want. Tactics: I can\u0026rsquo;t say it any way better than my current employer does: Insist on the highest standards. Code, code reviews, procedures, quality, sustaining engineering. They have to be top-notch, and they need to be freaking muscle memory. I think you\u0026rsquo;ll find if you think big, you fix many of the problems of funnel hell.\nYou get months of your leadership time back. You\u0026rsquo;re not arguing about $$ in the guise of \u0026ldquo;strategy\u0026rdquo;. The customer is satisfied, and that goes straight to your bottom line. The \u0026ldquo;court politics\u0026rdquo; reduces to a manageable level. Retention gets better because you\u0026rsquo;re serving peoples\u0026rsquo; need for purpose. They either believe in your org or they don\u0026rsquo;t. If they don\u0026rsquo;t, they move. ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/04/software-development-study-tactics-and-logistics.-forget-strategy./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHerein, I shall commit heresy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m going to suggest that \u0026ldquo;Software Strategy\u0026rdquo; is useless:  Enabling success involves the very large, and the very small, leaving \u0026ldquo;Strategy\u0026rdquo; in the useless middle.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWho am I to say this?  I\u0026rsquo;ve been in software for 18 years, and I\u0026rsquo;ve been in a leadership role for the last 8.  I\u0026rsquo;ve spent innumerable hours in \u0026ldquo;Strategy\u0026rdquo; meetings.  I\u0026rsquo;ve had just about enough of that and I\u0026rsquo;d like to suggest a better way.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Software Development: Study Tactics and Logistics.  Forget Strategy."},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s a shot at some frequently asked questions:\n\u0026lsquo;Harvid\u0026rsquo;?? My name seems hard for most humans to say. One day, my academic team coach in college conflated the terms \u0026lsquo;Harold\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;Harvard\u0026rsquo; and what came out was \u0026lsquo;Harvid\u0026rsquo;. Thus a nickname was born. \u0026lsquo;miniharryc\u0026rsquo;? The year was 2003 and as a member of Blogger, I had early access to this newfangled webmail thing called GMail. I needed to come-up with an email address, and I was tired of my perennial shortname \u0026lsquo;hcombs\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;hcombs0\u0026rsquo;. At the time I drove a MINI (2003 R50 5-speed British Racing Green w/white top), so I prepended those 4 letters to the front of an easier way to say my name. Thus, \u0026lsquo;mini-harry-c\u0026rsquo;. How did you get into programming? I was never a programmer in High School. I\u0026rsquo;ve always been a computer geek since DOS 2.11 and an Tandy 1000 EX, but was never particularly into programming. I took a \u0026lsquo;CSC 111\u0026rsquo; class in the Spring of 1998. I took the next class (the weed-out linked-lists and trees class) the next semester, and I attended an ACM programming competition that fall with very little practical experience. One of my teammates offered me an internship at Lexmark, which I began in March 1999. I would stay there for the next 17 years. I\u0026rsquo;ll edit this to add more as it occurs to me. These are the general questions that come up most often.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/04/faq/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a shot at some frequently asked questions:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u0026lsquo;Harvid\u0026rsquo;??\u003c/strong\u003e My name seems hard for most humans to say.  One day, my academic team coach in college conflated the terms \u0026lsquo;Harold\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;Harvard\u0026rsquo; and what came out was \u0026lsquo;Harvid\u0026rsquo;.  Thus a nickname was born.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u0026lsquo;miniharryc\u0026rsquo;?\u003c/strong\u003e The year was 2003 and as a member of Blogger, I had early access to this newfangled webmail thing called GMail.  I needed to come-up with an email address, and I was tired of my perennial shortname \u0026lsquo;hcombs\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;hcombs0\u0026rsquo;.   At the time I drove a MINI (2003 R50 5-speed British Racing Green w/white top), so I prepended those 4 letters to the front of an easier way to say my name.  Thus, \u0026lsquo;mini-harry-c\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHow did you get into programming?\u003c/strong\u003e  I was never a programmer in High School.  I\u0026rsquo;ve always been a computer geek since DOS 2.11 and an Tandy 1000 EX, but was never particularly into programming.  I took a \u0026lsquo;CSC 111\u0026rsquo; class in the Spring of 1998.  I took the next class (the weed-out linked-lists and trees class) the next semester, and I attended an ACM programming competition that fall with very little practical experience.  One of my teammates offered me an internship at Lexmark, which I began in March 1999.  I would stay there for the next 17 years.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll edit this to add more as it occurs to me.  These are the general questions that come up most often.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FAQ"},{"content":"Why is it so hard to keep perspective?\nNo, Ansel Adams, I\u0026rsquo;m not talking about the physical perspective you have on a landscape, but rather the dispassionate distance from a situation needed to keep you from punching the clerk at the Kwik-E-Mart when he screws up giving you change.\nI certainly know what losing perspective looks like:\nYou\u0026rsquo;re afraid, alot. Your lower-brain puts you in fight-or-flight mode at any point. You increasingly focus on yourself to the exclusion of the greater good, morality, or simple humanity. You say things you don\u0026rsquo;t mean. You do things you don\u0026rsquo;t really mean, either. One thing I\u0026rsquo;ve noticed is folks in tech lose perspective faster than most. I have some ideas on why that is.\nFirst, our brains are bathed in dopamine for hours per day. We\u0026rsquo;re doing something we genuinely love, and like junkies, when we detox, we get the shakes. We lose our rationality. Anything that takes us away from creating siphons-away that sweet, sweet buzz and we start rationalizing excuses to get back.\nNext, you need to understand how little the world of software maps to the human world. In two words: It doesn\u0026rsquo;t. Though it\u0026rsquo;s damnably frustrating, developing software makes sense. You write logic, it does what you say. It\u0026rsquo;s contained, controllable, and predictable. People? Not so much.\nSo let\u0026rsquo;s combine these two. You\u0026rsquo;re in \u0026ldquo;flow,\u0026rdquo; and you have been for 2 hours or so. You see a notification pop-up about a re-organization, or a new policy, or some arcane thing that changes. I\u0026rsquo;m willing to bet your first reaction is to fire-up your email client/slack/twitter and complain. Moreover, I posit that that scale of that complaint is rather severe, too severe for the situation.\nWhy? Because you\u0026rsquo;ve lost perspective. You\u0026rsquo;re resentful something has kicked you from \u0026ldquo;land that makes sense\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;land of irrational wetware.\u0026rdquo; So, you lash out.\nThis comes to mind because there was a situation here at work on process this week, and I had a rather out-of-scale reaction, both to the facts of the matter and to the meetings and sturm-und-drang associated with fixing the problem. At the heart of it, it was all because I was behind on something I was doing, and I really just wanted to get back to the thing I liked. Once I was honest with myself about that, it was much easier to deal with.\nSo, what to do? Here\u0026rsquo;s what generally works for me:\nDisable desktop notifications around email. Look, email was once a great thing, now it\u0026rsquo;s generally a nuisance. It\u0026rsquo;s the world of \u0026ldquo;official\u0026rdquo; (boring) communication and getting poked every time someone \u0026ldquo;Replies All\u0026rdquo; to the universe is a great way to trigger a lizard-brain reaction. Control your email usage. That being said, you must deal with email. Do so at the beginning and end of your day, and maybe after lunch. That way you\u0026rsquo;re intentional and you\u0026rsquo;re not interrupting your flow state. Debounce your reaction. Avoid writing/tweeting the first reaction that comes to mind. Write it down on a literal piece of paper by your keyboard and if it still seems valid (not petty, mean, spiteful, etc.) in an hour or two, go ahead with it. Be honest about your Mood. Were you up last night with a kid? Have you had adequate sleep, food, and exercise? Are your physical and emotional needs being met? If not, deal with that situation because it\u0026rsquo;s costing you your perspective. ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/03/on-regaining-and-retaining-your-perspective/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhy is it so hard to keep perspective?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo, Ansel Adams, I\u0026rsquo;m not talking about the physical perspective you have on a landscape, but rather the dispassionate distance from a situation needed to keep you from punching the clerk at the Kwik-E-Mart when he screws up giving you change.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI certainly know what losing perspective looks like:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re afraid, alot.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYour lower-brain puts you in fight-or-flight mode at any point.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYou increasingly focus on yourself to the exclusion of the greater good, morality, or simple humanity.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYou say things you don\u0026rsquo;t mean.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYou do things you don\u0026rsquo;t really mean, either.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne thing I\u0026rsquo;ve noticed is folks in tech lose perspective faster than most.  I have some ideas on why that is.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Regaining and Retaining Your Perspective"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ll never forget taking Tyler on a tour of our new offices in Building 001 at Lexmark HQ.\nBack in the day, 001 had been a manufacturing line that made the iconic IBM Selectric Typewriter and the Model M buckling-spring mechanical keyboard. People still like those things today. Suffice it to say, it was a quarter-mile long building with a floor flat as a pancake, and roughly 35 yards wide.\nFor a good decade after I hired-on, most of that building sat empty, home to a disused loading dock and stacks of IBM standard issue desks and chairs. In 2012, our control-freak CFO decided we needed to do some \u0026ldquo;space consolidation\u0026rdquo; so he spent millions of dollars outfitting that area as a massive cubicle farm and moved us from our private offices and labs into that farm.\nWe got one concession out of that, though: A Game Room. My second line (she\u0026rsquo;d go on to be my direct boss, and she was a hell of a good one) pushed relentlessly for the sort of gaming room that would attract and keep software talent. So, nestled halfway down this building, behind a badge reader so only our group could get in, was a game room.\nInside you had the standard stuff:\n2 XBoxes with couches in front of large (50\u0026quot;) LCD monitors A foosball table A ping-pong table A (donated) pinball machine Pop-a-shot Anyway, I was in-the-tank for all this. My coworker Tyler, a friend from church, came by one day to see the new area. He looked pitifully on our cube farm (He sat in the famous \u0026ldquo;Lab\u0026rdquo; building of 032/035, a place you could hit with a tactical nuclear weapon and it\u0026rsquo;d probably look better) in private offices with fully-functioning labs.\n\u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s that room?\u0026rdquo; he asked.\nSo I took him in, past the badge reader.\nHe drank it all in, then I thought he was going to vomit. \u0026ldquo;THIS IS WHAT YOU PEOPLE DO ALL DAY?\u0026rdquo; See, Tyler might\u0026rsquo;ve been young (10 years my junior), but he was a real mechanical engineer, he was going for his PE the next year, and he was cut from the old cloth. He wasn\u0026rsquo;t a workaholic, but he definitely believed in work. He adopted that smirking, disbelieving grin one only gets from real engineers, and quietly walked out of our area.\nFrom that day on, I understood. Tyler was right.\n* * *\nIn essence, Tyler\u0026rsquo;s attitude was: \u0026ldquo;I come to work to work, okay?\u0026rdquo; I pretty much believe the same thing. See, I really enjoy my job, minus the part where I sit stock-still for 8+ hours a day. I don\u0026rsquo;t come here to play boardgames, ping-pong, foosball, or FIFA. None of those things \u0026ldquo;destress\u0026rdquo; me or \u0026ldquo;help me think.\u0026rdquo; Indeed, my brain chemistry is such that if I have an undone task, it increases my anxiety. Nothing fixes that except me doing the task or giving the task to someone else. I understand people who play games at work. For people who aren\u0026rsquo;t wired like me, it can indeed be relaxing and increase average productivity and team cohesion. That\u0026rsquo;s just not me.\nI was brought up to both work and enjoy working. In sum, no game you play with me is going to be more enjoyable than me writing, testing, and pushing code. That likely makes me a workaholic. So be it. This is how I provide for my family, and how I actually have fun. Minus a vacation here and there, if you get in my way of working, we\u0026rsquo;re going to have problems. This dopamine isn\u0026rsquo;t going to release itself, okay?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/03/no-i-dont-want-to-play-games-at-work/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll never forget taking Tyler on a tour of our new offices in Building 001 at Lexmark HQ.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBack in the day, 001 had been a manufacturing line that made the iconic IBM Selectric Typewriter and the Model M buckling-spring mechanical keyboard.  People still like \u003ca href=\"http://jackbaruth.com/?p=6280#more-6280\"\u003ethose things today\u003c/a\u003e.   Suffice it to say, it was a quarter-mile long building with a floor flat as a pancake, and roughly 35 yards wide.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor a good decade after I hired-on, most of that building sat empty, home to a disused loading dock and stacks of IBM standard issue desks and chairs.  In 2012, our control-freak CFO decided we needed to do some \u0026ldquo;space consolidation\u0026rdquo; so he spent millions of dollars outfitting that area as a massive cubicle farm and moved us from our private offices and labs into that farm.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"No, I Don't Want to Play Games at Work"},{"content":"So, April 1st will mark a year since Lexmark paid me to find a new job.\nTo recap, I agreed for that year, I\u0026rsquo;d not besmirch the name of LXK, recruit anyone of my old colleagues, or attempt to work there again. The last is really not an issue, but the former two are tougher. I\u0026rsquo;d dearly love to reach out to folks and get them to work with me again.\nThat middle item is the reason I\u0026rsquo;m writing tonight. As I write this, I\u0026rsquo;ve just done 170+ miles in our Sienna minivan, shuttling goods from our garage to a Life Storage facility up in Georgetown, Texas. Our daughters have been accepted to a private academy up there, and the place seems much more like us than Austin proper. We\u0026rsquo;re house-hunting and trying to cache stuff up there for the inevitable move sometime in April, May, or June.\nAnyway, that much time on the road gives one a chance to think, especially what the right thing to do is once my contractual gag-order expires.\nOn one hand, oh the stories I could tell! Stories of a place that lost its way in a big way, anecdotes of personal pettiness, jealousy, and immaturity. Likewise, there\u0026rsquo;d be stories of (relative) triumph, of people pulling together and \u0026ldquo;Making it Happen\u0026rdquo;. In sum, I had many good and bad experiences there that I think would make interesting copy.\nOn the other hand, it\u0026rsquo;d help no one and it\u0026rsquo;d probably hurt me and my family. A \u0026ldquo;tell-all\u0026rdquo; might be juicy, but writing one is the mark of one with nothing left to lose, seeking attention.\nOn my more egotistical days, I fashion myself like an SDE Peter Egan, telling amusing anecdotes from the front line with his easy style, with words people like to read. The reality is I\u0026rsquo;m just another person shouting to the ether, with nothing novel to say whatsoever.\nHemingway at least had Spain and WWI to talk about. All I have are memories of life in the Crystal Palace beside Taco Tico watching a corporate realize its obsolescence over 15 years.\nStill, there are stories to tell, with wisdom I learned. They\u0026rsquo;ll probably be navel gazing crap, but I have over a decade of blog entries that show I love exactly that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/03/a-year-elapsed...now-what/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, April 1st will mark a year since Lexmark \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/04/on-unemployment/\" title=\"on unemployment\"\u003epaid me to find a new job\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo recap, I agreed for that year, I\u0026rsquo;d not besmirch the name of LXK, recruit anyone of my old colleagues, or attempt to work there again.  The last is really not an issue, but the former two are tougher.  I\u0026rsquo;d dearly love to reach out to folks and get them to work with me again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Year Elapsed...Now What?"},{"content":"Let\u0026rsquo;s get this out of the way: Social media killed the blog. Before 2007, there was a cacophony of individual \u0026lsquo;Blogs where people shouted their unvarnished opinions into the aether. Some had quite a following, especially in tech.\nThe concept was strikingly simple: Use a blog engine (like this one, Blogger) or bootstrap your own site on Wordpress and make your content accessible to anyone with an internet connection. This was the internet at its purest: Content and hyperlinks all \u0026ldquo;webbed\u0026rdquo; together, with idea building upon another free-flowing idea.\nSo where\u0026rsquo;d it go?\nIt went on Facebook.\nFacebook and Twitter launched in 2005-2007, and one can map a direct decline the the number, length, and quality of blog articles since then. People put their \u0026ldquo;quick shots\u0026rdquo; up on twitter, and a good number of blog entries were just that\u0026ndash;motes of observation.\nThe interactivity on those sites was much better as well\u0026ndash;one got immediate comment feedback, \u0026ldquo;@replies,\u0026rdquo; and metrics on who cared about what.\nSo, exactly 10 years later, why did I fire up the execrable \u0026ldquo;Feedly\u0026rdquo; mobile app this morning and browse my old Google Reader feeds, curated over 10 years ago?\nIn a word: Writing. Social media isn\u0026rsquo;t writing; it\u0026rsquo;s stream of consciousness. (Full apologies to those who think James Joyce is a genius). At best, social media is like a distributed conversation with the same ebb-and-flow. That\u0026rsquo;s certainly valuable and we humans need that.\nHowever, we also need short-form writing with long-recognized formats:\nEssays that frame a real point-of-view. Reviews that give our opinion, backed-up with evidence Journal entries that tell about our days and how events impact us. Getting your thoughts out is important, and removing them from the Agora of Facebook and Twitter is important because ideas are temporal. You are temporal. We know what farmers and tradesmen in Mesopotamia thought 5000 years ago because they took time to write-down things on cuneiform tablets. These were the things important to them, and posterity is better for their efforts.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/03/trying-blogs-again/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s get this out of the way: Social media killed the blog.  Before 2007, there was a cacophony of individual \u0026lsquo;Blogs where people shouted their unvarnished opinions into the aether.  Some had quite a following, especially in tech.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe concept was strikingly simple:  Use a blog engine (like this one, Blogger) or bootstrap your own site on Wordpress and make your content accessible to anyone with an internet connection.  This was the internet at its purest:  Content and hyperlinks all \u0026ldquo;webbed\u0026rdquo; together, with idea building upon another free-flowing idea.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trying Blogs Again"},{"content":"I heard a sermon yesterday about \u0026ldquo;Authenticity.\u0026rdquo; The general theme was: \u0026ldquo;Isn\u0026rsquo;t it exhausting wearing a mask all the time. Stop caring about what people think and expect and just be yourself.\u0026rdquo;\nWow, I wish it were just that simple.\nFirst, we must deal with \u0026ldquo;The Puck Factor\u0026rdquo;. This guy:\nBascially \u0026ldquo;Puck\u0026rdquo; was a universally-reviled character from the MTV Reality show \u0026ldquo;Real World\u0026rdquo; in the 1990\u0026rsquo;s. To sum-up He was unapologetic in his self-centered asshattery. Looking at Puck and saying, \u0026ldquo;Just be yourself,\u0026rdquo; was like an exercise in an Ethics class. Puck liked hurting other people. That was genuinely him being him.\n\u0026hellip;.which brings us to yesterday.\nYesterday was going just fine. We went to church, got home, and I was outside setting things right from our rained-out camping trip, and my wife comes around and we start to talk. All was still going well until we got to a topic of general disagreement between us.\nI kept my mouth shut. I know what topics are useless discussion. My nonverbal communication made it clear I wasn\u0026rsquo;t happy, though. \u0026ldquo;You keep pursing your lips, crossing your arms, and rolling your eyes. Please stop that.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m doing that so that I don\u0026rsquo;t say what\u0026rsquo;s on my mind.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Please stop.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Ooooookay.\u0026rdquo;\nRemembering the sermon, I proceeded to speak what was really on my mind for the next two minutes. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t what I meant per se, but it was just what I\u0026rsquo;d describe as a \u0026ldquo;clot\u0026rdquo; of emotion that was pent-up on said topic.\nTwo. Minutes.\nWhat followed was 3 hours of me apologizing and trying to repair the relationship to what it\u0026rsquo;d been before I opened my stupid mouth.\n* * *\nThat is to say: Sorry, pastor. Living with other human beings means wearing a mask, whether that be civility, toughness, manners, or whatever. I\u0026rsquo;m genuinely sorry about that, but I\u0026rsquo;ve never encountered a single person in my life whom I could be fully \u0026ldquo;me\u0026rdquo; around, long-term.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s not entirely, a bad thing. I don\u0026rsquo;t like being around \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; me, and no one else would, either.\nI\u0026rsquo;m selfish and I think myself more important in the grand scheme of things than I actually am. That particular mask of not being \u0026ldquo;king baby\u0026rdquo; only-child is useful, even if everything is filtered through my limbic selfishness to my cortex so I can mitigate the \u0026ldquo;WAHHHHH I WANT WHAT I WANT I WANT IT NOW\u0026rdquo;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/03/the-puck-factor-or-nobody-cares-what-you-think/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI heard a sermon yesterday about \u0026ldquo;Authenticity.\u0026rdquo;   The general theme was: \u0026ldquo;Isn\u0026rsquo;t it exhausting wearing a mask all the time.  Stop caring about what people think and expect and just be yourself.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWow, I wish it were just that simple.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, we must deal with \u0026ldquo;The Puck Factor\u0026rdquo;.  This guy:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://i.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/1994-real-world-san-francisco-cast-pic-mtv__oPt.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/1994-real-world-san-francisco-cast-pic-mtv__oPt.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBascially \u0026ldquo;Puck\u0026rdquo; was a universally-reviled character from the MTV Reality show \u0026ldquo;Real World\u0026rdquo; in the 1990\u0026rsquo;s.  To sum-up He was unapologetic in his self-centered asshattery.  Looking at Puck and saying, \u0026ldquo;Just be yourself,\u0026rdquo; was like an exercise in an Ethics class.  Puck liked hurting other people.  That was genuinely him being him.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The \"Puck\" factor, or \"nobody cares what you think\""},{"content":"Let\u0026rsquo;s imagine you\u0026rsquo;re a Program/Product Manager, SDM, or Lead Engineer/Architect. You\u0026rsquo;re starting a program to develop tech thingie \u0026lsquo;X\u0026rsquo;. You\u0026rsquo;ve read all the books. You\u0026rsquo;ve looked into Agile, from the brevity of the Agile Manifesto, to the what-are-you-selling nonsense that is the Scaled Agile Framework.\nIn all that, you come to the same decision that people have had since Amenhotep designed the first pyramid: How do you organize yourself? That is, how do you set-up your group of people to accomplish the task?\nDigression: On the Spotify Model At this point, many of you will yell: \u0026ldquo;Self organizing teams!!!!\u0026rdquo; like it\u0026rsquo;s some sort of talisman, obviating any need of further thought. \u0026ldquo;Smart people will organize themselves optimally.\u0026rdquo;\nLet\u0026rsquo;s take this head-on: No, they won\u0026rsquo;t. To be precise: At scale, this does not work. For our purposes, \u0026ldquo;scale\u0026rdquo; is about 10-20 people or more. They\u0026rsquo;ll do their best, but results will waste everyone\u0026rsquo;s time and money versus someone who laid out an organization structure with clear lines of ownership.\nBut, please, leave a comment on how Spotify does that and they\u0026rsquo;re successful. Suffice it to say, there are examples where that works, but they\u0026rsquo;re usually:\nOpen Source projects without a schedule or budget (e.g. they\u0026rsquo;re \u0026ldquo;not real\u0026rdquo; from a business perspective), or Companies at a micro-scale with super-smart people, in which case I argue (at length) ANYTHING WILL SUCCEED. For awhile. Moving on\u0026hellip;..\nWhat I\u0026rsquo;d like to treat today is the question that naturally arises in Agile: Do you have generalists, or specialists? I\u0026rsquo;ll attempt to consider both options and provide a pragmatic answer that combines both approaches.\nGeneralists and Specialists Defined Let\u0026rsquo;s first define our terms:\nGeneralists implies that pretty much anyone in your (team, group, squad, crossfit box) can do every task. Bob and Sue are \u0026ldquo;Software Development Engineers\u0026rdquo; and hence can do front end, coding, database work, infrastructure, design, etc. They\u0026rsquo;re also intimately familiar with the target domain of your product\u0026ndash;insurance, personal finance, selling things, businesses. As will see, that\u0026rsquo;s the real trick. (Following the axiom: Most things you do aren\u0026rsquo;t technical problems, they\u0026rsquo;re people problems) Specialists turns that on its head. Instead of organizing by general talent and capability, you organize around job function: Bob is a DBA and Sue is a back-end developer. Bob has no idea how to write Groovy/PHP/etc. Sue couldn\u0026rsquo;t write a query-optimized stored procedure if her life depended on it. Carrying this further, you need Business Analysts (BAs) to know the domain, feeding requirements and specs/mocks/post-it notes to the people who do the actual implementation. Why Neither Works If the second description sounds pejorative, forgive me. I\u0026rsquo;ve grown-up in the world where \u0026ldquo;specialists\u0026rdquo; were decried and we were supposed to all be generalists. The benefits are obvious, right? You have 50 people you can apply to whatever problem in your business domain, versus 10 DBAs, 20 coders, and 20 front-end people with a Business Analyst. Your job as a Manager/PM/Architect is so much easier. Just throw people at the problem.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re still reading, you understand: It\u0026rsquo;s not that simple. In that model, people hyper-define their role and hold up their job description at you when you ask them to do something and scream, \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s not my job.\u0026rdquo; It\u0026rsquo;s a management nightmare. You\u0026rsquo;ll end-up with 50 people who have the productivity of 10 people.\nGeneralists are broad and shallow, by definition. They probably know a little about everything, but they\u0026rsquo;re not tossing down the super-tuned Stored Procedure or whiz-bang front-end thing. At best they\u0026rsquo;re overweighted in certain areas, and they get-by in others. When you\u0026rsquo;re looking for that competitive edge, you need some people with true domain mastery. If you\u0026rsquo;re running a 15-30% attrition rate, your generalists will never get there.\nSo, what to do? Proposed Way Forward I\u0026rsquo;d like to propose a simple solution:\n**Make coehesive teams ** Make your \u0026ldquo;unit of responsibility\u0026rdquo; a 4-to-8 person team. Work doesn\u0026rsquo;t go to \u0026lsquo;Bob\u0026rsquo; it goes to the web experience team. This lowers your risk and bus factor, and eliminates chaos. Things have an owner, and that owner is a team. **Teams get to specialize **That team has a well-defined, domain-specialized responsibility within your thingie \u0026lsquo;X\u0026rsquo;. This serves individuals\u0026rsquo; need for mastery. People naturally become good at anticipating customer needs and technical issues within that domain. This is much better than dropping in-and-out of disparate domains iteration to iteration. You\u0026rsquo;ll notice your employee satisfaction and retention increase, too. People want to grow and get good at things. Work with that, not against it. Within that team, everyone is a generalist. They have knowledge, procedures, and automation to do anything that team needs to do. Your technical risk will spread. Its individuals\u0026rsquo; responsibility to come up to the bar of the team\u0026rsquo;s capability and raise that, mentoring others. Rotate people through the teams. Make sure people have growth opportunity and that they don\u0026rsquo;t become stale and over-specialized. This has several immediate advantages. At the program level, you can deal with (say) 5 teams much easier than 40 individual developers. You\u0026rsquo;ll have an innate sense of \u0026ldquo;where things go.\u0026rdquo; This is classic hierarchy in the Persian/Roman army sense, with units of people that \u0026ldquo;live\u0026rdquo; daily (~8 people), and units that go to battle (up to 80 people). Leadership can maneuver the teams in a way that maps to the human wetware 7 +/- 2 rule. Let human biology work for you.\nSome things be aware of:\nThe teams\u0026rsquo; culture will diverge. One team may be more process-focused. Another adjacent one may be more slash-and-hack get-things-done. That\u0026rsquo;s natural, inasmuch as individual personalities diverge. As leadership, encourage team identity, but discourage contempt or outright win/lose thinking. We\u0026rsquo;re all trying to get there, wherever \u0026ldquo;there\u0026rdquo; is. People will grow stale if you let them. Insist people rotate through the teams or through other groups in your company. People managing services need a rotation through front-end or mobile, and vice-versa. People will try to specialize within the team and avoid certain tasks that are team responsibilities. You\u0026rsquo;ll need to be diligent in not allowing this to happen, or your right back to In summary, organizing people is one of the key challenges in humanity, in whatever goal you\u0026rsquo;re trying to achieve. The \u0026ldquo;Agile Revolution\u0026rdquo; brought considerable energy, but it hasn\u0026rsquo;t fundamentally changed the underlying drives of human beings. Above, I\u0026rsquo;ve argued that successful, sustainable technology efforts should organize around domain-specialized teams populated by generalists within that domain. This lowers your risk profile while making your organization of 40 as nimble as one of 5 reports when you\u0026rsquo;re planning and executing.\nAfter 18 years, that\u0026rsquo;s just what makes sense to me.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/03/on-agile-generalists-vs-specialists/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s imagine you\u0026rsquo;re a Program/Product Manager, SDM, or Lead Engineer/Architect.  You\u0026rsquo;re starting a program to develop tech thingie \u0026lsquo;X\u0026rsquo;.  You\u0026rsquo;ve read all the books.  You\u0026rsquo;ve looked into Agile, from the brevity of the \u003ca href=\"http://agilemanifesto.org/\"\u003eAgile Manifesto\u003c/a\u003e, to the what-are-you-selling nonsense that is the \u003ca href=\"http://www.scaledagileframework.com/\"\u003eScaled Agile Framework\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn all that, you come to the same decision that people have had since Amenhotep designed the first pyramid:  How do you organize yourself?  That is, how do you set-up your group of people to accomplish the task?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Agile: Generalists vs Specialists"},{"content":"Just now, I had a lovely conversation with a gentleman who\u0026rsquo;d come to Amazon in 2005. He was working for another (very large) tech firm at the time and he saw that Amazon had the same revenue as CorpX but had 1/3rd the number of employees.\nHe made it through the interview process and they said, \u0026ldquo;Very glad to have you; now we just need to figure out what you\u0026rsquo;re going to do.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll happily be the Janitor. I\u0026rsquo;m glad to be here.\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nThat little anecdote brings to mind a principle: \u0026ldquo;Work somewhere that has a culture you believe in.\u0026rdquo; I believe in the culture here, as expressed in the published Leadership Principles. Ownership is the next-to-top one (right behind \u0026ldquo;Customer Obsession\u0026rdquo;), and it ends with, \u0026ldquo;Never says, \u0026lsquo;That\u0026rsquo;s not my job\u0026rsquo;.\u0026rdquo;\nIn other words, do what needs doing. Nothing is beneath you. You own part of this company; act like it.\nAnd you know what? It\u0026rsquo;s really true.\nLast year, they asked for volunteers to go work in a Fulfillment Center, and I readily volunteered. It was a great opportunity to learn how we satisfy our customers by picking, boxing, and shipping items. I worked for 8 hard hours that day loading 40-foot trailers full of goodies going to Kansas City, Houston, and Omaha. Each box was somebody\u0026rsquo;s Christmas present. It was hard, but it was incredibly rewarding at the end of the day.\nAbout halfway through the day, it struck me that I\u0026rsquo;d seen all this before: The attitude, the team-focus, the continuous improvement. It looked just like the other company for which I\u0026rsquo;d happily sweep the floors: Toyota. So I asked the team lead on my group about it.\n\u0026ldquo;Oh yeah! We patterned most of this off how Toyota does things.\u0026rdquo;\nThat\u0026rsquo;s kind of interesting: Both Toyota and Amazon know their customer. They\u0026rsquo;re not terribly interested in following the trendy thing, but they want to engineer processes and teach people how to do things so that they work. They both move fast and don\u0026rsquo;t break things.\nI have no idea how long I\u0026rsquo;ll work here. It could be another year or the rest of my career. However it turns out, it\u0026rsquo;s been wholly the privilege to serve customers. Through next Tuesday is one of my on-call rotations, so some minuscule part of that www.amazon.com site you visit today has me sitting behind it, ensuring it runs at 100% efficiency.\nAnd you know what? It\u0026rsquo;s a privilege. It\u0026rsquo;s what I\u0026rsquo;ve worked my entire career to do.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/03/work-for-a-place-where-youd-happily-be-the-janitor-ownership/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust now, I had a lovely conversation with a gentleman who\u0026rsquo;d come to Amazon in 2005.  He was working for another (very large) tech firm at the time and he saw that Amazon had the same revenue as \u003cem\u003eCorpX\u003c/em\u003e but had 1/3rd the number of employees.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe made it through the interview process and they said, \u0026ldquo;Very glad to have you; now we just need to figure out what you\u0026rsquo;re going to do.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Work for a Place Where You'd Happily Be the Janitor (Ownership)"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s been quite a year. The previous twelve years I\u0026rsquo;ve written this blog, I\u0026rsquo;ve been based out of Georgetown, Kentucky, and I worked at Lexmark. I\u0026rsquo;ve added many things in that time: A wife, a step-son, two daughters, and 2 houses. Through it all, I remained in Georgetown and worked at Lexmark. As I write this, both have changed.\nSet your wayback machine for Jan 1, 2016 and let\u0026rsquo;s see how I got here.\nJanuary 1st saw us in Indianapolis, Indiana, with the whole crew visiting the Indianapolis Children\u0026rsquo;s Museum. The museum was great, but in the back of my mind I had a feeling of change coming. Lexmark had put itself up for sale in October 2015, and things within were highly uncertain. Whenever I visited a new city, I constantly asked myself: \u0026ldquo;Could I live here?\u0026rdquo; With regards to Indy, I said, \u0026ldquo;Yes\u0026rdquo; and kept it in my mind.\nWhen I returned to work in January, a pall hung over things. Management was more flinty than usual, and we sound found out why. They announced a Voluntary Reduction Program (VRP), which would close on March 1st. If you wanted out, they\u0026rsquo;d buy you out.\nWhat followed was a surreal period for me. I saw many of my colleagues wrestling with staying or leaving. As a nominal part of \u0026ldquo;leadership\u0026rdquo; I did my best to get people to stay, but my words rang hollow; my heart wasn\u0026rsquo;t in it.\nJanuary became February and I had an enjoyable time with my daughters at the Her Knight Dance (a Daddy/Daughter dance at Keeneland in Lexington), then February became March and it was decision time. Final day to sign-up. \u0026ldquo;Go time\u0026rdquo;:\nWife: \u0026ldquo;So, what\u0026rsquo;s your decision?\u0026rdquo; Me: \u0026ldquo;I feel like God wants me out of here.\u0026rdquo; Wife: \u0026ldquo;Well, you should probably listen to Him.\u0026rdquo; At 9am that day I was a Lexmark employee with a bright future with the company. By 4:45pm, I\u0026rsquo;d signed and submitted my paperwork to leave.\nThereafter followed a period waiting to find out if I\u0026rsquo;d been accepted to the program. They didn\u0026rsquo;t have to take me, but they did. I was going to be leaving and I\u0026rsquo;d need to find a new job.\nFrom there until April Fool\u0026rsquo;s Day, my last official day, things were pretty bizarre. A few \u0026ldquo;going away\u0026rdquo; lunches, a decreasing trail of work, cleaning out my cube, and saying goodbyes. My last day was hard, turning in my beloved MacBook Pro and all my equipment. At the same time, I was on the job hunt.\nWhat followed is well-chronicled in my blog. I had two job offers almost immediately, both obtained via some personal networking. I declined both; I still wonder if that was wise.\nAt the same time, a long series of events had transpired at our house at 1007 Walker Way in Georgetown. We loved the house, but it was over 30 years old and it needed some maintenance. In particular, we\u0026rsquo;d replaced the water heater with a tankless, gas-fired unit. We loved that \u0026ldquo;endless hot water\u0026rdquo; feeling, but turns-out this was poison for the house, allowing granules of calcified hot water into the system. In particular, the thirty-year-old faucet and shower in our downstairs bath became inoperable. Not knowing if we were moving or not, we entered into a contract in January/February to remodel the bathroom, so now we faced (A) selling the house and (B) said house not having a downstairs bathroom. It would only get better from there.\nSo, as March ended, I was out of work for the first time since I\u0026rsquo;d been 19. I didn\u0026rsquo;t know it, but I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t work again until July 5th, my start-date at Amazon. I had a quarter of this year off work. During that time:\nLearned to love Red State BBQ in Georgetown Multiple Job interviews Worked on getting the house ready to sell Followed-through on our Disney vacation plans Trips to Austin to interview and find housing The second half of the year is a blur of settling-in here, getting used to Austin (somewhat), and working here at Amazon. Looking back on it, it\u0026rsquo;s really amazing that all this transpired in only a year.\nI\u0026rsquo;m older, fatter, grayer, balder, and generally more sallow than I was when the year began. I sleep much more, but I don\u0026rsquo;t get rest like I did in Georgetown. I\u0026rsquo;m learning lots here at work.\nWhat I\u0026rsquo;ve done this year, I\u0026rsquo;ve done out of obedience, with the general understanding that it wasn\u0026rsquo;t for me, but for my family. They\u0026rsquo;re much healthier in a warmer, drier climate.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2017/01/2016-a-year-in-review/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been quite a year.  The previous twelve years I\u0026rsquo;ve written this blog, I\u0026rsquo;ve been based out of Georgetown, Kentucky, and I worked at Lexmark.   I\u0026rsquo;ve added many things in that time: A wife, a step-son, two daughters, and 2 houses.  Through it all, I remained in Georgetown and worked at Lexmark.  As I write this, both have changed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSet your wayback machine for Jan 1, 2016 and let\u0026rsquo;s see how I got here.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2016 A Year in Review"},{"content":"As I type this, it’s 8:44 am, and I just drove 30 minutes in 10 miles of pouring rain to start the week on 4 hours of sleep.\nI went to bed about 11:30, but didn’t fall asleep until nearly 1am—very unusual for me. Like an overtightened bolt, I felt my corners round-off just a bit yesterday, the torque warping my mind just too much to sleep.\nThere’s much to consider, globally, nationally, and within my own hearth. Much I can do little about. Globally, there keeps being more of us, and our impact on the planet worsens by the year. Humans certainly seem less education, humane, and trustworthy than we did even 10 years ago. Perhaps my eyes are just open to our own debauchery, my naiveté burned away like so much slag from God’s refiner’s fire.\nI can’t recall Donald Trump. I can’t unsay some of the things he’s said. I can generally watch in horror and pinch myself every time I hear the phrase “President-Elect” attached to his name.\nI’ve found myself watching lots of post-apocalyptic films from my childhood. Stuff like the horrifying “The Day After” and the thrillers “Damnation Alley” and “By Dawns Early Light.” Any nuclear war scenario there is too horrible to contemplate, much like a Roman of 150 A.D. likely couldn’t comprehend the Dark Ages and Germanic Conquest. Like them, I’m not sure I’d want to survive to see the aftermath.\nTheologically, I’m having tons of trouble with “The Problem of Evil”as it’s termed. Watching those movies I mentioned reminds me that we’re still yet roughly 45 minutes away from annihilating ourselves. Among hundreds of other atrocities we might commit, that an all-good (“omnibenevolent”) God would allow Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical weapons to exist boggles me. We could commit planetary suicide, and God seems powerless (unwilling?) to intervene.\nPerhaps that was the plan all along, to create a sentient race of beings so broken they annihilate one another. Or, as The Bard put it:\nLife’s but a walking shadow, a poor player\nThat struts and frets his hour upon the stage\nAnd then is heard no more: it is a tale\nTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,\nSignifying nothing. (Macbeth V.5)\nOther evils weigh, of course, from the car crash this weekend that claimed two pillars of my hometown community to my own family’s health issues. I’ve done my share of “Why, God?” questioning in the past few weeks.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/12/monday-mope/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs I type this, it’s 8:44 am, and I just drove 30 minutes in 10 miles of pouring rain to start the week on 4 hours of sleep.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI went to bed about 11:30, but didn’t fall asleep until nearly 1am—very unusual for me. Like an overtightened bolt, I felt my corners round-off just a bit yesterday, the torque warping my mind just too much to sleep.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s much to consider, globally, nationally, and within my own hearth. Much I can do little about. Globally, there keeps being more of us, and our impact on the planet worsens by the year. Humans certainly seem less education, humane, and trustworthy than we did even 10 years ago. Perhaps my eyes are just open to our own debauchery, my naiveté burned away like so much slag from God’s refiner’s fire.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Monday Mope"},{"content":"Some things are too long for a tweet, to short for a short-form essay. I like to think of them like \u0026ldquo;macro-tweets.\u0026rdquo; Some have taken to posting paragraphs or even whole positions on twitter in the form of:\n1/7\n2/7\nAnd so on. That\u0026rsquo;s an abuse of the platform. Longer-form should be somewhere else.\nEnd preamble.\n* * *\nSo Maria and I have abandoned swimming for the moment. I don\u0026rsquo;t know why exactly, aside from we don\u0026rsquo;t have an indoor pool membership and the outdoor pool we have is rather\u0026hellip;.variable\u0026hellip;with regard to temperature. I went to swim about 400m with an air temp of 48 degrees back in September, and part of my body just went: \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re nucking futs, dude.\u0026rdquo;\nIn lieu of that, Maria and I are walking every morning. Typically a one-mile circuit right outside our front door. In the back of my mind, I hope we\u0026rsquo;ll graduate to jogging, but for now I\u0026rsquo;m simply enjoying the time with my daughter.\nWe talk about many things, some mundane, some profound. It\u0026rsquo;s a simple human pleasure to talk to your family in a idle, relational way. Being present in a moment is a struggle for me.\nSo, on our morning walks I had one of those things I call a \u0026ldquo;snap-back\u0026rdquo; moment. I define that as \u0026ldquo;Being wholly present in a moment with the benefit of perspective.\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;ve had a few of these in my life, usually preceded by, \u0026ldquo;Holy shit!\u0026rdquo;\nHoly shit! I\u0026rsquo;m in college! Holy shit! I\u0026rsquo;m married! Holy shit! I\u0026rsquo;m a dad! Today\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Holy shit!\u0026rdquo; moment was, \u0026ldquo;Holy shit! I live in Texas!\u0026rdquo;\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a year, well a bit more. My old company putting itself up for sale\u0026hellip;.the announcement of a voluntary exit program\u0026hellip;the snap decision to leave that\u0026rsquo;d been coming for 7 years\u0026hellip;unemployment\u0026hellip;self-imposed exile in my own house\u0026hellip;flying all over the country to find a job\u0026hellip;selling the house\u0026hellip;leaving our son behind\u0026hellip;.moving.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s all unreal somehow, like some sort of dream. Any moment, I expect to wake-up and go back to work at the only real employer I\u0026rsquo;d ever had.\nHoly shit. I live in Texas.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/11/macro-tweet-i-live-in-texas-now/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSome things are too long for a tweet, to short for a short-form essay.  I like to think of them like \u0026ldquo;macro-tweets.\u0026rdquo;   Some have taken to posting paragraphs or even whole positions on twitter in the form of:\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e1/7\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e2/7\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAnd so on.  That\u0026rsquo;s an abuse of the platform.  Longer-form should be somewhere else.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eEnd preamble.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo Maria and I have abandoned swimming for the moment.  I don\u0026rsquo;t know why exactly, aside from we don\u0026rsquo;t have an indoor pool membership and the outdoor pool we have is rather\u0026hellip;.\u003cem\u003evariable\u003c/em\u003e\u0026hellip;with regard to temperature.  I went to swim about 400m with an air temp of 48 degrees back in September, and part of my body just went:  \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re nucking futs, dude.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Macro-Tweet: I live in Texas, now?"},{"content":"Last Tuesday night was surreal.\nThe data all indicated that DJT had no chance in hell of becoming president. He never polled above 42%. Then\u0026hellip;the returns rolled in. The NBC anchor team already had their through-line prepped:\n\u0026ldquo;Did he lose the election on day one, calling immigrants rapists?\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;If he loses Florida or North Carolina, he\u0026rsquo;s going to have a long night.\u0026rdquo; As the hours wore on, it became clear that we were at the very end of the bell curve, amid Nate Silver\u0026rsquo;s 15% chance that DJT could win. I became more and more despondent, realizing that of the two bad choices, the Chaotic Evil was going to be the electoral victor.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t have more to offer than the deluge of think-pieces since Wednesday morning. Democrats are largely out of power everywhere now. The majority of governorships, state legislatures, both houses of Congress and now POTUS are Republican.\nI should be happy. After all, I\u0026rsquo;m a (moderate) Republican. I\u0026rsquo;ve disagreed with the overreach of both the Supreme Court and the Obama administration. I\u0026rsquo;ve decried his tendency to \u0026ldquo;act alone\u0026rdquo; on nearly Imperial terms. He acted more like a dictator than a President, exercising powers not seen since Lincoln (Civil War) and FDR (Great Depression). This election could be seen as a broad-based rebuke of that overreach.\nYet, I mourn the result. Why?\nTrump shows all the signs of a Fascist. He lacks the cunning of a Hitler, but he certainly shows the charisma mixed with incompetence of Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. He wants a cult of personality, a broad feeling that he can fix things and \u0026ldquo;Do What Must Be Done.\u0026rdquo; There\u0026rsquo;s little evidence he\u0026rsquo;s thought-through anything aside from displacing the current power structure.\nFor some people, that was enough. Clinton certainly didn\u0026rsquo;t provide any sort of vision aside from that.\nMy twitter feed is full of my friends in the diaspora from Kentucky, and they\u0026rsquo;re scared and angry. Whether they\u0026rsquo;re immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ, they see \u0026ldquo;their country\u0026rdquo; slipping away. If those fascist portents come to pass, then everyone\u0026rsquo;s country is slipping away. We couldn\u0026rsquo;t be invaded, but sure as hell can give away our freedoms to people who promise security. So, I\u0026rsquo;m just taking some time to be sad. I\u0026rsquo;m praying for our nation, which at times has been a City on the Hill for the world, a refuge for the forgotten and oppressed, a place to start a new life. May God grant it continues to be so, and gives us leaders of vision.\nGod bless you all.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/11/so-that-happened....election-2016-where-now/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast Tuesday night was surreal.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe data all indicated that DJT had no chance in hell of becoming president.   He never polled above 42%.  Then\u0026hellip;the returns rolled in.  The NBC anchor team already had their through-line prepped:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;Did he lose the election on day one, calling immigrants rapists?\u0026rdquo; \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;If he loses Florida or North Carolina, he\u0026rsquo;s going to have a long night.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs the hours wore on, it became clear that we were at the very end of the bell curve, amid Nate Silver\u0026rsquo;s 15% chance that DJT could win.  I became more and more despondent, realizing that of the two bad choices, the Chaotic Evil was going to be the electoral victor.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"So That Happened....Election 2016: Where Now?"},{"content":"Whatever happens over the next few days, I\u0026rsquo;d like us to remember we\u0026rsquo;re Americans.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve surmounted Monarchy, the burning of the capital, a war between ourselves, mountain ranges, slavery, polio, Fascism, Communism, presidential assassination, Watergate, 9/11, pet rocks, and several sub-par Metallica albums.\nPeople tried to take our freedom. \u0026ldquo;Over our dead bodies!\u0026rdquo; we cry. And so it was.\nWe will gladly give it away, though, in fear and hate, vilifying our neighbors.\nI care about what happens next Tuesday, sure. However, what happens in the days and weeks thereafter is what history shall remember.\nMay Lincoln\u0026rsquo;s summary remain true: \u0026ldquo;that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.\u0026rdquo;\nBlessings be with you all.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/11/on-the-2016-election/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhatever happens over the next few days, I\u0026rsquo;d like us to remember we\u0026rsquo;re Americans.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve surmounted Monarchy, the burning of the capital, a war between ourselves, mountain ranges, slavery, polio, Fascism, Communism, presidential assassination, Watergate, 9/11, pet rocks, and several sub-par Metallica albums.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePeople tried to take our freedom. \u0026ldquo;Over our dead bodies!\u0026rdquo; we cry. And so it was.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe will gladly give it away, though, in fear and hate, vilifying our neighbors.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the 2016 Election"},{"content":"Postulate:\nNo matter the brilliance of a given development team, it\u0026rsquo;s always more efficient to Analyze/Groom/Think about requirements before you\u0026rsquo;re in the meeting where you commit to delivering those requirements. I\u0026rsquo;ve been developing software with groups of fairly brilliant people for some time. The above is my genuine experience.\nCorollary:\nWhen a group of people encounter a set of requirements and expect to scope and commit to them in realtime while reading the document, it wastes everyone\u0026rsquo;s time.\nGenerally, productive discussion results, yes, but that discussion is unbounded.\nBetter:\nOne person pre-grooms the story. In times past, that\u0026rsquo;s a business analyst or architect, but a member of the development team is fine. Just be sure before you go into the pitch/commitment meeting someone is warmed-up to present the story. This is analogous to an intern or resident presenting a case in a hospital to the other doctors during rounds. The group scopes the story in 5 minutes or less. If the \u0026lsquo;grooming owner\u0026rsquo; has done his job breaking-down the story, then that should be enough. Repeat until done. Keep metrics on how fast you can get through everything, and if the analysis was sufficient for the sprint. ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/10/groom-your-backlog/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePostulate:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo matter the brilliance of a given development team, it\u0026rsquo;s always more efficient to Analyze/Groom/Think about requirements \u003cem\u003ebefore\u003c/em\u003e you\u0026rsquo;re in the meeting where you commit to delivering those requirements.  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been developing software with groups of fairly brilliant people for some time.  The above is my genuine experience.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCorollary:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen a group of people encounter a set of requirements and expect to scope and commit to them in realtime \u003cem\u003ewhile reading the document\u003c/em\u003e, it wastes everyone\u0026rsquo;s time.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Groom your Backlog!"},{"content":"Too long for a tweet.\nToo short for a blog post.\nThese are some tech-related skills I\u0026rsquo;m glad I have. They come in awfully handy:\nTouch typing. You\u0026rsquo;d be surprised at the number of people who work with computers for a living who can\u0026rsquo;t actually touch type. Markdown. Markdown is incredibly handy for tossing-off documentation and forum responses. I\u0026rsquo;ve actually considered hosing this blog entirely and converting to posts hosted on Github, formatted in Markdown.\nVim. I\u0026rsquo;ve rediscovered a love for Vim in the past few weeks. I\u0026rsquo;ve intentionally avoided installing Sublime Text 3 on my work machines, just so I\u0026rsquo;d get better with Vim. This thing is a frickin\u0026rsquo; katana for text editing (duh\u0026hellip;)\nRuby. A surprising number of production programmers don\u0026rsquo;t have a scripting language under their belt, which is a shame. Ruby is both light enough for scripting and powerful enough to do basically anything you need. (Just write RSpecs for anything \u0026gt; 100 lines, m\u0026rsquo;kay?)\nUnix command line. I\u0026rsquo;m blessed to work at a place that\u0026rsquo;s all *Nix, all the time, so getting better with unix commands and pipes is a must. Just off the top of my head:\nsed\ntr\ntree\nfind and its many switches\nxargs\nNext up: A post about the things I wish I knew better. Hint: JavaScript is definitely on there.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/09/skills-im-glad-i-have/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToo long for a tweet.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToo short for a blog post.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese are some tech-related skills I\u0026rsquo;m glad I have.  They come in awfully handy:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTouch typing.  You\u0026rsquo;d be surprised at the number of people who work with computers for a living who can\u0026rsquo;t actually touch type.  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet\"\u003eMarkdown\u003c/a\u003e.  Markdown is incredibly handy for tossing-off documentation and forum responses.  I\u0026rsquo;ve actually considered hosing this blog entirely and converting to posts hosted on Github, formatted in Markdown.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skills I'm glad I have"},{"content":"A few quick thoughts on a subject I\u0026rsquo;ve seen at least 10 times in my career:\n\u0026ldquo;Okay, when are you done enough for me to test this thing?\u0026rdquo;\nLet\u0026rsquo;s parse that a bit, because the ensuing arguments are one of definition\n\u0026ldquo;Okay,\u0026rdquo; Acknowledging that stuff is just great or else I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be talking. \u0026ldquo;when\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m going to ask you for a date. \u0026ldquo;are you done\u0026rdquo; Done as is: Things won\u0026rsquo;t change between the time I hit submit on the bug and I go to the bug review meeting and look like an imbecile. \u0026ldquo;enough\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m not a total douche. I\u0026rsquo;d like to test this, not make you look like a fool by filing 15,000 bugs. \u0026ldquo;for me\u0026rdquo; Hi, I\u0026rsquo;m a professional software tester. Yes, we do exist. \u0026ldquo;to test\u0026rdquo; I was born to test and break things. I can make your code cry. You need me. \u0026ldquo;this thing?\u0026rdquo; At the end of the day, your work of art is a piece of business value and I\u0026rsquo;ll not insult both of us by implying otherwise. The above is the way a real QA professional sees that question. I think. Because, I\u0026rsquo;m not a QA professional, and God HELP YOU if I were. I maintain my decade-plus assertion that great testers are born, not made.\nSo, what\u0026rsquo;s the problem? Scenario You\u0026rsquo;d like to release your Thing on Date X. You\u0026rsquo;d like to make money or save time or whatever. You want some reasonable assurance that it works. The QA team says they need Date X - days to test things. That milestone is either imminent or sadly in the rearview mirror. To wit: You\u0026rsquo;re an engineer and you\u0026rsquo;re staring at either a Project Manager or a QA professional and they ask you that question: \u0026ldquo;Okay, when are you done enough for me to test this thing?\u0026rdquo;\nThis is like an opening move in chess, I\u0026rsquo;d argue, and there are several (well-studied) responses\nYour Responses Deflect. That is, attack the premise that you\u0026rsquo;re ever \u0026ldquo;done\u0026rdquo; with software. Said differently, imply there are plenty of testable features: \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s plenty of stuff to test. Why haven\u0026rsquo;t you started already?\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;ve been there. I\u0026rsquo;ve done this. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t work. If your shop cares about milestones, this is a one-way ticket to escalation. For one thing, you\u0026rsquo;ve established a Dev \u0026gt; Test primacy that excites the Lizard Brain in all of us, particularly test managers. Particularly if they have an axe to grind. Lie. \u0026ldquo;Sure, we\u0026rsquo;ll be done by ______.\u0026rdquo; While given with the best intentions, any sort of answer that fits that pattern given on the spot is a lie. Take a breath and understand that. You might have a 50/50 shot of hitting a date given on the spot, and if you miss again, there goes your credibility. Stall. In effort to avoid 1 \u0026amp; 2, a natural is, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll get back to you.\u0026rdquo; This is perfectly acceptable in many circumstances, including here, but realize: If someone uttered that original question, their Spidey Sense that you\u0026rsquo;re going to be horribly late with crappy deliverables they have to somehow pull out of the fire goes off. Better: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll get back to you this afternoon.\u0026rdquo; Work the problem. Assuming everyone is trying, all sides want to meet the goals. The Testers really want to test, because they\u0026rsquo;ve lived through working 70 hour weeks trying to test stuff that delivered late. They\u0026rsquo;re sensitive to that not happening again. So, call a meeting to look at the situation from both test and development perspectives and see what\u0026rsquo;s testable and when the late stuff will be available. Variations Deflection by fit-throwing: roll your eyes. Swear appropriately. Go off by yourself in a huff. Your hapless manager/team lead will try to rope you back in and they\u0026rsquo;ll forget all about the test kerfuffle. You\u0026rsquo;re acting like a 2-year-old. Please be better than that.\nLie by legalism: \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t believe our schedule committed to exactly ______ by .\u0026rdquo; This will send everyone back to their various documentation and buy you time. It\u0026rsquo;s a damned dirty trick, and everyone sees through it. You\u0026rsquo;ll probably win the battle\u0026ndash;no one maintains that kind of documentation, unless there\u0026rsquo;s a government contract involved\u0026ndash;but again your credibility is toast.\nWork the problem\u0026hellip;.until they quit. This is inviting them into a meeting. Then another meeting. Then a meeting you have to reschedule. Eventually, they give up. Again, past a certain point, people know you\u0026rsquo;re all smoke and mirrors. You don\u0026rsquo;t want that on your reputation.\nFire all your testers. \u0026ldquo;We can automate everything, and we don\u0026rsquo;t need them. We need developers, and the budgets are tight.\u0026rdquo; You\u0026rsquo;re rationalizing. Call me in exactly 18 months when all your customers find the issues you didn\u0026rsquo;t add to the automation suite, but a good tester would\u0026rsquo;ve found in 1 day.\nPut the testers on the development team. Bah, just fire them. Admit you want them to STFU so you can keep hitting dates, and doing this removes any sort of counterbalance to the \u0026ldquo;ship it\u0026rdquo; mentality of a development manager.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;ve lived through some theme and variation on all the above. The RIGHT answer is: Work the problem, bombard your test group with progress and status before you get close to a milestone so there\u0026rsquo;s zero surprises. That\u0026rsquo;s right, if someone even asks the question in the middle of your project, take it as a sign your development process has failed, and act accordingly.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/09/when-can-test-start/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA few quick thoughts on a subject I\u0026rsquo;ve seen at least 10 times in my career:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Okay, when are you done enough for me to test this thing?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s parse that a bit, because the ensuing arguments are one of definition\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;Okay,\u0026rdquo; \u003cem\u003eAcknowledging that stuff is just great or else I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be talking.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;when\u0026rdquo; \u003cem\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m going to ask you for a date.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;are you done\u0026rdquo; \u003cem\u003eDone as is:\u003c/em\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eThings won\u0026rsquo;t change between the time I hit submit on the bug and I go to the bug review meeting and look like an imbecile\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;enough\u0026rdquo; \u003cem\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not a total douche.  I\u0026rsquo;d like to test this, not make you look like a fool by filing 15,000 bugs.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;for me\u0026rdquo; \u003cem\u003eHi, I\u0026rsquo;m a professional software tester.  Yes, we do exist\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;to test\u0026rdquo; \u003cem\u003eI was born to test and break things.  I can make your code cry.  You need me.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;this thing?\u0026rdquo; \u003cem\u003eAt the end of the day, your work of art is a piece of business value and I\u0026rsquo;ll not insult both of us by implying otherwise\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe above is the way a real QA professional sees that question.  I think.  Because, I\u0026rsquo;m not a QA professional, and God HELP YOU if I were.  I maintain my decade-plus assertion that great testers are born, not made.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"When Can Test Start?\""},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m homesick.\n\u0026ldquo;Home\u0026rdquo; is hard to define:\nThe place where your feet are. The place where your wife and kids are. The place where you feel at\u0026hellip;well\u0026hellip;.home. I don\u0026rsquo;t feel at home in Austin. All the social and physical trappings of having roots here just aren\u0026rsquo;t here yet:\nWe don\u0026rsquo;t have a real house. We have an apartment with a yard. It\u0026rsquo;s nice enough, but nothing about it feels like \u0026lsquo;home\u0026rsquo; except for the occupants. We don\u0026rsquo;t have a church. Realistically, we\u0026rsquo;re not even close. Everywhere we\u0026rsquo;ve visited, coming up on 10 churches at this point has been some combination of too. Too loud. Too small. Too doctrinally unsound. Protestantism, as ever, remains a mixed bag once you go somewhere else. The water here is genuinely terrible. For one thing, tap water is hot, not cool or cold. There seems to be mix of limestone and sulfur in that\u0026rsquo;s just hard to take. Everything reasonably potable is filtered or bottled. I don\u0026rsquo;t have the friends and colleagues I left behind. I knew this was part of the deal. I felt called to come to Texas, but I guess I didn\u0026rsquo;t appreciate having people who really knew me. There are positives, of course. My wife and daughters seem to be flourishing, amid the many homeschool groups and activities of Greater Austin (Cedar Park and Round Rock, in particular). We\u0026rsquo;re able to save for the first time in our life,. Work couldn\u0026rsquo;t be more stimulating.\nSometimes, I mope. It\u0026rsquo;s a thing for me to just hit a depressive cycle every so often and I guess just looking down and seeing no safety net beneath us has me homesick. I miss being able to relax, though I\u0026rsquo;d suppose that\u0026rsquo;s my own neurosis.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/09/homesick/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m homesick.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Home\u0026rdquo; is hard to define:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe place where your feet are.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe place where your wife and kids are.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe place where you feel at\u0026hellip;well\u0026hellip;.\u003cem\u003ehome\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t feel at home in Austin.  All the social and physical trappings of having roots here just aren\u0026rsquo;t here yet:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe don\u0026rsquo;t have a real house.  We have an apartment with a yard.  It\u0026rsquo;s nice enough, but nothing about it feels like \u0026lsquo;home\u0026rsquo; except for the occupants.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe don\u0026rsquo;t have a church.  Realistically, we\u0026rsquo;re not even close.  Everywhere we\u0026rsquo;ve visited, coming up on 10 churches at this point has been some combination of \u003cem\u003etoo\u003c/em\u003e.  Too loud.  Too small.  Too doctrinally unsound.  Protestantism, as ever, remains a mixed bag once you go somewhere else.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe water here is genuinely terrible.  For one thing, tap water is hot, not cool or cold.  There seems to be mix of limestone and sulfur in that\u0026rsquo;s just hard to take.  Everything reasonably potable is filtered or bottled.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t have the friends and colleagues I left behind.  I knew this was part of the deal.  I felt called to come to Texas, but I guess I didn\u0026rsquo;t appreciate having people who really knew me.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are positives, of course.   My wife and daughters seem to be flourishing, amid the many homeschool groups and activities of Greater Austin (Cedar Park and Round Rock, in particular).  We\u0026rsquo;re able to save for the first time in our life,.  Work couldn\u0026rsquo;t be more stimulating.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Homesick"},{"content":"So, during my job-hunt, I spent at least an hour a day on HackerRank. I highly recommend the site for anyone learning to code, sharpening their skills, or learning a new language.\nAnyway, so at my new job we use Java8 extensively. I\u0026rsquo;d had cursory exposure to Java at my last gig, but mostly in the \u0026ldquo;Why won\u0026rsquo;t this frigging library run with my Java 1.7 JVM?!\u0026rdquo; variety. So, it was time to learn something new. Narturally, I thought of HackerRank and it\u0026rsquo;s Java tutorials.\nSo here\u0026rsquo;s one that\u0026rsquo;s interesting: Java List.\nSome things of note:\nOne can eschew loops completely now. The new Streams API + lambdas make it possible to mimic the expressiveness of Ruby, with Stream.forEach( ) feeling awfully similar to Ruby\u0026rsquo;s each {} The Stream parallelStream() is pretty much as easy as concurrency on JVM is likely to get. The only downside is the global JVM fork/join pool for the streams. It\u0026rsquo;s awfully easy to get sucked into multiple transforms that seem to make code harder to read. As I gain experience with the Collectors, this seems to be getting better. ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/09/java8-loops-not-required/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, during my job-hunt, I spent at least an hour a day on \u003ca href=\"https://www.hackerrank.com/\"\u003eHackerRank\u003c/a\u003e.  I highly recommend the site for anyone learning to code, sharpening their skills, or learning a new language.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, so at my new job we use Java8 extensively.  I\u0026rsquo;d had cursory exposure to Java at my last gig, but mostly in the \u0026ldquo;Why won\u0026rsquo;t this frigging library run with my Java 1.7 JVM?!\u0026rdquo; variety.  So, it was time to learn something new.  Narturally, I thought of HackerRank and it\u0026rsquo;s Java tutorials.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Java8: Loops Not required"},{"content":"Yes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/09/is-printing-dying/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-12/hp-inc-buying-samsung-s-printer-business-for-1-05-billion\"\u003eYes\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Is Printing Dying?"},{"content":"September is ruined, it seems.\nSeptember is my time of reflection, just as it was 2 years ago. I looked out upon Chevy Chase in Lexington, on bi-monthly afternoon off, and I was both over-caffeinated and sad.\nToday isn\u0026rsquo;t all that different: I\u0026rsquo;m pensive, alone among a crowd, and over-caffeinated. I\u0026rsquo;m a Christian without a church home, a football fan without a team, and a father down one child.\nHow did we get here? The man writing on that patio in 2014 was actually on the rebound: He\u0026rsquo;d learned the folly of pursuing The Company.\nThe Company had asked him many times to do what was necessary, and he happily obliged. Somehow, it was the one safe harbor in his life, where being a \u0026ldquo;confident, capable\u0026rdquo; person was somewhat true. He wasn\u0026rsquo;t a failure there, as a husband or a father. For seven, ten, or twelve hours a day, he could make things better, make things work.\nUntil he couldn\u0026rsquo;t. They broke him in 2011, irrevocably. He got the big call-up as they say in baseball. An ill-defined position something like \u0026ldquo;Principal Engineer.\u0026rdquo; Talk about a recipe for disaster! Requirements for that position:\nAn ability to maintain perspective no matter the circumstances. Good boundaries, knowing where your responsibility both begins and ends. Ability to cede ultimate responsibility to the \u0026ldquo;decision maker.\u0026rdquo; Ability to delegate. Ability to micro-manage others as necessary. Keeping things professional, leaving emotions out of any decision. General self-image impervious to both direct and indirect attack from those with some sort of axe to grind, both individual contributors and the innumerable middle-managers you\u0026rsquo;ll deal with. No outward sense of paranoid, but a constant vigilance to CYA at all times. Let\u0026rsquo;s be clear: A different person would relish this position, both the power and the perks.\n\u0026hellip;just not me.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s time I put it away. In any case, in 2014, this happened\nOh darn\u0026hellip;.looks like I\u0026rsquo;ll be back writing, delivering code instead of programming by powerpoint. #shutupandcodehttps://t.co/Ih2QAyiVj3\n— Harold Combs (@miniharryc) June 27, 2014\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the context of that 2014 post. I was about 9 weeks back into serious development, and I\u0026rsquo;ll never regret it. In the next 18 months, I would:\nHelp write the Identity Provider all of our Cloud stuff would depend upon Help roll-out our solution in Europe Help spur a transition to Amazon EC2 Really get to use Ruby, RSpec, Capybara, and the wonderful Ruby ecosystem. Write a damned-slick screen-scraper/login driver using NodeJS Get to operate that solution. In short, I had a blast, and I got to work with the sharpest at my company.\nI was uneasy, because I was doing something I wanted to do. I had plenty of people asking me what the hell I thought I was doing. I had several people (apparently) nervous I was trying to usurp their authority (I wasn\u0026rsquo;t). I just wanted to code, and make stuff, and get better at it.\nIn summary, as I now sit in a combination cafe/froyo stand just west of Lakeline mall in Austin, with the sun moving towards the horizon surrounded by people with macbooks, I\u0026rsquo;m happy I\u0026rsquo;m at a place where I get to code so much that I sometimes go home with my fingertips sore. I learn stuff, every day, and I get to interact with some great people.\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t yet scratched the surface of Austin, from its strange fascination with Tacos, cycling, and hippies. I haven\u0026rsquo;t yet figured out how to be Dad and Husband adequately\u0026hellip;.maybe I never will. At best, this is a ramble, much like my transition down here. Trying to snatch a plot out of a stream of consciousness 2 million people wide, all trying to make sense of \u0026ldquo;life its own self\u0026rdquo; as Dr. Bud used to say.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/09/was-it-two-septembers-ago-it-seemed-like-yesterday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSeptember is ruined, it seems.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeptember is my time of reflection, \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/09/a-moment-in-time-early-september-2014/\" title=\"a moment in time\"\u003ejust as it was 2 years ago\u003c/a\u003e.  I looked out upon Chevy Chase in Lexington, on bi-monthly afternoon off, and I was both over-caffeinated and sad.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday isn\u0026rsquo;t all that different:  I\u0026rsquo;m pensive, alone among a crowd, and over-caffeinated.  I\u0026rsquo;m a Christian without a church home, a football fan without a team, and a father down one child.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Was it Two Septembers ago?  It Seemed Like Yesterday"},{"content":"Joey fired us.\nTomorrow marks two weeks since that was official.\nI love my son.\nI miss my son.\nMaybe this was all a mistake.\nI have no idea.\nPerhaps that\u0026rsquo;s the beginning of Faith.\nIf so, faith is painful as Hell.\nAnd lonely.\nSo fine, and sunny, and smiling, and empty.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s said that God breaks us, so he might rebuild us.\nI\u0026rsquo;m a thousand pieces flying in close formation.\nWhat does He make of that?\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll see.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/08/i-miss-my-son/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJoey fired us.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTomorrow marks two weeks since that was official.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI love my son.\u003cbr\u003e\nI miss my son.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaybe this was all a mistake.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have no idea.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePerhaps that\u0026rsquo;s the beginning of Faith.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf so, faith is painful as Hell.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd lonely.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo fine, and sunny, and smiling, and empty.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s said that God breaks us, so he might rebuild us.\u003cbr\u003e\nI\u0026rsquo;m a thousand pieces flying in close formation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I Miss My Son"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Hey, this traffic isn\u0026rsquo;t so bad!\u0026rdquo; I thought a month ago. It was July and I was averaging 15-20 minutes to work down a 6 lane surface street with an effective 70mph speed limit (Yay, Texas?)\n\u0026hellip;then school started back.\nThat same street became one backup after another this morning, and it took me 30 minutes door-to-door, even though I live 9 miles away. Between schools being back in session and UT classes restarting, something like 40,000 more Austinites are on the road each morning and afternoon.\nYaaaay!\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not so bad, of course. Between the EV mode on my Fusion Hybrid and the regenerative braking, I\u0026rsquo;m up past 32mpg even in that gridlock. Not bad for for a now 7 year old paid-for car.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/08/north-austin-traffic/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Hey, this traffic isn\u0026rsquo;t so bad!\u0026rdquo; I thought a month ago.  It was July and I was averaging 15-20 minutes to work down a 6 lane surface street with an effective 70mph speed limit (Yay, Texas?)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;then school started back.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat same street became one backup after another this morning, and it took me 30 minutes door-to-door, even though I live 9 miles away.   Between schools being back in session and UT classes restarting, something like 40,000 more Austinites are on the road each morning and afternoon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"(North) Austin Traffic"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been reflecting lately. Huge life changes will do that to you. You know, things like: Quitting your job of 17 years without another one handy, moving to a state you\u0026rsquo;ve only driven through once, working at one of the big 4 tech firms, and being fired as a Dad by my own son.\nSo, when do you decide to make a change?\nLooking back on it, there were several discrete moments where I was \u0026lsquo;out\u0026rsquo;.\nPhilosophic Disagreement: I was still an intern when I learned the company decided to shut-down all manufacturing at our site. This fundamentally changed the company, from being a team-oriented place where we did everythig soup-to-nuts (R\u0026amp;D -\u0026gt; Manufacturing -\u0026gt; Sales) to being wholly white-collar. I was so upset I called my Dad and said I wanted to quit, to never go back to that place. I went back the next Monday. Burnout: When I was promoted waaay too fast and burnt out, at 25. I was leading a team in America and one in India, and every single person on both teams was older than me. I handled it\u0026hellip;.by working about 80 hours a week. I was increasingly unhealthy and stressed, and if you look back at my blog in 2003-\u0026gt;2004, you can see it clearly. The Deathmarch: In 2008-\u0026gt;2009, I worked on an 18 month deathmarch project full of politics, deadlines, and impossibility. We got it done and made it work, but I was working 80 hours a week minimum for that time. I remember distinctly having a shouting match with my manager at 3am on a Sunday night. I tried to get out, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t try very hard. One interview went badly and I just slumped back into my job. Peter Principle: I got promoted 3 levels up the org chart to report directly to a director. I saw the reality of corporate middle management, and it made me sick. It got so bad, my wife drew the line and said she wanted to hear nothing about my job ever again. (A bad sign unto itself) The Pie Shrinks: Sometimes, you have to look around and realize that every year, bit-by-bit, you\u0026rsquo;re shrinking. There are fewer people than there were, and just as much work. Think of it like Germany in 1945: It makes little sense to run a things the way you once did when you\u0026rsquo;re just trying to stave off the Soviet Army at the gate. Thing was, I saw the pie shrink something like 7 times before I got out. Seventeen years Why did I stay?\nInsecurity. I\u0026rsquo;ve never been a \u0026ldquo;natural\u0026rdquo; at CS stuff, I went to a no-name school, my natural accent makes people think I should have a banjo instead of a keyboard. Loyalty. I am loyal. I was brought-up to be loyal to family, country, and (yes) company. My father worked for the same company his entire career. Family Circumstances. I\u0026rsquo;m the sole income-earner and I support 4 other people. \u0026ldquo;Risk tolerant\u0026rdquo; was not something I could be. I needed steady income and job security. How did I break that down?\nSeventeen years of experience. People really don\u0026rsquo;t care what school you went to after a few years in industry. They care about your body of work and what you bring to the table now. There is no loyalty to employees. It\u0026rsquo;s fantasy. Individual managers are great (and I\u0026rsquo;ve had many that were), but a for-profit, joint-stock corporation has nothing in its corporate charter about loyalty to employees. In the end, both sides operate best when seeking mutually beneficial outcomes: Great work in exchange for great compensation. I got down to zero debt (thanks Dave Ramsey) and got a separation package. So, like most things, fear and pride were why I stayed.\nRealistically, things had run their course in 2005, 2009, and 2011. All of those were great opportunities to tie a bow and do something else.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/08/when-do-you-leave/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been reflecting lately.  Huge life changes will do that to you.  You know, things like: Quitting your job of 17 years without another one handy, moving to a state you\u0026rsquo;ve only driven through once, working at one of the big 4 tech firms, and being fired as a Dad by my own son.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, when do you \u003ca href=\"http://freakonomics.com/2011/04/06/ten-reasons-you-need-to-quit-your-job/\"\u003edecide to make a change\u003c/a\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLooking back on it, there were several discrete moments where I was \u0026lsquo;out\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"When Do You Leave?"},{"content":"Just wanted to pause and write about that super-exciting topic: Code reviews.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s begin with defining what code review is, and establishing the case for making it part of your development process. We\u0026rsquo;ll also take a trip down memory lane and acknowledge doing code reviews was really hard for years, and now it\u0026rsquo;s laughably easy.\nWhat is Code Review? Simply, code review is when someone else looks at your code to critique for defects. Metaphorically, it\u0026rsquo;s like when you hand your rough draft of a piece of writing to someone else and ask: \u0026ldquo;Does this make sense to you?\u0026rdquo; The writing process and programming process are close kin, but that\u0026rsquo;s another post unto itself.\nSo what is the reviewer looking for?\nDoes the (changed) code do what you set out to do? Have you considered various types of good and bad input? Do you handle errors appropriately? Does the work communicate intent clearly and concisely to the reader? There are more, but #4 interests me, because it\u0026rsquo;s _the same thing you\u0026rsquo;d say about a piece of prose. _Again, a topic for another day, but it\u0026rsquo;s quite interesting that it\u0026rsquo;s relatively easy to compiles reliably and which accomplishes a task. It\u0026rsquo;s harder to make code a human can understand days, weeks, even years later. See Software Craftsmanship.\nWhy Review Code Code review promises many things:\nFewer bugs in your production code. Cross-training people, lessening the business risk of turnover. Promotes better \u0026ldquo;team\u0026rdquo; ownership of a codebase. Let\u0026rsquo;s unpack that a bit.\nBugs happen. Thankfully our tools handle things like syntax errors, module integration issues, and style-guide problems automatically, most of the time. However, logic and design problems still occur, and other sets of eyes really help find that before your customers do.\nCross training and collective ownership don\u0026rsquo;t happen organically. People\u0026ndash;especially software folks\u0026ndash;like to specialize and master things. They like doing what\u0026rsquo;s comfortable and easy. In absence of other energy or intent, you\u0026rsquo;ll quickly find that a codebase turns enclaves like \u0026ldquo;Carl\u0026rsquo;s Code\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Larry\u0026rsquo;s Code\u0026rdquo; with everything but a /* STAY OUT UNLESS YOU TALK TO ME (NATHAN) */ comment on it. Actually, I\u0026rsquo;ve seen those comments. They\u0026rsquo;re funny!\nIn any case, a session where other folks have to review code forces them to read and understand the code. At minimum, some awareness of how another piece of code works, and it de-personalizes the code and makes it more a property of the entire team.\nThat being said\u0026hellip;.\nWhy Doesn\u0026rsquo;t it Happen? I submit: Doing required code review isn\u0026rsquo;t self-evident. It takes time. It can be frustrating, both for the reviewer and code author(s). I\u0026rsquo;ve been programming professionally for 17 years, but during that time I\u0026rsquo;ve only been in groups with effective, systemic code review for ~5 years, and even that off-and-on. Why is that?\nIt\u0026rsquo;s useful to look at the reasons people don\u0026rsquo;t:\n_ROI: _It takes too long / We don\u0026rsquo;t have the time. _Operational feasibility: _It\u0026rsquo;s too hard. _ROI: _I have no way of verifying the code under review actually got fixed. _ROI: _We have tools that enforce most of this stuff anyway. Thus, the resistance factors are: (1) Is this worth my time? (2) Is it necessary? (3) Is it practical, day-to-day? To answer, we need to contrast programming before ~2009 and after.\nThe Before (Tools) Time Scenario You\u0026rsquo;ve done 3 months worth of work on a new feature for your software, largely by yourself. You\u0026rsquo;ve already committed the code 2 weeks ago and people have change it since. There\u0026rsquo;s a ticky mark on your Project Manager\u0026rsquo;s spreadsheet she copy-pastes under everyone\u0026rsquo;s quarterly features: Code Review Complete. So, you call a meeting of the whole team and email them links to your code in CVS.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re lucky, everyone brings their 7lb+ laptops with PCMCIA wireless cards to the meeting. If you\u0026rsquo;re not, people bring page after page of print-outs of the .h/.cpp files with scribbles. The pedant(s) will bring a set of style sins you\u0026rsquo;ve committed and hand you those on a sheet (with a superior smile). Then the meeting begins. If it\u0026rsquo;s a formal review, the author (you) says nothing. This is formal. This is by the book, dammit. The facilitator reads your code, line-by-line, and people raise questions and defects. Another participant\u0026ndash;the scribe\u0026ndash;writes down those defects along with line numbers. Lord willing, you make it to the end of your changeset by the end of the hour(s). If it\u0026rsquo;s anything non-trivial, you probably won\u0026rsquo;t. You\u0026rsquo;re handed/emailed the defects, and you\u0026rsquo;re expected to fix them and call another verification meeting where we\u0026rsquo;ll do this all again.\nYes, that\u0026rsquo;s what code review looked like in 2002 or so.\nProblems Let\u0026rsquo;s acknowledge that the above can work. It\u0026rsquo;s a very formal process, developed and codified. I\u0026rsquo;ve done it, probably 3 times in 17 years. One of those 3 times it was effective.\nCentrally: Who has time to do that?\nThe problems I observed with the above:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026ldquo;super meeting\u0026rdquo;: Everyone has to synchronize the prep-time, the meeting, and the follow-up. A meeting like that is man-weeks of impact to your schedule. No one does the prep work. Well, the pedant(s) on your team will. They\u0026rsquo;ll love eschewing real work to critique others (yet another topic for another day). In reality, of 8 team members who walk in that door as reviewers, maybe 2 will have read any of your code before that day. It\u0026rsquo;s painful to collate, parse, and take action on the review comments. They\u0026rsquo;re out of context, and use absolute references to code: Doofus.cpp, line 1337: Consider \u0026lsquo;switch\u0026rsquo; instead of repeated \u0026lsquo;if/else\u0026rsquo; blocks.\nThus, you have to take action on the reviews from bottom to top or your line numbers get messed-up. Tedious, at best.\nNo one wants to attend the follow-up meeting to verify your changes were correct. People will acquire strange illnesses and schedule vacations to garden spots like Detroit to miss that meeting, believe me. Like most business problems, the above have very little to do with technical issues. Mostly it\u0026rsquo;s people. If it\u0026rsquo;s too hard, people find ways to not do it. Also, code reviews were the second thing that got cut to meet schedule, right after that nebulous \u0026lsquo;Unit Tests\u0026rsquo; line item on the Gantt chart.\nCode Review in the Github Era (post 2009) Scenario You have a user story you took off the Kanban board this morning. You code up a unit test and write the code for it before lunch. You check-in your changes to a git branch and push that branch to \u0026lsquo;origin\u0026rsquo;. Once the ad-hoc build for your branch completes (automatically), you create a pull-request to your team.\nWherever they might be over the next 2 hours, your team members review your changes\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s only ~40-50 lines of ruby/groovy, anyway. Their screen shows them the current code and your suggested changes in a two-pane view. When they have comments, they click on the line number on the screen and type-in their comments.\nAt around 3pm, you see Sue has given some feedback you need to integrate; she found a critical corner case you didn\u0026rsquo;t account for. You update your unit test and your code, then push again. The code review updates automatically with the change.\nYou receive 3 \u0026lsquo;+1\u0026rsquo; comments from your teammates and you merge the changes by 4pm.\nHow is this better? It\u0026rsquo;s asynchronous. Your teammates may review your code any time the review is open. It\u0026rsquo;s location-independent. Your reviewers could be anywhere in the world. Zero prep work is required. Given reasonable familiarity with the codebase, the 2-pane diff view shows you the changes in context. The system handles the comments, rework, and verification for you. You have: Unit tests, Integration tests, automated build, and a code review system. There\u0026rsquo;s no way to lose the context of the review. Verifying your rework is usually trivial for the reviewers. Summary Going back to our original resistance factors:\nIs it worth my time? Unless you\u0026rsquo;re doing 50 pull requests per day, yes. Reviews can be less than 10% of your time every day.\nIs it necessary? One can produce working code without code review. Arguably, if one wants a codebase that can sustain a 100% developer turnover in 3 years, then I\u0026rsquo;d consider it essential.\nIs it practical? Formal reviews were never practical, unless you worked at NASA or on flight control software. The ROI wasn\u0026rsquo;t there. A more github-style flow is entirely practical.\n* * I\u0026rsquo;d argue Code Review was an ad-hoc, spotty practice before the tooling improved. Like diet and exercise, it was \u0026ldquo;What we should do,\u0026rdquo; but precious few of us were diligent about it. The ROI was barely there before tooling caught-up to how people work in the git/github era.\nNow, given excellent tools like Github and ReviewBoard, an engineering group can integrate a code review into their workflow easily. Again like diet and exercise, if one is diligent every day, it\u0026rsquo;s easy to make it a lifestyle.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/08/code-review-1.-the-case-for-code-review/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust wanted to pause and write about that super-exciting topic: Code reviews.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s begin with defining what code review is, and establishing the case for making it part of your development process.  We\u0026rsquo;ll also take a trip down memory lane and acknowledge doing code reviews was \u003cem\u003ereally hard\u003c/em\u003e for years, and now it\u0026rsquo;s laughably easy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"what-is-code-review\"\u003eWhat is Code Review?\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSimply, code review is when someone else looks at your code to critique for defects.  \u003c/p\u003e","title":"[Code Review] 1. The Case for Code Review"},{"content":"Thus far the quote of the month has been:\nWe should\u0026rsquo;ve moved here 5 years ago.\nSo far Austin is amazing. In true Freudian fashion, my fingers wrote that last sentence as \u0026lsquo;Austin is amazon.\u0026quot; :) Amazon is amazing, too, but I can\u0026rsquo;t quite talk about that.\nSo, it\u0026rsquo;s August. It\u0026rsquo;s 100 degrees every day, 81 degrees at 7 am, and it\u0026rsquo;s great. Pollen counts are laughably low here, so everyone\u0026rsquo;s improving in their allergies.\nTraffic is bad, but manageable. I have 3 good ways to work, two of them toll-free. I can generally make it to work in 20 minutes on a 9.8 mile commute, getting 30+ mpg with the a/c on full blast. One real blessing: Our building has a free parking structure next door, and that lets me park my dark-colored Fusion out of the sun. I\u0026rsquo;ve so far washed the car once since I got here and the exterior still looks great\u0026ndash;no rain and shade/garage will do that for you. Getting home is a bit more \u0026lsquo;fun\u0026rsquo;, usually taking 20-45 minutes. The one time it rained it took almost an hour.\nMy office environment is open floor-plan with 4\u0026rsquo; walls. Our entire development team is in one big room I\u0026rsquo;d estimate at 30\u0026rsquo; x 60\u0026rsquo;. And that\u0026rsquo;s everybody: Project managers, developers, managers, etc. Conversations do carry, and there are usually lively debates ~4pm or so every day on various topics: Static -v- dynamic programming languages, type safety, interview experiences, etc.\nThe building does lack a cafeteria, but there are usually adjacent food trucks, and a great street with lots of options is about a quarter-mile away. That is, easily walkable.\nThe only thing that\u0026rsquo;s not going so great is our ongoing search for a new church. The results so far:\nA great little church with awesome music, good sermon, and somewhat friendly folks. But simply too small at 100 people. We\u0026rsquo;ve done the small church thing once and would prefer to avoid it. The hollow shell of a megachurch complete with vegas-quality AV/lighting and production values. The place can\u0026rsquo;t pay its bills after several scandals in the past decade. Again, we\u0026rsquo;ve done a church that can\u0026rsquo;t pay its bills, and would prefer to avoid. A church that, on paper, seems perfect\u0026ndash;~400 or so attendees, life groups, beliefs that match our own. Problems: We went to service and walked out with a literal headache from loud, bad worship music and a diffuse, monotone sermon. If it were just me, I\u0026rsquo;d love to go back to that little church again. I really felt the Spirit there and man could they sing!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/08/how-are-you-today-im-wonderful/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThus far the quote of the month has been:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWe should\u0026rsquo;ve moved here 5 years ago.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo far Austin is amazing.  In true Freudian fashion, my fingers wrote that last sentence as \u0026lsquo;Austin is amazon.\u0026quot;  :)  Amazon is amazing, too, but I can\u0026rsquo;t quite talk about that.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, it\u0026rsquo;s August.   It\u0026rsquo;s 100 degrees every day, 81 degrees at 7 am, and it\u0026rsquo;s great.  Pollen counts are laughably low here, so everyone\u0026rsquo;s improving in their allergies.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How are you today?  I'm wonderful"},{"content":"A letter to myself in July 2015 from July 2016:\nDear sir,\nThis is your future self speaking. Don\u0026rsquo;t question and go all \u0026lsquo;Dr Who\u0026rsquo; on me, just listen. Your life is about to change. You\u0026rsquo;ve worked at Lexmark for 16 years unofficially. You\u0026rsquo;re looking forward to that congratulatory \u0026ldquo;15 years of service\u0026rdquo; email you\u0026rsquo;ll get on June 4th, 2016. You\u0026rsquo;ll never see it. Let me explain a bit what\u0026rsquo;s going to transpire:\nThe company will \u0026ldquo;explore strategic alternatives\u0026rdquo; beginning in October. I still can\u0026rsquo;t tell you much about what happens after that, legally. You\u0026rsquo;ll start getting signals it\u0026rsquo;s time to go from above. The company will announce a voluntary exit program with \u0026lsquo;N\u0026rsquo; weeks of pay and benefits. You will accept this offer on the last possible day you could, March 4th. You will exit the company on April 1st. You will have job offers locally, but you\u0026rsquo;ll turn them down in favor of rolling the dice in Texas. You\u0026rsquo;ll finally accept a job with Amazon in Austin, Texas. By the way, Amazon has a development team in Austin, TX. You\u0026rsquo;ll sell your house with it only 2 days on the market. You\u0026rsquo;ll be technically out of work for 3 months. Yes, you\u0026rsquo;ll survive that somehow. Signed, Future You.\n* * *\nSo, yeah\u0026hellip;.down here in Austin. So much to say, but I\u0026rsquo;m so woefully behind on blogging that it\u0026rsquo;ll require some effort to catch up. Work is great. Our (rental) house is like a big apartment. Austin is great so far. Today begins my 3rd full week of work in Austin, 4th week at Amazon overall. Quite a change :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/07/reboot-now-in-austin/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA letter to myself in July 2015 from July 2016:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDear sir,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is your future self speaking.  Don\u0026rsquo;t question and go all \u0026lsquo;Dr Who\u0026rsquo; on me, just \u003cem\u003elisten\u003c/em\u003e.  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYour life is about to change.   You\u0026rsquo;ve worked at Lexmark for 16 years unofficially.  You\u0026rsquo;re looking forward to that congratulatory \u0026ldquo;15 years of service\u0026rdquo; email you\u0026rsquo;ll get on June 4th, 2016.  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;ll never see it.  Let me explain a bit what\u0026rsquo;s going to transpire:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reboot: Now in Austin"},{"content":"So, I\u0026rsquo;ve had a few rants thoughts on process in the past.\nI\u0026rsquo;d like to revisit those with my Big Boy pants on. For one thing, during my current job search process, my experience in Agile in the past 4 years always comes up, so I thought I\u0026rsquo;d parrot here what I generally say in the interviews, on why you\u0026rsquo;d choose one versus another.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;ll allow me, I\u0026rsquo;m going to argue that both are valuable, and both should be in your organization.\nFirst, let\u0026rsquo;s define our terms. When I say Scrum, I generally mean the process that arose in the early 2000\u0026rsquo;s employing same-size sprints, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and backlogs. See the wiki link for more detail. When I say Kanban, I mean the process employing same-sized units of work in a continuous delivery stream with a strong focus on Service Level Agreement (SLA) for a given team.\nThings I\u0026rsquo;m explicitly not discussing:\nXP or \u0026ldquo;Extreme Programming\u0026rdquo; Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Any generic holy wars that generally devolve into the No True Scotsman fallacy Let\u0026rsquo;s proceed, then, Scotty.\nWhy to Choose Scrum Summary \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; If you have to adopt some methodology and you can\u0026rsquo;t spell \u0026ldquo;Agile\u0026rdquo; yet, choose Scrum. It\u0026rsquo;s generic and structured enough. Just don\u0026rsquo;t let it become a religion.\nHaving lived through \u0026ldquo;Agile\u0026rdquo; when it was basically defined by what it wasn\u0026rsquo;t, Scrum is amazing. It\u0026rsquo;s real, tangible, and it holds water to all those people who write the checks (your bosses) and buy your products (your customers). People have a place, and defined responsibilities. Scrum optimizes for working code always, and deliverable code at the end of each sprint. Each sprint is like a small software release encompassing design, testing, development (see what I did there?) and delivery. At the end, there\u0026rsquo;s a demo, and an opportunity for the stakeholders to adjust direction. Lather, rinse, repeat.\nA key term to learn in Scrum is velocity, the # of \u0026ldquo;story points\u0026rdquo; a team can complete within an increment (2 to 4 weeks), typically. By using velocity and a well-sized backlog of work, one can do that Project Management magic of managing risk/schedule/function for a given product.\nScrum is great when\u0026hellip; You\u0026rsquo;re building something big. Each \u0026lsquo;sprint\u0026rsquo; is another step towards the end goal. (Keep that in mind, that\u0026rsquo;ll be a big difference for Kanban), and a chance to course-correct. You can leave a team alone for N weeks. A big part of Scrum is minimizing impediments and interruptions. They\u0026rsquo;re going to go through a full development cycle before your very eyes, so watch \u0026ldquo;behind the glass\u0026rdquo; so to speak. Someone cares to watch the demo. This is obvious when you look at it, but it must be said: Real business stakeholders often don\u0026rsquo;t care to see your results twice a month. If no one\u0026rsquo;s going to the demo, it\u0026rsquo;s a waste of time for everyone. You have a new team or you\u0026rsquo;ve never been agile before. As mentioned above, there\u0026rsquo;s a way to go from Zero to Scrum, and most trained Scrum Masters can get you there. Things to watch for\u0026hellip;. Teams sandbagging because of the \u0026ldquo;commitment\u0026rdquo; part of Scrum People rolling their eyes on all the meetings required for Scrum. (Psst\u0026hellip;.they\u0026rsquo;re not required. Make the process work for you!) People exhibiting Stanford Prison Experiment symptoms: Because Scrum does so crisply define roles, it\u0026rsquo;s tempting to lean back into them instead of transcending. Those are just the rules, not the entire \u0026ldquo;Box\u0026rdquo; of your work responsibilities. Exhaustion, particularly in your Product Owners. PO\u0026rsquo;s have a \u0026ldquo;term paper\u0026rdquo; due every 2 weeks during release planning/spring planning, along with their other responsibilities. Why to Choose Kanban Ah, Kanban. Everyone in manufacturing or adjacent to it has learned Lean and TPS and all the theory around it. In essence, Kanban takes the opposite approach from Scrum, in that it\u0026rsquo;s fine with interruptions and odd delivery schedules. Kanban optimizes for throughput by minimizing Work in Progress. Similar to the GTD or Pomodoro philosophy, it hypothesizes that teams do best when they can concentrate on the work at hand.\nKanban is ideal for a team that has to be responsive, like a support organization. In fact, it\u0026rsquo;s nothing really that new. In an ad-hoc way you might consider a ticketing system like RT (or any queuing system) as a Kanban way of acting. What Kanban is really good at is making everything highly visible and focusing the team on the work, not on the individuals. For example, in standup, the team reports on each item in progress, not the team member\u0026rsquo;s status. That\u0026rsquo;s subtle, but it\u0026rsquo;s important: Businesses don\u0026rsquo;t care about what Bob did yesterday, they care about Support ticket #1234 and if the customer is happy.\nKanban is great when\u0026hellip; You\u0026rsquo;re any sort of support or operations group. Kanban was made for you. You have any sort of pre-sales or customization responsibility. Things may crop up day-to-day to close a sale. Those can work in Scrum sprints, but it\u0026rsquo;s awkward. You find your group always takes 3 or 5 \u0026ldquo;story point\u0026rdquo; stories anyway. You have more of a continuous delivery model of development, rather than a hard shutdown/regress/ship. For example, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t see a Hardware R\u0026amp;D organization using Kanban, because there\u0026rsquo;s little value in delivering things on different schedules\u0026ndash;everything has to be fitted, integrated, and tested together. Things to watch for\u0026hellip; Demos. Kanban has no prescribed demo times, so you\u0026rsquo;ll look-up in 6 months without ever demonstrating the product. In a weird way, this can put you back in waterfall hell. Too much WIP. (insert Devo reference as you like!) It\u0026rsquo;s tempting to put too much in progress at once, such that the team is working 1 story per developer. You\u0026rsquo;ll find your productivity plummets at that point\u0026ndash;people get territorial, they don\u0026rsquo;t pair, etc. You\u0026rsquo;re always working. Kanban is a continuous stream of work, but there are other things to do: Training, refactoring, onboarding, etc. Scrum makes it easy/easier to take a \u0026lsquo;quality\u0026rsquo; sprint or a \u0026rsquo;training\u0026rsquo; sprint with crisp edges. That\u0026rsquo;s not straightforward in Kanban. Coaching instead of driving. Kanban is about pulling work, not jamming work through the system. Which leads me to\u0026hellip; Driving to dates. Be honest with yourself\u0026ndash;if you have something schedule driven, you don\u0026rsquo;t have \u0026lsquo;velocity\u0026rsquo; to predict things like with Scrum. Kanban can be made to work in a schedule-driven shop, but it\u0026rsquo;s better in a continuous delivery shop. That\u0026rsquo;s really about it. One final word: Scrum isn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;basic\u0026rdquo; agile anymore than Kanban is \u0026ldquo;advanced\u0026rdquo; agile. This sets up a pecking order, and it really doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist. As I\u0026rsquo;ve said above, if you\u0026rsquo;re building something big, with milestones, and you need predictability, use Scrum. If you\u0026rsquo;re doing support, operations, or pre-sales or continuous delivery, Kanban if for you.\nThus the kicker: Most significant development shops need both. You may have some teams building the new Widget, while some teams are mostly sustaining your bread \u0026amp; butter. Choose whichever methodology makes sense at the team level, and work-out the reporting structure to project management from there.\nThe above is my considered opinion after years of Agile (before it had a name, really). Would love to understand others opinions on it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/04/some-less-controversial-thoughts-on-agile-scrum-v-kanban/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;ve had a few rants \u003cem\u003ethoughts\u003c/em\u003e \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/09/cranky-rant-on-process/\" title=\"rant on process\"\u003eon process in the past\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d like to revisit those with my Big Boy pants on.  For one thing, during my current job search process, my experience in Agile in the past 4 years always comes up, so I thought I\u0026rsquo;d parrot here what I generally say in the interviews, on why you\u0026rsquo;d choose one versus another.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;ll allow me, I\u0026rsquo;m going to argue that both are valuable, and both should be in your organization.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some Less Controversial thoughts on Agile: Scrum -v- Kanban"},{"content":"Well, the goodbye echos are over, the severance check is safely in the bank, and the initial supernova of Job Hunt Hysteria has died down.\nYep, I\u0026rsquo;m just unemployed at the moment. Nothing terribly special\u0026hellip;just a guy looking for his next gig, like millions of others.\nThe first week of \u0026ldquo;not going to work\u0026rdquo; didn\u0026rsquo;t go so well. I was completely off-schedule at home, and an person with my brain chemistry devoid of structure tends toward anxiety and acting-out. I did act-out on Wednesday, so the road back there continues. I have calmed down considerably, and I feel like I\u0026rsquo;m through the change curve to the point of \u0026ldquo;Yep, I don\u0026rsquo;t work at Lexmark anymore.\u0026rdquo;\nI have two sorts of days now: Days where I\u0026rsquo;m at home, and days where I\u0026rsquo;m on the hunt. \u0026ldquo;Home\u0026rdquo; days like yesterday are really nice\u0026ndash;I get to take some of the burden off Whitney and do things around the house, deferred maintenance and errands mostly. For example, I finally closed our old safety deposit box and re-upped my passport (expired since January), then cleaned-up the garage.\n\u0026ldquo;Hunt\u0026rdquo; days finally have some structure to them as well. I\u0026rsquo;ve taken to coming to the Northside Branch of the Lexington Public Library and using their 300Mb/s internet to good effect. Physically the site is close to downtown, has several quiet rooms for people to use for things like conferences or job interviews, and its far enough away from home that I don\u0026rsquo;t feel like I\u0026rsquo;m just \u0026ldquo;hanging out\u0026rdquo; in Georgetown.\nSo, the tech side of things is mostly interview prep on HackerRank. I really can\u0026rsquo;t recommend this site enough\u0026ndash;all of the \u0026lsquo;write this code\u0026quot; problems you inevitably get on a programming interview, plus instant feedback as it runs test cases over your submitted solutions. It\u0026rsquo;s much like the old ACM programming contests from back in the day, but fully automated and self-service.\nI am considering picking-up some F/OSS projects or something else to keep me focused. Doing practice problems is great, but there\u0026rsquo;s nothing quite like squashing bugs or contributing to a real codebase. My church needs a new website and app. so there\u0026rsquo;s always that.\nAs far as current kit goes, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t quite convince myself we needed another $2k+ MacBook pro, so I hit-up a used computer shop in Lexington and got an HP Envy 14\u0026quot; Core i5 machine with a 750MB conventional hard drive for $200, including a 90-day warranty. I put-up with Windows 10 on it for about a week, then slapped Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on it with the Unity UI. Wow, Canonical has really done their homework with this one. They\u0026rsquo;re definitely emulating the Mac look/feel and most everything Just Works. So far, there\u0026rsquo;s no yak shaving required like in the good (?) old days, aside from the keyboard simply not working whenever I power off or suspend the machine. As I type this, it\u0026rsquo;s working just fine, but there\u0026rsquo;s no predictability to it, so I\u0026rsquo;m carrying around a full 102-key USB keyboard. Yeah, I should hit-up the warranty, but I don\u0026rsquo;t want to be out a machine.\nMaria\u0026rsquo;s about to start summer swim team again\u0026ndash;and she\u0026rsquo;s getting faster all the time, with an improving dive\u0026ndash;so it\u0026rsquo;s time we make some definite plans. Stay? Go? If go, where?\nI do thank God to have the financial security to take some time with this, but the Eastern Kentuckian in me is plainly antsy\u0026ndash;seems like lots of good local stuff floating by me, and I\u0026rsquo;m not jumping in any of those proverbial boats. At least, not yet. By Mid-May, it will be time to do some narrowing.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/04/settling-in-for-the-job-hunt-long-term/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, the goodbye echos are over, the severance check is safely in the bank, and the initial supernova of Job Hunt Hysteria has died down.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep, I\u0026rsquo;m just \u003cstrong\u003eunemployed\u003c/strong\u003e at the moment.  Nothing terribly special\u0026hellip;just a guy looking for his next gig, like millions of others.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first week of \u0026ldquo;not going to work\u0026rdquo; didn\u0026rsquo;t go so well.  I was completely off-schedule at home, and an person with my brain chemistry devoid of structure tends toward anxiety and acting-out.  I did act-out on Wednesday, so the road back there continues.  I have \u003cem\u003ecalmed down\u003c/em\u003e considerably, and I feel like I\u0026rsquo;m through the change curve to the point of \u0026ldquo;Yep, I don\u0026rsquo;t work at Lexmark anymore.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Settling in for the Job Hunt, long-term"},{"content":"Double entendre\u0026hellip;.on darn, already off to a poor start.\nSo, as 11 month ago, I took the leap, signed the papers, and volunteered to leave my former employer. This came with some stipulations. For one year, I may not:\nTry to recruit anyone actively employed at Lexmark or assist any new employer in same. Besmirch or otherwise criticize Lexmark. Return to work there. That\u0026rsquo;s right. In the course of one afternoon, I went from a a fully-employed Software Architect at a (nominally) Fortune 500 company to 4 weeks from out-the-door on the job market. Today marks my first day of official unemployment. As it stands, I have no job offers outstanding, but that\u0026rsquo;s certainly not been the case through the past 4 weeks. So, the first week, I got offered a job at a startup. No interview, just say \u0026lsquo;yes to the dress\u0026rsquo; as it were. I was so excited I nearly leaped out of my skin. A STARTUP! There\u0026rsquo;s nothing more exciting for a developer than the opportunity to go your own way, to be a founding part of startup. I put that one in my back pocket and decided to test the waters a bit more.\nThe next week, I had several phone screens and landed an interview at The Other Big Place in town. Good group of folks, but it felt just like my old gig\u0026ndash;software group amid a massive Hardware company, large legacy codebase they were trying to modernize. Honest work, and a much more technology-focused group. Representative quote: \u0026ldquo;We code here. Basically 95% to 100% of your job will be coding. Are you okay with that?\u0026rdquo;\nLong interview later, offer #1 was on the table. I chewed on it for that next weekend and turned it down. I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to go back to the same place I just came from, proverbially speaking. Through a contact at work, I got an interview in a place up in Cincy that had exploded in growth over the past 3 years, with a culture that seemed like a cross between Google and Thoughtworks. (Turns out, Thoughtworks was a consultant of theirs, so seems natural they\u0026rsquo;d adopt some of their policies.)\nNeed to pause here for emphasis\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s hard to imagine a better fit for me than this place. Something like 300 engineers, all staff- to senior-level, with Coding Dojos, Hack Weeks, Scrum, Pairing, and Linux development. Interview was a joy: Intense 1-hour deal with their senior folks, good vibes all around. I had an offer in hand by the next day. But, it meant a move.\nSo, local startup or move to Cincinnati?\nNeither.\nSo this is where I must introduce the architect of all this change: God. My prayer life had been pretty consistent since January when they announced the voluntary exit program: This is your time to go.\nSo, from there, I was in denial right through the last day of the voluntary program, when I finally filled-out my paperwork and submitted it. Listening to God isn\u0026rsquo;t exactly something I do quickly, but I do get around to it.\nSo, praying over both opportunities I had, there were a couple of directives:\nYou\u0026rsquo;re going to be moving. You need to be patient. Basically, I got the \u0026ldquo;Love, Joy, Peace, Patience\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; verse running through my head. Thus the verse, Proverbs 14:12 \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; \u0026ldquo;There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.\u0026rdquo;\nBut such\u0026hellip;.good\u0026hellip;.jobs! One exciting without requiring my family to move. The other only a moderate move to a place we generally like, Ohio.\nIt wasn\u0026rsquo;t to be. Upon discussion with several people trying to choose between the above the dichotomy, it became clear there wasn\u0026rsquo;t a real winner because neither was where God had me going. I was praying about jobs, not about where He wanted us. Praying over the map, I felt the pull to Texas. Whitney laughed because her prayer life was just the same. So, I look.\nSo, here I sit, back in the Ensor LRC where I was 18 years ago. Yep\u0026hellip;kids born that year are now here at Georgetown College, and here Old Fart Me sits, re-embarking on the job search.\nDear Reader, this is going to take me some time to work through. I poured much (too much?) of myself into that old place, so now I have to find-out who I am in middle age. This will likely be my forum.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/04/on-unemployment/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDouble entendre\u0026hellip;.on darn, already off to a poor start\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, as 11 month ago, I took the leap, signed the papers, and \u003cstrong\u003evolunteered\u003c/strong\u003e to leave my former employer.  This came with some stipulations.  For one year, I may not:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTry to recruit anyone actively employed at Lexmark or assist any new employer in same.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBesmirch or otherwise criticize Lexmark.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eReturn to work there.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s right.  In the course of one afternoon, I went from a a fully-employed Software Architect at a (nominally) Fortune 500 company to 4 weeks from out-the-door on the job market.  \u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Unemployment"},{"content":"So, I\u0026rsquo;ve been at Lexmark longer than:\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been married (10 years) I\u0026rsquo;ve had kids (10 years) I knew what autocross was (13 years) I could swim a full lap in a pool (1 year) I\u0026rsquo;ve known the Java Programming Language (in all its 1.1.8 glory) (15 years) I\u0026rsquo;ve lived in any one place continuously (13 years) The only thing I\u0026rsquo;ve done longer than have the email address hcombs@lexmark.com and the same strangely 4-digit employee ID (they recycle them) is:\nBreathing (37 years) Driving cars (21 years\u0026hellip;legally) \u0026hellip;so yeah, I\u0026rsquo;m leaving.\nNobody saw it coming. We had a \u0026ldquo;Voluntary Reduction Program\u0026rdquo; in which they\u0026rsquo;d pay me to take my services elsewhere. So I considered my options and decided to take it.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s really not much more complex that that. It was time to go. Perhaps it was time long ago, but that will be a post for 1 year from April 1st.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/03/leaving-lexmark-after-17-years/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;ve been at Lexmark longer than:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been married (10 years)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve had kids (10 years)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI knew what autocross was (13 years)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI could swim a full lap in a pool (1 year)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve known the Java Programming Language (in all its 1.1.8 glory) (15 years)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve lived in any one place continuously (13 years)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe only thing I\u0026rsquo;ve done longer than have the email address \u003ca href=\"mailto:hcombs@lexmark.com\"\u003ehcombs@lexmark.com\u003c/a\u003e and the same strangely 4-digit employee ID (they recycle them) is:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Leaving Lexmark after 17 Years"},{"content":"To quote Donne:\nNever ask for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.\nThe South Carolina primary will likely be the end of Jeb Bush\u0026rsquo;s run for the Whitehouse. I\u0026rsquo;m on the record decrying the idea that we\u0026rsquo;ll have yet another member of either the Clinton or Bush family lead our nation.\nStill, I\u0026rsquo;m struck by what this means, not only for Jeb and his personal legacy, but also for the Party and our nation as a whole. The saddest part of the slow-motion denouement of Jeb Bush\u0026rsquo;s campaign: This is not who Jeb is.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s a sane, credible, thinking man. He cares about immigrants and working people. He was an able leader and governor. He wants government that helps people succeed, not people that help government succeed\u0026ndash;that is, he\u0026rsquo;s what the Republican party OUGHT TO BE.\nThis campaign has thrown him into the modern equivalent of an Elizabethan bear-baiting, amid a radicalizing party tearing itself apart. He\u0026rsquo;s had to lower himself to the same mean, petty, ad-hominem insults that his cliptastic peers practice, especially Cruz and Trump.\nThe current winnowing of candidates is leaving us with only chaff, people so Robespierre Radical that they\u0026rsquo;ll further divide this nation.\nGod help us.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2016/02/rip-jeb-bushs-campaign/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTo quote Donne:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNever ask for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe South Carolina primary will likely be the \u003ca href=\"http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/jeb-bush-running-on-fumes-219474\"\u003eend of Jeb Bush\u0026rsquo;s run for the Whitehouse\u003c/a\u003e.  I\u0026rsquo;m on the record decrying the idea that we\u0026rsquo;ll have \u003cem\u003eyet another\u003c/em\u003e member of either the Clinton or Bush family lead our nation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-blog/blogs/jeb-bush-logo-hed-2015.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-blog/blogs/jeb-bush-logo-hed-2015.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, I\u0026rsquo;m struck by what this means, not only for Jeb and his personal legacy, but also for the Party and our nation as a whole. The saddest part of the slow-motion denouement of \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/jebbush/\"\u003eJeb Bush\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s campaign: This is not who Jeb is.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RIP, Jeb Bush's Campaign"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s been a fascinating, sometimes frustrating year. Today\u0026rsquo;s my last official workday; I\u0026rsquo;ll probably check email from here on out.\nSome highlights to share:\nCode activity\nThat pretty much tells-the-tale. Up through July I was hot and heavy on of our projects, then I had a week of vacation (which was awesome\u0026hellip;I really recommend Nags Head, NC.) Throughout that time, I was working with a very sharp team, and we had a go-live with our changes on April 23d. I didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep much that night. Things would go downhill from there. I can\u0026rsquo;t go into much detail, but from April -\u0026gt; August, we were on an effort to move the hosting of our solution, and it got aborted when the company made a switch in strategy and the entire Ops group supporting us left. This left us high and dry, and we eventually retargeted on another path that delayed us 6 months.\nIn early September, I got shifted from my previous position to one with our Retail Publishing Platform . This has been an exciting opportunity, including a business trip out to Seattle to work with our dev/sales/support group out there. I LOVE SEATTLE. Well, I love Seattle at the end of Summer when it\u0026rsquo;s not raining.\nProbably the most frustrating thing\u0026ndash;as reflected in the github:enterprise visualization above, is the lack of coding. It\u0026rsquo;s been docs, powerpoint, emails, strategy, and various duties away from code since September.\nPolitics\nSo, people from my work apparently read my blog, so let me just say it like this: While I was on vacation in NC, my group got re-organized under another group. So, basically, we had a whole new set of priorities atop/besides our previous priorities. As part of that, there was a RIF in our software group, and several people left on top of that. That\u0026rsquo;s how I got on my current project; the previous guy left.\nI say the above by way of recording the facts, not judging anyone. I also got introduced to the new group\u0026rsquo;s strategic planning process, which is very thorough.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a learning process. Sometimes it\u0026rsquo;s been a \u0026ldquo;telling\u0026rdquo; process, but I\u0026rsquo;ll leave it at that.\nCompany as a Whole\nThe company is \u0026ldquo;exploring strategic alternatives.\u0026rdquo; At this point, I have no idea what the future holds. We could be (A) bought outright (B) merge with another company (C) split into several businesses (D) something else an MBA can dream-up.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been an interesting 2 months since they announced that: Attrition, rumors, etc. New Technologies\nLeaving aside all the drama above, I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten some time with several new/new-to-me technologies this year:\nCMake: If you\u0026rsquo;re building native stuff, use CMake. Extremely powerful, well-documented, and gets you the cross-platform compatibility that the GNUtools have, without the cruft. Valgrind: Just yesterday, we encountered an apparent memory leak issue in production in a Linux PAM module. I was able to use Valgrind to localize it within minutes, and now we\u0026rsquo;ve integrated that into the test/acceptance for that module. Docker/Docker-Machine. This stuff is quite revolutionary. Yes, virtualization is there and we pretty-much take it for granted, but docker takes it to a whole other level. One can basically wrap a pre-configured \u0026ldquo;machine\u0026rdquo; around one\u0026rsquo;s code in a way that makes puppet/chef seem clunky. Docker runs natively on linux, and on Win/MacOSX through virtualization\u0026ndash;though first-class Windows support is coming in Server 2016. Spring Boot. I really don\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;buy\u0026rdquo; the Java stack anymore. It\u0026rsquo;s still a mess, and a bloated one at that, but I have to applaud the rigor that SpringSource is giving to making it a great out-of-box experience for developers. Angular / Jasmine / Karma. Node-Red. Neat\u0026hellip;neat\u0026hellip;.NEAT stuff. I\u0026rsquo;m sure there are others I\u0026rsquo;m forgetting. Dev Machines and Environment\nMost of the year I remained with my trusty MBP 15\u0026quot; Retina 8GB Ram / 256 GB SSD. It\u0026rsquo;s still a screamer.\nOn there I still love Homebrew for downloading and compiling dependencies. Most of my coding is still in Sublime Text 3, but for Java/Groovy/Grails I used IntelliJ 14 Ultimate Edition. I\u0026rsquo;ve gone from a single 24\u0026quot; 16x9 ratio monitor to two, now back to (effectively) 1.\nMy new project is almost entirely Win32/Win64 so I got my Quad-core Xeon 2.4Ghz 6GB Ram 256Mb SATA machine out of mothballs and installed Windows 10.\nLet me just say this: Windows 10 is amazing. I jump back to OSX 10.10 and it just doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel as slick. No idea how those mad geniuses at MSFT did it, but Windows is back, and seems to have loads more security and integration features. Things \u0026ldquo;just work\u0026rdquo; in the way they have for Macs for 18 years, but anyway :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/12/2015-a-work-year-in-review/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been a fascinating, sometimes frustrating year.   Today\u0026rsquo;s my last official workday; I\u0026rsquo;ll probably check email from here on out.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome highlights to share:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCode activity\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-guuki2MOPHE/VnRVRkzI_0I/AAAAAAAAH8U/wPwEDPaDpSQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2015-12-18%2Bat%2B1.49.18%2BPM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-guuki2MOPHE/VnRVRkzI_0I/AAAAAAAAH8U/wPwEDPaDpSQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2015-12-18%2Bat%2B1.49.18%2BPM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat pretty much tells-the-tale.  Up through July I was hot and heavy on of our projects, then I had a week of vacation (which was awesome\u0026hellip;I really recommend \u003ca href=\"https://www.outerbanks.org/outerbanks-nags-head/\"\u003eNags Head, NC\u003c/a\u003e.)  Throughout that time, I was working with a very sharp team, and we had a go-live with our changes on April 23d.  I didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep much that night.  \u003c/p\u003e","title":"2015: A Work Year in Review"},{"content":"Except for a 1 month break during the summer, Maria and I have been swimming every weekday morning, and I\u0026rsquo;m quite proud of our progress.\nIn January, we could barely make 1 half-lap of a 25 yard pool without being totally out of breath. Maria was very scared\u0026ndash;she could barely swim\u0026ndash;and she would only do kickboard stuff at first. I was a complete goof, and the thought of doing even a full 25-yard stint frankly scared me. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t coordinate my movements, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t breathe properly, and everything felt like a struggle. I honestly didn\u0026rsquo;t know if we\u0026rsquo;d make it out of January still swimming.\nAs I sit here today, we\u0026rsquo;re both up to 1/4 mile in the pool each week day apiece. Maria\u0026rsquo;s confidence is much higher, and she participated in a local swimming club in the summer.\nAs for myself, today marked the first time I swum 11 Fifty-yard lengths without using a kickboard. I\u0026rsquo;ve just about gotten bilateral breathing on the forward crawl, and my technique is improving.\nA few times over the last month, I\u0026rsquo;ve experienced a \u0026ldquo;swimmers high,\u0026rdquo; which is very similar to a runner\u0026rsquo;s high; a general feeling of euphoria in which you feel like you could just keep going, forever. My resting heart rate is down to 65 BPM, and I can handle the jolts of adrenaline/testosterone from my body during stressful situations much better. My breathing is slower, and overall my cardiovascular capacity is much improved.\nHonestly, when I started this journey, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t make it up the stairs or chase after Grace effectively, at only 37 years old. After some diet modifications, I\u0026rsquo;ve dropped 20 pounds and I\u0026rsquo;m almost back in size 36 jeans after being unable to fit size 38 back in May.\nSwimming is a great activity, with lots of technique in addition to raw effort. I have had several strains and injuries, mostly around shoulder issues or knee problems due to bad technique. I do feel generally exhausted after a session, but nothing like when I was jogging. There\u0026rsquo;s simply no impact on your joints, so it\u0026rsquo;s easy to recover.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/12/swimming-a-year-in/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eExcept for a 1 month break during the summer, Maria and I have been swimming every weekday morning, and I\u0026rsquo;m quite proud of our progress.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn January, we could barely make 1 half-lap of a 25 yard pool without being totally out of breath. Maria was very scared\u0026ndash;she could barely swim\u0026ndash;and she would only do kickboard stuff at first.  I was a complete goof, and the thought of doing even a full 25-yard stint frankly scared me.  I couldn\u0026rsquo;t coordinate my movements, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t breathe properly, and everything felt like a struggle.  I honestly didn\u0026rsquo;t know if we\u0026rsquo;d make it out of January still swimming.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Swimming: A Year In"},{"content":"Once upon a time, my employer decided I was enough of a naive workaholic to put me on a list. This list contained other people who were naive workaholics. They decided they should herd us together and teach us to be more effective, slightly less naive workaholics.\nThe guy who taught the class had many nuggets of wisdom, but this one stuck with me. He drew this simple diagram on a pad of paper at the front of the class.\nSimple enough? He went on to explain.\n\u0026ldquo;How many jumps are there between you and the CEO? 4? 5? More? Let me tell you something:\nEveryone between you and the CEO is playing a game. The CEO doesn\u0026rsquo;t have to; everyone works for him. You don\u0026rsquo;t have to, because you\u0026rsquo;re the lowest man on the totem pole.\nEveryone else is playing a game. What\u0026rsquo;s maddening is the # of games one has to play to get anything done.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/12/corporate-games-your-position/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOnce upon a time, my employer decided I was enough of a naive workaholic to put me on a list.  This list contained other people who were naive workaholics.  They decided they should herd us together and teach us to be more effective, slightly less naive workaholics.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe guy who taught the class had many nuggets of wisdom, but this one stuck with me.  He drew this simple diagram on a pad of paper at the front of the class.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Corporate Games \u0026 Your position"},{"content":"Yes, I\u0026rsquo;m still alive, as my twitter stream would substantiate.\nFelt led to share this.\nFirst, some background: I\u0026rsquo;m a Protestant Christian. As such, I follow the doctrine of Justfication by Faith (Sola Fide). Justification by Faith, broadly defined, means that we are \u0026lsquo;justified\u0026rsquo;, that is, redeemed or saved, by Grace from God alone through Faith,\n**For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,**not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:9, ESV). So, there\u0026rsquo;s that. Simple enough?\nWell, yes and no. So, if I\u0026rsquo;m \u0026ldquo;Saved,\u0026rdquo; through no action of my own, then it seems that my actions before and after such Justification are immaterial. If I\u0026rsquo;m a member of the elect, might I just as well go on doing things that feel good and still punch my ticket to Heaven?\nThe answer is maddeningly simple: Yes, you might do that, in that Christ\u0026rsquo;s atonement is sufficient (Calvin\u0026rsquo;s objections to the contrary notwithstanding), but in reality, once you become saved, your desire to do things apart from God\u0026rsquo;s will decreases.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s where we need to introduce a separate concept: Sanctification. That is, \u0026ldquo;the process of being made holy.\u0026rdquo;\nNow, \u0026ldquo;Justification\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Sanctification\u0026rdquo; seem like awfully legalistic terms, don\u0026rsquo;t they? What do they mean?\nJustification: You avoid Hell. Your bank account balances with God. If being born into a sin-nature damns you, then being re-born through Christ\u0026rsquo;s justification reverses that process. Thus, the symmetry of the Christian cosmos. Sanctification: You\u0026rsquo;re a baby Christian, you move to being an adult Christian, and as Paul says, \u0026ldquo;when I became an adult, I put away childish things.\u0026rdquo; You stop getting milk, you start getting meat. Why is this a big deal? Couple of things.\nIt stops the treadmill of being \u0026ldquo;Good enough.\u0026rdquo; It seems obvious reading the New Testament, but many Christians\u0026ndash;myself included\u0026ndash;stay on a never-ending treadmill of quasi-Christian doctrine that you must work your way towards God. \u0026ldquo;Cleanliness is next to Godliness,\u0026rdquo; etc. Worse is the pernicious, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll clean up my act, then get saved.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s nothing like Christian doctrine, thankfully. It DOES give you something to do, and a reason to do it. Getting Justified in Christ is like getting through the job interview and getting hired, then showing-up for your first day at work. YOU GOT THE JOB! Congrats, euphoria, all that. (And indeed, angels laud this day!)\nHowever: Now what? What is your _career in Christ _going to look like? Are you going to skate along doing the minimum? Are you going to excel? You have agency once again. I\u0026rsquo;ve been obsessed for years trying to figure out Free Will versus TULIP Predestination doctrine. Turns out I had it all backward: Whatever the mechanism, I am justified, now I need to work at being sanctified.\nWill I have setbacks? Yes. Will I have seasons where I move towards God? Yes.\nIs this all both liberating and exciting? Yes. It\u0026rsquo;s like I\u0026rsquo;ve been struggling to get through a door for years, and I\u0026rsquo;ve been on a moving train all along. Now I can actually enjoy the scenery.\nGod bless you all. This may be bone obvious to you, but it\u0026rsquo;s taken ~10 years of study for me to get peace on this.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/11/christian-doctrine-justification-versus-sanctification/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYes, I\u0026rsquo;m still alive, as my \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/miniharryc\"\u003etwitter stream\u003c/a\u003e would substantiate.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFelt led to share this.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, some background: I\u0026rsquo;m a Protestant Christian.  As such, I follow the doctrine of Justfication by Faith (\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_fide\"\u003eSola Fide\u003c/a\u003e).  \u003cem\u003eJustification by Faith\u003c/em\u003e, broadly defined, means that we are \u0026lsquo;justified\u0026rsquo;, that is, \u003cstrong\u003eredeemed\u003c/strong\u003e or saved, by Grace from God alone through Faith,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e**For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,**\u003cstrong\u003enot a result of works, so that no one may boast.\u003c/strong\u003e (Ephesians 2:9, ESV).  \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Christian Doctrine: Justification versus Sanctification"},{"content":"This is sort of a follow-up to my On Steve Jobs post.\nI write this with myself as the audience, after getting slapped with fish by life for the past 10 days.\nNo one cares.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ve been raised in child-centric America, from 1990 to the present. You\u0026rsquo;re behaviorally Millennial; you don\u0026rsquo;t remember a time before computers, minivans, or helicopter parents. You\u0026rsquo;ve always felt entitled to speak your mind, in whatever the situation.\nWhen affronted, you\u0026rsquo;re either aggressive or passive aggressive. Unlike your Gen-X forebears, you can\u0026rsquo;t take critique as the standard \u0026lsquo;Wah-Wah\u0026rsquo; din of parents, superiors, or peers. No. You feel the need to respond. And those same people better listen to you, dammit, because you\u0026rsquo;re _________ (insert your name here, Snowflake). You\u0026rsquo;ll either run your mouth off or go to some form of social media to complain and find surcease.\nIbid: \u0026ldquo;No one cares.\u0026rdquo;\nThey really don\u0026rsquo;t. They may patronize you and listen to your little ideas, or your silly complaints, but they\u0026rsquo;ll adopt the same attitude they would with their 4 Year Old, \u0026ldquo;How nicely you speak! You know some big-boy words. Yes, that\u0026rsquo;s just awful. Now run along and play while the adults do the real work.\u0026rdquo;\nConsider not holding that against them.\nThe word we need to use here is entitlement. You feel entitled for someone to listen to you. For Heaven\u0026rsquo;s sake, disabuse yourself of that notion. Whether actively or passively, they don\u0026rsquo;t need you. Their need or want of you ends with the day, the meeting, the project, or whatever. It\u0026rsquo;s transactional.\nWhen you cease producing, they\u0026rsquo;ll try and do humane things: Retrain you, relegate you, finally releasing you in a broad swathe of \u0026ldquo;right-sizing.\u0026rdquo; That day will come; employment for life is over.\nSo, that being said: This melancholic fretting has to end. Today. You\u0026rsquo;ve stared change in the face for two weeks now and you need to decide if it gets the better of you. (By the way, not deciding is a decision, Buttercup.) Your wife and family deserve better. Your colleagues at work depend on you and they deserve better.\nSo, please stop sucking. Internalize that \u0026lsquo;No one cares\u0026rsquo; and turn towards some things and people that do, okay?\nGod loves you. To use more modern language, you are a sinful pile of scat and Christ loves you anyway. Your family loves you. All you kids are crazy about you. Your wife loves you, often in spite of yourself. You\u0026rsquo;re blessed to have a job. Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s going through massive transition and people are walking around 50% triggered (except you, you\u0026rsquo;re running at 95% triggered) /rant\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/08/ecclesiastes-moment-the-truth-narcissist-is-that-no-one-cares/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is sort of a follow-up to my \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/07/on-steve-jobs-nsfw/\" title=\"on steve jobs\"\u003eOn Steve Jobs\u003c/a\u003e post.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI write this with myself as the audience, after getting slapped with fish by life for the past 10 days.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNo one cares\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;ve been raised in child-centric America, from 1990 to the present.  You\u0026rsquo;re behaviorally Millennial; you don\u0026rsquo;t remember a time before computers, minivans, or helicopter parents.  You\u0026rsquo;ve always felt entitled to speak your mind, in whatever the situation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ecclesiastes Moment:  The Truth, Narcissist, is that No One Cares"},{"content":"I did a quarter mile worth of laps in a pool. Holy crap!\nMaria is now on a summer swim team, racing other kids her age. Holy crap!\nGot a good pair of goggles at Costco, and my breathing patterns are better, if only my cardio would come along with it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/06/swimming-6-months-later/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI did a quarter mile worth of laps in a pool.  Holy crap!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaria is now on a summer swim team, \u003cem\u003eracing other kids her age\u003c/em\u003e.  Holy crap!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGot a good pair of goggles at Costco, and my breathing patterns are better, if only my cardio would come along with it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Swimming, 6 Months later"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been a software developer throughout the \u0026ldquo;Agile Revolution.\u0026rdquo; My first team lead, back in 2001 said these words to me and I\u0026rsquo;ve always taken them to heart:\nI think the world\u0026rsquo;s pretty done with us [Software Developers]. I feel like we\u0026rsquo;ve got about 5 years to get our act together or that\u0026rsquo;s it.\nApropos, that same year a highly influential group of practitioners signed the Agile Manifesto. Amid waves of Dot-Com-Bubble-Bursting, offshoring, and right-sizing, they kept it simple: Here\u0026rsquo;s what works; apply liberally.\nThat was 14 years ago. In the intervening time, much like Protestantism after Luther, factions emerged: eXtreme Programming, Scrum, Kanban, Scaled Agile Framework. Characteristically, 25-year-old me thought these were all leaps forward. At 36-and-a-half, my cynicism grows: I\u0026rsquo;ve seen Agile roll-out to 1000+ developers in 2 world-wide organization across different corporate and civic cultures. ** I\u0026rsquo;ll gladly replace Sisyphus rolling the rock uphill in Hades before I\u0026rsquo;d do it again.**\nApparently I\u0026rsquo;m not alone: Yesterday, Andy Hunt\u0026ndash;one of those very signatories\u0026ndash;took his football and went home.\n* * *\nOkay\u0026hellip;now what?\nMaybe before we jump into something else--a Trademarked name already, and a .com!\u0026ndash;we ought to take some time to grieve and reexamine, lest the next thing be worse that what\u0026rsquo;s ending.\nFor my part:\nI like making clients happy, whether that\u0026rsquo;s the guy in the next cube or a customer 12 timezones away. It\u0026rsquo;s validating. Sometimes to do that, you need a spec (a contract), sometimes you need a conversation. Throwing specs away was naive, just as much as slavishly expecting spec == quality. I like demo\u0026rsquo;ing often and getting instant feedback from a client (or her designee). I like designing things before I code. Sometimes. I shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be shouted down for that by someone invoking \u0026lsquo;YAGNI\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;BDUF\u0026rsquo; as magic talismans. I like hacking together a PoC without much design. Sometimes. I want to make: Software that works. Software that somebody finds useful. Software that doesn\u0026rsquo;t get thrown away every 6 months. Maybe GROWS (TM) [BLECH!] will end-up being a panacea. Part of me genuinely hopes something works and gains adoption as \u0026ldquo;Standard Practice\u0026rdquo; so we can have solid standards in Software Engineering the way that Mechanical and Civil Engineers do. I question whether I\u0026rsquo;ll live to see that day.\nThe largest part of me couldn\u0026rsquo;t care less. I\u0026rsquo;d rather be coding.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/05/pragmaticandy-burns-down-the-house/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been a software developer throughout the \u0026ldquo;Agile Revolution.\u0026rdquo;  My first team lead, back in 2001 said these words to me and I\u0026rsquo;ve always taken them to heart:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI think the world\u0026rsquo;s pretty done with us [Software Developers].  I feel like we\u0026rsquo;ve got about 5 years to get our act together or that\u0026rsquo;s it.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eApropos, that same year a highly influential group of practitioners signed the \u003ca href=\"http://agilemanifesto.org/\"\u003eAgile Manifesto\u003c/a\u003e.   Amid waves of Dot-Com-Bubble-Bursting, offshoring, and right-sizing, they kept it simple:  Here\u0026rsquo;s what works; apply liberally.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"PragmaticAndy Burns Down the House"},{"content":"Ecclesiastes is Solomon\u0026rsquo;s valediction as an old man. From the purported wisest man that ever lived\u0026ndash;gifted with wisdom from God Himself--comes a book that seems a real downer on the hollowness of nearly every pursuit in his hedonistic life.\nSometimes, having worked as a developer for 16 years, I\u0026rsquo;m reminded off Ecclesiastes.\nWith apologies to Solomon:\nTo everything there is a season:\n_ A time to build big, and a time to build small,_\n_ A time to write, and lots more time to sustain,_\n_ A time to break systems apart,_\n_ A time to pull systems together._\nA time to delete, and a time to merge.\nMost telling is the author\u0026rsquo;s refrain: \u0026ldquo;All is vanity! There is nothing new under the sun.\u0026rdquo;\nIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t discourage me, but it does make me think: Is this worth rewriting/redoing, or should I just use something off-the-shelf? The thrill of just writing everything myself is gone, replaced by the understanding that whatever I write is more \u0026ldquo;mental surface area\u0026rdquo; for the rest of my colleagues to understand, versus using a well-documented and understood implementation.\nAnd in that, growth. To everything, there is a season.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/05/programming-via-ecclesiastes/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes\"\u003eEcclesiastes\u003c/a\u003e is Solomon\u0026rsquo;s valediction as an old man.  From the purported wisest man that ever lived\u0026ndash;gifted with wisdom from \u003ca href=\"https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Kings+3%3A10-14\u0026amp;version=ESV\"\u003eGod Himself\u003c/a\u003e--comes a book that seems a real downer on the hollowness of nearly every pursuit in his hedonistic life.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSometimes, having worked as a developer for 16 years, I\u0026rsquo;m reminded off Ecclesiastes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith apologies to Solomon:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eTo everything there is a season:\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n_  A time to build big, and a time to build small,_\u003cbr\u003e\n_  A time to write, and lots more time to sustain,_\u003cbr\u003e\n_  A time to break systems apart,_\u003cbr\u003e\n_  A time to pull systems together._\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eA time to delete, and a time to merge.\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nMost telling is the author\u0026rsquo;s refrain:  \u0026ldquo;All is vanity! There is nothing new under the sun.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Programming via Ecclesiastes"},{"content":"Reference: Why Go’s design is a disservice to intelligent programmers\nI honestly can\u0026rsquo;t decide if this article is sarcastic praise for #golang hitting every one of its design goals, because once you look past the ad-hominem crap, it\u0026rsquo;s there:\n\u0026ldquo;Similar to Go, the book is easy to read with good examples and clocking in at about 150 pages you can finish it in one sitting.\u0026rdquo; Read: Go\u0026rsquo;s easy to learn. The documentation is excellent. \u0026ldquo;I’ve always thought that the developers at Google are hand picked from the brightest and best on Earth. Surely they can handle something a little more complicated?\u0026rdquo; He misses the point entirely. Those same devs choose to go away from the frills to get leaner and faster. Code is a means to an end at Google, and they realize that it\u0026rsquo;s going to be read by other developers many times more than it\u0026rsquo;s written. Simplicity and clarity surmount all else; Google\u0026rsquo;s stultifying C++ style guide makes this apparent. \u0026ldquo;There are no shortcuts in Go, it’s verbose code or nothing.\u0026rdquo; Shortcuts get abused. See: C preprocessor macros. I read this as \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;I have to check return values and handle errors\u0026rsquo; == verbose code.\u0026rdquo; This is not a valid Software Engineering view. IMO, it should be obvious whether code handles errors properly. \u0026ldquo;The language could be described as C with training wheels.\u0026rdquo; Thanks! I rather like C. I just wish it had a decent Standard Library, no header files, less \u0026ldquo;undefined\u0026rdquo; behavior, inbuilt concurrency, package management, and garbage collection. Oh wait, that\u0026rsquo;s Go.\nObligatory: Java is C++ with training wheels. That worked out rather well.\n\u0026ldquo;Their recommendation was to just copy the entire repository at that time into your project and leave it as-is.\u0026rdquo; This is known as \u0026lsquo;vendoring your dependencies\u0026rsquo;, and it\u0026rsquo;s a common practice. \u0026ldquo;There is [sic] no new ideas in the language apart from the concurrency support (which is excellent by the way) and it’s such a shame.\u0026rdquo; Unsupported assumption: Something must contain new ideas to be valid. \u0026ldquo;Concurrency support\u0026hellip;is excellent.\u0026rdquo; Yes, it is. Loads better than the shared-state locking pthreads crap we\u0026rsquo;ve dealt with for 20 years. Every fact in this article\u0026ndash;aside from Generics\u0026ndash;points to Go achieving its design goals. In a very backhanded way, TFA supports why people writing server-side code at scale should consider using Golang.\n* * *\nThe summary demonstrates so many problems in our industry right now:\n[Go] has been written for lesser programmers using an old language as a template.\nFellow programmers, can we get over ourselves, please? To categorically refute the above:\nOn any given day, we\u0026rsquo;re all lesser programmers. For my part, I\u0026rsquo;m certainly not on all cylinders on 3 hours\u0026rsquo; sleep in the middle of crunch trying to ship product. It\u0026rsquo;s no sin to want code that\u0026rsquo;s easy to reason about when you read it. Choosing something easier to read and sustain does not make you a lesser programmer any more than choosing to read Hemmingway in lieu of Shakespeare. Ah: \u0026lsquo;using an old language\u0026rsquo;. This is the heart of it. \u0026lsquo;Go\u0026rsquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t cool, so let\u0026rsquo;s set it aside. I find the above exasperating, simply because it\u0026rsquo;s the same naïveté that\u0026rsquo;s led to 1000 JavaScript Web MVC Frameworks, LISP fragmentation, etc. As Software _Engineers\u0026ndash;_if such a PE-worthy profession ever emerges\u0026ndash;we must surmount simple fad and fashion and entertain what\u0026rsquo;s useful, evaluating on merit alone.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/04/refutation-gos-design-is-a-service-to-experienced-developers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eReference:  \u003ca href=\"http://nomad.so/2015/03/why-gos-design-is-a-disservice-to-intelligent-programmers/\"\u003eWhy Go’s design is a disservice to intelligent programmers\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI honestly can\u0026rsquo;t decide if this article is sarcastic \u003cem\u003epraise\u003c/em\u003e for #golang hitting every one of its design goals, because once you look past the ad-hominem crap, it\u0026rsquo;s there:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;Similar to Go, the book is easy to read with good examples and clocking in at about 150 pages you can finish it in one sitting.\u0026rdquo; \n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRead: Go\u0026rsquo;s easy to learn.  The documentation is excellent.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;I’ve always thought that the developers at Google are hand picked from the brightest and best on Earth. Surely they can handle something a little more complicated?\u0026rdquo; \n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHe misses the point entirely.  Those same devs choose to go away from the frills to get leaner and faster.  Code is a means to an end at Google, and they realize that it\u0026rsquo;s going to be \u003cem\u003eread\u003c/em\u003e by other developers many times more than it\u0026rsquo;s written.  Simplicity and clarity surmount all else; Google\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"https://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.html#Exceptions\"\u003estultifying C++ style guide\u003c/a\u003e makes this apparent.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;There are no shortcuts in Go, it’s verbose code or nothing.\u0026rdquo;\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eShortcuts get abused.  See: C preprocessor macros.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI read this as \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;I have to check return values and handle errors\u0026rsquo; == verbose code.\u0026rdquo;  This is not a valid Software Engineering view.  IMO, it should be obvious whether code handles errors properly.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;The language could be described as C with \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training_wheels\"\u003etraining wheels\u003c/a\u003e.\u0026rdquo;\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThanks!  I rather like C.  I just wish it had a decent Standard Library, no header files, less \u0026ldquo;undefined\u0026rdquo; behavior, inbuilt concurrency, package management, and garbage collection. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Refutation: Go's Design is a Service to Experienced Developers"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s 1:38 pm. But for a snowstorm on Thursday, this would be my 7th straight day at work.\nI\u0026rsquo;m doing things that people variously term \u0026ldquo;unwise,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;strange,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;nearly impossible.\u0026rdquo;\nI\u0026rsquo;ve nearly gotten them to work, but not yet. That\u0026rsquo;s why I\u0026rsquo;m here.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/03/journaling-some-work/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s 1:38 pm. But for a snowstorm on Thursday, this would be my 7th straight day at work.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m doing things that people variously term \u0026ldquo;unwise,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;strange,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;nearly impossible.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve nearly gotten them to work, but not yet.  That\u0026rsquo;s why I\u0026rsquo;m here.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Journaling Some Work"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Well, sir, you certainly didn\u0026rsquo;t have afternoons like *this*, when you were doing the Architect Gig.\u0026rdquo;\nGotta love that inner critic. There\u0026rsquo;s always something.\nMy response: Indeed, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t *ever* have weeks like last week where we found and solved problems in realtime with a team of engineers, either. It was lonely, and devoid of the kind of dopamine-enhanced highs I got.\nLast week was hard. Every day except for Wednesday, I was here \u0026rsquo;til late. On two nights, mine was the last car out of the parking log. Snowpocalypse 2015 put us behind, and a Linux/PAM story that won\u0026rsquo;t die put us even farther behind.\nI\u0026rsquo;m enjoying it, but not today. Today, I\u0026rsquo;m just tired.\nTime to drive to Louisville to get Joey.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/03/sunday-afternoon-at-work/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Well, sir, you certainly didn\u0026rsquo;t have afternoons like *this*, when you were doing the Architect Gig.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGotta love that inner critic.  There\u0026rsquo;s always \u003cem\u003esomething\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy response:  Indeed, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t *ever* have weeks like last week where we found and solved problems in realtime with a team of engineers, either.  It was lonely, and devoid of the kind of dopamine-enhanced highs I got.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast week was hard.  Every day except for Wednesday, I was here \u0026rsquo;til late.  On two nights, mine was the last car out of the parking log.   Snowpocalypse 2015 put us behind, and a Linux/PAM story that won\u0026rsquo;t die put us even farther behind.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sunday Afternoon at Work"},{"content":"So, Maria and I are swimming.\nMaria tends to take after me, in that she can look at food and gain weight, and she rather enjoys food. We both eat our emotions, and emotions we have aplenty.\nRight after the new year, I noticed just how crotchety I felt, even at 36 years old. My back hurt constantly, I had little energy, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t deal with stress, etc. Maria was enrolled in swim classes last year and we found out she had limited range-of-motion in her right arm, basically from atrophy.\nAtrophy at 8 years old. Yikes.\nThe doctors recommended swimming as a low/no-impact full-body aerobic workout, and I readily agreed. Every morning from 6:30 to 7:30 or so we\u0026rsquo;re at the local rec center swimming.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve got to admit: The first week nearly killed me. Between getting up at 5am again and just the activity of swimming \u0026lt; 50m was exhausting. Right before snowpocalypse 2015, I was really questioning if we were making any progress at all. My weight was actually up, not down, and M was improved, but not much.\nThen we got back in the pool this week after laying-off the previous week. Holy crap have things changed: M can do half-laps of the pool by herself in half the time she did when we started. We\u0026rsquo;re actually diving to the bottom of a 4.5\u0026rsquo; pool for rings and stuff, where before she was barely competent to tread water.\nAnd me? I did a full lap of the pool today, for the first time ever. I\u0026rsquo;m putting my head down in the water for a forward crawl and it\u0026rsquo;s just\u0026hellip;easy. As in, natural. Sure, it\u0026rsquo;s exhausting and a great workout, but it\u0026rsquo;s getting fun, much the same way running got fun for me 10 years ago.\nI\u0026rsquo;m very encouraged. This started as a lark, now it\u0026rsquo;s quickly becoming a habit.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/02/swimming-6-weeks-in/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, Maria and I are swimming.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaria tends to take after me, in that she can look at food and gain weight, and she rather enjoys food.  We both eat our emotions, and emotions we have aplenty.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRight after the new year, I noticed just how crotchety I felt, even at 36 years old.  My back hurt constantly, I had little energy, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t deal with stress, etc.  Maria was enrolled in swim classes last year and we found out she had limited range-of-motion in her right arm, basically from atrophy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Swimming, 6 weeks in"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s been a stellar couple of days for Joey\u0026rsquo;s sense of humor. Representative samples.\n\u0026ldquo;Yo\u0026rsquo; momma so fat, Arnold Schwarzenegger tells her to GET AWAY FROM DA CHOPPA!\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\n[Interior: The Combs Clan sits around the table]\nWhitney (to Harold): You know, when you lie, you get spots on your face.\nHarold: O RLY? Tell me something and I\u0026rsquo;ll lie in response.\nWhitney: Yeah, say \u0026lsquo;I like titty-twisters.\u0026rsquo;\nHarold: I\u0026hellip;like\u0026hellip;titty-twisters.\nJoey: Now tell us a lie.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/01/quickshot-joey-humor/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been a stellar couple of days for Joey\u0026rsquo;s sense of humor.  Representative samples.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Yo\u0026rsquo; momma so fat, Arnold Schwarzenegger tells her to GET AWAY FROM DA CHOPPA!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e[Interior: The Combs Clan sits around the table]\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nWhitney (to Harold): You know, when you lie, you get spots on your face.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold: O RLY?  Tell me something and I\u0026rsquo;ll lie in response.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney: Yeah, say \u0026lsquo;I like titty-twisters.\u0026rsquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold: I\u0026hellip;like\u0026hellip;titty-twisters.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quickshot: Joey Humor"},{"content":"Contrary to popular opinion, I can swim.\nI actually took snorkeling lessons in 3rd grade and was utterly \u0026ldquo;into\u0026rdquo; SCUBA-diving. I loved the water.\nHowever, I got awfully used to having swim fins, a buoyancy compensator, and a mask on. Read: I got lazy. Free swimming just didn\u0026rsquo;t interest me, so I never learned to swim properly: diving, the basic 4 strokes, etc.\nSo, serendipity arrived this new year when Maria\u0026rsquo;s PT announced that she needed to work-out, every day and that she needed to swim.\nFor the past two mornings, I\u0026rsquo;ve risen before 6am to take my daughter to our local parks and rec facility to swim. It\u0026rsquo;s been great, but my whole body aches in a way only an atrophied 36-year-old can. It\u0026rsquo;s not one specific joint; it\u0026rsquo;s much of my chest and legs.\nBut hey, it\u0026rsquo;s something. Since changing my brain chemistry, I\u0026rsquo;m up 10 pounds. I\u0026rsquo;m up an unbelievable 45 pounds since summer 2012, and I feel every ounce of it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/01/swimming-with-m/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eContrary to popular opinion, I can swim.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI actually took snorkeling lessons in 3rd grade and was utterly \u0026ldquo;into\u0026rdquo; SCUBA-diving.  I loved the water.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, I got awfully used to having swim fins, a buoyancy compensator, and a mask on.  Read: I got lazy.  Free swimming just didn\u0026rsquo;t interest me, so I never learned to swim properly: diving, the basic 4 strokes, etc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, serendipity arrived this new year when Maria\u0026rsquo;s PT announced that she needed to work-out, every day and that she needed to swim.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Swimming with M"},{"content":" Bad engineers try to convince you don\u0026rsquo;t have a problem Good engineers solve your problem Great engineers help you understand the problem that caused your problem, then solve that. Yes, I\u0026rsquo;m trying to create those little office placards in my spare time. I\u0026rsquo;m sure someone, somewhere has said this better, but it does seem to be true. I was thinking about some senior people, and what seems to differentiate the goods from the greats is that capability of seeing the heart of an issue and keeping perspective.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/01/on-engineers/","summary":"\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eBad\u003c/em\u003e engineers try to convince you don\u0026rsquo;t have a problem\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eGood\u003c/em\u003e engineers solve your problem\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eGreat\u003c/em\u003e engineers help you understand the problem that caused your problem, then solve that.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, I\u0026rsquo;m trying to create those little office placards in my spare time.   I\u0026rsquo;m sure someone, somewhere has said this better, but it does seem to be true.  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was thinking about some senior people, and what seems to differentiate the goods from the greats is that capability of seeing the heart of an issue and keeping perspective.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Engineers"},{"content":"So I resolved to change part of my regimen about 4 weeks ago. Let\u0026rsquo;s chart the changes.\nPros I\u0026rsquo;m \u0026ldquo;me\u0026rdquo; again. This is how I remember myself feeling and behaving prior to 2011. Coding (once I\u0026rsquo;m in \u0026ldquo;flow\u0026rdquo;) is so\u0026hellip;much\u0026hellip;better. Like \u0026ldquo;lightbulb coming on\u0026rdquo; better. I\u0026rsquo;ve felt like my mind has been shackled for the past few years, and those fetters seem gone. My sense of humor and general perspective is much better. My family genuinely seems to like who I\u0026rsquo;m being at home. I have actual emotions again. As we\u0026rsquo;ll see, that\u0026rsquo;s also a \u0026lsquo;con\u0026rsquo;, but the world seems to be in color again, not Black-and-White. I can be \u0026ldquo;present\u0026rdquo; once again. Fully, wholly, don\u0026rsquo;t-care-what-the-clock says present. Cons I\u0026rsquo;ve gained like 10 pounds. Yes, in 1 month. I have appetite like a man starving, but yet I\u0026rsquo;m full. I have no idea what time it is, nor can I measure its passage accurately. Like, time dilates into one hyper-focus session and hours can evaporate in what seems like minutes. I have an insatiable appetite for caffeine. I\u0026rsquo;m constantly pounding coffee, espresso drinks, Coke Zero. With enough of it onboard, I can feel normal. Without it, I\u0026rsquo;m as listless as a drunken manatee. It\u0026rsquo;s simple to saturate me with stimuli. I don\u0026rsquo;t have the accompanying anxiety, but I do have the shutdown-effect so common to folks with my brain chemistry. The bar used to be so high, but now it\u0026rsquo;s laughably low. Imagine your kids running towards you squealing when you come through the door and you curling up in a little ball with you hands over your eyes and your thumbs in your ears. Dealing with interruptions is hard. Getting back into a \u0026ldquo;flow\u0026rdquo; state, especially in our open floorplan offices, is harder since any sort of visual or auditory stimulus can knock me out of flow. Emotions\u0026hellip;suck. I\u0026rsquo;ve had things I\u0026rsquo;d ordinary slough-off really impact me, almost to the point of breakdown. On the other side of it, I\u0026rsquo;ve known real joy and laughter in ways that I just couldn\u0026rsquo;t channel before. So basically, things aside from work are going great. Things at work requiring me to be a poised, ready-for-anything, tactful, considerate individual are not great.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/01/update-1-month-in/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo I resolved to change part of my regimen about 4 weeks ago.  Let\u0026rsquo;s chart the changes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"pros\"\u003ePros\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m \u0026ldquo;me\u0026rdquo; again.  This is how I remember myself feeling and behaving prior to 2011.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCoding (once I\u0026rsquo;m in \u0026ldquo;flow\u0026rdquo;) is so\u0026hellip;much\u0026hellip;better.  Like \u0026ldquo;lightbulb coming on\u0026rdquo; better.  I\u0026rsquo;ve felt like my mind has been shackled for the past few years, and those fetters seem gone.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMy sense of humor and general \u003cem\u003eperspective\u003c/em\u003e is much better.   My family genuinely seems to like who I\u0026rsquo;m being at home.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI have actual emotions again.  As we\u0026rsquo;ll see, that\u0026rsquo;s also a \u0026lsquo;con\u0026rsquo;, but the world seems to be in color again, not Black-and-White.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI can be \u0026ldquo;present\u0026rdquo; once again.  Fully, wholly, don\u0026rsquo;t-care-what-the-clock says present.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"cons\"\u003eCons\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve gained like 10 pounds.  Yes, in 1 month.  I have appetite like a man starving, but yet I\u0026rsquo;m full.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI have no idea what time it is, nor can I measure its passage accurately.  Like, time dilates into one hyper-focus session and hours can evaporate in what seems like minutes.  \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI have an insatiable appetite for caffeine.  I\u0026rsquo;m constantly pounding coffee, espresso drinks, Coke Zero.  With enough of it onboard, I can feel normal.  Without it, I\u0026rsquo;m as listless as a drunken manatee.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s simple to saturate me with stimuli.  I don\u0026rsquo;t have the accompanying anxiety, but I do have the shutdown-effect so common to folks with my brain chemistry.   The bar used to be so high, but now it\u0026rsquo;s laughably low.  Imagine your kids running towards you squealing when you come through the door and you curling up in a little ball with you hands over your eyes and your thumbs in your ears.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDealing with interruptions is hard.  Getting back into a \u0026ldquo;flow\u0026rdquo; state, especially in our open floorplan offices, is harder since any sort of visual or auditory stimulus can knock me out of flow.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEmotions\u0026hellip;suck.  I\u0026rsquo;ve had things I\u0026rsquo;d ordinary slough-off really impact me, almost to the point of breakdown.  On the other side of it, I\u0026rsquo;ve known real joy and laughter in ways that I just couldn\u0026rsquo;t channel before.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo basically, things \u003cem\u003easide from work\u003c/em\u003e are going great.  Things at work requiring me to be a poised, ready-for-anything, tactful, considerate individual are not great.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Update: 1 Month in"},{"content":"I lost my uncle on January 6th. His given name was Ova Haddix, but he was always \u0026ldquo;Ovie\u0026rdquo; to me, and so he shall ever remain.\nOvie was born Nov 10, 1939 and died January 6, 2015 at age 75. He was buried in Sterling Heights, Michigan just north of Detroit, his adopted home. My Aunt Sue asked me to be a pallbearer and I was honored to serve. It was the least I could do to serve a man who\u0026rsquo;d epitomized force of will and strength, whose earnest gaze and frank self assessment I needed as a child and adolescent.\nOvie wasn\u0026rsquo;t a big man\u0026ndash;wiry thin and just above average height\u0026ndash;but he was larger than life. He had a ready smile, and a booming voice, and an even louder laugh. He was a a fount of endless stories and opinions, and he loved to talk, especially to his family. As with many Jess and Dorothy Haddix children, he never met a stranger.\nThroughout my childhood, he\u0026rsquo;d host us as we\u0026rsquo;d come to Detroit in summers and on holiday breaks to visit first at their house in St. Claire Shores where Pam and Tim grew up, then in Utica, finally at their *amazing* 3-story house on the far northern outskirts of Detroit. Detroit seemed so other-wordly to me, with its factories and industry, broad streets, danger, and people who spoke so differently from myself.\nEach time, Ovie would go out-of-his way to be the magnanimous host to his very large extended family, often boarding 8-10 people (with kids bent on breaking things) under his roof. He wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hear of us getting a hotel. Out of the question! (Honestly, somewhere he\u0026rsquo;s pissed that I spent the night in a hotel for his funeral, sorry Ovie!)\n(He had an amazing cabin on a lake in the Upper Peninsula, which was his respite from the grind and site of a near-death experience for me, but that\u0026rsquo;s a story for another time.)\nOvie was a hard man. He was born amid the depression, served as an MP in the military in Germany, and left in the great diaspora after WWII from Eastern Kentucky up to Detroit. He stayed fit throughout the rest of his life; every time I hugged him, it hurt. I was fat; he was not.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t have the history straight in my mind, but he got hired on in a sub-supplier for the auto industry, and put his whole self into it, finally buying-out the owner of his shop in Detroit in 1984. He was the quintessential \u0026ldquo;boss\u0026rdquo;: He spoke with command, and expected to be listened to. There\u0026rsquo;s a great story about him trying to teach my dad and uncle mike to MIG weld in 1994 that has a punchline something like, \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t give a rat\u0026rsquo;s ass what you think you know about welding, Mike. We\u0026rsquo;re gonna learn MY MOTHERF****** WAY.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;The shop\u0026rdquo; as he called it was a never-ending font of stories, both of the auto industry, unions, workers, and downtown Detroit itself. He\u0026rsquo;d talk about theives, con-men, and prostitutes walking up-and-down the street. For a kid from Jackson, Kentucky, the town and life he described sounded as different as the moon.\n* * *\nI could go on-and-on about Ovie, but I\u0026rsquo;ll close with one signal moment that affected me for the rest of my life. Ovie had this way of looking through you, of seeing who you were and who you were headed towards being. That is, he saw the path your choices lead to.\nI was probably 10 or so when this happened. We\u0026rsquo;d moved to the farm when I was 8, and I was an only-child, stuck away from anyone my own age. There was plenty to busy myself with on the farm and lots of things to interest me, especially my new computer. In honesty, I was bored to tears and lonely, but I was doing my best to act like a grown-up and get on with life. There was work to be done.\nAnyway, I was sitting the Family Diner in Jackson (now burned-down) enjoying some of their famous vegetable soup, trying to be like Ovie. I was telling stories and doing my best to be the center of attention (like Ovie). However, at 10, I hadn\u0026rsquo;t discovered that the thing most people find interesting is stories about other people. In any case, I had no close friends, so I was telling stories about my Tandy 1000 EX and some issues I was having with the spreadsheet application trying to do a budget for Mom. (Yes, I\u0026rsquo;m *that* boring.)\nOvie put up with this for a good 10 minutes before his omnipresent smile kinda froze on his face and he fixed me with a gaze.\n\u0026ldquo;You need to be a kid, Harold Ray. You\u0026rsquo;ll have all of your life to be an adult, but only this time to be a kid.\u0026rdquo;\nHe didn\u0026rsquo;t make a huge deal about it, and his easy laugh returned soon after, but he was right. He had the stones to stay that in front of my mother, too, who wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hear anyone criticize or admonish me, even for my own good. He knew I was choosing a path I\u0026rsquo;d regret.\n* * *\nI wish I could say that simple statement extracted the stick from my ass and loosened me up into a All-American adolescence. It didn\u0026rsquo;t. Meeting my wife in college helped, and that work-in-progress continues.\nStaring at the casket Friday, I saw a man whose life was well-lived, who worked hard, and loved hard. He never asked anyone for anything, and pulled himself up from nothing. He was present in every conversation until Alzheimer\u0026rsquo;s ebbed him away starting 3 years ago.\nI loved you, Ova Haddix. I\u0026rsquo;m sorry you\u0026rsquo;ve gone, but I look forward to hearing you laugh again.\nGod bless and keep you, uncle. Thanks for being awesome.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2015/01/a-boy-named-ova/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI lost my uncle on January 6th.  His given name was Ova Haddix, but he was always \u0026ldquo;Ovie\u0026rdquo; to me, and so he shall ever remain.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOvie was born Nov 10, 1939 and died January 6, 2015 at age 75.  He was buried in Sterling Heights, Michigan just north of Detroit, his adopted home.   My Aunt Sue asked me to be a pallbearer and I was honored to serve.  It was the least I could do to serve a man who\u0026rsquo;d epitomized force of will and strength, whose earnest gaze and frank self assessment I needed as a child and adolescent.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Boy Named Ova"},{"content":"Thus far on this little experiment, I\u0026rsquo;ve:\nOverslept by 1 hour. Completely lost track of time innumerable occasions. Discovered an odd blurring \u0026amp; vibration in my vision. Generally, it feels like I\u0026rsquo;m looking through a tunnel or a straw at the world. Had insatiable cravings for caffeine and sugar. Hyperfocused on assembly language programming and exercism. Generally feel like I got hit by a truck\u0026ndash;slow, plodding, etc. On the bright side:\nMood is much better. Sleep is much better. Laughed more (that is, some!) The next 2-6 weeks look to be rocky, but we\u0026rsquo;ll see. Some things have to change, and my brain chemistry\u0026rsquo;s going to have to come along for the ride.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/12/chemical-reactions/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThus far on this little experiment, I\u0026rsquo;ve:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOverslept by 1 hour.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCompletely lost track of time innumerable occasions.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDiscovered an odd blurring \u0026amp; vibration in my vision.  Generally, it feels like I\u0026rsquo;m looking through a tunnel or a straw at the world.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHad insatiable cravings for caffeine and sugar.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHyperfocused on assembly language programming and \u003ca href=\"http://exercism.io/\"\u003eexercism\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGenerally feel like I got hit by a truck\u0026ndash;slow, plodding, etc.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the bright side:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chemical Reactions"},{"content":"I still remember an interview I had around February 2001, in which +Ron Garnett talked about how his team wrote code:\nWe write stuff in Assembler, because we\u0026rsquo;re too lazy to write stuff in C.\nWait\u0026hellip;what? I thought the whole purpose of C was to have portable Assembly, so you could control the bare metal correctly. I did get an inkling if you were that good, assembly could be seductive in your ability to do whatever you want.\nThis came to mind again when +Seth Moore posed a similar question on Facebook the other night:\nPop quiz:When you run this, what prints out? Basically, the above is a quiz to determine if you understand loops, expressions -v- statements, and the pre-decrement operator (\u0026ndash;). Pre-decrement specifies that the lvalue of the expression is the current value minus one and the post-state of that variable is assigned that decremented value. Post-decrement has the same result (decrementing the value), but the lvalue of the expression is the PREVIOUS value.\nAs is my wont, I got the above wrong, but that\u0026rsquo;s not the point. To check my answer, I sucked it into quick c program using vim:\nCompiling that program and using mac\u0026rsquo;s otool to dump the assembly gives you this\nSome things to note in the above:\nThe compiler has done a faithful job of translating exactly the program (as-is) to assembler:\nWe load the variables in lines 9 and 10\nWe have the first loop in lines 11-22\nThe second loop (despite being a no-op) is in line 24-29\nThings get slightly more interesting when you pass the -O (optimize) flag\nSome things to note:\nThis looks nothing like the C code. There are no loops (or indeed, branch instructions) at all. The compiler determined the second loop to be a no-op, and compiled it away completely. Our stack variables are gone. The compiler is using x64 CPU registers exclusively. The compiler has analyzed the loop and unrolled it into discrete calls to callq for the printf function. Lastly: The answer to the quiz is in the assembly if you look hard enough:\n5 9\n5 8\n5 7\n5 6\n5 5\n5 4\n5 3\n5 2\n5 1\nPretty cool\u0026hellip;.I never get to look at assembly in my day-job, so getting this close to the CPU is neat.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/12/fun-with-assembly/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI still remember an interview I had around February 2001, in which \u003ca href=\"https://plus.google.com/101777204319263282927\"\u003e+Ron Garnett\u003c/a\u003e talked about how his team wrote code:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe write stuff in Assembler, because we\u0026rsquo;re too lazy to write stuff in C.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWait\u0026hellip;what?  I thought the whole purpose of C was to have portable Assembly, so you could control the bare metal correctly.  I did get an inkling if you were that \u003cem\u003egood\u003c/em\u003e, assembly could be seductive in your ability to do whatever you want.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fun with Assembly"},{"content":"From this article:\nMayer also favored a system of quarterly performance reviews, or Q.P.R.s, that required every Yahoo employee, on every team, be ranked from 1 to 5. The system was meant to encourage hard work and weed out underperformers, but it soon produced the exact opposite. Because only so many 4s and 5s could be allotted, talented people no longer wanted to work together; strategic goals were sacrificed, as employees did not want to change projects and leave themselves open to a lower score.\nOne of the uglier parts of the process was a series of quarterly “calibration meetings,” in which managers would gather with their bosses and review all the employees under their supervision. In practice, the managers would use these meetings to conjure reasons that certain staff members should get negative reviews. Sometimes the reason would be political or superficial. If anyone believes Vitality Ranking works, especially with knowledge workers, you\u0026rsquo;re sadly mistaken. The system breeds paranoia, malaise, and mediocrity: Paranoia, in that the employees know the above scenario is inevitable\u0026ndash;calibration meetings must occur in which they\u0026rsquo;re judged against their peers and forced into a distribution. If your organization is rife with dead wood, man-up and fire them. Otherwise, understand that forcing your \u0026ldquo;healthy\u0026rdquo; employees into a bell curve is akin to cutting off good tissue after you\u0026rsquo;ve excised a gangrenous limb. Malaise, in that the employees know there\u0026rsquo;s a sad inevitability to the process. Everyone knows who the \u0026ldquo;golden boy\u0026rdquo; is in your rank. Generally, he\u0026rsquo;s the sycophant, workaholic who\u0026rsquo;s constantly the smartest guy in the room. He\u0026rsquo;s the \u0026lsquo;5\u0026rsquo; in the above scenario. You also know who the loser is in the group, the \u0026ldquo;Well, I\u0026rsquo;m not as bad as ______.\u0026rdquo; He\u0026rsquo;s the 1. He\u0026rsquo;s dead meat. So, ensure you\u0026rsquo;re not last and you \u0026ldquo;win,\u0026rdquo; sort of. Mediocrity, in that this system makes you continously gaze INWARD. Managers don\u0026rsquo;t like it\u0026hellip;they spend inordinate amounts of time doing QPR\u0026rsquo;s, paperwork, and susbstantiation. Employees obsess about it, because they might be on the chopping block, so you start funneling \u0026ldquo;achievements\u0026rdquo; to your manager so he has ammunition for the calibration meetings. INWARD looking means You\u0026rsquo;re not competing. That\u0026rsquo;s fine for GE (oh wait, no it\u0026rsquo;s not), but for any company without a substantive monopoly and barrier to entry in their field, it\u0026rsquo;s the first step towards destruction. If Mayer instituted this at Yahoo, then the company deserves to go down in flames.\n/rant\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/12/rant-stacked-ranking-at-yahoo...yet-another-failure/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-when-marissa-mayer-tried-to-be-steve-jobs.html?_r=1\"\u003ethis article\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMayer also favored a system of quarterly performance reviews, or Q.P.R.s, that required every Yahoo employee, on every team, be ranked from 1 to 5. The system was meant to encourage hard work and weed out underperformers, but it soon produced the exact opposite. Because only so many 4s and 5s could be allotted, talented people no longer wanted to work together; strategic goals were sacrificed, as employees did not want to change projects and leave themselves open to a lower score.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rant: Stacked Ranking at Yahoo...yet another failure"},{"content":"Ah, the Spotify Engineering Culture.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve all heard the gloss: Small, independent Squads organized into buzzwordy terms like \u0026ldquo;Tribes,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Guilds.\u0026rdquo; These terms hearken to days past in humanity, days of community and craftsmanship.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s what I take from the above: None of that fricking matters. What really matters is a throwaway blurb at the very end of the video, starting at 12m 30s. Transcribed here:\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve learned trust is more important than control. Why would we hire someone we don\u0026rsquo;t trust? Agile at scale requires trust at scale, which means NO POLITICS. It also means no fear. Fear doesn\u0026rsquo;t just kill trust; it kills innovation. Because, if failure gets punished, people will be afraid to try new things.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s the secret sauce:\nHire the right people. Trust them. Dump the politics. Expect failure and deal with it appropriately. * * *\nSo here\u0026rsquo;s the thing with the above: I question whether it\u0026rsquo;s sustainable by any organization of human beings. Organizations have a natural succession, like a forest. When the forest is just beginning, certain types of plants and animals thrive. As it moves towards being old-growth, those new plants just don\u0026rsquo;t fit anymore. Then, a fire comes and kills the forest, and the cycle begins anew.\nSpotify seems dedicated to keeping itself in that \u0026lsquo;Succession\u0026rsquo; phase, with maximal growth and competition. Can it sustain that? The dark side of the model is, ironically, that it is so trusting of individual performance and correct behavior. That is:\nTalented individuals need to be in all the roles. (To the \u0026ldquo;Hire the right people\u0026rdquo; statement) The organization must not apply too much control. The org must staunch natural human social behavior (read: politics). The org must embrace failure and not blamestorm. Said a different way, the Spotify model trusts human beings to be \u0026ldquo;good.\u0026rdquo; Once sociopathic behavior emerges, intractable egos, or other issues emerge, there\u0026rsquo;s no indication how to deal with it. I\u0026rsquo;m sure there\u0026rsquo;s a copout in there somewhere: \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re doing it wrong.\u0026rdquo; (e.g. you made a bad hire, etc.) Look, one bad hire should not crater your product delivery, okay?\nThe tagline occurs to me is this:\nI don\u0026rsquo;t trust the code I WRITE. Because of that, I write unit and integration tests. QED: People are fallible. The spotify model asks me to trust a conjoined web of dependencies to ship my product?!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/11/spotify-model-the-darkside/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, the \u003ca href=\"http://vimeo.com/85490944\"\u003eSpotify Engineering Culture\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve all heard the gloss:  Small, independent Squads organized into buzzwordy terms like \u0026ldquo;Tribes,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Guilds.\u0026rdquo; These terms hearken to days past in humanity, days of community and craftsmanship.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s what I take from the above:  \u003cstrong\u003eNone of that fricking matters\u003c/strong\u003e.  What really matters is a throwaway blurb at the very end of the video, starting at 12m 30s.  Transcribed here:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve learned trust is more important than control.  Why would we hire someone we don\u0026rsquo;t trust?  Agile at scale requires trust at scale, which means NO POLITICS.  It also means no fear.  Fear doesn\u0026rsquo;t just kill trust; it kills innovation.  Because, if failure gets punished, people will be afraid to try new things.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Spotify Model, the Darkside"},{"content":"Me: \u0026ldquo;Hey Joey, what would you like to do today?\u0026rdquo;\nHe: \u0026ldquo;Let\u0026rsquo;s go iceskating.\u0026rdquo;\n[\u0026hellip;silence\u0026hellip;]\nShe: \u0026ldquo;Dad doesn\u0026rsquo;t do iceskating.\u0026rdquo;\nMe: \u0026ldquo;I can do it if I have to.\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nAh famous last words.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been working alot lately. Let me rephrase: I\u0026rsquo;ve been working roughly 9:30-\u0026gt;8pm M-T-R-F. I haven\u0026rsquo;t been working late Wednesdays because of Church, and not Fridays because something usually comes-up. I haven\u0026rsquo;t been able to spend much time with my son, and we\u0026rsquo;re both missing it.\nBut\u0026hellip;skating? I hate ice-skating. I actually went into our marriage with two agreements: Whitney doesn\u0026rsquo;t have to go on any ski-lifts or high places and I don\u0026rsquo;t have to skate.\nThen somehow it became a matter of pride and I said we were going. Besides, we had a coupon for 1 free skate with another paid admission. So, we went.\nJoey was having lots of fun, and I made it it around the rink 2 times in an hour without falling. So far so good. My feet hurt and my lower-leg muscles were fatigued. (Yes, we\u0026rsquo;re talking two slow circuits of the rink here, pathetic as it sounds). I sat down and decided I was done, then like a punk with something to prove, I got up for a 3rd time.\nThe third trip didn\u0026rsquo;t go so well. In an attempt to help my throbbing feet, I loosened my laces too much. I somehow missed my wife\u0026rsquo;s texted admonition to \u0026ldquo;keep the ones a the top tight.\u0026rdquo; I made it maybe 15 yards onto the rink, then I fell pretty hard, backwards. I tried to twist on my side like they tell you, but managed only to bang my shoulder, wrist, and right forehead. I lay on the ice feeling like a class \u0026lsquo;A\u0026rsquo; idiot, and everyone was looking at me. My head was bleeding. Not bad, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t look good. I didn\u0026rsquo;t get a concussion or anything, but I was a real asshole to the entire staff and concerned onlookers. \u0026ldquo;Er, did someone cut in front of you or something?\u0026rdquo; a well-meaning 60-ish skating coach asked me as I sat down awaiting an ice pack.\n\u0026ldquo;No\u0026hellip;I just CAN\u0026rsquo;T SKATE, okay?\u0026rdquo; Then I threw my skates off like a 5 year old disenchanted with the toy whose batteries had run out. Then the manager came over, \u0026ldquo;Sir, I\u0026rsquo;m Mr. Dewflotchy and I\u0026rsquo;m the manager\u0026hellip;do you need anything?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yes, you can LEAVE ME ALONE.\u0026rdquo;\nI wasn\u0026rsquo;t mad at them. I was mad at me. I felt humiliated for yet another FAIL at the ice rink. I knew I was fatigued and that I\u0026rsquo;d reached my limits. Worse, this is another in a string of 16 years of incidents at this very same place.\nSo we left. I felt woozy, then got home and Whitney suggested I visit the ER. Three X-Rays and a Band-Aide later they sent me home with a clean bill of, \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s gonna hurt in the morning.\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nAt this point, I\u0026rsquo;ve no idea if I\u0026rsquo;ll ever get on a rink again. I\u0026rsquo;m pretty fed-up and I\u0026rsquo;ve got nothing to prove to anyone. God bless you folks who like to glide across frozen water; it seems I\u0026rsquo;m not fated to become one of you. I\u0026rsquo;ve spent maybe 3 hours total on a rink in my life, and hated nearly every second of it.\nAll this makes me really sad, like I\u0026rsquo;m a quitter. Mostly, I regret how I\u0026rsquo;ve acted after the incident. I was a real dick to the people at the ice center who were just trying to help.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/11/my-longstanding-battle-with-skating-continues/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMe: \u0026ldquo;Hey Joey, what would you like to do today?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe: \u0026ldquo;Let\u0026rsquo;s go iceskating.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[\u0026hellip;silence\u0026hellip;]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe: \u0026ldquo;Dad doesn\u0026rsquo;t do iceskating.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/002/109/orly_owl.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/002/109/orly_owl.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: \u0026ldquo;I can do it if I have to.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAh famous last words.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been working alot lately.  Let me rephrase:  I\u0026rsquo;ve been working roughly 9:30-\u0026gt;8pm M-T-R-F.  I haven\u0026rsquo;t been working late Wednesdays because of Church, and not Fridays because something usually comes-up.  I haven\u0026rsquo;t been able to spend much time with my son, and we\u0026rsquo;re both missing it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My Longstanding Battle with Skating Continues"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve come to understand my limits: 2 meetings.\nLooking back on it, it\u0026rsquo;s hard to comprehend a day where I had 7 1-hour meetings in a single day, because as it stands today, I\u0026rsquo;ve had 3 meetings and my mind is tapioca. Actually, you might say I\u0026rsquo;ve had 4, but I\u0026rsquo;ll get to that.\nRunning down the list:\n10:30am Team standup. Daily coordination face-to-face activities. Absolutely essential. Still counts against the quota! 2pm. Steering committee meeting for something rather important. 3pm. Emergency coordination meeting because our team discerned we were blocked on all our upcoming work and needed to pull in some other work. Now amid all that, was a sit-down I had around 11:15 with another developer on a point-of-interest.\nNote the timing, too:\n10:30 \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Right in the middle of the morning. 2-3pm \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Right in the middle of the afternoon. I remember fondly a team I was on where all meetings were before 10 or after 4, and the middle of the day was sacrosanct.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/10/aaaaaand-my-day-is-shot-by-meetings/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve come to understand my limits: 2 meetings.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLooking back on it, it\u0026rsquo;s hard to comprehend a day where I had 7 1-hour meetings in a single day, because as it stands today, I\u0026rsquo;ve had 3 meetings and my mind is tapioca.  Actually, you might say I\u0026rsquo;ve had 4, but I\u0026rsquo;ll get to that.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRunning down the list:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e10:30am Team standup.  Daily coordination face-to-face activities.  Absolutely essential.  \u003cstrong\u003eStill counts against the quota!\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e2pm.  Steering committee meeting for something rather important.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e3pm. Emergency coordination meeting because our team discerned we were blocked on all our upcoming work and needed to pull in some other work.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow amid all that, was a sit-down I had around 11:15 with another developer on a point-of-interest.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Aaaaaand, My Day is Shot (by Meetings)"},{"content":"Imagine yourself trapped in a cylinder filling with water. The water comes in at an uneven rate: Sometimes it dribbles, sometimes it gushes. You can\u0026rsquo;t get out of the cylinder, and once the water reaches your head you\u0026rsquo;ll drown.\n\u0026ldquo;Okay, that\u0026rsquo;s torture.\u0026rdquo;\nYes, it is.\nNow, let\u0026rsquo;s imagine the cylinder were bigger, maybe the size of one of those nuclear storage tanks, but still only 7 or so feet tall. You can have things in there with you to distract you, but the water\u0026rsquo;s still coming in and once it gets to the top, you drown.\n\u0026ldquo;Still torture.\u0026rdquo;\nYep, it is.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s imagine the water was coming in at an unbelievably slow rate\u0026hellip;maybe it might take years to get all the way to the top, and let\u0026rsquo;s imagine the tank was even bigger, with a transparent top so you could see the sun. There\u0026rsquo;s always the risk that someone will open the flood valve and fill the tank at any moment.\nStill\u0026hellip;torture? Maybe by now you see where this is going. You\u0026rsquo;re in that tank right now.\nOur days are ultimately numbered, and our \u0026rsquo;tank\u0026rsquo; is the size of the earth, perhaps bigger. We\u0026rsquo;ve no real idea when that flood valve is going to open and kill us.\nDealing with those (metaphorical) facts is the central challenge in humanity: Is your life torture, or is it something with meaning? When your water gets to the top, be it suddenly or quickly, what is your legacy.\nAnd, most importantly, do you know someone who can get you out of that tank once that brief moment of drowning is done?\nI do. And today, that makes me smile. Let the water come.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/10/a-thought-experiment./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eImagine yourself trapped in a cylinder filling with water.  The water comes in at an uneven rate: Sometimes it dribbles, sometimes it gushes.  You can\u0026rsquo;t get out of the cylinder, and once the water reaches your head you\u0026rsquo;ll drown.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;Okay, that\u0026rsquo;s torture.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nYes, it is.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow, let\u0026rsquo;s imagine the cylinder were bigger, maybe the size of one of those nuclear storage tanks, but still only 7 or so feet tall.  You can have things in there with you to distract you, but the water\u0026rsquo;s still coming in and once it gets to the top, you drown.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A thought experiment."},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s quiet and loud, busy and peaceful as I sit outside Starbucks this afternoon. Caffeine from the Clover-brewed Ethiopian Yirgacheffe courses through me as the clock turns 6.\nI\u0026rsquo;m reeling having watched The One I Love. Like, back on my heels reeling. Watched that at the Kentucky Theatre with a small matinee crowd, attempting to shut-down a few brain cells to prepare for crunch time ahead\u0026ndash;crunch time at home, at work, etc. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t successful, the movie\u0026rsquo;s a mind-f@#%. Like, your mind rejects it, refusing to suspend disbelief, right as the main characters\u0026hellip;have to suspend their disbelief.\nAnyway, Chevy Chase area, Lexington Kentucky. This is exactly where I always wanted to live, some place like this, or the Bardstown road area of Louisville: Urban, but green, old but renewed. Cars exist here, but they\u0026rsquo;re optional\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s very walkable, and people seem fit, especially on a glorious no-humidity day with Fall in the air.\nMostly, I just like listening and smelling. When I was out in Seattle in April, I enjoyed walking down to Pike Place market in the early morning (3 hour Jet lag, yay) and smelling and hearing the bustle, the life. You can see how writers of the Lost Generation had to have a place like Paris, a nexus of people and ideas, of cafes and places to meet to exchange ideas.\nSeems like we\u0026rsquo;ve forgotten that, the agora, the forum, the square, the Sunday afternoon bandstand. Maybe America never had it, obsessed as we are with our manifest destiny to subdue a continent. We have important STUFF TO DO. \u0026ldquo;Shut up and get out of my way, buddy,\u0026rdquo; shouts our houses, cars, clothes, and our noses buried in our phones. \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rdquo; are not important. *I* am important.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll find out some day we got that last part wrong. We were all important, to God. The \u0026ldquo;gift\u0026rdquo; of Neitzsche seems to be the pervasive belief that we\u0026rsquo;re not. The nihilism and chaos that\u0026rsquo;s resulted shames us all.\nThe world seems ready to blow itself apart more than usual: Russia and Ukraine read from Archduke Ferdinand\u0026rsquo;s script\u0026ndash;or something worse. If every generation invents sex, we surely invent war, too. \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;ll look back and see that Malaysian Air 17 was the start of World War III,\u0026rdquo; a friend opined on Facebook. She\u0026rsquo;s looking more right by the day.\nOn my front, lots of goodness: I continue making my way through Cottrell\u0026rsquo;s The Faith Once for All. I\u0026rsquo;ve never had a systematic treatment of theology from the Ontological argument through a tour of doctrine, and this is my first foray at Tom LaHue\u0026rsquo;s suggestion. I\u0026rsquo;ve long be trying to reconcile freewill and God\u0026rsquo;s omniscience and Cottrell has the first convincing argument I\u0026rsquo;ve seen that\u0026rsquo;s not TULIP Calvinism or shackling God somehow.\nAt church, I\u0026rsquo;m taking a class on Apologetics with our music minister, Daniel Stephens. I often look for people who \u0026ldquo;geek out\u0026rdquo; on a topic, be it dentistry, optometry, or car repair. Like when you\u0026rsquo;re interviewing people, you like people with passion. Daniel gushes over philosophy and reason, to a degree I didn\u0026rsquo;t even see in the Philosophy profs in college. Class #1 was interesting, and I look forward to class 2.\n* * *\nLast, a bit of DIY: This week my wife announced our fridge was broken, registering ~60 degrees F on wednesday. All our food spoiled, but curiously the freezer was colder than ever, frosting over. We prepped to swallow purchase of a new fridge, but scheduled a call to an appliance tech anyway. He patiently explained that what we actually had was a frozen-over ventilation system from our freezer to our fridge.\n\u0026ldquo;Has anyone left your fridge door open?\u0026rdquo; Why yes, the darling three-year-old before you, kind sir.\nSo basically, he reformatted my understanding of how refrigerators work\u0026hellip;at least the mechanical kind. There\u0026rsquo;s one thermostat, and it lives in your fridge. There\u0026rsquo;s one compressor circuit and it lives in your freezer. There\u0026rsquo;s airflow between the two, and whenever the fridge gets too hot, the thermostat tells your freezer to kick on. However, there\u0026rsquo;s a catch: If the fridge stays open, it\u0026rsquo;s possible for the freezer to run so long as to frost-up the channels between them.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s exactly what happened to us. So, 30 minutes of steam-defrosting later, we have our fridge back, at 10% the cost of a new fridge. Tidbit: \u0026ldquo;This fridge will outlast any new one you buy. It\u0026rsquo;s completely mechanical. They made this fridge for 20 years. If you want to get rid of it, call me and I\u0026rsquo;ll take it.\u0026rdquo; Fellow seemed credible. Again: \u0026ldquo;Geek out\u0026rdquo; effect.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/09/a-moment-in-time-early-september-2014/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s quiet and loud, busy and peaceful as I sit outside Starbucks this afternoon.  Caffeine from the Clover-brewed Ethiopian Yirgacheffe courses through me as the clock turns 6.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m reeling having watched \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2756032/?ref_=nm_knf_i4\"\u003eThe One I Love\u003c/a\u003e.  Like, back on my heels reeling.  Watched that at the Kentucky Theatre with a small matinee crowd, attempting to shut-down a few brain cells to prepare for crunch time ahead\u0026ndash;crunch time at home, at work, etc.  I wasn\u0026rsquo;t successful, the movie\u0026rsquo;s a mind-f@#%.  Like, your mind rejects it, refusing to suspend disbelief, right as the main characters\u0026hellip;have to suspend their disbelief.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Moment in Time: Early September 2014"},{"content":"Dynamics? Yes, dynamics.\nIn music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic (staccato, legato etc.) or functional (velocity). The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicatedynamics. I\u0026rsquo;ve read Peter Egan obsessively for years: I have dead-tree copies of 2 of 3 Side Glances compilations, and one edition of Leanings that stoked a motorcycle obsession I\u0026rsquo;ve had since 2008. Prior to that, I\u0026rsquo;d pick up copies of Road \u0026amp; Track in the Winn-Dixie in my hometown, read the Egan article and then place it back on the shelf above the sign, \u0026ldquo;IF YOU READ THEM BUY THEM. THIS AIN\u0026rsquo;T A LIBRARY [sic].\u0026rdquo;\nIndeed: Libraries don\u0026rsquo;t smell like cigarettes and rotting meat.\nThirty years on, Gearheads venerate Peter Egan, but I think that limits too much to our particular obsession. Really, anyone who aspires to write or narrate anything can benefit from Egan\u0026rsquo;s style, much like listening to various modern-day Chatauqua speakers benefit from Garrison Keillor or The Moth. Like them, it\u0026rsquo;s not so much the content\u0026ndash;though with Egan it\u0026rsquo;s almost always interesting\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s the way it\u0026rsquo;s delivered\nI\u0026rsquo;d like to deconstruct just one thing that makes that style great, drawing a parallel to music. Remember back to music class in elementary school when you learned about \u0026lsquo;dynamics\u0026rsquo;? You know, how the composer of a piece intends a particular passage to be played with those fancy Italian words: Staccato, legato, grandissimo, forte, fortissimo, piano, pianissimo. Or, if you\u0026rsquo;re from my hometown: Sharp, smooth, grandly, loud, dang loud, quite (\u0026ldquo;quiet\u0026rdquo;), or \u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t hear it it\u0026rsquo;s so soft.\u0026rdquo;\nSaid another way, composers tap into a central part of humanity: We get bored really, really easily. No matter how technically interesting or melodic the passage or lyric, if you don\u0026rsquo;t vary how loud or soft you play it, people eventually tune-out. Green Day\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Nimrod\u0026rdquo; album goes like this: PUNK, PUNK, PUNK, \u0026ldquo;Last Ride In,\u0026rdquo; PUNK, PUNK, \u0026ldquo;Time of Your Life,\u0026rdquo; PUNK. The soft bounds the loud and gives it meaning and emotion. That\u0026rsquo;s the brilliant thing about Egan: He does the same thing with his writing, by varying his paragraph length just when the reader needs it.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s dive in and look at a passage from Egan\u0026rsquo;s last \u0026ldquo;Side Glances\u0026rdquo; column.\nI sold the Beetle for $350 to a kid who was building a dune buggy, and then used borrowed test bikes from Cycle World to get around until I could afford another car. A Datsun B-210. This car was stultifyingly dull, but the fenders were attached to the body, and it ran on all four. Three years later, I took a job with Road \u0026amp; Track, upstairs in the same building as _Cycle World _(these two publications were owned by CBS at the time), and I\u0026rsquo;ve been contributing to both magazines ever since. Thirty-three years at _CW,_and 30 years at R\u0026amp;T.\nAnyway, that loyal but rusty Beetle was the last VW product I owned, despite my having an irrational weakness (active to this day) for the Volkswagen Thing. But no more Vee-Dubs until now.\nWhy now? Well, because I\u0026rsquo;d like to retire.\nIn a nutshell, the above is that \u0026lsquo;Dynamics\u0026rsquo; I\u0026rsquo;m talking about. Long Paragraph, short paragraph, Punch, PUNCH. The above is the climax of the column, the point at which Egan\u0026rsquo;s announcing his retirement. The following paragraphs will explain, detail, and valedict, but this is the turn. Look, how ordinary it is. This is weighty, dramatic stuff, but he just offers it up in a short snippet without drama or ornation.\nNice, isn\u0026rsquo;t it?\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know what to call that from a writing style perspective aside from \u0026lsquo;dynamics\u0026rsquo;\u0026ndash;the shape and complexity of the prose varies with pauses and interludes between major passages that capitulate the previous and introduce the next in a way wholly designed to refocus the reader, whether that\u0026rsquo;s a guy reading R\u0026amp;T cover-to-cover or an ADD kid in a Winn-Dixie. These dynamics make the writing digestible and they make the reader comfortable. Simple to explain, hard to practice.\nSince reading Egan intentionally with an eye to his style, I\u0026rsquo;ve tried to do the same, to have discipline on the shape of the prose I\u0026rsquo;m writing, much like I (attempt to) have with the code that I\u0026rsquo;m writing. As my colleague Pete once said, \u0026ldquo;I can just scroll through this file and tell you it\u0026rsquo;s a bad design, the _shape of the code is wrong.\u0026rdquo; _More and more, I see the same thing with short-form prose, and email, and even public speaking.\nAnd, it seems like it\u0026rsquo;s getting worse.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve noticed something about the better prose, though: It looks lots like Peter Egan\u0026rsquo;s.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/09/what-peter-egan-taught-me-about-writing-dynamics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDynamics?  Yes, dynamics.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIn \u003cstrong\u003emusic\u003c/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003edynamics\u003c/strong\u003e normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic (staccato, legato etc.) or functional (velocity). The term is also applied to the written or printed \u003cstrong\u003emusical\u003c/strong\u003e notation used to indicate\u003cstrong\u003edynamics\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e I\u0026rsquo;ve read Peter Egan obsessively for years:  I have dead-tree copies of 2 of 3 \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Side-Glances-Americas-Popular-Automotive/dp/1855207281\"\u003eSide Glances\u003c/a\u003e compilations, and one edition of \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Leanings-Peter-Cycle-World-Magazine/dp/0760336571\"\u003eLeanings\u003c/a\u003e that stoked a motorcycle obsession I\u0026rsquo;ve had since 2008.  Prior to that, I\u0026rsquo;d pick up copies of \u003cem\u003eRoad \u0026amp; Track\u003c/em\u003e in the Winn-Dixie in my hometown, read the Egan article and then place it back on the shelf above the sign, \u0026ldquo;IF YOU READ THEM BUY THEM. THIS AIN\u0026rsquo;T A LIBRARY [\u003cem\u003esic\u003c/em\u003e].\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What Peter Egan taught me about writing:  \"Dynamics\""},{"content":"SPOILERS!!\nDinosaurs in London.\nWell, that was awkward. Capaldi off to a poor start, but honestly, so was Tennant in \u0026ldquo;Christmas Invasion\u0026rdquo;\nNew Opening looks like the opening to Amazing Stories in 1985\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;People are apes. MEN are monkeys.\u0026rdquo; Nice, Mdm Vastra\nClara dealing with the change. Not well. Metaphor for all relationships\u0026ndash;people change. Are we big enough to see through the veil?\nParallels: Doctor and the Dinosaur, \u0026ldquo;I am alone\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nStrax is a joy, per usual, \u0026ldquo;May I take your clothes?\u0026rdquo;\nAnd\u0026hellip;there\u0026rsquo;s the cyborg\n\u0026ldquo;He looked young, you might as well flirt with a mountain range.\u0026rdquo; Nice interlude to explain Peter Capaldi is\u0026hellip;you know\u0026hellip;old.\n\u0026ldquo;My Time Machine was stuck in your throat\u0026hellip;that\u0026rsquo;s mostly how I meet girls.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Planet of the pudding brains\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nStrax: \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;and we will melt him with acid. The Times shall I send it up?\u0026rdquo; WHACK!\nAh, JLC in Victorian Garb. Holds her own quite well against Strax\u0026rsquo;s impromptu exam.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;ve seen this face before.\u0026rdquo; Yeah, like in Pompeii? This episode is\u0026hellip;.trippy\u0026hellip;.\u0026ldquo;Why this face?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;These are ATTACK EYEBROWS\u0026rdquo;\nSo, David Tennant couldn\u0026rsquo;t be scottish, but Capaldi *can*\u0026hellip;?\nJenni in a corset. So, there\u0026rsquo;s that. \u0026ldquo;For the sake of Art.\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;And there\u0026rsquo;s the gratiuitous nude torso.\n\u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s at times like this I miss Amy\u0026rdquo; (Yeah, she had legs that were 12 feet long, dude.)\nI\u0026rsquo;ve seen this before\u0026hellip;yes, on the Madame Pompador. F-A-N-S-E-R-V-I-C-E.\n\u0026ldquo;No point in them catching us both.\u0026rdquo; What\u0026hellip;WHAT?!\n\u0026ldquo;The Promised Land\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;And that includes Karaoke and mimes\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Geronimo!!\u0026rdquo; F-A-N\u0026hellip;oh, nevermind.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve got the horrible feeling I\u0026rsquo;m going to have to kill you.\u0026rdquo;\nNice action climax there :-)\n\u0026ldquo;Give him Hell, he\u0026rsquo;ll always need it.\u0026rdquo;\nNew TARDIS!!\n\u0026ldquo;Clara, I\u0026rsquo;m not your boyfriend.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I never thought you were.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I never said it was your mistake.\u0026rdquo; Bah zing. So 11 *was* into her.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a woman out there, that\u0026rsquo;s very keen we stay together.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m sorry. I\u0026rsquo;m so, so sorry.\u0026rdquo;\nMATT SMITH!! It\u0026rsquo;s his voice\u0026hellip;He needs you.\n\u0026ldquo;Goodbye Clara\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You look @ me and you can\u0026rsquo;t see me.\u0026rdquo; Okay, Moffat, you got me with that one.\n\u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;m a hugging person now.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m missy. I hope my boyfriend wasn\u0026rsquo;t too mean to you.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/08/spoilerific-liveblogging-dr.-who-s8e1-deep-breath/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSPOILERS!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDinosaurs in London.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, that was awkward.  Capaldi off to a poor start, but honestly, so was Tennant in \u0026ldquo;Christmas Invasion\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNew Opening looks like the opening to Amazing Stories in 1985\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;People are apes.  MEN are monkeys.\u0026rdquo;  Nice, Mdm Vastra\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClara dealing with the change.  Not well.  Metaphor for all relationships\u0026ndash;people change.  Are we big enough to see through the veil?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eParallels: Doctor and the Dinosaur, \u0026ldquo;I am alone\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Spoilerific Liveblogging Dr. Who S8E1: \"Deep Breath\""},{"content":"I try to pause every so often and record what my toolchain looks like. Sort of like people posting on Everyday Carry, but for what I use every day in development.\nDevelopment machine: 13\u0026quot; MacBook Pro Retina, 2.8GHz Core i7, 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD. I love this machine. My wife calls it my woobie. She\u0026rsquo;s not far from right. OS: Mac OS 10.9.4. Unix when I want it to be, polished Consumer OS when I just don\u0026rsquo;t care. It\u0026rsquo;s been 3 years since I ran a windows box as a development machine and with virtualization I can\u0026rsquo;t see running windows as a primary OS ever again. Physical Setup: Thunderbolt Gigabit ethernet, Thunderbolt-to-DVI single 23\u0026quot; monitor, Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. I\u0026rsquo;ve dabbled in multi-monitors and buckling spring keyboards, but this setup keeps my attention focused and my repetitive strain to a minimum. I\u0026rsquo;ll eventually wear out this keyboard and probably buy another one just like it. Note taking tool: Evernote, but honestly I\u0026rsquo;m dissatisfied everywhere I turn. Evernote gets closest to what I want amid everything else I\u0026rsquo;ve tried: Google Keep, OneNote (which is an abomination on the Mac), paper notebooks, PDAs, Google Drive Documents, emails. I basically pendulum between over-noting and under-noting everything. Google Drive wants to be the master, but I resist. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure why. Blogging Platform: Blogger, through simple inertia. Wordpress seems like exchanging one master for another. I\u0026rsquo;m taking a hard look at Github:Pages and Jekyll because I like finer-grained creative control and Markdown, but I can\u0026rsquo;t commit to it. Terminal Program: iTerm. Tabs are nice. I spend lots of time here these days in irb or grails shell. Command line shell: zsh + oh-my-zsh. Tabbing command-line completion and aliases for most things. (Ex: gc == \u0026ldquo;Git commit\u0026rdquo;), with a vibrant community to go with it. Package Manager: Homebrew. I have no idea how I survived on windows without a decent package manager like apt, yum, or brew. I\u0026rsquo;d switch away from Windows to *nix or Mac for this alone. Editor: Sublime Text 3. I\u0026rsquo;m an old vi guy. Sublime has let me forget the envy I always had for not learning emacs. Like homebrew or oh-my-zsh, has a rabid, vibrant community. IDE: Honestly, none. I like command line tools and Sublime, but I acknowledge IntelliJ 13 is peerless in the Java/JVM IDE world. (Sorry, Eclipse\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ve been a user since 2.11, but you\u0026rsquo;re just a hot mess.) Virtualization: VirtualBox. A colleague turned me on to this a few years ago, and paired with Vagrant for setup/teardown, it\u0026rsquo;s great. Scripting Language: Ruby. This one feels like the old Simpsons plot \u0026ldquo;So you finally decided to steal cable tv.\u0026rdquo; Ruby is NICE. It\u0026rsquo;s like PERL grown-up, without the awk acne: The language just falls away, and you\u0026rsquo;re dealing with the problem at hand. Backend framework (tie): Rails 4.x or Grails 2.x. Yeah, I\u0026rsquo;m not taking a position here. If you\u0026rsquo;re playing with the JVM ecosystem, Grails is the obvious pick. Rails is (and remains) a breath of fresh air, especially with the tools that go with it: Bundler, Berkshelf, rbenv. Moreover, there\u0026rsquo;s a frenetic vibrancy in the Rails community that\u0026rsquo;s infectious. Maddening\u0026ndash;sure\u0026ndash;but infectious. Browser: Chrome. Frau Perry croons, \u0026ldquo;We fight, we breakup, we kiss, we makeup.\u0026rdquo; Chrome makes me uneasy the same way IE 5 did back in the day\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s becoming a monoculture, and Google\u0026rsquo;s starting to get evil with it. Still, it\u0026rsquo;s fast and its fundamental architecture still has Mozilla\u0026rsquo;s Firefox playing catchup. Source Control: Git, specifically Github and Github:Enterprise. Pull Requests and social coding have changed how developers work in the last 5 years. Mobile: None. I was a phandroid, but I\u0026rsquo;m still on the smartphone wagon for 1 year and 6 days now. I\u0026rsquo;m not first in line for a mobile development position, but there\u0026rsquo;s enough left in server and web development that I think I\u0026rsquo;ll be okay. Social Media: Twitter for short-form and Facebook for long-form. Facebook\u0026rsquo;s just inescapable if I want to interact with family, friends, and church. They seem intent on running everyone away, but the simple network effect keeps everyone there. I much prefer twitter, but understand not everyone can stand it, particularly since they went public and started screwing with everyone\u0026rsquo;s Google+ is dead, and has been since 3 months after it launched. Google should merge it with Youtube (the perfectly good social network they already had) and be done with it. Miscellaneous: Vagrant, Chef, gvm, Github Pages, Jekyll, Markdown, npm, /Stream-of-consciousness\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/08/developer-toolchain-2014-edition/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI try to pause every so often and record what my toolchain looks like.   Sort of like people posting on Everyday Carry, but for what I use every day in development.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eDevelopment machine\u003c/em\u003e: 13\u0026quot; MacBook Pro Retina, 2.8GHz Core i7, 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD.  I love this machine.  My wife calls it my woobie.  She\u0026rsquo;s not far from right.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GSy_kdNA7hU/SvcBKj4YPgI/AAAAAAAAACw/goteKYCQJVc/s200/linus.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GSy_kdNA7hU/SvcBKj4YPgI/AAAAAAAAACw/goteKYCQJVc/s200/linus.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eOS\u003c/em\u003e: Mac OS 10.9.4.  Unix when I want it to be, polished Consumer OS when I just don\u0026rsquo;t care.   It\u0026rsquo;s been 3 years since I ran a windows box as a development machine and with virtualization I can\u0026rsquo;t see running windows as a primary OS ever again.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhysical Setup\u003c/em\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e:\u003c/strong\u003e Thunderbolt Gigabit ethernet, Thunderbolt-to-DVI single 23\u0026quot; monitor, Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.   I\u0026rsquo;ve dabbled in multi-monitors and buckling spring keyboards, but this setup keeps my attention focused and my repetitive strain to a minimum.  I\u0026rsquo;ll eventually wear out this keyboard and probably buy another one just like it.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote taking tool\u003c/em\u003e: Evernote, but honestly I\u0026rsquo;m dissatisfied everywhere I turn.  Evernote gets closest to what I want amid everything else I\u0026rsquo;ve tried:  Google Keep, OneNote (which is an abomination on the Mac), paper notebooks, PDAs, Google Drive Documents, emails.  I basically pendulum between over-noting and under-noting everything.  Google Drive wants to be the master, but I resist.  I\u0026rsquo;m not sure why.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eBlogging Platform\u003c/em\u003e: Blogger, through simple inertia.  Wordpress seems like exchanging one master for another.  I\u0026rsquo;m taking a hard look at Github:Pages and Jekyll because I like finer-grained creative control and Markdown, but I can\u0026rsquo;t commit to it.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eTerminal Program:\u003c/em\u003e iTerm.   Tabs are nice.  I spend lots of time here these days in irb or grails shell.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eCommand line shell\u003c/em\u003e: zsh + oh-my-zsh.   Tabbing command-line completion and aliases for most things.  (Ex: gc == \u0026ldquo;Git commit\u0026rdquo;), with a vibrant community to go with it.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003ePackage Manager\u003c/em\u003e: Homebrew.   I have no idea how I survived on windows without a decent package manager like apt, yum, or brew.  I\u0026rsquo;d switch away from Windows to *nix or Mac for this alone.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eEditor\u003c/em\u003e: Sublime Text 3.  I\u0026rsquo;m an old vi guy.  Sublime has let me forget the envy I always had for not learning emacs.  Like homebrew or oh-my-zsh, has a rabid, vibrant community.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eIDE:\u003c/em\u003e  Honestly, none.  I like command line tools and Sublime, but I acknowledge IntelliJ 13 is peerless in the Java/JVM IDE world.  (Sorry, Eclipse\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ve been a user since 2.11, but you\u0026rsquo;re just a hot mess.)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eVirtualization\u003c/em\u003e: VirtualBox.  A colleague turned me on to this a few years ago, and paired with Vagrant for setup/teardown, it\u0026rsquo;s great.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e \u003cem\u003eScripting Language:\u003c/em\u003e Ruby.    This one feels like the old Simpsons plot \u0026ldquo;So you finally decided to steal cable tv.\u0026rdquo;  Ruby is NICE.  It\u0026rsquo;s like PERL grown-up, without the awk acne:    The language just falls away, and you\u0026rsquo;re dealing with the problem at hand.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eBackend framework (tie):\u003c/em\u003e  Rails 4.x or Grails 2.x.  Yeah, I\u0026rsquo;m not taking a position here.  If you\u0026rsquo;re playing with the JVM ecosystem, Grails is the obvious pick.    Rails is (and remains) a breath of fresh air, especially with the tools that go with it:  Bundler, Berkshelf, rbenv.  Moreover, there\u0026rsquo;s a frenetic vibrancy in the Rails community that\u0026rsquo;s infectious.   Maddening\u0026ndash;sure\u0026ndash;but infectious.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eBrowser:\u003c/em\u003e Chrome.  Frau Perry croons, \u0026ldquo;We fight, we breakup, we kiss, we makeup.\u0026rdquo;  Chrome makes me uneasy the same way IE 5 did back in the day\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s becoming a monoculture, and Google\u0026rsquo;s starting to get evil with it.  Still, it\u0026rsquo;s fast and its fundamental architecture still has Mozilla\u0026rsquo;s Firefox playing catchup.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eSource Control\u003c/em\u003e: Git, specifically Github and Github:Enterprise.  Pull Requests and social coding have changed how developers work in the last 5 years.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eMobile\u003c/em\u003e: None.  I was a phandroid, but I\u0026rsquo;m still on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/08/ch-ch-changes-2013-edition/\" title=\"ch changes\"\u003esmartphone wagon\u003c/a\u003e for 1 year and 6 days now.  I\u0026rsquo;m not first in line for a mobile development position, but there\u0026rsquo;s enough left in server and web development that I think I\u0026rsquo;ll be okay.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eSocial Media\u003c/em\u003e:  Twitter for short-form and Facebook for long-form.   Facebook\u0026rsquo;s just inescapable if I want to interact with family, friends, and church.  They seem intent on running everyone away, but the simple network effect keeps everyone there.  I much prefer twitter, but understand not everyone can stand it, particularly since they went public and started screwing with everyone\u0026rsquo;s   Google+ is dead, and has been since 3 months after it launched.  Google should merge it with Youtube (the perfectly good social network they already had) and be done with it.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cem\u003eMiscellaneous\u003c/em\u003e: Vagrant, Chef, gvm, Github Pages, Jekyll, Markdown, npm, \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e/Stream-of-consciousness\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Developer toolchain, 2014 Edition"},{"content":"There aren\u0026rsquo;t really pics to go with this. Sorry about that.\nIt began simply enough: A dog days Saturday that promised mild temps and good weather. Car parts in two separate boxes in my garage. \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll probably have this done before you guys get back from the hair place, \u0026quot; I said.\nI set myself two tasks: Kill the Check Engine light in the Camry that\u0026rsquo;d been on for two years and 5 days, and give my 1995 truck a tuneup\u0026ndash;plugs, wires, rotor, distributor cap. I had all the parts, and plenty of hand tools.\nSimple enough\u0026hellip;.\nIn Which Your Author Hugs a Camry I knew the problem with my Camry was the Vacuum Switching Valve. It was throwing trouble code P0401, which meant a problem with the EGR system. Cars are so polite these days, telling you these things. Back in the day, one had to diagnose from symptoms, now the sensors throughout the system tell you your car that\u0026rsquo;s otherwise running fine needs help. Okay, so it didn\u0026rsquo;t need help, but I was tired of staring at a CEL, and I\u0026rsquo;d already paid about $400 to have the EGR valve and Modulator replaced. The internets told me it was the Vacuum Switching Valve. What\u0026rsquo;s a vacuum switching valve? I\u0026rsquo;ve no idea, but given its powered and has an input and output vacuum line, I assume it\u0026rsquo;s something the ECM uses to turn the EGR system on and off.\nHere we run into trouble, because like most modern day DIY mechanics the first thing I did to prep for the task was to search Youtube for a suitable video. No suitable video exists. The closest I could get was a guy doing the swap on his 5SFE (2.2L Toyota 4 Cylinder) RAV 4, and that had blurry shots of some dark recess of the engine and lots of grunting.\n\u0026hellip;which, turns-out is exactly what\u0026rsquo;s involved.\nTo wit:\n(The little bugger in question is #8, above.)\nSo I chocked the wheels, jacked-up the car as far as I could, put the front on jackstands, then slid underneath. Then I began the search for the VSV. Uhh\u0026hellip;as near as I could tell, the thing lived somewhere behind the intake manifold, above the motor mount, which is as close to the Bermuda Triangle you get in the otherwise-roomy 4th XV20 Camry nose. Seriously\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve never found anything on this car hard to work-on. Well, at 200,014 miles, today was the day.\nI couldn\u0026rsquo;t visualize it, and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get my hands on it. I was stuck, so I slid out and tried to look from above. That didn\u0026rsquo;t help. I finally figured I needed to take the passenger-side front wheel off. (This was when my wife and daughters showed-up and my \u0026ldquo;before your haircut\u0026rsquo;s through\u0026rdquo; estimate evaporated like Jeff George\u0026rsquo;s QB credibility in the middle 1990\u0026rsquo;s.)\nWith the wheel off I could finally visualize the VSV. Well, okay, I could visualize the bolt that held on the VSV and a sure pathway to get at it: Lie directly beneath the passenger subframe, and fish my left hand between the exhaust and the subframe, then send my right arm in behind the wheel hub and between the engine mount and the engine accessory pulleys.\nOnce I did that, I could use a 12mm 6-point 3/8\u0026rdquo; drive socket, a 6\u0026quot; extension, and a U-joint attached to a ratchet to get it off. It struck me how similar this must be to laparoscopic surgery, but without the benefit of a laparoscope.\nBasically, from there, I got the VSV off, put the new one on, and got things buttoned up after only 2.5 hours. The car ran, and after I disconnected and reconnected the battery terminal, the CEL cleared. VICTORY!\nIn which Our Author Renders American Iron Immobile Alright. A tuneup. This should be easy\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve done plugs and wires on the Camry (twice), the bmw (once). All didn\u0026rsquo;t require a trip on a rollback to be fixed. I was even handy with a feeler gauge.\nProblem the first: My feeler gauge had gone missing. Trip to Advance Auto Parts #1 for the day.\nProblem the second: All the aforementioned cars had had at least one tuneup after leaving the factory. That\u0026rsquo;s right, as near as I could tell, my 1995 Chevy TBI 5.7L was running roughly 20 model years later on the original ignition system. Bravo, AC Delco. Bra-frickin-vo.\nSome things I found out doing a tuneup on a small block chevy:\nSitting in the engine bay is a requirement. This was a novelty for me, having come up long after the death of big American cars. Thanks to Chevy sticking the distributor behind the intake beside the firewall, you\u0026rsquo;ll either be laying on the engine or sitting beside it. By the end of the day, I\u0026rsquo;d done both.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ve got to remove the Air cleaner and it\u0026rsquo;s metal housing, exposing the Throttle body injectors (awww, cute\u0026hellip;this is how to do fuel injection on an old carbureted motor! Make a fuel injector that fits on a carb manifold!)\nDisconnect the battery. No, nothing happened, but an energized ignition coil has like 22k volts. Tools you\u0026rsquo;ll need:\nSAE wrenches and sockets. This thing is American as they come, right down to the bizarro sockets in the 32nds of an inch. Aside from my GTO, I\u0026rsquo;d always worked metric, but I had plenty of SAE. Specifically:\nA 5/8\u0026quot; deep socket or spark plug socket of the same diameter, 3/8\u0026quot; drive\nA little screwdriver-pick thingy. Something like the third tool from the left here: WD40. You\u0026rsquo;re dealing with steel and cast iron. Things will be rusty.\nA 7/32nds 1/4\u0026quot;-drive socket and a 6\u0026quot; 1/4 inch drive extension. You\u0026rsquo;ll be sorry if you don\u0026rsquo;t have this when it comes time to take the distributor off. I had to make another trip to Advance Auto to get a (very overpriced) 1/4\u0026quot; extension to make this work.\nA 3/8ths drive micro-torque wrench that reads up to 250 inch-lbs (correct, inch-pounds. This isn\u0026rsquo;t the 2\u0026rsquo; long jobber you use to torque your lugnuts. This is a delicate instrument.\nDo one sparkplug and wire at a time. Don\u0026rsquo;t touch the distributor until you\u0026rsquo;ve done all the wires. I must\u0026rsquo;ve spent a total of 1.5 hours just taking the darn retaining clips off the wire hangers on both sides of the engine. These will be old, brittle plastic, and that pick is invaluable to get them loose. Once I got going, I usually replaced the wire, then replaced the plug.\nGap the plugs to .035\u0026quot; (\u0026ldquo;Thirty-five Thousandths\u0026rdquo;) That\u0026rsquo;s the spec for a SBC of this vintage. The plugs you get from AC Delco will be pre-gapped at .045\u0026quot;, so you\u0026rsquo;ll need to re-gap each one.\nStart the plugs by putting them in the socket, grab the socket with your hands, and rotate the plug counter-clockwise until you feel it drop into place, then begin to tighten (clockwise). That helps you avoid cross-threading the plug.\nSeems like most manufacturers (NGK, etc.) tell you to avoid anti-seize, so I didn\u0026rsquo;t use any\nTorque to 20 ft-lbs or 240 in-lbs. It\u0026rsquo;s tight in there, so use the u-joint.\nSquirt the distributor screw/bolts with WD40.\nUse the 7/32\u0026quot; socket and the extension to remove the distributor cap. Sure, you can try to use the phillips-head screws, but once you strip those hopelessly like I did, use the socket.\nTransfer the wires one-at-a-time from the old to the new distributor cap. This way you avoid screwing-up the firing order of your engine.\nWhile the caps\u0026rsquo;s off, yank the rotor off the top of the distributor. It requires quite a bit of even upward force to come off.\nPut the new rotor on. Again, it requires quite a bit of force to seat it.\nPut the new cap on, wires attached. Spend an hour trying to get the screws to go in.\nGive up and go eat dinner. Obsess about what went wrong.\nSo yeah, after all that, I didn\u0026rsquo;t get it done yesterday. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get the distributor cap to seat properly so the two screws that hold it on would start. In desperation, I tried putting the old cap back on just so I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have an immobile 5000lb truck in my back drive, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get that cap on either.\nMy going theory is the rotor\u0026rsquo;s not seated fully, so the cap won\u0026rsquo;t go down all the way. Or something else obvious I\u0026rsquo;m missing. In any case, an afternoon wrenching on my old cars, outside, with at least one success.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/08/an-afternoon-with-the-fleet/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere aren\u0026rsquo;t really pics to go with this.  Sorry about that.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt began simply enough:  A dog days Saturday that promised mild temps and good weather.  Car parts in two separate boxes in my garage.  \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll probably have this done before you guys get back from the hair place, \u0026quot; I said.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI set myself two tasks:  Kill the Check Engine light in the Camry that\u0026rsquo;d been on for \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/08/febrile-seizures-this-is-the-seizure-you-want-to-have...wait-what/\" title=\"seizure\"\u003etwo years and 5 days\u003c/a\u003e, and give my 1995 truck a tuneup\u0026ndash;plugs, wires, rotor, distributor cap.  I had all the parts, and plenty of hand tools.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"An Afternoon with the Fleet"},{"content":"Saturday, I took my daughters to the kids day/open house down at our local PBS station. Getting past the claustrophobia of jamming hundreds of kids, strollers, and overwrought parents into the narrow hallways and anechoic studios, it was great kidly fun\u0026ndash;lots of booths, sing-alongs, and face painting. On our way out, we noticed a smart-looking medium duty truck painted like a firetruck, pulling a trailer packed to the gills with equipment. Inside were two \u0026ldquo;simulator\u0026rdquo; booths where two robust gentlemen were showing how they train police officers and firemen to drive their vehicles in all sorts of conditions and situations.\nWatching a ten-year-old attempt to pilot a full-sized firetruck in a city (protip: make wide turns), it struck me:\nThere is effectively no simulation training for Software Developers.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s right: For the pilot of your 777, there\u0026rsquo;s a simulator. She\u0026rsquo;s required to log so many hours in life-threatening situations so that she can respond with confidence when the big crisis occurs. You\u0026rsquo;re trusting her with your life, and the only thing telling you she\u0026rsquo;s worthy is her logbook of hours and her simulation record. Apparently, there\u0026rsquo;s something similar for firemen and police officers.\nHowever, there\u0026rsquo;s nothing like that for software developers, and I\u0026rsquo;d argue it\u0026rsquo;s sorely missed.\nFirst, professional software development gives you tunnel vision. Software development is problem solving, and human beings have two methods to problem solve: Autonomous pattern matching and deep cognition. Autonomous pattern matching is when you reach back into your cache of experience and retrieve THE WAY TO DO IT. Otherwise, you really have to think.\nLet me show you an example. Ever see anyone solve one of those horseshoes with ring puzzles?\nIf you\u0026rsquo;ve never solved it before, your cache is empty. You scan the thing, handle it, feel around it looking for a way out. Your pupils are dilated, your heart rate increases, and your cortex is consuming extra oxygen\u0026ndash;you\u0026rsquo;re really thinking. This is deep cognition.\nNow, if you *have* seen one before, none of that physiology happens. You grab the shoes, twist them just so, and out pops the ring. Easy! Your body barely reacts at all, and studies confirm your brain uses no extra oxygen. Moreover, if you\u0026rsquo;ve done it enough times, you\u0026rsquo;ll have a hard time even teaching someone how to do it.\nAll that to say: Once you\u0026rsquo;ve been developing software for awhile, many, many things move into that autonomous pattern matching system. You become expert, but you also become blind. You crutch on your autonomous system and your deep cognition atrophies. (This is why my wife derides my omnipresent internet perusal as fluff. Rightly, she concludes that I\u0026rsquo;m just absorbing more information to pattern match, without thinking critically.)\nWhy does this matter? Because it costs money, and it can also cost lives. Psychologists conclude that our deep cognition system, while immensely powerful, is fundamentally lazy. It costs energy, and we\u0026rsquo;re wired to avoid using it if we can. That\u0026rsquo;s just our biology. When presented with problems almost like one in our cache, we\u0026rsquo;ll rationalize that it \u0026ldquo;must be that\u0026rdquo; and go with our gut.\nOur gut is sometimes wrong. Some examples:\nThat customer issue that looks like the 15 other customer issues with the same log statements. Did you test the fundamentals and reproduce the issue, or just send them the patch and pray it fixed it? That sneaky concurrency bug. Hey, all the code you\u0026rsquo;ve shipped worked that way, so why try and fix it? (This is also the Gambler\u0026rsquo;s fallacy, another product of our autonomous pattern matching system) How many times have you just stared at a stack trace, hex trace, or other telemetry and had a flash of insight as to what it \u0026ldquo;must be.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s a combination of your autonomous system jumping up and your cognition crying uncle. That\u0026rsquo;s why simulators or trial scenarios are so useful:\nThey draw on common experience. Many firemen have driven over curbs, failed to stop because of poor weather conditions, and been unable to negotiate tight quarters in firetrucks. The simulator lets those play-back for every newbie. They\u0026rsquo;re non-destructive. Screw-up a crosswind approach in a 777, and 400+ people will die. Do so in a simulator, and you learn without killing anyone. They provide consistency. Everyone who\u0026rsquo;s been through the simulator has been through the \u0026lsquo;Kobiashi Maru\u0026rsquo; or whatever that equivalent is for your org. That builds peer confidence in the capability of the organization. They provide \u0026ldquo;impossible\u0026rdquo; situations. It\u0026rsquo;s unlikely an aircraft will have 3 major emergencies simultaneously without a SAM involved. However, one can simulate those trivially in a simulator, and help a pilot understand how to balance the workload to a good result. The last is the big win for me. Critical customer issues happen, and they\u0026rsquo;re high-stress, and it\u0026rsquo;s difficult to balance your own physiology and the matter at hand. The insidious autonomous system looms, waiting to give you the \u0026ldquo;almost right\u0026rdquo; answer without you thinking.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the thing: I think we have the technology to build simulators right now, without extraordinary effort. Here\u0026rsquo;s what I see:\nUse Vagrant and Chef to codify the machine configurations in question. Maybe it\u0026rsquo;s a downlevel CentOS box with a wonky configuration. Let\u0026rsquo;s say the http_proxy isn\u0026rsquo;t configured and you want to show the trainee how the system behaves. That\u0026rsquo;s trivial to codify and check-in to your \u0026lsquo;simulator\u0026rsquo;. Destroying the box is no consequence; one can delete and rebuild with two commands. Your \u0026lsquo;development box\u0026rsquo; is a set of tools similarly checked-in to SCM, with vagrant and chef creating a vm (either locally, on a VM server in-house, or on IaaS). Maybe you want to teach someone how to attach remote debug to a running JVM that\u0026rsquo;s dying because of MaxPermGen config issues. Easy enough. You can use ssh or the equivalent to monitor and remote control the development box, much like a simulator instructor can turn on rain, wind, or other environmental factors. Failing hard drive? Flaky Wifi? Throw the student some curve-balls, and make that cognitive system work. Katas can help. Learning new languages and paradigms can help. However, nothing would be better than a real scenario simulator.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/08/why-are-there-no-software-development-simulators/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSaturday, I took my daughters to the kids day/open house down at our local PBS station.  Getting past the claustrophobia of jamming hundreds of kids, strollers, and overwrought parents into the narrow hallways and anechoic studios, it was great kidly fun\u0026ndash;lots of booths, sing-alongs, and face painting.  On our way out, we noticed a smart-looking medium duty truck painted like a firetruck, pulling a trailer packed to the gills with equipment.  Inside were two \u0026ldquo;simulator\u0026rdquo; booths where two robust gentlemen were showing how they train police officers and firemen to drive their vehicles in all sorts of conditions and situations.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why are there no Software Development simulators?"},{"content":"Ramping on a new project is fun!\nActually, it resembles lighting yourself on fire, running and jumping onto a moving train with jugs of water on it, only to discover the first car has flammable liquids, then the next car, then the next.\nRestated: It\u0026rsquo;s never boring.\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;m collaborating with a team writing in Rails 4, and that team\u0026rsquo;s adopted the 12 Factor App religion. Great! I\u0026rsquo;ve dabbled in heroku before, and it\u0026rsquo;s neat to see apps written that way from the first git init.\nAnyway, thought I\u0026rsquo;d jot down just how \u0026ldquo;easy\u0026rdquo; it is to get an app running.\nInstall git. Pull the code for the project. Everything\u0026rsquo;s self-contained from there, right? Er\u0026hellip;\nInstall VirtualBox. This will let you create run virtual machines on your development box. (You\u0026rsquo;ll need about 8GB of RAM installed\u0026hellip;you have that, right?)\nInstall Vagrant. This is like a build system for your virtual machines.\nInstall Chef. This is a configuration system for your virtual machines. Once you boot the machine, you run chef to install software, set permissions, etc. Install the vagrant plugins listed in the README.md file.\nUse the \u0026lsquo;berksfile\u0026rsquo; utility that comes with the \u0026lsquo;Chef-DK\u0026rsquo; (har!) to \u0026lsquo;vendor\u0026rsquo; your dependencies.\nVendoring is deep-copying any external dependent applications under your app. That way, you\u0026rsquo;re insulated from change should someone go and upgrade one of those dependencies to an incompatible version. It\u0026rsquo;s one way of handling \u0026lsquo;DLL Hell\u0026rsquo; situations. Another (more draconian) method is #golang\u0026rsquo;s method of just compiling everything into one static executable.\nDo \u0026lsquo;vagrant up\u0026rsquo; and wait a few minutes for it to create your configured running machine from scratch.\nWhen it works, it\u0026rsquo;s fricking beautiful. You\u0026rsquo;ve eliminated whole classes of bugs: System configuration vagaries, OS package differences. All developers are using the same system to develop, test, and deploy.\nWhen you\u0026rsquo;re a n00b, it\u0026rsquo;s a bit daunting, but I\u0026rsquo;m liking it. If nothing else, it lets me develop on my OS of choice, then run on a different target\u0026ndash;usually the same one as production.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/08/its-just-that-easy-configuration-as-code-2014/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRamping on a new project is fun!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eActually, it resembles lighting yourself on fire, running and jumping onto a moving train with jugs of water on it, only to discover the first car has flammable liquids, then the next car, then the next.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRestated: It\u0026rsquo;s never boring.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;m collaborating with a team writing in Rails 4, and that team\u0026rsquo;s adopted the \u003ca href=\"http://12factor.net/\"\u003e12 Factor App\u003c/a\u003e religion. Great!  I\u0026rsquo;ve dabbled in heroku before, and it\u0026rsquo;s neat to see apps written that way from the first git init.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"It's just that easy: Configuration as Code 2014"},{"content":"You\u0026rsquo;ve gotta love social scientists.\nIn the ongoing quest to squeeze every ounce of productivity from the burnout-destined drone age 20-to-40, they\u0026rsquo;re studying ways to measure collective intelligence.\nQuotable quote:\nRight now, the optimal size is probably somewhere between five and 10, but with the right collaboration tools, you could imagine having a group that kept getting more intelligent, up to 50, 100, or even 500 or 5,000 people. ::sigh::\nOkay, be proud: You\u0026rsquo;ve got your name on the company, and you\u0026rsquo;re the centerpiece of this spiffy article. What you\u0026rsquo;re trying to do, though, it surmount human biology: We can keep 7 +/- 2 ( that is, anywhere from 5 to 9) things in our active memory at any one time. Whenever you go above that number, we forget. Managing over that many relationships day-to-day simply creates overhead.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/08/ideal-team-size-5-to-10.-still-no-cure-for-cancer/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;ve gotta love social scientists.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the ongoing quest to squeeze every ounce of productivity from the burnout-destined drone age 20-to-40, they\u0026rsquo;re studying ways to \u003ca href=\"http://www.strategy-business.com/article/00257?pg=all\"\u003emeasure collective intelligence\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQuotable quote:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRight now, the optimal size is probably somewhere between five and 10, but with the right collaboration tools, you could imagine having a group that kept getting more intelligent, up to 50, 100, or even 500 or 5,000 people. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e::sigh::\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, be proud: You\u0026rsquo;ve got your name on the company, and you\u0026rsquo;re the centerpiece of this spiffy article.  What you\u0026rsquo;re trying to do, though, it surmount human biology:  We can keep 7 +/- 2 ( that is, anywhere from 5 to 9) things in our active memory at any one time.  Whenever you go above that number, we forget.  Managing over that many \u003cem\u003erelationships\u003c/em\u003e day-to-day simply creates overhead.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Ideal team size 5 to 10.\" (Still no cure for cancer)"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m muddling through Thinking Fast and Slow.\nMuch of it sounds like a the Wah-wah sound from a Charlie Brown teacher. Or, if you like, Unikitty talking business\nHowever, about once in a chapter, there\u0026rsquo;s a revelation that\u0026rsquo;s obvious yet profound. Here is a summary of one:\n\u0026ldquo;Extreme outcomes (both high and low) are more likely to be found in small than in large samples\u0026rdquo;\nZzzzzzzz\u0026hellip;wait, what? Okay, let\u0026rsquo;s have an example:\n\u0026ldquo;A study of the incidence of kidney cancer in the 3,141 counties of the Unites States reveals a remarkable pattern: The counties in which the incidence of kidney cancer is lowest are mostly rural, sparsely populated, and located in traditionally Republican states in the Midwest, the South, and the West. What do you make of this?\u0026rdquo;\nDid you leap to any conclusions? Something about clean living country people away from pollution? Not so fast\u0026hellip;\nNow consider the counties in which the incidence of kidney cancer is highest. These ailing counties tend to be mostly rural, sparsely populated, and located in traditionally Republican states in the Midwest, the South, and the West.\u0026quot; Any conclusions here? Maybe that rural people are more likely to be in poverty, eat a high-fat diet, and use both alcohol and tobacco more than normal?\nWait, the extreme results appear from the SAME DATASET. We can\u0026rsquo;t have it both ways. Turns out you may infer ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from these \u0026lsquo;facts\u0026rsquo;. They\u0026rsquo;re statistical anomalies: When you have a sufficiently large number of trials, then the Law of Large Numbers applies. There is no \u0026ldquo;Law of Small Numbers,\u0026rdquo; except to say that extreme results are more likely in small samples.\nWhat does that mean? Let\u0026rsquo;s look at the example from the book:\nImagine an url filled with marbles. Half are red, half are white. Imagine a robot that blindly draws 4 marbles from the urn, then throws the balls back in the urn and does it all over again many times. If you summarize the results, you\u0026rsquo;ll find the outcome \u0026ldquo;2 red, 2 white\u0026rdquo; occurs 6 times as often as \u0026ldquo;4 red\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;4 white\u0026rdquo;. [Related to the cancer example]. From the same urn, two robots take turns drawing out marbles, with one drawing out 7 marbles at a time, the other drawing out 4. Both record only when they have a sample of all red or all white. The smaller sample will see extreme results much more often, by a factor of 8. (The expected percentages are 12.5% and 1.56%, respectively) The interesting thing for me in reading this was how quickly my mind sought a causal relationship\u0026ndash;a reasonable story\u0026ndash;to explain the statistic. Hypotheses jumped up almost immediately. All are irrelevant because small counties are just so small that extreme results naturally crop-up. The book argues we\u0026rsquo;re wired that way: Our \u0026lsquo;irrational\u0026rsquo; mind/intutition will find a scenario to find the fact, almost autonomously. It\u0026rsquo;s up to our (sadly lazy) \u0026lsquo;Rational\u0026rsquo; mind to expend the effort to challenge the facts.\nDoes this make statistics useless? Certainly not! However, we cannot accept statistics as fact without understanding their validity. Reading this section of the book will lead me to be more cautious with statistics and see if there\u0026rsquo;s sufficient sample size.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/08/from-thinking-fast-and-slow-on-statistics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m muddling through \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555\"\u003eThinking Fast and Slow\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuch of it sounds like a the Wah-wah sound from a Charlie Brown teacher.  Or, if you like, Unikitty talking business\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, about once in a chapter, there\u0026rsquo;s a revelation that\u0026rsquo;s obvious yet profound.  Here is a summary of one:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Extreme outcomes (both high and low) are more likely to be found in small than in large samples\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eZzzzzzzz\u0026hellip;wait, what?  Okay, let\u0026rsquo;s have an example:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"From \"Thinking: Fast and Slow\" on Statistics"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s all fun and games until your audience starts forwarding your blog posts to your boss.\nI\u0026rsquo;m tired of shooting myself in the foot by over-sharing. So, this is over. Haven\u0026rsquo;t decided yet whether the whole blog goes dark, gets deleted, or what (if any) content I\u0026rsquo;ll post here in the future.\nI\u0026rsquo;d like to keep it as a place my kids can see their Dad struggle through his self-entitlement and selfishness to find the path to redemption (yes, over and over). At this point, the whole thing is just a liability, and that makes me sad.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/07/ragequit-end-of-the-personal-stuff/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s all fun and games until your audience starts forwarding your blog posts to your boss.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m tired of shooting myself in the foot by over-sharing.  So, this is over.  Haven\u0026rsquo;t decided yet whether the whole blog goes dark, gets deleted, or what (if any) content I\u0026rsquo;ll post here in the future.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d like to keep it as a place my kids can see their Dad struggle through his self-entitlement and selfishness to find the path to redemption (yes, \u003cem\u003eover\u003c/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eover\u003c/em\u003e).  At this point, the whole thing is just a liability, and that makes me sad.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ragequit: End of the Personal Stuff"},{"content":"So, here we are 3 years later. In 2011, I saw my name on a weird spot of an organization chart, 3 levels up from where it had been. I was reporting to a Director (soon to be a Vice President) and my title was \u0026lsquo;Architect\u0026rsquo;.\nI went through all the phases of grief:\nShock: \u0026ldquo;Wow, look at all this stuff I need to understand! I can do anything I want\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; Anger: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve just butted heads with most everyone in power at my company. I can\u0026rsquo;t do anything I want.\u0026rdquo; Bargaining: \u0026ldquo;Maybe I can balance all this crap with things I like to do. I can do something I want.\u0026rdquo; Acceptance: \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s an huge pile of work. I\u0026rsquo;m spread paper thin. I can do a little bit of what I want.\u0026rdquo; During that time, I expected to live at all levels: High-level strategy, designing new systems, coding, support/sustainment, etc. I felt excited, because we needed help in all those places, and I thought I could do it all.\nBoy howdy, was I wrong. At the end of the day, you\u0026rsquo;ve got to do something in your day-to-day that makes you happy. You\u0026rsquo;ve got to feel that you\u0026rsquo;re doing something relevant, measurable, and known. My work was so behind-the-scenes that it didn\u0026rsquo;t influence my area\u0026rsquo;s day-to-day at all. To me, it was relevant, but in a probabilistic way\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;d do designs, sizings, and proofs-of-concept, but many weeks/months later would they get any action. And I became an unknown entity\u0026hellip;nobody knew who I was or what I was doing anymore.\nI saw a great deal: Politics, pettiness, bravery, naïveté, and people searching for answers amid a swirling soup of change. That sort of exposure changes you; I began to appreciate the grim, determined stoicism of some of my mentors. You need that attitude to survive.\nAll that is to say, I was done. After three years of \u0026ldquo;strategy,\u0026rdquo; I was unfit to do my fundamental job of making things. Code was becoming more and more unnatural, but each time I did get to code going back to my regular day-to-day strategy job was simply painful. And I never, ever had a sense of job satisfaction, that I was doing a good job.\nSome unexpected positives came from it: I learned to stop being so needy of my job, my profession. Like many men, I\u0026rsquo;d had my self-worth entirely wrapped-up in my job. That, oddly, made me worse at my job. I needed people to like and appreciate what I was doing, and became defensive, fractious, and condescending when they didn\u0026rsquo;t. In my strategy job, it was essentially impossible for anyone to appreciate what I was doing\u0026ndash;in some cases, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t even tell them because doing so would violate SEC regulations\u0026ndash;so I was left to turn towards my family and my Lord above. Looking back on it, I\u0026rsquo;m a better person for having had this job.\nAll that to say: As of 10am or so today, I\u0026rsquo;ve got something to deliver by the end of this year. It\u0026rsquo;s big. It\u0026rsquo;s hard. It\u0026rsquo;s technical, and it\u0026rsquo;s important. I\u0026rsquo;ll need to do analysis, design, implementation, delivery, and sustainment, and I\u0026rsquo;ll be consulting with a broader team to do it, a team I\u0026rsquo;ve worked with in the past.\nSo. Fricking. Happy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/06/best-5-minute-meeting-ever/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, here we are 3 years later.  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2011, I saw my name on a weird spot of an organization chart, 3 levels up from where it had been.  I was reporting to a Director (soon to be a Vice President) and my title was \u0026lsquo;Architect\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI went through all the phases of grief:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eShock: \u0026ldquo;Wow, look at all this stuff I need to understand!  I can do \u003cem\u003eanything I want\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnger: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve just butted heads with most everyone in power at my company.  I can\u0026rsquo;t do \u003cem\u003eanything I want\u003c/em\u003e.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBargaining: \u0026ldquo;Maybe I can balance all this crap with things I like to do.  I can do \u003cem\u003esomething I want.\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAcceptance: \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s an huge pile of work.  I\u0026rsquo;m spread paper thin. I can do \u003cem\u003ea little bit of what I want.\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDuring that time, I expected to live at all levels:  High-level strategy, designing new systems, coding, support/sustainment, etc.  I felt excited, because we needed help in all those places, and I thought I could do it all.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Best 5 minute meeting ever"},{"content":"The unfortunate thing about working in a corporation is you have to \u0026rsquo;tie out\u0026rsquo; with people. This sounds awfully exciting, with visions of ropes, knots, maybe even a lasso or wrestling someone to the ground.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not that exciting. No, what \u0026ldquo;tie out\u0026rdquo; really means is getting 2 or more people to agree to do something. In general, that requires those people be physically or virtually in contact at the same time.\nThis is a list of common excuses for that not happening, broken down by month:\nJanuary: Sorry, I was on vacation skiing. February: Sorry, I was at home trying to shovel my driveway. March: Are you kidding? Spring Break April: Out doing my taxes. Text me. May: Watching our (child, niece, grandchild, neighbors kid) graduate from (kindergarten, 5th grade, 8th grade, high school, college, college (masters)). I\u0026rsquo;m also taking off the whole week of Memorial Day and the Friday before. Really need a break, ya know? June: Family Vacation. I\u0026rsquo;ll be completely inaccessible for 2 weeks. Pray for me. July: Me vacation because I took the Family Vacation in June. Also, duh, I won\u0026rsquo;t be here on 4th of July week\u0026hellip;are you *kidding*? August: Meh\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m actually here in August September: I\u0026rsquo;m making a week of Labor Day. October: Kids are off school for Fall Break, which is apparently a thing. November: Thanksgiving week! Om-nom-nom! December: Nobody\u0026rsquo;s here from December 10th onwards except security. See you next year. In my experience the best times to \u0026ldquo;get something done\u0026rdquo; is from January to March 15th, then August to Mid November. Midsummer and \u0026ldquo;The holidays\u0026rdquo; are toast.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/06/rant-why-we-cant-get-anything-done-%2332767--vacations/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe unfortunate thing about working in a corporation is you have to \u0026rsquo;tie out\u0026rsquo; with people.  This sounds awfully exciting, with visions of ropes, knots, maybe even a lasso or wrestling someone to the ground.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s not that exciting.  No, what \u0026ldquo;tie out\u0026rdquo; really means is getting 2 or more people to agree to do something.  In general, that requires those people be physically or virtually in contact at the same time.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rant: Why we can't get anything done #32767 --\u003e Vacations"},{"content":"Thought I\u0026rsquo;d just shout this one into the ether: When one feels wronged by a person, the correct procedure is to go to that person one-on-one and discuss it.\n15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. (Matthew 18:15)\nOkay, that\u0026rsquo;s what to do, but why does God want us to do it that way? Because it\u0026rsquo;s human nature to gossip, and conflict destroys community.\nWhen you involve others, you spread the original wrong to others, \u0026ldquo;infecting\u0026rdquo; them. Sometimes, this is entirely appropriate; when a crime\u0026rsquo;s been committed, for example, the public needs to know to guard themselves from that individual. For normal \u0026ldquo;he hurt my feelings\u0026rdquo; crap, you\u0026rsquo;re making yourself feel better by spreading the poison to others who\u0026rsquo;ll feel obligated as your friends to \u0026ldquo;own\u0026rdquo; your problem. (An incorrect obligation, but one that seems widespread.) That ownership changes their behavior towards others, leading to escalation and factions and divisions. What was between two people is now among a larger group.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve recently had two incidents that violated the above principle. In both cases, I was in the wrong and admitted as much when confronted\u0026ndash;by someone else. To emphasize: In American culture, it\u0026rsquo;s rude in the extreme for peers to go to a 3rd party before attempting resolution. This isn\u0026rsquo;t universal; in the Filipino culture, for instance, that\u0026rsquo;s wholly appropriate because a confrontation causes both parties to lose face.\nI\u0026rsquo;m saddened by the above, but it happens. I can obsess about it, or I can choose to forgive and move on. That\u0026rsquo;s what I\u0026rsquo;m doing, while limiting my exposure to those individuals going forward.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/06/on-conflict-resolution/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThought I\u0026rsquo;d just shout this one into the ether:  When one feels wronged by a person, the correct procedure is to go to \u003cem\u003ethat person\u003c/em\u003e one-on-one and discuss it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.  (Matthew 18:15)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, that\u0026rsquo;s what to do, but \u003cem\u003ewhy\u003c/em\u003e does God want us to do it that way?  Because it\u0026rsquo;s human nature to gossip, and conflict destroys community.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Conflict Resolution"},{"content":"Well, I had a good run.\nI exited Facebook on December 30th 2012 and remained off until 4 April 2014. Last week, Whitney asked me to dig up some pics from my trip to Cebu in 2012, most of which were on my dead MacBook Air\u0026hellip;and on Facebook.\nHmm\u0026hellip;quandry. So, I bit the bullet and dove back in.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s good and bad. As one would expect, the \u0026ldquo;network effect\u0026rdquo; is wonderful. Most of my dad\u0026rsquo;s family is active, along with some key people from mom\u0026rsquo;s family. Instantly, I saw pictures of people I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen in person in 3-5 years. Likewise, much of my high school class is on there and it\u0026rsquo;s neat to see people grow, change, and rear children of their own. It also seems they\u0026rsquo;ve adopted more of the \u0026ldquo;limited sharing\u0026rdquo; tools from Google+ so you can share a story with one \u0026ldquo;list\u0026rdquo; but not your entire friend group, or go whole hog and share out to \u0026ldquo;Public\u0026rdquo; like Twitter.\nThe bad is largely Facebook itself. The UI is an A.D.D. nightmare and the \u0026ldquo;Top Stories\u0026rdquo; algorithm is a mystery. With Twitter (and Tweetdeck specifically), I know I\u0026rsquo;m getting a chronological list of updates. That can be overwhelming and limits individual streams to ~200 to 300 members practically. Facebook is trying to encourage much larger networks and has a single conceptual \u0026ldquo;stream\u0026rdquo; so I realize they have to show/hide things selectively.\nBut, so what? It\u0026rsquo;s a tool and it largely disappears when you\u0026rsquo;re looking at baby pics, or commiserating over shared troubles or whatever. They\u0026rsquo;ve captured 1/7th of the humans on the planet, and that inertia brought me back.\nI still prefer twitter for short-form stuff and interacting with my Gearheads and Tech friends. But for actual friends, coworkers, and family, Facebook is the choice.\nEveryone who had April 2014 in the pool, you win.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/04/back-on-the-facebook-hookah/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, I had a good run.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI exited Facebook on December 30th 2012 and remained off until 4 April 2014.  Last week, Whitney asked me to dig up some pics from my trip to Cebu in 2012, most of which were on my dead MacBook Air\u0026hellip;and on Facebook.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHmm\u0026hellip;quandry.  So, I bit the bullet and dove back in.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s good and bad.  As one would expect, the \u0026ldquo;network effect\u0026rdquo; is wonderful.  Most of my dad\u0026rsquo;s family is active, along with some key people from mom\u0026rsquo;s family.   Instantly, I saw pictures of people I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen in person in 3-5 years.  Likewise, much of my high school class is on there and it\u0026rsquo;s neat to see people grow, change, and rear children of their own.  It also seems they\u0026rsquo;ve adopted more of the \u0026ldquo;limited sharing\u0026rdquo; tools from Google+ so you can share a story with one \u0026ldquo;list\u0026rdquo; but not your entire friend group, or go whole hog and share out to \u0026ldquo;Public\u0026rdquo; like Twitter.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back on the Facebook Hookah"},{"content":"At the risk of sounding like a mommyblogger: It\u0026rsquo;s difficult to hear yet another thing your child\u0026rsquo;s food allergies prevent. Honestly, at times, it feels like my kids are going to end-up in some Food Allergy ghetto wearing a medical alert bracelet staring out through plexiglass at kids luxuriating with their peanut butter, quiche, and potato salad.\nYeah, I\u0026rsquo;m sad. This is part of my process of getting over it, so bear with me.\nGrace is 3 years old. She\u0026rsquo;s active, sensory \u0026ldquo;enhanced\u0026rdquo; (let\u0026rsquo;s say), impulsive, and quite intelligent. Channelled appropriately, those are all great qualities. As it stands, I\u0026rsquo;m just glad when I come home and the house hasn\u0026rsquo;t burned down. She\u0026rsquo;s shown a proclivity for sharp objects, flammable microwaves, and plumbing problems.\nAnyway, 2 weeks ago, I got the ball rolling to get her into the new child care center/preschool we have onsite exclusively for employees. The place is brand new, and it\u0026rsquo;s nothing short of magical. Seriously, I halfway expected St. Peter to greet us at one door and a choir of angels to suffuse the halls with music. It\u0026rsquo;s That Nice.\nSo, we paid the application fee and filled out the paperwork. Today was supposed to be the final intake, meet the teacher, get a badge, and set a schedule day. So, we start going over Grace\u0026rsquo;s food allergies.\n\u0026ldquo;So, she can be in the room with eggs, right?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;No,\u0026rdquo; my wife emphasized, \u0026ldquo;She breaks out if she\u0026rsquo;s in proximity and swells-up like a balloon if she even touches them.\u0026rdquo; (The list at the moment is: Eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, milk/dairy, chicken, potatoes, garlic, and daddies with beards.)\n[Staff exchange worried glances]\n\u0026ldquo;Uhh\u0026hellip;We serve eggs in open bowls in the room \u0026lsquo;family style\u0026rsquo; two or three times a week in lieu of snacks. Eggs are a great source of protein and we have the kids serve themselves\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; She proceeded to discuss open dishes of eggs, carafes of milk, and quiche prepared onsite.\nWhitney got it immediately, but the palaver carried on for about 5 minutes until I finally understood the director and her staff were making sincere apologies, \u0026ldquo;This doesn\u0026rsquo;t sound like a safe environment for her. We\u0026rsquo;re just concerned for her safety.\u0026rdquo; In other words: We can\u0026rsquo;t keep your daughter safe with the way we do things.\nSo yeah, that awesome, work-subsidized preschool with the great facilities, highly trained teachers, and focus on Montessori learning styles? My daughter can\u0026rsquo;t go; she probably can\u0026rsquo;t be in the same building.\nMy mood flopped from mild bemusement at the process (we were in a conference room with like an \u0026lsquo;interview panel\u0026rsquo; of women) to bitter disappointment. Once the shock wore off, I was sad, disappointed, and angry all at once. I tried to keep a grip on myself and keep perspective, but I failed. As we got into the car, Whitney (gently) said: \u0026ldquo;You know that was super rude, right?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yeah, I\u0026rsquo;ll apologize once I calm down.\u0026rdquo;\nI\u0026rsquo;m disappointed, but it might turn-out to be a blessing. We\u0026rsquo;ve already enrolled her in a summer program in Georgetown and for the Fall term there as well, and Whitney came away with a strong indication that is where she needed to be. We have bills to pay, and work to do on the house in the interim.\nIf I take a hard look at it, this whole thing was me trying to control the situation. I kept insisting on the work preschool, to the point of causing an argument about it last Saturday. I was forcing the issue, and I was wrong. I also wanted to have a little extra time each day with my (last, quickly growing-up) little girl before she got bigger, to get to see her play at lunch and things like that. Ultimately, both are just me being selfish. Maybe God just knew how fractious and distracted Daddy can be on that ride to and from work and kept us both away from it, but I\u0026rsquo;m still disappointed I don\u0026rsquo;t get to at least try.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/03/just-fyi-food-allergies-suck/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt the risk of sounding like a mommyblogger: It\u0026rsquo;s difficult to hear \u003cem\u003eyet another thing\u003c/em\u003e your child\u0026rsquo;s food allergies prevent.  Honestly, at times, it feels like my kids are going to end-up in some Food Allergy ghetto wearing a medical alert bracelet staring out through plexiglass at kids luxuriating with their peanut butter, quiche, and potato salad.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, I\u0026rsquo;m sad.  This is part of my process of getting over it, so bear with me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Just FYI: Food Allergies Suck"},{"content":"Methodology Doesn\u0026rsquo;t Matter; People Do I\u0026rsquo;ve been in industry for 15 years, as unbelievable as that seems. I just want to shake people when all they can talk about is Process this and Methodology that and Tool this other.\nIt.\nDoesn\u0026rsquo;t.\nMatter.\nOkay, it does matter, but only when you have the people end of things sorted out first. Assuming an equally talented group, those with a better system will (generally) perform better over time. However, no methodology in the world is going to make disengaged, sloppy employees perform well. (It\u0026rsquo;s tempting to draw a parallel to the Auto Industry, but I\u0026rsquo;ll spare you.)\nSo, let\u0026rsquo;s postulate that it\u0026rsquo;s the people that matter. So what?\nWell, if you take that as true, there are conclusions to draw:\nYou must attract top-performing people. You must retain a large percentage of those people. You must eliminate those who don\u0026rsquo;t perform. It\u0026rsquo;s really that simple. Okay, item #3 is non-obvious: Can\u0026rsquo;t the top-performers just take-up the slack for the also-rans, since they produce 5x to 10x their output? Yes they can, but they\u0026rsquo;ll end up getting frustrated and leaving, for two reasons. First, they\u0026rsquo;re going to understand they\u0026rsquo;re pulling someone else\u0026rsquo;s weight, and nobody likes that. Next, talent likes to be surrounded by talent. Say it however you like: \u0026ldquo;A\u0026rsquo;s hire A\u0026rsquo;s,\u0026rdquo; etc. The harsh reality of #3, though, is it\u0026rsquo;s difficult, both from human and legal perspective. But let\u0026rsquo;s leave those aside and examine what you get when you miss just one of the above.\n1 + 2 + X: You can\u0026rsquo;t fire people. For whatever reason, you lack the processes and/or will to cull the herd. Okay:\nAccountability will disappear. Top performers will become mediocre in absolute terms. Why kill yourself? You\u0026rsquo;re lightyears ahead of Bob over there, and he barely shows up to work. You\u0026rsquo;ll have no real success at #2, for the reasons described above. You\u0026rsquo;ll continue to retain mediocre people who think they\u0026rsquo;re superstars because they\u0026rsquo;re still better than the freeloaders you retain. 1 + x + 3: You can\u0026rsquo;t retain people Okay, you\u0026rsquo;re managing performance\u0026ndash;good for you!\u0026ndash;but people are leaving. Tough luck; it happens. What\u0026rsquo;s that look like?\nEveryone is super young and energetic. Accountability and work-ethic remain. Your organization has zero wisdom or identity. Basically, you\u0026rsquo;re a Frat: The membership turns over every 4 years, and you might cycle among competence, superstardom, and doldrums. Exciting, but not what the business wants. You end-up reinventing the wheel, because no one has the seasoning and wisdom to understand when things inter-relate, and it\u0026rsquo;s easier and more l337 to rewrite that crappy code from 6 months ago for the 3rd time, anyway. Pass the Red Bull! x + 2 + 3: You Can\u0026rsquo;t Attract Top People For whatever reason, the spigot of top talent isn\u0026rsquo;t flowing your way. Maybe you\u0026rsquo;re in a crappy location. Maybe you\u0026rsquo;re making electronic buggy-whips. You\u0026rsquo;re retaining the talent you have, but attrition will still occur\u0026ndash;People don\u0026rsquo;t live forever, they retire, etc. You are, at least, dealing with issues when they arise. What\u0026rsquo;s that look like?\nIt\u0026rsquo;s pretty grim, let\u0026rsquo;s face it. You\u0026rsquo;ll see shrinking groups, more responsibility on fewer shoulders, and a general feeling of holding on by your fingernails. Like any organization\u0026ndash;churches, clubs, etc.\u0026ndash;in these circumstances, you\u0026rsquo;re getting older and more defensive. Fresh blood brings new ideas and practices\u0026ndash;some good, some bad\u0026ndash;and your COBOL/C/Java wizard doesn\u0026rsquo;t have anyone new keeping him honest. You\u0026rsquo;ll hear, \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;ve always done it ____ way.\u0026rdquo; Alot. Free flow of ideas? Why would I want to do that? Everyone has 10+ years of experience, so why write anything down? People have a false sense of job security based upon what they know. Or, what they knew 10 years ago that still (magically) works. Conclusion In their own way, each of the above scenarios can work. They\u0026rsquo;re just not foundations upon which you can build a vibrant organizations.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/03/secret-sauce-managing-performance/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"methodology-doesnt-matter-people-do\"\u003eMethodology Doesn\u0026rsquo;t Matter; People Do\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been in industry for 15 years, as unbelievable as that seems.  I just want to shake people when all they can talk about is Process this and Methodology that and Tool this other.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDoesn\u0026rsquo;t.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMatter.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, it \u003cem\u003edoes\u003c/em\u003e matter, but only when you have the people end of things sorted out first.  Assuming an equally talented group, those with a better system will (generally) perform better over time.  However, no methodology in the world is going to make disengaged, sloppy employees perform well.  (It\u0026rsquo;s tempting to draw a parallel to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Factory-Eyewitness-Industrys-Self-Destruction/dp/1438952945/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top\"\u003eAuto Industry\u003c/a\u003e, but I\u0026rsquo;ll spare you.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Secret Sauce: Managing Performance"},{"content":"Sorry I was unable to ___ because\u0026hellip;.\nthe Loyal Order of White Castle was meeting at the same time. I was playing ping-pong. I was playing XBox. I didn\u0026rsquo;t get to work until 11am. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t find the indicated conference room with a map, sextant, compass, GPS, diving rod, and several readings of appropriate entrails. I was busy juggling. I was at lunch \u0026rsquo;til 2pm. I chose not to go to bed until 3am, and a nuclear explosion couldn\u0026rsquo;t wake me at 7, let alone my 20 year old Sony clock radio ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/03/my-superego-presents-best-excuses-ever/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSorry I was unable to ___ because\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ethe Loyal Order of White Castle was meeting at the same time.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI was playing ping-pong.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI was playing XBox.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI didn\u0026rsquo;t get to work until 11am.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI couldn\u0026rsquo;t find the indicated conference room with a map, sextant, compass, GPS, diving rod, and several readings of appropriate entrails.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI was busy juggling.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI was at lunch \u0026rsquo;til 2pm.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI chose not to go to bed until 3am, and a nuclear explosion couldn\u0026rsquo;t wake me at 7, let alone my 20 year old Sony clock radio\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e","title":"My Superego Presents: Best Excuses Ever"},{"content":"Five-year-old Joey: \u0026ldquo;Harold, when are we going hunting?\u0026rdquo;\nMy step-son is a canonical boy: Around age 1, his mother reported him fashioning pistols and shooting her with his toast. He likes taking things apart. He loves archery, and he\u0026rsquo;s fascinated by firearms. We live in Kentucky, so most consider this not Neanderthal DNA expressing itself, but the natural order of things.\nSo yeah, hunting.\nAs with many things in my life, I found myself in the 1.5 day Kentucky Orange Card certification class this past Friday and Saturday through an odd chain of events: We actually read the 4-H letter from our local Ag Extension office. (We get the 4-H letter because we signed-up for a community garden plot last year, but I dropped the ball and we never planted it.) In the newsletter was a blurb about Scott County 4-H Shooting sports: Archery, air rifle, air pistol, .22 rifle, .22 pistol, and trap. It appeared this was all free. There was an additional blurb: In order to participate in the things that go boom, you needed your orange card certification.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s an orange card? Basically, it\u0026rsquo;s like a driver\u0026rsquo;s license: You\u0026rsquo;ve gone through enough theory and practical training you might possibly not kill yourself or others in the process of trying to kill something and eat it. Once you have one, you\u0026rsquo;re eligible to hunt anywhere in the US, Mexico, or Canada, once you purchase a license. I signed-up the now 13-year-old Joey through a painless electronic form, charted it on my calendar for a month hence, and did what everyone else did in February 2014: I watched it snow.\nLast Friday night rolled around, and Joey and I piled into my Dad\u0026rsquo;s old chevy truck and headed to the Extension office. Inside we found a group ranging from ~10 years old through their 50\u0026rsquo;s sitting on some folding metal chairs. Many family groups attended, and I was proud to be there with Joey. At the front was a 30-ish gentleman, and girl who looked college age, and a heavyset guy with a badge, and open-carry semi-auto pistol and a contagious grin.\nAnd a projector. And some powerpoint slides. And a corny video that was like Driver\u0026rsquo;s Ed. \u0026ldquo;Blood on the Highway,\u0026rdquo; but for stupid ill-advised hunting behaviors. Great, I thought to myself, this is gonna be just as \u0026lsquo;fun\u0026rsquo; as the CCDW class.\nIn short, I was wrong. The room was overheated, but the guy running it\u0026ndash;Jamie Cook\u0026ndash;was just a joy. He eventually propped open an outside door and the temp dropped, just as everyone\u0026rsquo;s attention focused-in. He interacted constantly: \u0026ldquo;What kind of animal is this?\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Who can name this thing?\u0026rdquo; There were enough young kids participating that it infected the adjacent adults and by the close of the session, I found myself joining-in. It helped that there was an array of (unloaded) weaponry on display at a table at the front, everything from a KY Flintlock to bolt-action rifles and various pistols. We ended the night and got home energized. Joey barely slept, and I was up past 11 doing dishes.\nSaturday was half classroom and half range-day. We began in the classroom with archery, and Joey was rapt. He\u0026rsquo;s loved bows since he was 8, and that love hasn\u0026rsquo;t really wavered. He looked particularly smug around the admonition to \u0026ldquo;NEVER DRY-FIRE YOUR BOW.\u0026rdquo; Then we progressed through ammunition, firearms and trapping. Tidbit I didn\u0026rsquo;t know: It\u0026rsquo;s illegal to hunt in KY with more than 3 shells in your shotgun. Many guns have a block to make sure you can\u0026rsquo;t load more than 3.\nNext exam time: Joey missed 3 and I missed 2 out of 50. Passing is 80%, so we were gold. After scarfing some breakfast buffet at Big Boy, we went out to the range.\nThere, we learned we\u0026rsquo;d be doing a skeet station, and a practical hunt simulation. We had ~100 participants at the range, so it looked like a long afternoon. Our group drew the skeet portion first, and so we headed over, squishing through the mud. Becky ran the skeet thrower, and the other trainee fellow handled the firearms. Participants could choose between a 12-gauge pump-action or a 20 gauge single shot breach loader. Mostly the adults and bigger kids went for the 12 gauge, and the kids went for the 20 gauge.\nJoe and I took our place in line, mid-pack. He looked pretty pale when the first 12 gauge blasts went off, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t question him on it. He seemed determined to go through with it. Myself, I\u0026rsquo;d never fired a shotgun, either. Today would be the day for both of us, it seemed.\n(Image by Kevin Kelly, posted to Twitter)\nEach shooter could take up to three shots. Most were obviously enjoying themselves\u0026ndash;free ammo and free targets\u0026ndash;so they took all three. The first shooters were kids without parent participants, and many did surprisingly well, hitting 1 or 2 clays. The son/father team right in front of us went and the son rang up all 3 targets with the 12 gauge and dad missed all three. Yikes, is that gonna be us?\nJoey went up and selected the 20 gauge. As often when he\u0026rsquo;s really nervous, he was quiet, almost shut-down. But, he did fine with the gun. Missed all the targets, but he carried through with all 3 shots where some kids bailed after #1.\nMy turn. The guy gave you one shell at a time. Okay, safety off\u0026hellip;close the action (wow that pump is satisfying\u0026hellip;)\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;PULL!\u0026rdquo; Orange clay goes arcing from my right towards the distance. BAM. Miss. Rack, eject, load, rack\u0026hellip;.breathe\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;PULL!\u0026rdquo; Same trajectory, better arc with the gun, squeeze, BAM!\n\u0026ldquo;You got a little bit of \u0026rsquo;er that time,\u0026rdquo; the fellow encouraged. The kick was, well, there but not unpleasant and not the mule-hit I was expecting.\nLast time. Load. Breathe. \u0026ldquo;PULL!\u0026rdquo; _see it\u0026hellip;see it\u0026hellip;don\u0026rsquo;t stop your arc\u0026hellip;_BAM. Disintegrated.\nI was giddy. First autocross run giddy. Five year old and I got a train for Christmas giddy. I remember thanking the gal running the thrower for providing this program for free.\nThe second rotation was less interesting: Simulating a hunt with air rifles in groups of 3. It took a long time, and I talked with a fellow taking the class, a former reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer named Kevin. Turns out he used to cover the Cincinnati Reds for the Enquirer, and we compared notes about working as a reporter in an industry in transition compared to working for a multinational corporation (in an industry in transition). I love conversations like this, learning about a whole different life than my own.\nWe wrapped-up about 4:30 and headed home. Our orange cards should be here in ~2 weeks, and I\u0026rsquo;m compulsively shopping shotguns.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/03/orange-card-certification-psst....its-free.-and-fun./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFive-year-old Joey:  \u0026ldquo;Harold, when are we going hunting?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy step-son is a canonical boy:  Around age 1, his mother reported him fashioning pistols and shooting her with his toast.  He likes taking things apart.  He loves archery, and he\u0026rsquo;s fascinated by firearms.  We live in Kentucky, so most consider this not Neanderthal DNA expressing itself, but the natural order of things.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo yeah, hunting.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs with many things in my life, I found myself in the 1.5 day Kentucky Orange Card certification class this past Friday and Saturday through an odd chain of events:  We actually \u003cem\u003eread\u003c/em\u003e the 4-H letter from our local Ag Extension office.  (We \u003cem\u003eget\u003c/em\u003e the 4-H letter because we signed-up for a community garden plot last year, but I dropped the ball and we never planted it.)  In the newsletter was a blurb about Scott County 4-H Shooting sports:  Archery, air rifle, air pistol, .22 rifle, .22 pistol, and trap.  It appeared this was all free.  There was an additional blurb:  In order to participate in the things that go boom, you needed your orange card certification.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Orange Card Certification (Psst....It's Free.  And Fun.)"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m part of an initiative developing curriculum and training resources for developers. Here\u0026rsquo;s what I have so far on fundamentals and skills for a developer.\nFundamentals Design and Structure\n• Design / Domain Modeling\n• Object Orientation / Design Patterns\nDevelopment and Delivery\n• IDE mastery: IntelliJ, Eclipse, etc.\n• Code Reviews / Pull Requests\n• Testing: Unit testing, test coverage\n• Effective Debugging / Using a symbolic debugger\n* Working on an Agile Development team\n* Profiling/ Performance Measurement Analysis\n* Secure Coding Practices \u0026amp; Threat modeling\nOperations and Sustainability\n• Appropriate Logging / Levels for operational troubleshooting\n• Open Source Adoption \u0026amp; Usage\n• Intellectual Property: Disclosure and Protection\nSpecific Skills for Server-side Developers Databases\nGeneral Relational Database concepts (Schemas, tables, datatypes)\nExpressing one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships\nGeneral SQL: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, various joins\nAwareness of more advanced topics: Transactions, Views, Stored Procedures, Geospatial queries, DB schema migrations\nDB Drivers and Object/Relational Mapping tools\nGeneral concepts in Drivers: JDBC Connections, connection pooling, connection pool configuration\nJPA\nHibernate / HQL\nHibernate Caches and cache optimization\nDebugging and profiling\nUsing GORM and the GORM DSL\nApp Server Concepts\nGeneral Layout of a Java Application Server and a WAR file\nWorking with an app server to install, start, stop, and remove your application\nMonitoring via JMX and other tools\nTomcat 7\nJetty\nFrameworks\nApplication Frameworks: Spring 3.0\nMVC frameworks: Grails 2.3+\nSecurity: SpringSecurity, OAuth 2\nUI Technologies\nHTML5\nDOM Fundamentals\nCSS\nJavaScript\nJQuery\nClient-side MVC Frameworks: Backbone, Ember, AngularJS concepts and application\nSecurity\nHashing Algorithms and applicability\nEncryption basics: Symmetric and Asymmetric key crypto\nCertificates and Certificate Authority infrastructure\nPassword storage requirements\nIdentity Federation\nThreat modeling\nInfrastructure and Operations\nApplication Installers (Yes, we still use those)\nHardware and Software Load Balancers and interoperability thereof\nVirtualization\nChoosing appropriate AMI’s for Amazon EC2\n“Infrastructure as Code” using Vagrant, Chef, and Puppet\nThat\u0026rsquo;s just what I have so far. Until you try to codify it, it\u0026rsquo;s easy to forget how much disparate crap has to be swimming in your head to be an effective developer in a nothing-fancy JVM stack in 2014. Many rough edges hide behind cute UIs, scaffolding, scripts, wizards, IDEs, and pre-canned workflows. However, beneath it all, there\u0026rsquo;s Masters or Ph.D-level art in each of those layers. How deep do you want to go? Moreover, how much do you want to sustain in production for 5 to 15 years?\nAlso, aside from IDE usage, this leaves out even more basic tooling like Version control (Git), Continuous Integration (Jenkins), and Artifact Management (Artifactory). That was someone else\u0026rsquo;s task this iteration.\nThe above makes me just a touch dizzy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/03/skills-to-master-for-a-full-stack-developer-on-the-jvm-2014-edition/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m part of an initiative developing curriculum and training resources for developers.  Here\u0026rsquo;s what I have so far on fundamentals and skills for a developer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"fundamentals\"\u003eFundamentals\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDesign and Structure\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e• Design / Domain Modeling\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e• Object Orientation / Design Patterns\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDevelopment and Delivery\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e• IDE mastery: IntelliJ, Eclipse, etc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e• Code Reviews / Pull Requests\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e• Testing: Unit testing, test coverage\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e• Effective Debugging / Using a symbolic debugger\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Working on an Agile Development team\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Skills to master for a \"Full Stack\" developer on the JVM, 2014 edition"},{"content":"Way back in 2004, I wrote a short review of Tate\u0026rsquo;s Bitter Java\nBasically, when this book appeared, Java was ~8 years old, and was at the peak of its hype cycle. Embraced by both the enterprise software world (okay, IBM) and the nascent open source community, Java was the golden hammer, fit for any problem.\nExcept, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t.\nPeople who could program, but who weren\u0026rsquo;t familiar with domain requirements began writing Enterprise Software, and they began making a mess of it. My own company had to write-off about $7.4 million on a \u0026ldquo;failed software project\u0026rdquo; back in 2003. Suddenly, the C-levels stopped saying \u0026ldquo;Maybe we should rewrite our stuff in Java.\u0026rdquo; Historians term such retrenchment the Thermidorian Reaction, predictable after every revolution. For us in the industry, it was the heart of the doldrums between the Y2K largesse and the onslaught of Web 2.0.\nAll that to say: Where is \u0026ldquo;Bitter Process\u0026rdquo;? We\u0026rsquo;re about 13 years into the Mayflower Compact\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;Agile Manifesto era. Seems like it\u0026rsquo;s time someone respected pointed at the naked emperor and laughed a bit.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/03/bitter-process/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWay back in 2004, I wrote a \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/servicing-a-gmt800/\" title=\"bitter java\"\u003eshort review\u003c/a\u003e of Tate\u0026rsquo;s Bitter Java\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.manning.com/tate/tate_cover150.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.manning.com/tate/tate_cover150.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, when this book appeared, Java was ~8 years old, and was at the peak of its hype cycle.   Embraced by both the enterprise software world (okay, IBM) and the nascent open source community, Java was the golden hammer, fit for any problem.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExcept, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePeople who could program, but who weren\u0026rsquo;t familiar with domain requirements began writing Enterprise Software, and they began making a mess of it.  My own company had to write-off about $7.4 million on a \u003ca href=\"http://www.apnewsarchive.com/2003/Lexmark-3Q-Earnings-Up-16-Percent/id-01c070ac3c2657e78a175e7d30244f7a\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;failed software project\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e back in 2003.  Suddenly, the C-levels stopped saying \u0026ldquo;Maybe we should rewrite our stuff in Java.\u0026rdquo;  Historians term such retrenchment the Thermidorian Reaction, predictable after every revolution.  For us in the industry, it was the heart of the doldrums between the Y2K largesse and the onslaught of Web 2.0.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Bitter Process\""},{"content":"So, my daughter found a cute trick about 3 weeks ago: If you set a bunch of dry oatmeal in a non-microwavable playset bowl on 5 minutes in the microwave, it catches fire.\nLots of fun things result: You mommy trotting you out into the cold, lots of folks with sirens showing up, seeing the inside of a Crown Victoria as you shelter from the sub-zero temperatures.\nThankfully, though the microwave was toast and there was smoke in the house, nothing happened permanently and everyone was safe.\nThat afternoon, though, debriefing with Whitney, I questioned, \u0026ldquo;Why didn\u0026rsquo;t the smoke detectors go off?\u0026rdquo; Basically, my wife had gotten out of the shower, smelled smoke and the smoke alarms never went off. It was then I figured-out how woefully unprepared we were for any sort of fire.\nYou see, our old house (1.5 story, 4 br, 2 bath on slab) was built in 2003 and had recent everything: Smoke detectors in every bedroom, one tied-in to the ADT system with constant A/C power, the works. Our current home (2 story, 4br, 2 bath on full basement) was built in 1985 and had one detector on the ground floor and one upstairs, and both candidly looked at least 20 years old, if not older.\nSo, I fired up Consumer Reports and bought some top picks. Got two of these to replace their ancient brethren:\nThose are hardwired 120V with a double-A battery backup. They yell at you to \u0026ldquo;EVACUATE THERE\u0026rsquo;S A FIRE\u0026rdquo; in addition to a 100dB+ tone. Also picked-up 4 of these, one for each upstairs bedroom and another for the basement\nThats the First Alert Atom, and I really like the design and the compact size (above is pretty much 1:1 scale. Thing is tiny)\nI also have an ABC fire extinguisher hard-mounted to the wall as you go into the kitchen. Today we had a small fire in the oven (some residue got too hot) and it was great knowing we had the fire extinguisher at hand.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/03/fire-protection-update/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, my daughter found a cute trick about 3 weeks ago:  If you set a bunch of dry oatmeal in a non-microwavable playset bowl on 5 minutes in the microwave, it catches fire.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLots of fun things result:  You mommy trotting you out into the cold, lots of folks with sirens showing up, seeing the inside of a Crown Victoria as you shelter from the sub-zero temperatures.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThankfully, though the microwave was toast and there was smoke in the house, nothing happened permanently and everyone was safe.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fire Protection Update"},{"content":"I understand this is meaningless to anyone besides me, but I just wanted to jot it down.\nShe said, \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t know who it is, but it\u0026rsquo;s not you. It used to be, and I think it\u0026rsquo;s sad that it\u0026rsquo;s not anymore.\u0026rdquo;\nAnd you know what, she\u0026rsquo;s right. I agree with her. Long about July 2011, I took a left turn and lost myself a bit. Not quite sure what to do with that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/02/my-low-for-today/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI understand this is meaningless to anyone besides me, but I just wanted to jot it down.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe said, \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t know who it is, but it\u0026rsquo;s not you.  It used to be, and I think it\u0026rsquo;s sad that it\u0026rsquo;s not anymore.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd you know what, she\u0026rsquo;s right.  I \u003cem\u003eagree with her\u003c/em\u003e.  Long about July 2011, I took a left turn and lost myself a bit.  Not quite sure what to do with that.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My \"Low\" for Today"},{"content":"It was pouring outside, and my daughter was trying to convince me how much she hated a children\u0026rsquo;s museum 4 hours\u0026rsquo; drive away.\n\u0026ldquo;Cosi? You mean the museum in Columbus?\u0026rdquo; I said between bites of Subway sandwich. Oooh, with mayonnaise. My youngest is allergic to eggs, so mayo was a delicacy.\n\u0026ldquo;YEAH,\u0026rdquo; she exploded. I was thankful we were the only customers; Maria\u0026rsquo;s like a combination of my passion and her mom\u0026rsquo;s expressiveness. In comparison, a nitromethane Funny Car mouses about.\n\u0026ldquo;I mean, really, I hate the place. There was this time\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; Oh, here come the hands gesticulating\u0026hellip; \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;when mommy was behind the door in the dark room with the lasers and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get to her and\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nand then, my daughter, time stopped, and Daddy looked at you. I mean, really looked. Hack writers would say \u0026ldquo;drank you in.\u0026rdquo;\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a moment in Forrest Gump when Jenny shows Forrest his son for the first time, tells him that the little kid watching TV is his, and Forrest, overwhelmed, just says, \u0026ldquo;He\u0026rsquo;s the most beautiful thing I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen.\u0026rdquo; This was kind of like that.\nIt was like I arrived from an alternate universe and realized you were mine, that your oh-so-expressive beautiful eyes and freckles were of my own flesh and blood, in a new generation. It was like 22 year old me, full of entitlement, self-confidence, and questing for purpose plopped into 35 year old me and took a peek.\nAt that moment, I appreciated the day for what it was: A gift. This moment, sharing a meal with my daughter. This second, seeing her personality, her passion, her intelligence in the raw. \u0026ldquo;No filter\u0026rdquo; the Instagrammers tag it; this was life in HD.\nHow low had I been just yesterday morning? Now here was my child, and it was Fricking Great.\nHow big she is! And her eyes were black oceans ringed in grey-blue irises. Baby teeth absented, and others twisting in disharmony\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;d be paying to straighten them soon enough. Forehead so like her mother\u0026rsquo;s, and a smirk\u0026hellip;.\nShe was smirking, yes very much like her mother. She\u0026rsquo;d stopped talking. She cocked her head and regarded me much like I was regarding her.\n\u0026ldquo;Daaaad\u0026hellip;what?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Nothing dear. Just looking at you.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/02/for-maria-a-moment-of-presence/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt was pouring outside, and my daughter was trying to convince me how much she hated a children\u0026rsquo;s museum 4 hours\u0026rsquo; drive away.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eCosi?\u003c/em\u003e You mean the museum in Columbus?\u0026rdquo;  I said between bites of Subway sandwich.  Oooh, with mayonnaise.  My youngest is allergic to eggs, so mayo was a delicacy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;YEAH,\u0026rdquo; she exploded.  I was thankful we were the only customers; Maria\u0026rsquo;s like a combination of my passion and her mom\u0026rsquo;s expressiveness.  In comparison, a nitromethane Funny Car mouses about.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"For Maria, A Moment of Presence"},{"content":"Caution: This is an entry about things that go boom. It\u0026rsquo;s NSFW (well, at my work, anyway)\nSo, for my bi-weekly time to myself, I choose to go to The Gun Warehouse (a.k.a \u0026ldquo;Bud\u0026rsquo;s Gun Shop\u0026rdquo;) in Lexington and try out some techniques I saw here:\nBud\u0026rsquo;s was busy (as typical of any Saturday), but I got on the range about 11:30am. If you\u0026rsquo;ve never been in a busy gun shop, it\u0026rsquo;s truly an experience: Excitement, fear, bravado from customers and staunch professionalism from the staff. Can\u0026rsquo;t recommend the place enough.\nFirst I did the two-in-the hole drill at 3 yards, and results weren\u0026rsquo;t encouraging. [Excuses] I was wearing my glasses today after having pinkeye this past week. I\u0026rsquo;m also trying to shift from using my right eye primarily (which I\u0026rsquo;ve used to shoot all my life) to going to my left eye, which is my dominant eye. I\u0026rsquo;m also trying to learn the isosceles stance,[/Excuses]\nAnyway, I was basically unable to hit two in one hole at 3 yards, so I moved on to the X drill. It was actually really neat. I\u0026rsquo;ve never intentionally worked on my shooting before, particularly with a handgun and the X drill was a great way to observe what I was doing at 3 yards. I was very erratic\u0026ndash;I hit low left, high right, and everything in between. I did notice that as I was more intentional about my breathing and my hold, the better I got, ending with some punching the center of the X. I was never taught to focus on the front sight and the sight picture, so being intentional there yielded results.\nI did two rounds of the X drill, and then I kicked up to the 5-10-15-20 drill. Overall, I was pleased..I consistently got shots on the center (\u0026ldquo;Center mass?\u0026rdquo;) of the target, and I was able to take a few potshots at the head with good results.\nMy body seemed to reject using my left eye, so I\u0026rsquo;m calling it a work-in progress.\nOverall, it\u0026rsquo;s surprisingly hard to hit something consistently with a handgun from what\u0026rsquo;s a trivial distance with a rifle. It\u0026rsquo;s also a pretty significant adrenaline hit being on a range full of people shooting (and people just blazing away 2 stalls over). I was buzzed most of the remaining afternoon :-)\nMy G19 and I are still getting comfortable with one another. Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s an incredible design, and as easy to take-down \u0026amp; clean as Hickok demonstrates. I can\u0026rsquo;t shake the feeling that it\u0026rsquo;s not the ultimate handgun for me. I still have significant SIG lust ($$) and my mind seems to grok Double-Action/Single-Action autos much better than strikers. I\u0026rsquo;m a definite n00b\u0026hellip;I don\u0026rsquo;t pretend to be anything more. I\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to getting better.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/02/range-diaries-trying-to-adjust-my-dominant-eye/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCaution:\u003c/strong\u003e This is an entry about things that go boom.  It\u0026rsquo;s NSFW (well, at my work, anyway)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, for my bi-weekly time to myself, I choose to go to \u003ca href=\"http://www.thegunwarehouse.com/\"\u003eThe Gun Warehouse\u003c/a\u003e (a.k.a \u0026ldquo;Bud\u0026rsquo;s Gun Shop\u0026rdquo;) in Lexington and try out some techniques I saw here:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBud\u0026rsquo;s was busy (as typical of any Saturday), but I got on the range about 11:30am.  If you\u0026rsquo;ve never been in a busy gun shop, it\u0026rsquo;s truly an experience:  Excitement, fear, bravado from customers and staunch professionalism from the staff.  Can\u0026rsquo;t recommend the place enough.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Range Diaries: Trying to Adjust My Dominant Eye"},{"content":"Here in Kentucky, we root for hopeless causes: Most incarnations of UK Football, the Broncos in Superbowl XVIII, and winter.\nWinter? you ask. Indeed!\nUsually, Winter is a neutered season. It\u0026rsquo;s like a buffer between our long, dry falls and our all-too-short wet Springtime. Summer\u0026rsquo;s the top-dog. Summer\u0026rsquo;s on the beach, kicking sand in the face of nerdy Winter, breaking his glasses and shooting tequila like a Carrie Underwood song (underage, natch). A \u0026ldquo;hard\u0026rdquo; winter here is one big snow of 3\u0026quot; and an average daytime high under 40. \u0026ldquo;You know, I had to scrape my windows this morning!\u0026rdquo; we exclaim in disbelief.\nOkay, well, it seems clear that Winter\u0026rsquo;s had it, gotten some \u0026lsquo;Roids, hit the gym, and come packing a Glock 10mm. He\u0026rsquo;s back, and he\u0026rsquo;s bad. At this point, I\u0026rsquo;m beginning to think he\u0026rsquo;s homicidal.\nAs I sit here at 6:45am, my birch tree in the back yard genuflects onto my back deck, weighed down by a crapton of ice from last night\u0026rsquo;s freezing rain. That was Tuesday night; on Sunday night, we got roughly 4\u0026quot; of heavy wet snow. The day before that, it was 60 degrees (\u0026ldquo;Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself!\u0026rdquo;) and the week prior we welcomed the second iteration of the Polar Vortex, with high temperatures in the single digits and most rivers and lakes aside from the Ohio frozen over.\nEmblematic: We had a white Thanksgiving this year.\nToday makes the Eleventy-first day off school for Joey, meaning he\u0026rsquo;ll complete his 7th grade term sometime in 2015 provided Dennis Quaid doesn\u0026rsquo;t walk buy towing Jake Gyllenhall\u0026rsquo;s emo butt from New York. Not that there\u0026rsquo;s any consistency\u0026ndash;prior to Christmas break, I drove Joey to school in a whiteout that had the bus in front of me break traction on a hill, while yesterday I could\u0026rsquo;ve gotten him to school with snowshoes better than the Camry. Other days, they\u0026rsquo;ve called off for the threat of weather that didn\u0026rsquo;t materialized, or that materialized after 4pm. Lose-Lose if you\u0026rsquo;re the superintendent.\nRough breakdown of tweets from the last few months:\nNovember: \u0026ldquo;Well, isn\u0026rsquo;t this accumulating snow on Thanksgiving a novelty. I hope we have a White Christmas.\u0026rdquo;\nDecember: \u0026ldquo;Wow, this weather sure is wild. I\u0026rsquo;m sure this will end soon.\u0026rdquo;\nJanuary: \u0026ldquo;So\u0026hellip;.cold\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo; Followed by 32,767 pictures of people\u0026rsquo;s car temp gauges @ -4.\nSub-genre reserved for Facebook: [Hapless mom] \u0026ldquo;Someone get these kids out of my house before I murder them.\u0026rdquo;\nFebruary: Pictures of every vertical or horizontal surface covered in ice.\nThus far, the house is weathering things well, minus the furnace igniter that went out on Monday ($$) and us trying to set the place alight yesterday (Kids do the darndest things). I\u0026rsquo;d be just fine with a February warm-up at this point, and an early Spring.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/02/winter-2013-2014-i-hate-you/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere in Kentucky, we root for hopeless causes:  Most incarnations of UK Football, the Broncos in Superbowl XVIII, and winter.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWinter?\u003c/em\u003e you ask.   Indeed!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUsually, Winter is a neutered season.  It\u0026rsquo;s like a buffer between our long, dry falls and our all-too-short wet Springtime.  Summer\u0026rsquo;s the top-dog.  Summer\u0026rsquo;s on the beach, kicking sand in the face of nerdy Winter, breaking his glasses and shooting tequila like a Carrie Underwood song (underage, natch).   A \u0026ldquo;hard\u0026rdquo; winter here is one \u003cstrong\u003ebig\u003c/strong\u003e snow of 3\u0026quot; and an average daytime high under 40.  \u0026ldquo;You know, I had to scrape my windows this morning!\u0026rdquo; we exclaim in disbelief.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Winter 2013-2014: I Hate You"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s been much discussion lately on the web about the dismal # of women choosing Computer Science. I thought I\u0026rsquo;d go straight to the source and ask, you know, a woman, who did not choose CS.\nMy wife.\nHer theory on gender imbalance in CS. (I had to transcribe as quickly as I could, and I\u0026rsquo;m not sure I quite caught the spirit of it all)\nIt\u0026rsquo;s stupid. You don\u0026rsquo;t make anything tangible. When I think of Computer Science, I think of greasy gamer nerds who want show off for their greasy gamer nerd friends. Why would I want to choose that, particularly when I know that when I go into it I\u0026rsquo;m going to be harangued by perverts who do nothing but sit on their butt all day? Which makes your butt huge. (Caveat: This is not what she thinks about the people I work with. This is her general view on what a female surveying the field would see as a Freshman in college.)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/01/my-wife-on-gender-inequality-in-computer-science/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s been much discussion lately on the web about the dismal # of women choosing Computer Science.  I thought I\u0026rsquo;d go straight to the source and ask, you know, a woman, who did not choose CS.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy wife.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer theory on gender imbalance in CS.  (I had to transcribe as quickly as I could, and I\u0026rsquo;m not sure I quite caught the spirit of it all)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s stupid.  You don\u0026rsquo;t make \u003cstrong\u003eanything tangible\u003c/strong\u003e.  When I think of Computer Science, I think of greasy gamer nerds who want show off for their greasy gamer nerd friends.  \u003c/p\u003e","title":"My Wife on Gender Inequality in Computer Science"},{"content":"Random stuff that\u0026rsquo;d annoy my twitter stream to death:\nThe animation in He-Man and She-Ra is laughably bad. Not \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s anime and they only shot one cel but panned across it for 2 seconds\u0026rdquo; bad, but \u0026ldquo;we reused the same sequence of he-man rolling 25 times in 5 episodes\u0026rdquo; bad. Natural Gas heat furnaces are amazing. My house is a toasty 70 degrees. It\u0026rsquo;s painful to start my Camry every morning. That glowing \u0026ldquo;low oil pressure light\u0026rdquo; (while normal) goes out much more slowly in zero degree weather, and there\u0026rsquo;s this groan it makes about 5 seconds after startup that I interpret as the car saying, \u0026ldquo;Really? Again?\u0026rdquo; Useless related factoid I remember from my childhood absorbing everything about aviation: When pilots started flying in Alaskan winters, they preferred radial engines (no water cooling system to freeze) and they were careful to drain the sump oil from the engine on shutdown into a container, then heat-up the container the next morning and pour it (hot) into the engine. Otherwise, past a certain temperature, the oil would sludge and the engine would seize. Related: In Minnesota and the Dakotas, it used to be common for people (especially those with diesels) to simply never turn their trucks off in winter. Diesels run variable fuel/air ratio based on load (as high as 200:1 at idle, unlike the 14:1 or richer required by gasoline) so they used relatively little fuel and there was no danger of the truck being \u0026ldquo;dead\u0026rdquo; the next morning. Dat Trig Also, just to expand on a story I tweeted yesterday: My eldest likes math, and he\u0026rsquo;s quite good at it. He loves puzzles, building things, and generally things he can get \u0026ldquo;lost in.\u0026rdquo; So, I\u0026rsquo;m up in our closet on a ladder coming down from the attic, having just changed our air filter in the upstairs HVAC, and he (apropos of nothing) holds up a sheet with this on it:\nJoey: So, I keep getting problems on our [insert alphabet soup standardized test] that look like this. What does it mean and how can I solve it?\nI nearly leapt off the ladder. I think I freaked Joey out as I said something like, \u0026ldquo;WOOHOO! TRIGONOMETRY!\u0026rdquo;\nThe next good hour was me at our homeschooling whiteboard introducing Joey to Pythagorus, Pythagorean triples, how the pyramids were built, why circles have 360 degrees (Babylonians), and \u0026ldquo;soh cah toa\u0026rdquo;. By the end, he worked at Tangent problem (\u0026ldquo;How high did your rocket go if you measure an angle of 45 degrees and you\u0026rsquo;re 100\u0026rsquo; from the rocket stand?\u0026rdquo;) by himself.\nYesterday, I picked him up from school and the first thing he tells me?\n\u0026ldquo;So, my Ti-35 can do trig, and the Sine of 30 degrees is 1/2. Why?\u0026rdquo;\nLove. It.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/01/random-musings-over-3rd-coffee-about-winter-and-trigonometry/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRandom stuff that\u0026rsquo;d annoy my twitter stream to death:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe animation in He-Man and She-Ra is laughably bad.  Not \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s anime and they only shot one cel but panned across it for 2 seconds\u0026rdquo; bad, but \u0026ldquo;we reused the same sequence of he-man rolling 25 times in 5 episodes\u0026rdquo; bad.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural Gas heat furnaces are amazing.  My house is a toasty 70 degrees.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s painful to start my Camry every morning.  That glowing \u0026ldquo;low oil pressure light\u0026rdquo; (while normal) goes out much more slowly in zero degree weather, and there\u0026rsquo;s this \u003cem\u003egroan\u003c/em\u003e it makes about 5 seconds after startup that I interpret as the car saying, \u0026ldquo;Really?  Again?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUseless related factoid I remember from my childhood absorbing everything about aviation:  When pilots started flying in Alaskan winters, they preferred radial engines (no water cooling system to freeze) and they were careful to drain the sump oil from the engine on shutdown into a container, then heat-up the container the next morning and pour it (hot) into the engine.  Otherwise, past a certain temperature, the oil would sludge and the engine would seize.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRelated:   In Minnesota and the Dakotas, it used to be common for people (especially those with diesels) to simply never turn their trucks off in winter.  Diesels run variable fuel/air ratio based on load (as high as 200:1 at idle, unlike the 14:1 or richer required by gasoline) so they used relatively little fuel and there was no danger of the truck being \u0026ldquo;dead\u0026rdquo; the next morning.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"dat-trig\"\u003eDat Trig\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlso, just to expand on a story I tweeted yesterday:  My eldest likes math, and he\u0026rsquo;s quite good at it.  He loves puzzles, building things, and generally things he can get \u0026ldquo;lost in.\u0026rdquo;  So, I\u0026rsquo;m up in our closet on a ladder coming down from the attic, having just changed our air filter in the upstairs HVAC, and he (apropos of nothing) holds up a sheet with this on it:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Random musings over 3rd Coffee about Winter and Trigonometry"},{"content":"I imagine this convo someday:\n\u0026ldquo;You really believe there\u0026rsquo;s some magic guy up in the sky who created the Universe? Do you also believe in Santa Claus?\u0026rdquo;\nThe respondent will be one of my children:\nI\u0026rsquo;ve never believed in Santa Claus. I would like to tell you about a real guy named Jesus and what He did for me\u0026hellip;.\nYep, we\u0026rsquo;re those people. Santa Claus doesn\u0026rsquo;t give our children presents, we give each other presents to celebrate the greatest unearned present ever, salvation. Our kids are the all-too-honest little antichrists who send your little Timmy or Terry home crying from Kindergarten, \u0026ldquo;MOM! Maria said Santa Claus isn\u0026rsquo;t real.\u0026rdquo;\nI\u0026rsquo;m not going to lie, it\u0026rsquo;s awkward. You get around other families any month south of September and hoo boy, you get The Glare, usually from the mom who\u0026rsquo;s put a load of items on layaway for Santa to bring. \u0026ldquo;Why in the world would you deprive your kids the joy of Santa?\u0026rdquo; Some come out and say it, but others say it in their eyes.\nWhy?\nI want that conversation above to be possible.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/01/were-the-monsters-who-dont-believe-in-santa-claus/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI imagine this convo someday:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You really believe there\u0026rsquo;s some magic guy up in the sky who created the Universe?  Do you also believe in Santa Claus?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe respondent will be one of my children:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve never believed in Santa Claus.  I would like to tell you about a real guy named Jesus and what He did for me\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep, we\u0026rsquo;re those people.  Santa Claus doesn\u0026rsquo;t give our children presents, we give each other presents to celebrate the greatest unearned present ever, salvation.   Our kids are the all-too-honest little antichrists who send your little Timmy or Terry home crying from Kindergarten, \u0026ldquo;MOM!  Maria said \u003cem\u003eSanta Claus isn\u0026rsquo;t real\u003c/em\u003e.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"We're the Monsters Who Don't Believe in Santa Claus"},{"content":"[Exterior: 3am as the Snow falls]\n[Garage door rises]\nFusion: Psst\u0026hellip;.hey, Camry of Doom.\nCoD (annoyed): Don\u0026rsquo;t start what you cain\u0026rsquo;t finish, Sparky.\nF: Mmmm\u0026hellip;.looks mighty cold out there in all that snow. I\u0026rsquo;d offer you a place in here, but this is only for the cars they like.\nCoD: Yeah, yeah\u0026hellip;.I\u0026rsquo;m fine out here. I don\u0026rsquo;t need no sissy garage.\nF: But it\u0026rsquo;s been frackin\u0026rsquo; cold forever it seems like. Doesn\u0026rsquo;t it hurt?\nCoD: Damned right it hurts\u0026hellip;Pain\u0026rsquo;s my only steady companion My hood\u0026rsquo;s peeling like a sunburnt albino, my suspension bushings remember the Clinton administration, and my emissions equipment hasn\u0026rsquo;t worked since Middle Girl was a baby.\nF: [snorts derisively] Doesn\u0026rsquo;t sound good, Gramps. I know he wants to get rid of you, the Fat One. . .why are you smiling?\nCoD: [Laughs] Boy, I came here out of necessity\u0026ndash;they didn\u0026rsquo;t want me, they needed me. They bought me off a used car lot on a freezing october. They needed something practical, roomy, efficient, and reliable, and SIMPLE. The Fat One hates getting near you. He can fix me with a wrench if he\u0026rsquo;d ever get off his butt and do it. Cheapskate.\nAnd don\u0026rsquo;t forget, I\u0026rsquo;ve seen your kind come and go, all \u0026ldquo;replacements\u0026rdquo; for me. That lardy van that \u0026ldquo;had a little accident.\u0026rdquo; The eurotrash I had to\u0026hellip;eliminate. I still remember how he cried that time he sprang a leak and got mildewy, then when his lifeblood spilt all over the driveway. Unfortunate how his oil fittings got a little \u0026ldquo;too tight.\u0026rdquo; I was sitting right there watching the whole thing. I love it when a plan comes together.\nNo, I\u0026rsquo;m not going anywhere. They\u0026rsquo;ve already got plans to give me to Skinny boy, in a mere 3 more years.\nSo, enjoy that garage, Sparky. I\u0026rsquo;m sure when something goes haywire, or they finally get tired of your lack of trunk, I\u0026rsquo;ll see them drag you out of it to the glue factory just like all the rest. I\u0026rsquo;d keep looking over my shoulder for those rollbacks. I hear the hooks really hurt when they latch on to your subframe. Not that I\u0026rsquo;d know.\nF: You\u0026rsquo;re a\u0026hellip;..monster\u0026hellip;.. [lowers garage door]\nCoD: Ain\u0026rsquo;t I just? Sweet dreams, Precious.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/01/in-which-the-fusion-and-camry-of-doom-parley-amid-the-snow/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e[Exterior:  3am as the Snow falls]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[Garage door rises]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFusion: Psst\u0026hellip;.hey, Camry of Doom.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCoD (annoyed): Don\u0026rsquo;t start what you cain\u0026rsquo;t finish, Sparky.\u003cbr\u003e\nF: Mmmm\u0026hellip;.looks mighty cold out there in all that snow.  I\u0026rsquo;d offer you a place in here, but this is only for the cars they \u003cem\u003elike\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCoD:  Yeah, yeah\u0026hellip;.I\u0026rsquo;m fine out here.  I don\u0026rsquo;t need no sissy garage.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eF: But it\u0026rsquo;s been frackin\u0026rsquo; cold forever it seems like.  Doesn\u0026rsquo;t it hurt?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"In which the Fusion and Camry of Doom Parley amid the Snow"},{"content":"So, my church is going through Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. The second item within the 40-day book is \u0026ldquo;You are not an accident.\u0026rdquo; With this as the follow-up.\nYour parents may have been good, bad, or indifferent. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter: God had a design for you before you were even born, with the combination of DNA inside your body determined.\nImmediately, the reality that soon enough (if some rogue nation hasn\u0026rsquo;t already) a cloned human being will be created. No mother, no father, just a sequenced genome injected into a sterilized embryo. It begins dividing and gestating, with a person resulting 40 weeks later. Maybe less if we accelerate the process.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a synthesized person, essentially the story of Pygmalion come true. There are lots of dystopian side effects to consider: Will this capability be used to breed the Alphas -\u0026gt; Epsilons of Brave New World? Will we see armies of cloned soldiers with all fear and remorse removed, like Star Wars Storm Troopers or Doctor Who Sontarans?\nBut, beyond that, how does one integrate a synthetic person into any sort of theological framework? The general ethos of any (Western) theology is: God is separate from me, and I have an immortal component within me that came from Him. If you trace my lineage far enough back, you will reach an initial Man and Woman formed by Him. At the end of my life, that component will either return to that initial area of perfection or\u0026hellip;not.\nWhen (saying \u0026lsquo;If\u0026rsquo; seems naive) we break that chain and create a person out of impossibly complex sequences of A,C, and G ourselves, it\u0026rsquo;s an ethical mess, no matter how you look at it.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s really it. I\u0026rsquo;ve no cosmic answers, nor any hypotheses about the state of such an individual\u0026rsquo;s soul, just this hypothetical:\nWhat does it imply to the creation, and\u0026ndash;moreover\u0026ndash;what does it imply about us?\nMy inclination: **When that day happens, we will be fully realized monsters ourselves. **\nOther questions that correlate:\nIs it different to \u0026ldquo;print\u0026rdquo; a human instead of, say, a bacterium? Is this fundamentally different than the Singularity, in which machines or other devices are imbued with consciousness? Is that creating \u0026rsquo;life\u0026rsquo;? This kind of crap is why Science Fiction is so popular\u0026hellip;oh the narrative possibilities. Thing is, this is reality.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/01/frankensteins-monster-is-coming...then-what/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, my church is going through \u003cem\u003ePurpose Driven Life\u003c/em\u003e by Rick Warren.  The second item within the 40-day book is \u0026ldquo;You are not an accident.\u0026rdquo;  With this as the follow-up.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYour parents may have been good, bad, or indifferent.  It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter:  God had a design for you before you were even born, with the combination of DNA inside your body determined.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e Immediately, the reality that soon enough (if some rogue nation hasn\u0026rsquo;t already) a cloned human being will be created.  No mother, no father, just a sequenced genome injected into a sterilized embryo.  It begins dividing and gestating, with a person resulting 40 weeks later.  Maybe less if we accelerate the process.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Frankenstein's Monster  is coming...then what?"},{"content":"So, working late(-ish) last night, I drove home listening to the dulcet tones of Governor Steve Beshear delivering his annual State of the Commonwealth speech.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve long held Beshear to be a dichotomy: He\u0026rsquo;s a moderate, reasonable with genuine communication and leadership ability who has a folksy, drawling twang that drives me bonkers. Though he sounds like a character from Hee-Haw, he\u0026rsquo;s been genuinely good for the state, surmounting two scandalous previous administrations and noted egomaniac Senate President David Williams. Beshear has both the common touch of a well-meaning Grandfather, and the business administration sense of a decent CEO.\nAnd\u0026hellip;yet\u0026hellip;\nHe has a somewhat benign but pernicious fatal flaw: He won\u0026rsquo;t let go of Casino-style gaming for Kentucky. It reared its head again as a \u0026ldquo;stinger\u0026rdquo; at the very end of his speech before the closing.\nAgain this session I will ask you to place a Constitutional Amendment on the ballot related to expanded gaming. Over the years several economic studies of various gaming scenarios have projected potential Kentucky tax revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But regardless of the amount, allowing gaming is a way to keep Kentucky tax revenue at home – instead of letting Kentuckians\u0026rsquo; entertainment dollars fund roads and schools in Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and other states. Now I realize there are many arguments for and against gaming. But there\u0026rsquo;s no reason to deny the people of Kentucky an opportunity to vote “up” or “down” on this issue. They want to vote on this issue, and we should let them decide whether to continue allowing Kentucky tax money to flow across our borders or to keep it here at home. From a utilitarian perspective, one cannot argue with his logic: We need revenue, and Kentuckians travel to other states to game, to those states\u0026rsquo; benefit.\nI am not a utilitarian. My central belief is that gaming is wrong, and certifying and encouraging it at a state level is blood money. Casino-style gaming is institutionalized fleecing of a population. Aside from card-counting at blackjack, no casino game is winnable in the long-term. People are exchanging their money for a hit of dopamine that comes from \u0026ldquo;winning,\u0026rdquo; and far too few quit while they\u0026rsquo;re ahead. Gaming has been shown to be addictive, and the societal costs of the secondary and tertiary effects of gaming will eventually outweigh whatever meager income boost in the short term: Desperate, strung-out gamblers destroying their careers, families, and themselves, with impacts to our educational, penal, and social support systems.\nJust like the games themselves, gaming is a loser in the long-run. In places it\u0026rsquo;s a demonstrated \u0026ldquo;win\u0026rdquo; like Las Vegas, various Native American Reservations, etc., the key component is \u0026ldquo;visiting\u0026rdquo; gamblers. People come, gamble away, then leave, and the purveyors of the gaming don\u0026rsquo;t have to deal with the fallout. Once gaming comes to Kentucky, I assure you, the fallout will sicken us all.\nOne can rationalize all the above away easily enough: People do it any way. We do it already in the form of horse racing and off-track betting, how is this any different? Kentucky makes tremendous revenue from \u0026lsquo;sin\u0026rsquo; pursuits like Bourbon, Horse Racing, and (illicit) marijuana cultivation. All the above is simple bandwagon fallacy, strawmen to distract from the central issues that haven\u0026rsquo;t changed in 7 years, and won\u0026rsquo;t change for 700 more. I consider gaming on its own merits, and find it wanting from both moral and practical perspectives.\nLastly, consider \u0026ldquo;The Lottery.\u0026rdquo; Wallace Wilkinson ran on a platform of bringing the lottery to Kentucky in the 1980\u0026rsquo;s. He succeeded, but to what effect? As is the case throughout the nation, middle and lower-class people play the lottery in vain hope of \u0026ldquo;hitting it big,\u0026rdquo; and improving their circumstances. That is, it\u0026rsquo;s a demonstrated regressive tax on that segment of society that can\u0026rsquo;t help itself. Simple math will show that those $2 lottery tickets invested over time have a much better result for all concerned. However, that bell rung nearly 30 years ago cannot be unrung today, and here we endure with The Lottery. I implore you to avoid the same mistake here with Casino Gambling.\nSo, Mr. Beshear, I use the above to dispute your position: \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s no reason to deny the people of Kentucky an opportunity to vote\u0026hellip;on this issue.\u0026rdquo; Yes, there is. We elect leaders like you, sir, because you demonstrate the qualities of wisdom and leadership needed in a Republican Democracy. Simple civics reminds us that our forebears didn\u0026rsquo;t set this Commonwealth (nor this country) up as a pure democracy wherein the minority would suffer at the whim of the mob.\nPlainly, just because \u0026ldquo;The People Want Something,\u0026rdquo; does not imply you give it to them. Our own citizens have also wanted Slavery, Nullification, Secession, and Segregation, but our leaders (eventually) transcended those desires of the moment to discern what was right.\nI call on both my representatives, Damon Thayer and Ryan Quarles to rise above utilitarian philosophy and hold the line on this, as has been the case throughout the current administration.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/01/expanded-gaming-no-thanksgovernor./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, working late(-ish) last night, I drove home listening to the dulcet tones of \u003ca href=\"http://governor.ky.gov/Pages/default.aspx\"\u003eGovernor Steve Beshear\u003c/a\u003e delivering his annual \u003ca href=\"http://governor.ky.gov/Speeches/20140107_SOTC.pdf\"\u003eState of the Commonwealth\u003c/a\u003e speech.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve long held Beshear to be a dichotomy:  He\u0026rsquo;s a moderate, reasonable with genuine communication and leadership ability who has a folksy, drawling twang that drives me bonkers.  Though he sounds like a character from Hee-Haw, he\u0026rsquo;s been genuinely good for the state, surmounting two scandalous previous administrations and noted egomaniac Senate President David Williams.  Beshear has both the common touch of a well-meaning Grandfather, and the business administration sense of a decent CEO.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Expanded Gaming?  No thanks,Governor."},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;And now, let\u0026rsquo;s go to Ollie Williams with the weather.\u0026rdquo;\nIt was 55 Degrees on Sunday afternoon, with detectable humidity in the air.\nBy Monday morning, it was 1, with a wind chill of -25. There were reports of thundersnow in the foothills to our east. Last night it was -5 or so.\nAlong the way, I learned a few things:\nIf you soak a t-shirt and leave it outside in such weather, it will freeze solid in 90 seconds. A garage door can flash-freeze to the concrete beneath it, requiring a sharpened spade shovel to dislodge. Boiling hot water thrown into the air becomes a cloud of steam. A cup of regular water thrown up into the air will freeze and thud onto the ground. A 15 year old Camry will still start, but will not come to operating temperature (read: no cabin heat) on a 20 minute drive to work. Power steering fluid loses i Thermal underwear is your friend. I love natural gas heat. Temp in my house has remained 70 degrees, and the upstairs \u0026amp; downstairs furnaces haven\u0026rsquo;t broken a sweat. The hawk i swerved around on the way out of my subdivision was either: (A) frozen to the ground next to the roadkill or (B) longed for the embrace of death to ease his suffering. Either way, he wasn\u0026rsquo;t budging. Thankful for a warm house and power that flickered but remained on throughout the event.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/01/what-i-learned-from-polar-vortex-2014/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;And now, let\u0026rsquo;s go to Ollie Williams with the weather.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://i.imgflip.com/5yih3.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://i.imgflip.com/5yih3.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was 55 Degrees on Sunday afternoon, with detectable humidity in the air.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy Monday morning, it was 1, with a wind chill of -25.  There were reports of thundersnow in the foothills to our east.  Last night it was -5 or so.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlong the way, I learned a few things:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIf you soak a t-shirt and leave it outside in such weather, it will freeze solid in 90 seconds.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA garage door can flash-freeze to the concrete beneath it, requiring a sharpened spade shovel to dislodge.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBoiling hot water thrown into the air becomes a cloud of steam.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA cup of regular water thrown up into the air will freeze and thud onto the ground.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA 15 year old Camry will still start, but will not come to operating temperature (read: no cabin heat) on a 20 minute drive to work.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePower steering fluid loses i\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThermal underwear is your friend.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI love natural gas heat.  Temp in my house has remained 70 degrees, and the upstairs \u0026amp; downstairs furnaces haven\u0026rsquo;t broken a sweat.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe hawk i swerved around on the way out of my subdivision was either: (A) frozen to the ground next to the roadkill or (B) longed for the embrace of death to ease his suffering.  Either way, he wasn\u0026rsquo;t budging.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThankful for a warm house and power that flickered but remained on throughout the event.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What I Learned From Polar Vortex 2014"},{"content":"\nHow is Ford still alive? If I look back even 10 years ago, Ford seemed to be completely on the ropes. Let\u0026rsquo;s take a look, shall we?\nFord\u0026rsquo;s 2004 product line:\nCrown Victoria: Chevy ceded the Police/Fleet market to Ford when it killed the Caprice in 1996. That\u0026rsquo;s the only reason this relic was still being sold. It had a boat-anchor 4.6L Mod motor pushing out barely over 235 hp and a gas tank that could kill you in a rear-end accident. E150/E250 Econoline. Same mod-motors but terrible transmissions. Still, they were the cheapest boxes on wheels to carry stuff, so they endured, getting 12 mpg lumbering in the slow lane dropping transmissions along the way. Escape CUV. Reasonable little trucklet, but an also-ran compared to the RAV4/CR-V that dominated. Expedition. The best large SUV ever made, overseen by John Krafcik, including an independent rear suspension. Krafcik would go on to bigger things. The Expedition would not; SUV sales were beginning to tank as a decade of higher gas prices and recession (culminating in 2008\u0026rsquo;s Financial Crisis) set-in. Still saddled with the mod-motor lump, but good package otherwise. Explorer. The Explorer never recovered from the rollover debacle in at the turn of the millenium. People finally wised-up that they didn\u0026rsquo;t need an ungainly, thirsty vehicle to carry 4 people and stuff. (They\u0026rsquo;d like an ungainly vehicle that wasn\u0026rsquo;t thirsty, and that\u0026rsquo;s how we got the CUV.) Ford rode the Explorer much too long before trying to find a replacement. Ford Explorer Sport Trac: It\u0026rsquo;s an automotive mullet. Business in the front (Explorer), party in the back (F-150). Handled about as well as you\u0026rsquo;d think it would given those Frankenstein origins. The F-150. It\u0026rsquo;s a testament to the innate goodness of these trucks that an effeminate redesign (1996) and a truly underpowered set of motors (yep 1996, too) couldn\u0026rsquo;t dislodge it from selling like beer in a college town. Well, that\u0026hellip;and an incredibly loyal customer base, the crushing ineptitude of GM, and the perennial also-ran status of everyone else. But, that\u0026rsquo;s another story for another day. The F-150 carried Ford, and still does. The Focus. Ah, the remnant of Jac Nasser\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;World Ford\u0026rdquo; initiative of the 90\u0026rsquo;s. Auspiciously the same car they got in Europe, but less reliable and cheaper. Increasingly uncompetitive with a flock of Koreans, and it couldn\u0026rsquo;t touch the Corolla or Civic for refinement or reliability. See a theme here? \u0026ldquo;Also ran.\u0026rdquo; The Freestar. Ah, mini-vans. They used to make those, didn\u0026rsquo;t they? Freestar was a barely redone Windstar, a van that couldn\u0026rsquo;t compete with Chrysler, let alone the contemporary Sienna and Odyssey. Granted, it could hold 8 in relative comfort. Too bad it couldn\u0026rsquo;t hold transmission or head gasket integrity. Another convenient Ford theme: Awful motors. Mustang. The last hurrah of the Fox body Mustang. Or, if you like, the 26th (!) year of a platform that dated back to the Ford Fairmont in 1978. Ranger. The 3.0 V6 in there powered the Taurus. The ORIGINAL Taurus. \u0026ldquo;Fresh\u0026rdquo; from its redesign in 1996 (!), the Ranger would ironically be the 2nd best compact pickup you could buy until its demise because the factory tooling simply forgot how to make something so old. The Ford Taurus. Yes, really\u0026hellip;this refugee from the Ovoid disaster of 1996 was still being sold and tried to compete with the new Accord and Camry. Aside from interior space, the it was painfully out of date, and its Duratec 3.0L was underpowered, comparatively thirsty, and unreliable. Thunderbird. It was ugly, slow, thirsty, pricey, and stemmed from the compromised DEW98 (Jaguar S-type, Lincoln LS) platform. Another sad theme: Mediocrity. So, there you have it. At best, you have outdated nameplates; at worst, you have products that never should\u0026rsquo;ve existed. If GM was dead-at-the-wheel, then Ford was surely asleep at it. So, how did they grow and thrive through the toughest financial conditions in the last half-century?\nWhat they did:\nThey got rid of everything that wasn\u0026rsquo;t core. Full-on repentance, with all the hubris expended in the 1990\u0026rsquo;s gobbling up Eurotrash vomited up like a bad hangover. Volvo, Aston, Jaguar, etc. They put a bullet in Mercury. Long overdue, this helped them product plan on a single brand. They stole the excellent Mazda6 platform and ran with it. The 2003 Mazda6 was a revelation in the midsize segment, but it was far from mainstream and the dealer network was tiny. Recasting it as a Ford with value, upstream, and hybrid versions gave them instant competitiveness. Contrast: The way Chrysler has struggled with any D-segment competitor and continues to do so. They stole the Volvo S80 platform and made a gazillion versions of it. At current, we\u0026rsquo;re talking the: Ford Taurus, Ford Flex, Ford Explorer, Ford Edge. (Also, the departed Freestyle/Taurus X). They went from having no large CUV to having 2-3 almost overnight. \u0026ldquo;Ecoboost\u0026rdquo; has been brilliant. Actually, the whole of Ford powertrain continues to impress, from the 1.0L 3-cylinder ecoboost to the 5.0 Coyote V8, to the no-holds-barred Shelby GT500 motors. Market acceptance has been good, and no offerings seem underpowered. They\u0026rsquo;ve embraced technology. Reports vary, but apparently they developed hybrid tech at roughly the same time as Toyota perfected Hybrid Synergy Drive, entering into a \u0026ldquo;we won\u0026rsquo;t sue each other\u0026rdquo; agreement with one another. They\u0026rsquo;ve also embraced telematics, and for all the hand-wringing, Ford SYNC (co-developed with Microsoft) has sold a great number of Fords. They\u0026rsquo;re willing to experiment and embrace new \u0026ldquo;buyers.\u0026rdquo; Okay, the \u0026ldquo;Fiesta Movement\u0026rdquo; was laughable, but they\u0026rsquo;re genuinely trying to appeal to younger buyers, selling technology, design, and sustainability. They realized they needed good leadership and brought him in from the outside. Mulally is (was?) a superstar, and he didn\u0026rsquo;t let any \u0026ldquo;corporate immune system\u0026rdquo; BS get in the way of getting the right product to the customer with a consistent message. They bet everything. They even leveraged the FORD LOGO to get guaranteed loans to finance the product and production upgrades, and they just happened to do it before credit markets froze in 2008. Every feel-good story like this has an element of \u0026rsquo;timing\u0026rsquo; or \u0026rsquo;luck\u0026rsquo;, I guess. So, there you have it. I have a 2010 Fusion Hybrid with Ford Sync in my garage at home, and I\u0026rsquo;m in lust with the Fiesta ST as a replacement for my dear departed R50 MINI Cooper and Nissan SE-R\u0026rsquo;s. No one\u0026rsquo;s more surprised than me. Good job, Ford. Please keep it up.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/01/lumpy-idle-ford-turned-around.-why/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100509162542/blurgame/images/1/1c/Ford.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100509162542/blurgame/images/1/1c/Ford.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow is Ford still alive?  If I look back even 10 years ago, Ford seemed to be completely on the ropes.  Let\u0026rsquo;s take a look, shall we?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymake/Ford2004.shtml\"\u003eFord\u0026rsquo;s 2004 product line\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCrown Victoria: Chevy ceded the Police/Fleet market to Ford when it killed the Caprice in 1996.  That\u0026rsquo;s the only reason this relic was still being sold.  It had a boat-anchor 4.6L Mod motor pushing out barely over 235 hp and a gas tank that could \u003ca href=\"http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/popular-police-cars-crown-victorias-prone-to-explo/nLszC/\"\u003ekill you in a rear-end accident\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eE150/E250 Econoline.  Same mod-motors but terrible transmissions.  Still, they were the cheapest boxes on wheels to carry stuff, so they endured, getting 12 mpg lumbering in the slow lane dropping transmissions along the way.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEscape CUV.  Reasonable little trucklet, but an also-ran compared to the RAV4/CR-V that dominated.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eExpedition.  The best large SUV ever made, overseen by John Krafcik, including an independent rear suspension.  Krafcik would go on to \u003ca href=\"http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/autos/2010-08-23-ceokrafcik23_cv_n.htm\"\u003ebigger things\u003c/a\u003e.  The Expedition would not; SUV sales were beginning to tank as a decade of higher gas prices and recession (culminating in 2008\u0026rsquo;s Financial Crisis) set-in.  Still saddled with the mod-motor lump, but good package otherwise.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eExplorer.  The Explorer never recovered from the rollover debacle in at the turn of the millenium.  People finally wised-up that they didn\u0026rsquo;t need an ungainly, thirsty vehicle to carry 4 people and stuff.  (They\u0026rsquo;d like an ungainly vehicle that wasn\u0026rsquo;t thirsty, and that\u0026rsquo;s how we got the CUV.)  Ford rode the Explorer much too long before trying to find a replacement.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFord Explorer Sport Trac:  It\u0026rsquo;s an automotive mullet.  Business in the front (Explorer), party in the back (F-150).  Handled about as well as you\u0026rsquo;d think it would given those Frankenstein origins. \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe F-150.  It\u0026rsquo;s a testament to the innate goodness of these trucks that an effeminate redesign (1996) and a truly underpowered set of motors (yep 1996, too) couldn\u0026rsquo;t dislodge it from selling like beer in a college town.  Well, that\u0026hellip;and an incredibly loyal customer base, the crushing ineptitude of GM, and the perennial also-ran status of everyone else.  But, that\u0026rsquo;s another story for another day.  The F-150 carried Ford, and still does.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Focus.  Ah, the remnant of Jac Nasser\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;World Ford\u0026rdquo; initiative of the 90\u0026rsquo;s.  Auspiciously the same car they got in Europe, but less reliable and cheaper.  Increasingly uncompetitive with a flock of Koreans, and it couldn\u0026rsquo;t touch the Corolla or Civic for refinement or reliability.  See a theme here?  \u0026ldquo;Also ran.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Freestar.  Ah, mini-vans.  They used to make those, didn\u0026rsquo;t they?   Freestar was a barely redone Windstar, a van that couldn\u0026rsquo;t compete with Chrysler, let alone the contemporary Sienna and Odyssey.  Granted, it could hold 8 in relative comfort.  Too bad it couldn\u0026rsquo;t hold transmission or head gasket integrity.   Another convenient Ford theme:  Awful motors.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMustang.  The last hurrah of the Fox body Mustang.  Or, if you like, the 26th (!) year of a platform that dated back to the Ford Fairmont in 1978.  \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRanger.  The 3.0 V6 in there powered the Taurus.  The ORIGINAL Taurus.  \u0026ldquo;Fresh\u0026rdquo; from its redesign in 1996 (!), the Ranger would ironically be the 2nd best compact pickup you could buy until its demise because the factory tooling simply forgot how to make something so old.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Ford Taurus.  Yes, really\u0026hellip;this refugee from the Ovoid disaster of 1996 was still being sold and tried to compete with the new Accord and Camry.  Aside from interior space, the it was painfully out of date, and its Duratec 3.0L was underpowered, comparatively thirsty, and unreliable.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThunderbird.  It was ugly, slow, thirsty, pricey, and stemmed from the compromised DEW98 (Jaguar S-type, Lincoln LS) platform.   Another sad theme: Mediocrity.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, there you have it.  At best, you have outdated nameplates; at worst, you have products that never should\u0026rsquo;ve existed.  If GM was dead-at-the-wheel, then Ford was surely asleep at it.  So, how did they grow and thrive through the toughest financial conditions in the last half-century?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lumpy Idle: Ford turned around.  Why?"},{"content":"So, Zappos announced that they\u0026rsquo;re moving their whole 1500 person organization to \u0026lsquo;Holacracy\u0026rsquo;. Why? Ironically, because of an autocratic decision by the CEO:\nLast fall, while exploring ways to scale Zappos without letting bureaucracy set in, Hsieh met Brian Robertson, the founder of the management consultancy HolacracyOne. Ah, this is classic: The CEO gets sold some snakeoil, the troops have to drink it. So, what is \u0026lsquo;holacracy\u0026rsquo;. Is it like \u0026lsquo;democracy,\u0026rsquo; \u0026rsquo;theocracy,\u0026rsquo; and other terms that\u0026rsquo;ve been with us since antiquity? Nope. Some guy invented it out of whole cloth.\nSummary from the defunct company that came up with holacracy. (Warning: Long)\nTL;DR summary of tenets: **Decision Making by Consent**: Consent is a method of decision-making whereby the arguments presented in discussing a decision are of paramount importance, and the result of the discussion is that no one present knows of a paramount reason to continue discussion before proceeding with the proposed decision. **Circle Organization**: The organization is built of a hierarchy of semi-autonomous circles. Each circle has its own aim, given by the higher-level circle, and has the authority and responsibility to execute, measure, and control its own processes to move towards its aim. **Double-Linking**: A lower circle is always linked to the circle above it via at least two people who belong to and take part in the decision making of both the higher circle and the lower circle. One of these links is the person with overall accountability for the lower-level circle’s results,and the other is a representative elected from within the lower-level circle. **Elections by Consent**: People are elected to key roles exclusively by consent after open discussion (this is not a democratic majority-vote election!). Most notably, the election process applies to the representative elected from a lower-level circle to a higher-level circle. ...Please remember that holacracy needs to be understood as a whole, not as a collection of independent practices. [](http://qz.com/161210/zappos-is-going-holacratic-no-job-titles-no-managers-no-hierarchy/) Consent is defined as: \u0026ldquo;Decisions are made once no one involved in the decision making process knows of a reasoned and paramount objection to making the proposed decision. All reasoned and paramount objections must be addressed in the decision-making process, giving everyone involved in the process a paramount voice in their own governance. That means the decision will be within the limits of tolerance of all aspects of the system for the time being.\u0026rdquo; (emphasis mine)\n* * *\nOkay, so a few things:\nYou\u0026rsquo;re an engineer; your language betrays you. \u0026ldquo;Tolerance,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Orthogonal.\u0026rdquo; (Relax, I use those words too.) You\u0026rsquo;ve designed a system that assumes working parts and nominal behavior. No social system operates this way past a \u0026ldquo;tribal\u0026rdquo; limit. That limit is something on the order of 50 to 150 people. Past that, pathological behavior emerges: Demagoguery, graft, fraud, etc. We stop seeing individuals and start seeing nameless, faceless groups that are \u0026ldquo;other\u0026rdquo;:\n\u0026ldquo;Those losers in marketing\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Facilities just doesn\u0026rsquo;t get it\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Development is so out of touch with operations\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Operations wouldn\u0026rsquo;t spend 10 cents to make $10 million\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo; See? Much easier to deal with groups when you stop seeing them as individuals. Moreover, there\u0026rsquo;s a school of thought that we simply CAN\u0026rsquo;T see them as individuals, that we\u0026rsquo;re biologically limited from doing so. Anyway, the best social systems not only accept the above, they use it to their advantage. Like, say, democracy.\nTHAT BEING SAID\u0026hellip;.there\u0026rsquo;s some good here. The Double Linking and Elections by Consent idea don\u0026rsquo;t suck.\nBasically, these sorts of systems (like Valve\u0026rsquo;s zero-hierarchy system and others) work great with a few provisos:\nYou\u0026rsquo;re small. You have superstars. You\u0026rsquo;re not in trouble. Note, with the above qualities, almost ANYTHING WILL SUCCEED. That\u0026rsquo;s what irks me about all these flash-in-the-pan systems. They depend upon the goodwill and altruism of engaged people doing the right thing in almost all circumstances. With a small-ish number of such people, you can move mountains. Once you double in size a few times, that simply won\u0026rsquo;t be true. You\u0026rsquo;ll have Sue in accounting who wants to come to work, do her job she\u0026rsquo;s been doing for 25 years, and go home to be with her kids.\nAnd you know, what? HR is going to mandate you keep Sue around, even if she\u0026rsquo;s not pulling that 80 hour workweek you are. Welcome to having a real company, buddy.\nSo yeah: /Rant.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2014/01/rant-holacracy....really/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, Zappos announced that they\u0026rsquo;re \u003ca href=\"http://qz.com/161210/zappos-is-going-holacratic-no-job-titles-no-managers-no-hierarchy/\"\u003emoving their whole 1500 person organization\u003c/a\u003e to \u0026lsquo;Holacracy\u0026rsquo;.  Why?  Ironically, because of an autocratic decision by the CEO:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast fall, while exploring ways to scale Zappos without letting bureaucracy set in, Hsieh met Brian Robertson, the founder of the management consultancy HolacracyOne. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAh, this is classic:  The CEO gets sold some snakeoil, the troops have to drink it.  So, what is \u0026lsquo;holacracy\u0026rsquo;.  Is it like \u0026lsquo;democracy,\u0026rsquo; \u0026rsquo;theocracy,\u0026rsquo; and other terms that\u0026rsquo;ve been with us since antiquity? Nope. Some guy invented it out of whole cloth.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rant: \"Holacracy\"....Really?"},{"content":"To Maria and Grace, my lovely daughters,\nToday I learned your blood runs very deep in this country, and deep in Kentucky. Here is your lineage:\nYour father\u0026rsquo;s full name is Harold Ray Combs, born in 1978 to Harold Gene and Dottie (Haddix) Combs.\nHarold Gene was born in 1953 to Bryan and Cora (McIntosh) Combs. (We tend to say the \u0026lsquo;McIntosh\u0026rsquo; part of the line is where our crazy comes from, but I\u0026rsquo;m not so sure.)\nBryan was born in 1919 to Prince and Lizzie (Keene) Combs. I remember him as a loving, kind man of good humor and many stories with supreme strength of body and character, taken well before his time at only 66. Bryan\u0026rsquo;s brother, James, served in Patton\u0026rsquo;s army in World War 2, and still lives.\nPrince was born in 1883 to Luther and Gemima (Thomas) Combs.\nLuther was born in 1839 to Seburn and Margaret (Gross) Combs. Luther Served in the Civil War when he was 23.\nSeburn was born in 1820 to Benjamin and Martha J. (Brown) Combs. Your Great-uncle Bryan \u0026ldquo;Seeb\u0026rdquo; Combs gets his nickname from Luther\u0026rsquo;s Dad, Seburn. Reputedly, Seburn was the meanest man in Breathitt County, and given the other contemporary occupants, that\u0026rsquo;s saying something.\nBenjamin was born in 1793 to John \u0026ldquo;Soldier\u0026rdquo; Combs and Margaret (Nantz) Combs.\nSoldier Combs was born in 1761 to John \u0026ldquo;Sr.\u0026rdquo; Combs and Nancy M. Harding. He was known as \u0026ldquo;Soldier\u0026rdquo; because he served in the Revolutionary War fighting for Virginia.\nSoldier and his brothers Nicholas \u0026ldquo;Danger\u0026rdquo; Combs (And you thought Dad\u0026rsquo;s stories were boring!) talked their dad into accompanying them into a trip across the Appalachians to Kentucky, which was a land-grant state for veterans of the war.\nJohn \u0026ldquo;Sr.\u0026rdquo; Combs was born in 1735 to Mason and Sarah Ann (Nelson) Combs. John Sr served in both the French and Indian War with his brother Josiah, and in the Continental Army starting in 1780.\n(At this point, you may be thinking \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re run out of America\u0026hellip;at some point, they had to come to this country, right? We\u0026rsquo;re not through!)\nMason Combs was born in 1713 to John and Hannah (Mason) Combs.\nJohn Combs was born in 1662 (!) to Archdale and Elizabeth (Butler) Combs.\nArchdale was born in 1625 (!) in JAMESTOWN VIRGINIA to John and Margaret (Archdale) \u0026ldquo;Coombes\u0026rdquo;. John had come over as an Indentured Servant to Virginia.\n* * *\nSo, in summary young ladies, your family has been here for (now) Twelve generations, having arrived originally in 1619. Your patrilineal ancestors participated in the French \u0026amp; Indian War, the American Revolution, the initial settlement of Kentucky, and the American Civil War. We\u0026rsquo;ve been on this continent for six years shy of 400 years, living in that time in Virginia and Kentucky almost exclusively.\nUntil today, I could name my lineage back through Prince (my Great-Grandfather) and that\u0026rsquo;s it. It\u0026rsquo;s humbling to see just how involved in American History we were.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/12/today-i-learned-my-family-has-been-in-america-since-jamestown/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTo Maria and Grace, my lovely daughters,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday I learned your blood runs very deep in this country, and deep in Kentucky.  Here is your lineage:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYour father\u0026rsquo;s full name is Harold Ray Combs, born in 1978 to Harold Gene and Dottie (Haddix) Combs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold Gene was born in 1953 to Bryan and Cora (McIntosh) Combs.  (We tend to say the \u0026lsquo;McIntosh\u0026rsquo; part of the line is where our crazy comes from, but I\u0026rsquo;m not so sure.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Today I Learned my Family has been in America since Jamestown"},{"content":"So, I broke down and took one of the online courses offered at my work on Project Management basics. I kept hearing domain language from managers, former project managers, and true project managers from our other (non-software) function. I wanted some info on their thoughts and methodology.\nSo, during that, I had a light-bulb moment: Agile software has no project managers.\nSeriously. Back-up and read that sentence. They don\u0026rsquo;t exist, and if that gives you the heebie-jeebies, keep reading. If you have agile and project managers, then you\u0026rsquo;re doing it wrong, at least as nearly as I can tell.\nTaken from my notes on the course, this is the role of the project manager.\nLeader —\u0026gt; Clear understanding of direction \u0026amp; purpose, from customer or client perspective of its value. _ You have a sense of ownership._ Manager —\u0026gt; Administrative functions affecting time, budget, scope, and quality. Facilitator —\u0026gt; Help the team get its work done. Create an environment conducive to work, meeting team individual work styles. Mentor —\u0026gt; Provide guidance to others, to help with their professional development. Lastly, the program describes the dedicated stakeholder list of the project, naturally with the Project Manager first:\nProject Manager: Responsible for successful completion of project. Manages activities of the project, leads project team, communicates with stakeholders. (emphasis mine)\nThat made me gag just a little. How is some dude who can\u0026rsquo;t code responsible for the ultimate outcome of a creative endeavor. Seems analogous to congratulating Picasso\u0026rsquo;s building superintendent for how good the paintings out of his workshop were. O_o.\nNo agile methodology has a project manager per my awareness. You do have a project team that takes ownership of maintaining direction and purpose through engagement, deals with its own administrative functions in cooperation with whatever minimal management input is required, works with others to remove roadblocks, and mentors its own members to be developers, not managers, or project managers, or whatever else you want to call them. It *can* work, but the second you cede ultimate responsibility to another party (a manager, a project manager), people lose the \u0026ldquo;skin in the game\u0026rdquo; feel that makes startups or other such enterprises exciting (and productive), and you hobble your Agile implementation.\nAs ever, I\u0026rsquo;m profoundly naive about these matters, but it did at least spark some recognition about why Agile has a tough go in many organizations. If you\u0026rsquo;re looking for some \u0026ldquo;fatherly\u0026rdquo; figure whom you trust to telephone you status reports, agile isn\u0026rsquo;t for you. Go back to wasting reams of paper and money on your old processes while you get disrupted from other people who have it sorted.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/12/lightbulb-agile-has-no-project-managers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I broke down and took one of the online courses offered at my work on Project Management basics.  I kept hearing domain language from managers, former project managers, and true project managers from our other (non-software) function.  I wanted some info on their thoughts and methodology.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, during that, I had a light-bulb moment:  \u003cstrong\u003eAgile software has no project managers\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeriously.  Back-up and read that sentence.  They don\u0026rsquo;t exist, and if that gives you the heebie-jeebies, keep reading.  If you have agile and project managers, then you\u0026rsquo;re doing it wrong, at least as nearly as I can tell.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lightbulb: Agile *has* no project managers"},{"content":"Have an test requiring me to fast at 3pm today, so no eating for me. CRANKY!\nIt occurred to me today to add-up all the time I\u0026rsquo;ve spent in the last 2 years trying to define processes. Then I realized if I did, I\u0026rsquo;d probably become violently ill or just violent. My last attempt. Seems like it should be this simple:\nHave a list of crap for people to do. Whoever populates that list is THE BOSS, whether his/her title says so or not. If bad stuff gets on that list and causes you to fail, that person accepts responsibility. Make sure someone [competent] covers each item. In the world of fairy farts and gooseberries, he\u0026rsquo;ll choose from that list altruistically. In the real world, someone takes a bite out of the crap sandwich and gets assigned work. When people don\u0026rsquo;t get their crap done, they feel consequences. If they can\u0026rsquo;t ever get their crap done satisfactorily, you fire them. When people do get their crap done, regularly, you promote them. When they stop getting their crap done, you demote them and promote someone else. (Take THAT, Peter Principle.) I think with the above 4 points, I\u0026rsquo;ve violated every single methodology in practice today.\nI am so frustrated at Process, more so than I am with Architecture (note: both capitalized). Process is the fetish for people who get off on telling people what to do. Architecture is the fetish for people telling boxes on a Visio what to do. That is, it\u0026rsquo;s at least less ego-centric than \u0026lsquo;Process\u0026rsquo;\u0026ndash;Visio sprites don\u0026rsquo;t have feelings.\n* * *\nDo we need processes? Yes, we do. I\u0026rsquo;m not naive.\nI guess I\u0026rsquo;m saying I\u0026rsquo;m not your man for developing them because I don\u0026rsquo;t see any sense in me wasting one more breath defining one. All seem equally bad in their own ways, and distract from whatever is The Task at Hand:\nIf you want Waterfall, I\u0026rsquo;ll have plenty of time to think through the problem, which isn\u0026rsquo;t bad. I\u0026rsquo;ll also have plenty of time to resent the decisions we made way too early, and the time spent writing \u0026ldquo;write only\u0026rdquo; documentation that covers our butt if (when) things go wrong. But, at least I\u0026rsquo;ll have plenty of time, minus that month+ of crunch at the end of every waterfall project. At least you\u0026rsquo;ll stay out of my face for a good long while. If you want XP, I\u0026rsquo;ll work somewhere else. Any process that responds to failure with \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re doing it wrong,\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t a process, it\u0026rsquo;s a religion, and I have one of those already. If you want Scrum, I\u0026rsquo;ll be rapidly doing whatever you pass in front of my nose with nary a whiff of long-term thought. I\u0026rsquo;ll be feeling good and staying heads down, but we\u0026rsquo;ll likely build track in parallel many times over. I\u0026rsquo;ll debate story points endlessly and stonewall that your Epics aren\u0026rsquo;t broken down enough and we\u0026rsquo;ll generally meet together and do no work until we strangle enough people that the remainder can make forward progress (\u0026ldquo;Storming/Norming/Performing\u0026rdquo; indeed!) If you want Kanban, I\u0026rsquo;ll smile and move my cards from the left to right side of a board and chuckle inwardly that this is the best organizational principle we can come-up with 70 years after the invention of the Digital Computer, and it\u0026rsquo;s the end-all-be-all Because Toyota Does It. ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/09/cranky-rant-on-process/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHave an test requiring me to fast at 3pm today, so no eating for me.  CRANKY!\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt occurred to me today to add-up all the time I\u0026rsquo;ve spent in the last 2 years trying to define processes.  Then I realized if I did, I\u0026rsquo;d probably become violently ill or just violent. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy last attempt.  Seems like it should be this simple:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHave a list of crap for people to do.  Whoever populates that list is THE BOSS, whether his/her title says so or not.  If bad stuff gets on that list and causes you to fail, that person accepts responsibility.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMake sure someone [competent] covers each item.  In the world of fairy farts and gooseberries, he\u0026rsquo;ll choose from that list altruistically.  In the real world, someone takes a bite out of the crap sandwich and gets assigned work.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhen people don\u0026rsquo;t get their crap done, they feel consequences. If they can\u0026rsquo;t ever get their crap done satisfactorily, you fire them.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhen people do get their crap done, regularly, you promote them.  When they stop getting their crap done, you \u003cem\u003edemote\u003c/em\u003e them and promote someone else.  (Take THAT, Peter Principle.)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think with  the above 4 points, I\u0026rsquo;ve violated every single methodology in practice today.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cranky Rant: On Process"},{"content":"A couple of things hit me tonight: First, I\u0026rsquo;ve never written anything about my experience in Cebu last October, which is a travesty. Second, I\u0026rsquo;ve never written anything about Dr. Who, which is near an unforgivable sin.\n(Above: Billie Piper and David Tennant, the 10th Doctor)\nAs I was about to leave for Cebu, October 2nd 2012, I noted my wife wasn\u0026rsquo;t speaking to me. I was about to fly halfway around the world (12 hour time difference) and leave her holding the bag: Three kids. New house with a mold problem. New middle schooler. Not. Good.\nI had, at least, figured out that Amazon gave away streaming video to every Amazon Prime member, and set-up both our Blu-Ray player and the piddly Vizio flatscreen upstairs keyed to our account. I noted on the penultimate night of my residence in North America that she\u0026rsquo;d idly looked-up Dr. Who.\n\u0026ldquo;You realize there are like 50 years worth of these things, right?\u0026rdquo; I asked. Control freak that I am, I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to live through another binge like Angel where we both hated it and watched it just\u0026hellip;.because we\u0026rsquo;re completionists.\n\u0026ldquo;Mrhfm.\u0026rdquo; Oh right, she wasn\u0026rsquo;t really speaking to me. Back to packing.\n\u0026hellip;4 weeks elapse\u0026hellip;.\nI come home to find Whitney amid the 6th Series of the modern Dr. Who, and I\u0026rsquo;m utterly lost. She\u0026rsquo;s rabid\u0026ndash;2, 3 episodes per night. Driven! I know the tropes of Who: He\u0026rsquo;s an alien, he changes faces whenever the actor quits he regenerates, and his Police Box, the TARDIS, is a time and space ship. Aside from that, and lots of quaint British English (Oh, \u0026lsquo;chips\u0026rsquo; are fries!) I have no idea what I\u0026rsquo;m watching.\nThen, I watched The Girl in the Fireplace.\nHoly crap, can these guys tell a story. When Pompador and the Doctor stood in Versailles and looked out on the stars, the depth was great. I got a glimpse of the Doctor\u0026rsquo;s nuance there, and I was hooked. I started back from Ecclestone\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m the Doctor. Now run!\u0026rdquo; and got all the way to Matt Smith\u0026rsquo;s quirkiness and the Ponds.\nToday, my shower curtain is a Dalek with the caption \u0026ldquo;Exfoliate!\u0026rdquo; My eldest daughter asked for a Sonic Screwdriver for her 6th birthday. The back of my wife\u0026rsquo;s Fusion sports 5 stickers: Davros, a Weeping Angel, a Cyberman, and two Daleks with bows in their hair. That\u0026rsquo;s our \u0026ldquo;family portrait.\u0026rdquo;\nI\u0026rsquo;m a Whovian, and no matter what the 12th Doctor holds, I\u0026rsquo;ve appreciated everything the new series has offered. It\u0026rsquo;s better than Trek ever was for me; instead of a story about humanity reaching aliens, it\u0026rsquo;s the story of an alien who guards humanity, amid all our failings. Somehow, that alien\u0026rsquo;s story is much more human than Trek ever achieved.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/09/on-dr.-who/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA couple of things hit me tonight:  First, I\u0026rsquo;ve never written anything about my experience in Cebu last October, which is a \u003cem\u003etravesty\u003c/em\u003e.  Second, I\u0026rsquo;ve never written anything about Dr. Who, which is near an \u003cem\u003eunforgivable sin\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/12/123390/2851405-drwho.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/12/123390/2851405-drwho.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Above: Billie Piper and David Tennant, the 10th Doctor)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs I was about to leave for Cebu, October 2nd 2012, I noted my wife wasn\u0026rsquo;t speaking to me.  I was about to fly halfway around the world (12 hour time difference) and leave her holding the bag:  Three kids.  New house with a mold problem.  New middle schooler. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Dr. Who"},{"content":"So, the family and I have been attending Bedford Acres since July of this year, and I\u0026rsquo;ve been consistently amazed at what service has been like. I\u0026rsquo;ve often wondered what it would be like if revival came through past church homes. Basically, it\u0026rsquo;d be like a regular Sunday at BACC.\nAnd today, the curveball.\nThe minister gets up on stage and announces, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not preaching a sermon today,\u0026rdquo; and this was the verse on the screen (1 Cor 14:29-31):\n29 Let two or three prophesy, and let the others evaluate what is said. 30 But if someone is prophesying and another person receives a revelation from the Lord, the one who is speaking must stop. 31 In this way, all who prophesy will have a turn to speak, one after the other, so that everyone will learn and be encouraged\nSo, he posed to us: \u0026ldquo;What would happen if we did that today. If you have something to say, a prayer, a thanksgiving, a confession, go for it. This is completely unscripted, and I don\u0026rsquo;t know what anyone\u0026rsquo;s going to say.\u0026rdquo;\nI looked over at Whitney who was in the middle of an epic hayfever attack (1 box tissues per hour) and our eyes were a little wider than ususal. This was different.\nI have to say, it was a privilege to be there, and this verse came out of one of the senior folks that got up to speak:\n(James 4:14) Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a testament to the Spirit that nearly everything that was said revolved around this, from the widow who\u0026rsquo;d lost her beloved, to those who stepped up to pass on the Gospel to new folks, because we\u0026rsquo;re all here for a short time in Eternal terms.\nNeat. Stuff.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/09/the-day-1-corinthians-14-came-to-bedford-acres/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, the family and I have been attending \u003ca href=\"http://www.bedfordacres.com/\"\u003eBedford Acres\u003c/a\u003e since July of this year, and I\u0026rsquo;ve been consistently amazed at what service has been like.   I\u0026rsquo;ve often wondered what it would be like if revival came through past church homes.   Basically, it\u0026rsquo;d be like a regular Sunday at BACC.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd today, the curveball.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe minister gets up on stage and announces, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not preaching a sermon today,\u0026rdquo; and this was the verse on the screen (1 Cor 14:29-31):\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Day 1 Corinthians 14 came to Bedford Acres"},{"content":"The laying-down of the phone continues to bear fruit, except at my waistline which seems to be expanding in direct proportion to my distance from having a woobie smartphone.\nFirst up, Neal Stephenson\u0026rsquo;s tome Cryptonomicon. While written in 2002, this epic work (1168 pages paperback, though I read the kindle edition) presaged much of headlines circa 2013: Cryptography, the emergence of \u0026rsquo;technocrats\u0026rsquo; who seem to be running the world, and the importance of finding one\u0026rsquo;s humanity amid it all.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t say \u0026ldquo;epic\u0026rdquo; lightly. This is a book set partially in World War II (\u0026ldquo;The Second Great 20th Century Struggle for Global Hegemony\u0026rdquo;) and partially in \u0026ldquo;modern\u0026rdquo; times, circa turn of the 21st century, but told with a generally 3rd person limited perspective that I found maddening at times. Like the underlying framework\u0026ndash;the study of hidden messages and the breaking of the codes that hide those secrets\u0026ndash;the novel reveals itself s-l-o-w-l-y, and sometimes it\u0026rsquo;s challenging keep going.\nWhich brings us to either the main complaint or the main thing that makes this book awesome: The math and computer science part of it. Being on the other side of it, I have no idea how someone without a math/CS education even understands the book. At the very ass-end of my algorithms class at in college, we got to play with cryptography and cryptanalysis and so I understood most of what Stephenson was talking about, but I\u0026rsquo;ve no idea how a good 10% of the book doesn\u0026rsquo;t sound like this:\nWith similar results for the reader.\nThat being said, the central character, Randy Waterhouse, is the epitome of a Gen-X American: Heir to a supreme legacy from his grandfather, Lawrence, a central figure in the development of the digital computer, Randy\u0026rsquo;s basically an underperforming, henpecked itinerant who we meet after he\u0026rsquo;s finally had it with his common law wife\u0026rsquo;s intelligensia cronies. He joins his tall-drink-of-water business partner Avi in another lucrative business venture, hidden behind 2048-bit RSA public/private keys and secure email servers. Randy is something of an amazing protagonist, because he learns as we learn, informed by hidden information thought lost to the War and time, resurrected by an unsanitary number of deus ex machina.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not that Stephenson\u0026rsquo;s lazy. For heaven\u0026rsquo;s sake, he had Bruce Schneier develop a new encryption algorithm and he put a PERL script of the algorithm in the book. At one point, he did an incredibly elegant description relative prime number recurrence using a bicycle chain. This guy has Stephen Hawking-like gift for metaphor, truly. Instead, we have layer-upon-layer of characters and idiosyncracies (remember: EPIC), and tying it all up just wasn\u0026rsquo;t very satisfying. The ending was so abrupt and the central antagonist in the modern part of the story so flat and unbelievable, I had to re-read a couple of passages twice to see after all that prose he\u0026rsquo;d really tied-up the plot like that.\nPerhaps the commentary is simply: Sometimes, life is abrupt and you just have to deal.\nHidden within is a gem of a WW2 narrative, with appearances by Alan Turing, Douglas MacArthur, and a theatre of the war that\u0026rsquo;s often misrepresented\u0026ndash;the Philippines. Also, there\u0026rsquo;s the underpinnings of our modern world here: Turing\u0026rsquo;s development of the digital computer. TL;DR: Good book. Glad I read it. Have no idea how 95% of people would understand it.\n* * *\nXenophon\u0026rsquo;s Anabasis\nQuite simply, this is one of the first \u0026ldquo;histories\u0026rdquo; worthy of the name, told in the 3rd person with an eye for accuracy. Xenophon, here, is a soldier elevated to leadership after his mercenary army is defeated and the nominal generals are all slaughtered when he and his crew are over a thousand miles from home and they\u0026rsquo;re ordered to lay down their arms.\nWhat would you do? Lay down and die? Neither did they.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s get this out of the way: This \u0026ldquo;book\u0026rdquo; was written 2400 years ago, and aside from some stylistic issues, one could imagine Patton, Rommel, or Napoleon penning it. The descriptions are slavishly chronological and vivid; Xenophon elides little. One wishes he\u0026rsquo;d elide the speeches made in camp to rally the troops, but the dialogue there gives roundness to the supporting cast of Greek hoplites, who were ordinary soldiers, not Homeric heroes. They fought, they bled, and over a thousand of them didn\u0026rsquo;t make the return trip. However, they were admirably rational, at least in Xenophon\u0026rsquo;s account, and they generally did the right thing even in the face of hopeless situation after situation. Taken another way: This thing is like the Odyssey, but with 11 out of 12 of the original ships making it back to Ithaca, ahead of schedule. Xenophon knew how to run a project.\nI\u0026rsquo;m glad to have read it, but I resorted to skimming much in the last 25%. Again, this is a history, not a novel, so he has to give the same weight chronologically to what happens after it becomes apparent the army is going to survive. The middle 50%, however, is gripping, with descriptions of tactics and \u0026ldquo;the fog of war\u0026rdquo; and how to deal with leadership and motivation.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/09/reading-list-cryptonomicon-and-anabasis/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe laying-down of the phone continues to bear fruit, except at my waistline which seems to be expanding in direct proportion to my distance from having a woobie smartphone.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst up, Neal Stephenson\u0026rsquo;s tome \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Cryptonomicon-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0060512806\"\u003eCryptonomicon\u003c/a\u003e.  While written in 2002, this epic work (1168 pages paperback, though I read the kindle edition) presaged much of headlines circa 2013:  Cryptography, the emergence of \u0026rsquo;technocrats\u0026rsquo; who seem to be running the world, and the importance of finding one\u0026rsquo;s humanity amid it all.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reading list: \"Cryptonomicon\" and \"Anabasis\""},{"content":"1 Cor 13, v1-3\n1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge ; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.\nIf I ___, but have not love, it is nothing.\nInitial response: \u0026ldquo;Wow, how screwed am I?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Love\u0026rdquo; there isn\u0026rsquo;t sex desire (eros), close friendship love (phileo), or family love (storge). This is agape:\n\u0026ldquo;Agape is selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love\u0026rdquo;\nIn the sermon today, pastor LaHue brought up that \u0026lsquo;Agape\u0026rsquo; love was used rarely prior to Christianity. Pope Benedict XVI spoke on this at length here.\nSo what\u0026rsquo;s the problem?\nThe unconditional part was and remains the problem.\nI grew up with wonderful examples of love and devotion. My parents fought, screwed-up, and made-up. As a small child, I just couldn\u0026rsquo;t handle it; I was watching way too many soap operas and \u0026ldquo;Divorce Court\u0026rdquo; at my babysitter\u0026rsquo;s and I\u0026rsquo;d often try to intervene, to get them to stop fighting. \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m afraid you guys are gonna get a Duh-vorce.\u0026rdquo; I even remember the stupid, whiny way I\u0026rsquo;d say it. It got to the point that I\u0026rsquo;d memorized the patronizing speech my father would make back to me:\nNow, Harold Ray, you know that I love your mother VERY much and that\u0026hellip;.\nYeah, Dad\u0026hellip;so why do you guys scream, holler, and swear at one another? Given a few mistaken impressions from one or the other (\u0026ldquo;Now, if I want your \u0026lsquo;Mother/Father\u0026rsquo; to know this I\u0026rsquo;ll tell myself\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;) and I quickly concluded that part and parcel of Love was keeping part of yourself back, duping people, etc.\nI saw the downsides of Love, too, I saw it make Mom cry, and Dad crazy. I saw them seemingly trapped with one another, by their devotion.\n*That* is love, huh? Greeaaaat.\nSo, I did what I knew to do: I processed the information I was given, and I formed conclusions. I turned inward, excluding extraneous data. I found solace in things that didn\u0026rsquo;t hurt. People hurt, machines didn\u0026rsquo;t. I LOVED watching TOS Star Trek, especially Spock. He had this crap sorted out\u0026ndash;he could compartmentalize, and he was much stronger than a regular human, not only because he was a Vulcan and that\u0026rsquo;s how they roll, but because he mastered his humanity, trying to erase it.\nI was probably the only kid who felt let down watching Spock turn down Kholinar and turn back to his humanity. I felt betrayed.\nAmidst all this, there\u0026rsquo;s certain ceremonies and rituals\u0026ndash;pleasantries\u0026ndash;one must observe to survive. School lunches, church, family reunions, going to the grocery with one\u0026rsquo;s mother. Somehow (possibly through sheer physical size) I escaped the usual fate of a person with my attitudes, being the picked-on nerd, the bottom of the social stratum. I acted enough like my Mom that people found me kind and pleasant. I could turn on the afterburners of my memory and intelligence whenever I needed to, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t beat people down with it. Well, usually.\nAnyway, it\u0026rsquo;s the acted in the above that\u0026rsquo;s important. I \u0026ldquo;knew how to act,\u0026rdquo; but it had no relation to how I felt or whom I cared for or whom I loved.\nPeople could see that I was \u0026ldquo;off,\u0026rdquo; especially people from my extended family that saw me only every few years. My uncle Ova (yes, his real name) remarked at least once in every encounter, \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re doing a fine job of playing adult. You need to be a kid before it\u0026rsquo;s too late.\u0026rdquo; He might just as well recommend Rapunzel fly from her high tower. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t going anywhere, I had the math to prove I was right.\n\u0026ldquo;Love\u0026rdquo; in me was such a perverse and twisted thing, I almost couldn\u0026rsquo;t describe it. It was a thing of control, of obligation, of quid pro quo. \u0026ldquo;I did ____ for you, and now you treat me this way?!\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;d heard that sentence innumerable times in my childhood, and now I internalized it: I would \u0026ldquo;Love\u0026rdquo; people so much they had to treat me right. (Parenthetically, if you can\u0026rsquo;t see where I\u0026rsquo;m going with this, let me reiterate\u0026ndash;that last sentence is the furthest you can possibly be from love.)\nI heard words to the effect that it was not so, that it was self-sacrificing and it didn\u0026rsquo;t hold grudges. Indeed, the following verses to the above are:\nLove is patient, love is kind and is not jealous ; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly ; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth ; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll be as frank as possible: Until recently, I\u0026rsquo;ve never read those verses as anything but over-sweet bullshit. I\u0026rsquo;ve never seen anyone demonstrate that behavior, or perhaps I did and I saw it as \u0026rsquo;extraneous data\u0026rsquo; after said person fell down (inevitably) sometime later. People would strut down the aisle, have that verse read at their wedding, then lie/cheat/steal and divorce. It didn\u0026rsquo;t add up.\nAs one inevitably does, I grew and had my turns with eros, and they were wonderful and terrible in their own way: Mindless bodily attraction and obsession. One could see how the poets\u0026rsquo; words of being \u0026rsquo;lovestruck\u0026rsquo; were true. While the attendant endorphin and oxytocin releases in my limbic system were wonderful, they didn\u0026rsquo;t show me anything about any \u0026lsquo;self-sacrificing\u0026rsquo; love. Seemed like the same quid pro quo BS, just with a much lower tier of \u0026ldquo;needs.\u0026rdquo; As soon as one couldn\u0026rsquo;t satisfy those needs, someone else would. Plan on it! (Again, data + analysis == prediction.)\nAt 35, I\u0026rsquo;m just learning how screwed-up all the above is. Agape is loving people, ignoring what they do, say, or feel. I committed to my wife, and I have loved her not caring what she thought of me. Irrationally, that is the only way to really love anyone: Honestly, with vulnerability and yet the immovable faith that you are a conduit of Love from the Source of Love.\nI\u0026rsquo;m doing a terrible job of it so far. I\u0026rsquo;m starting with my family, but once you go beyond that, it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;shields up Mr. Sulu.\u0026rdquo; I still get hurt far too easily, and I lapse into old patterns. I\u0026rsquo;ve seen progress since January, and I hope to continue it. Recent events and poor choices on my part seem to be taking steps back, but that\u0026rsquo;s just the Adversary being on his toes. It will work out.\nSo, in summary, if you\u0026rsquo;ve got this concept of love, consider that you\u0026rsquo;re wrong, that your base assumptions might be incorrect.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/09/on-love/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e1 Cor 13, v1-3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1 If I speak with the \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6473695\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003etongues of men and of \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6473695\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eangels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6473695\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eclanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6473695\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eprophecy, and know all \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6473695\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003emysteries and all\u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6473695\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e knowledge ; and if I have \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6473695\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eall faith, so as to \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6473695\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eremove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.3 And if I \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6473695\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003egive all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6473695\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003esurrender my body \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6473695\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eto be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"Love\""},{"content":"I just want to delete my internet presence entirely. Over 15 years since I groped around on usenet, I\u0026rsquo;m sick of it. I\u0026rsquo;ll get over it, and I won\u0026rsquo;t do anything rash.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve already shutdown my Facebook account, as of Jan 1st this year.\nI\u0026rsquo;m currently the #3 contributor on our internal social network at work, but I\u0026rsquo;m tired of the inevitable running jokes that putting yourself out there entail. Getting people to talk to one another and share ideas is incredibly difficult, and people seem to carry the same stress, ego, and polarization from their personal life into the work sphere. Throw in some language barriers and hilarity ensues!\nTwitter\u0026rsquo;s making me sad these days; I don\u0026rsquo;t know why. It\u0026rsquo;s alot of people talking AT one another, not real communication, but I stay because it\u0026rsquo;s where people I like interacting with are.\nGoogle+ is\u0026hellip;.a joke.\n* * *\nRecent events have convinced me of realities that most people sort out for themselves at around 12 years old: (1) Shut up, and (2) Trust no one. To wit: If I hear one more time that every move I make is being watched and that I have huge target square on my back, I think I\u0026rsquo;ll scream.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/09/one-of-those-days...in-a-funk./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just want to delete my internet presence entirely.  Over 15 years since I \u003ca href=\"https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/prom$20candids/rec.photo.equipment.35mm/QF74Y3IMWvs/jXXh00eb798J\"\u003egroped around on usenet\u003c/a\u003e, I\u0026rsquo;m sick of it.  I\u0026rsquo;ll get over it, and I won\u0026rsquo;t do anything rash.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve already shutdown my Facebook account, as of Jan 1st this year.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m currently the #3 contributor on our internal social network at work, but I\u0026rsquo;m tired of the inevitable running jokes that putting yourself out there entail.   Getting people to talk to one another and share ideas is incredibly difficult, and people seem to carry the same stress, ego, and polarization from their personal life into the work sphere.  Throw in some language barriers and hilarity ensues!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"One of Those Days...In a Funk."},{"content":"Forgive me, I\u0026rsquo;m recovering from learning today that Peter Egan is retiring from Road and Track.\nWhat I\u0026rsquo;m about to write is Dharmic revenge for my actions as an 16-25 year old: Ten years on from that, I hate shopping for anything durable. I don\u0026rsquo;t mind shopping for food, theatre tickets, or the average temporal thrill, but when it comes to something that\u0026rsquo;s going to take-up residence at my house, I\u0026rsquo;d rather not.\nBasically, I separate shopping from buying. Shopping implies going somewhere, looking at something, maybe trying it out, then walking away and thinking about it.\nThis has a few distasteful outcomes for me:\nOutright obsession. Though better since I got a handle on my brain chemistry years ago, I can still obsess about some shiny object, night and day, for a remarkable time. Mostly these are mechanical things: Guns, cars, motorcycles. It\u0026rsquo;s a fever, in my blood, with all the positives and negatives. Disappointment. I\u0026rsquo;d been obsessing about something and then the reality of it was just disappointing. Like, say, modern cars: Overwrought, low-revving, paragons of technology, with gun-slit windows and the character of your average. Yes, I need 18\u0026quot; wheels on my Ford Fiesta (and the associated turning circle of the Bismark after the British torpedo\u0026rsquo;d its rudder, thanks!) General empathy for wasting everyone\u0026rsquo;s time. Going to the store (or car dealership, or gun shop) when I\u0026rsquo;ve no intention of buying anything is just a monumental waste of time. I\u0026rsquo;m not getting the salesperson any commission, I\u0026rsquo;m not going home with a shiny widget, and I burned gas and time to get there and get back. Wasteful. There\u0026rsquo;s the genuine vanity of it all. Consumerist culture surrounds you like cloying ladies of the night at the entrance of Cebuano mall\u0026ndash;you can\u0026rsquo;t escape them, so you just barge through and don\u0026rsquo;t make eye contact. Which is draining. For big ticket items, there\u0026rsquo;s the inevitable follow-up calls, which waste my time as well. Buying something is sometimes even worse:\nAs many freshly-married Cassanovas discover, having is not the same as wanting. Wanting to buy something, lusting after it, consuming yourself in knowledge of the thing is great. It\u0026rsquo;s a thrill. At one time, I knew the specifications of every 35mm SLR camera for sale in america between $100 and $500. Then I bought a Pentax PZ-1P on consignment and the chase was over. The camera was great, but the let-down was real. You have to care \u0026amp; feed the thing. Lord willing, it\u0026rsquo;s not alive, so you needn\u0026rsquo;t *actually* spend time and money dealing with it, but when you\u0026rsquo;re talking serious mechanical equipment, there\u0026rsquo;s a tangible cost to your life to just keep it maintained. Thus the old adage, \u0026ldquo;Your stuff owns you.\u0026rdquo; ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/08/i-hate-shopping/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eForgive me, I\u0026rsquo;m recovering from learning today that \u003ca href=\"http://www.roadandtrack.com/voices/columnists/peter-egan/voices-columnists-peter-egan-side-glances-65-3-roa1013http://www.roadandtrack.com/voices/columnists/peter-egan/voices-columnists-peter-egan-side-glances-65-3-roa1013\"\u003ePeter Egan is retiring from Road and Track\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat I\u0026rsquo;m about to write is Dharmic revenge for my actions as an 16-25 year old: Ten years on from that, I hate shopping for anything durable.   I don\u0026rsquo;t mind shopping for food, theatre tickets, or the average temporal thrill, but when it comes to something that\u0026rsquo;s going to take-up residence at my house, I\u0026rsquo;d rather not.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I Hate Shopping"},{"content":"PostIts\nRoundtable.\nSturm und Drang\nYou said what you believed. You gave suggestions. You swore too much, and called \u0026ldquo;bullshit\u0026rdquo; at least once.\nGood for you. Old, impolitic, devil-may-care you arose and you had the \u0026ldquo;tough conversation.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/08/a-snapshot/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePostIts\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoundtable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSturm und Drang\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nYou said what you believed.  You gave suggestions.  You swore too much, and called \u0026ldquo;bullshit\u0026rdquo; at least once.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGood for you.  Old, impolitic, devil-may-care you arose and you had the \u0026ldquo;tough conversation.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Snapshot"},{"content":"George Carlin (God rest his soul) had this great bit about humanity. From memory:\n\u0026ldquo;How\u0026rsquo;s the earth doing?\u0026rdquo; people ask. \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re destroying the earth.\u0026rdquo; How\u0026rsquo;s the EARTH doing?! Earth is doing just dandy. Four billion years and counting. Like we\u0026rsquo;re really going to hurt the Earth. You wanna know how the Earth is doing? Why don\u0026rsquo;t you go on down to Pompeii and ask those people frozen in place under Vesuvius. The EARTH is doing just fine. It\u0026rsquo;s not going anywhere\u0026hellip;.we are. (::Wild applause::)\nPack your S*@# folks, we\u0026rsquo;re going away. Time\u0026rsquo;s up. Earth needed oil, and we got the dinosaurs. Then it needed plastic, so it got us. It\u0026rsquo;s got plastic, so\u0026hellip;\n/Digression.\nSo, today, I had a prolonged technical discussion with a colleague from India. This guy and I are far from infallible, but I trust this man. He\u0026rsquo;s careful, diligent, and professional. He told me \u0026ldquo;The Frobulator won\u0026rsquo;t support foobar().\u0026rdquo;\nWe discussed it back and forth, and I said I\u0026rsquo;d relay the information. First person I meet: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re meeting some challenges with the Frobulator not supporting foobar().\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Oh really,\u0026rdquo; said individual replies and swivels to workstation. \u0026ldquo;Google\u0026hellip;.frobulator support\u0026hellip;.foobar\u0026hellip;.Ah, first hit is \u0026lsquo;How to make frobulator support foobar.\u0026rsquo; Let me send that your way in an email.\u0026rdquo; And she did, with the tagline of \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re welcome.\u0026rdquo;\nI could feel my ire rising so I thanked said individual and wished them a pleasant remainder of the morning.\nI guess I can just retire to something real, since the first \u0026lsquo;I\u0026rsquo;m Feeling Lucky\u0026rsquo; response from Google, or some copy/pasta\u0026rsquo;s code from StackOverflow.com is gospel.\nPerhaps the whole purpose in humanity isn\u0026rsquo;t plastic, but rather the Googleplex and StackOverflow. Pipe that crap into a compiler and let\u0026rsquo;s just hit the beach or go for a hike.\nMy button pushing finger\u0026rsquo;s tired, Jane. Where\u0026rsquo;s Elroy?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/08/rant-the-google-stackoverflow-problem/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGeorge Carlin (God rest his soul) had this great bit about humanity.  From memory:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;How\u0026rsquo;s the earth doing?\u0026rdquo; people ask.  \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re destroying the earth.\u0026rdquo;  How\u0026rsquo;s the EARTH doing?!  Earth is doing just dandy.  Four billion years and counting.  Like we\u0026rsquo;re really going to hurt the Earth.  You wanna know how the Earth is doing? Why don\u0026rsquo;t you go on down to Pompeii and ask those people frozen in place under Vesuvius.  The EARTH is doing just fine.  It\u0026rsquo;s not going anywhere\u0026hellip;.we are.  (::Wild applause::)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rant: The Google \u0026 StackOverflow Problem"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s a huge reason why I gave up my Smartphone two weeks ago:\nI see this. Everywhere.\nYou\u0026rsquo;re not at the event, you\u0026rsquo;re watching it through your phone\u0026rsquo;s viewfinder. You\u0026rsquo;re not interacting, you\u0026rsquo;re looking at the palm of your hand. It\u0026rsquo;s quickly becoming normal to be \u0026lsquo;social\u0026rsquo; while talking over or around a screen with 10% of your brain. You\u0026rsquo;re not thinking, you\u0026rsquo;re regurgitating what you can find on Youtube, Imdb, Google, or Siri. While this information may be instantly correct, it obviates the need for you. You\u0026rsquo;re not driving, you\u0026rsquo;re looking for the next point where you can zone out (straight stretch of road, stop sign, line at the drive-thru) so you can carry on whatever triviality you just hit on FB, Instragram, SMS, or whatever. So, I took a step off the running train. Blowback has been both expected and encountered:\n\u0026ldquo;What is that? A Crackberry?\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;You did WHAT?\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;What? Couldn\u0026rsquo;t afford a real phone?\u0026rdquo; But, on the whole, here\u0026rsquo;s the only comment that counts: \u0026ldquo;Glad to have you back.\u0026rdquo;\nGlad to be back. I\u0026rsquo;ve read more in the last 2 weeks than probably the last 3 years, finally finishing Coders at Work, currently tackling both Stephenson\u0026rsquo;s Cryptonomicon and Putnam\u0026rsquo;s Bowling Alone. I\u0026rsquo;ve been working more in and around the house, and I\u0026rsquo;ve just been there. It\u0026rsquo;s not all been great. I like listening to music (especially podcasts) while I work, and I\u0026rsquo;ve not sorted that out fully. My new phone does have .mp3 capabilities, but it requires a microSD card I haven\u0026rsquo;t purchased yet. That\u0026rsquo;s intentional. Detox means me not strutting around the house with earbuds plugged-in ignoring everything around me. I\u0026rsquo;ve really not missed being wired to twitter 20 hours a day. Distance helps one gain perspective; that\u0026rsquo;s really the overall theme. If you never unplug (and in a way, I haven\u0026rsquo;t since I was about 10 years old), then you never grow.\nI know, I know\u0026hellip;this is just another of 100 \u0026ldquo;epiphanies\u0026rdquo; you can read if you follow this blog back to its beginning. We\u0026rsquo;ll see if it sticks, or if I find something else with which I can ignore my primary relationships.\nFor two weeks, though, it\u0026rsquo;s been sweet.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/08/giving-up-my-smartphone-two-weeks-on/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a huge reason why \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/08/ch-ch-changes-2013-edition/\" title=\"changes\"\u003eI gave up my Smartphone\u003c/a\u003e two weeks ago:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI see this.  Everywhere.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re not at the event, you\u0026rsquo;re watching it through your phone\u0026rsquo;s viewfinder.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re not interacting, you\u0026rsquo;re looking at the palm of your hand.  It\u0026rsquo;s quickly becoming normal to be \u0026lsquo;social\u0026rsquo; while talking over or around a screen with 10% of your brain.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re not thinking, you\u0026rsquo;re regurgitating what you can find on Youtube, Imdb, Google, or Siri.  While this information may be instantly \u003cem\u003ecorrect\u003c/em\u003e, it obviates the need for you.  \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re not driving, you\u0026rsquo;re looking for the next point where you can zone out (straight stretch of road, stop sign, line at the drive-thru) so you can carry on whatever triviality you just hit on FB, Instragram, SMS, or whatever.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, I took a step off the running train.  Blowback has been both expected and encountered:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Giving up my SmartPhone, Two Weeks on"},{"content":"So, since the first of the year, I\u0026rsquo;ve been a happy LastPass user, using the browser integrations in Chrome and Firefox. It\u0026rsquo;s great:\nI never need to type a password \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Especially handy if you\u0026rsquo;re projecting on screen. I never reuse a password across sites \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Even salted, hashed password files can get compromised. The \u0026lsquo;Generate Password\u0026rsquo; feature lets me generate an arbitrary length password of arbitrary complexity\u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Not vulnerable to dictionary attacks. You can use a neat 2-factor authentication system. I\u0026rsquo;ve also enabled 2-factor auth wherever I can (Google Profile, Twitter, etc.).\nHowever, the thing with a two-factor authentication system is, you must have both factors to log-in. In my case, factor 1 is my master lastpass password, which I have to enter whenever I launch a new browser. This is something I know. Factor 2 is an alphanumeric grid that lastpass generated for me and that I have with me in my wallet. This is something I possess.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s all well and good, right up until I opened my wallet this morning and saw I didn\u0026rsquo;t have my grid with me. Looking online, the way LastPass sends you a cancellation link for two-factor is via your email address. My email is\u0026hellip;.stored behind my Google Profile on Gmail, itself protected by 2-factor auth, one of which is a 20-character LastPass password. Stuck.\nMy recovery for my personal gmail is my work Gmail, protected behind\u0026hellip;.you get the idea.\nI was stuck.\nThe only thing that saved me was my work login is resettable internally via a hotline, so i reset that (they left the uber-secure reset password on my voice mail, protected behind a PIN). From there I began the cascade:\nI reset my gmail. I reset my lastpass to remove the 2-factor I re-engaged 2-factor with a new grid I regenerated my Google profile password I regenerated my work passsword Through it all, LastPass worked as advertised. But I\u0026rsquo;d just about \u0026lsquo;secured\u0026rsquo; my way out of any possibility of logging-in to work this morning.\nFun times. Gotta love security!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/08/on-lastpass-after-i-lost-the-2-factor-grid/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, since the first of the year, I\u0026rsquo;ve been a happy \u003ca href=\"https://lastpass.com/\"\u003eLastPass\u003c/a\u003e user, using the browser integrations in Chrome and Firefox.  It\u0026rsquo;s great:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI never need to type a password \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Especially handy if you\u0026rsquo;re projecting on screen.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI never reuse a password across sites \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Even salted, hashed password files can get compromised.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe \u0026lsquo;Generate Password\u0026rsquo; feature lets me generate an arbitrary length password of arbitrary complexity\u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Not vulnerable to dictionary attacks.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYou can use a neat 2-factor authentication system.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve also enabled 2-factor auth wherever I can (Google Profile, Twitter, etc.).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On LastPass After I lost the 2-factor Grid"},{"content":"The Dumb Phone As my tweet stated:\nQuit my smartphone cold turkey at noon. Wonder how bad the DTs will be #addicted\nOne of the supreme joys of ADHD is the vulnerability you have to, well, anything that stimulates your limbic system. Basically, early in the day (pre meds) and late in the day (when the meds tail off), my brain turns into this mush of neurons that\u0026rsquo;s desperate for stimulation, for something to make the cacaphony of input from visual, auditory, and sensory signals even out and make sense. However, early and late in the day is the only time I regularly see my family.\nNot. Good.\nSince I got my Atrix in 2011, I\u0026rsquo;ve been on an increasingly slack-jawed path to staring at YouTube videos and obsessing over the current trending topics on Twitter. General pathology looks something like this:\nThe last thing I see at night and the first thing I see in the morning isn\u0026rsquo;t my wife, it\u0026rsquo;s my phone. Forgive my bluntness, but that\u0026rsquo;s fucked up. I got convicted of that \u0026ldquo;right quick\u0026rdquo; today in church and the way forward was clear. My phone is an immediate escape from boredom. I\u0026rsquo;ve been reaching for it any time my current flow \u0026ldquo;blocks\u0026rdquo; as we say in Computers. It\u0026rsquo;s always there, ready for fresh content to feed my neurons. However, \u0026ldquo;boredom\u0026rdquo; is the first gateway to creativity, and I\u0026rsquo;ve become a much more banal, reactive person since I\u0026rsquo;ve had a smartphone. I\u0026rsquo;m ignoring my kids. No, that\u0026rsquo;s not quite right. I\u0026rsquo;m neglecting my kids. I noticed today a specific tic i\u0026rsquo;ve acquired: When I sing my girls to sleep I reach for my smartphone to check my twitter feed or pre-load my next Hickock45 video while I sing them a song on autopilot. Grace\u0026rsquo;s first memory of me is likely to be me with a set of iPhone headphones in my ears while she tries to get my attention. That\u0026rsquo;s fucked-up, too. The phone is a siren call to other compulsions I have. I\u0026rsquo;ve been kidding myself for too long that I could handle that. Nope, it\u0026rsquo;s been \u0026ldquo;handling\u0026rdquo; me. The above was sadly predictable. I\u0026rsquo;m mad at myself for letting it get that bad, and I don\u0026rsquo;t blame the technology, \u0026ldquo;the world,\u0026rdquo; or anything else. It\u0026rsquo;s on me, and it\u0026rsquo;s on me to stop it.\nSo, today, I got home from a wonderful sermon at church (more on that in a second) and I fulfilled the oath I made during Communion: I pulled my SIM card out of the Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro (great little phone, BTW\u0026hellip;can\u0026rsquo;t recommend it enough) and set-out to buy a phone that did Calls, Bluetooth, Text, and nothing else. I shut-off my data plan, too. I selected a GoPhone Z431 for the cut-rate price of $30, popped-in my SIM, and here I sit in the stylishly remodeled McDonald\u0026rsquo;s on US60 in Lexington. I\u0026rsquo;m sure the shakes will ensue momentarily :)\n* * *\nThe Church My wife and I decided to break with our former church home after wrestling with it for nearly 2 years. It was a difficult decision, meaning me giving up a Small Group ministry leadership position, and leaving many friends behind. But it was time; in reality, it was past time. We\u0026rsquo;d ignored God\u0026rsquo;s leading; more specifically, I ignored it, afraid of something new.\nWe decided to start looking immediately after we took a Concealed Carry Weapons class at a church one Saturday in June. I\u0026rsquo;ve no idea what kicked me out of it, but being in that other building had this latent energy, so we found ourselves right back there the next morning for service.\nI wasn\u0026rsquo;t prepared for how awesome it was.\nYou know how you get invited along to a concert sometimes and you\u0026rsquo;re just not prepared for how much connection you feel to the music, the performers, and even the genre? That was me in Bedford Acres that morning. We walked out, I sat down in Whitney\u0026rsquo;s Fusion, turned on the ignition and said to no one in particular, \u0026ldquo;So that\u0026rsquo;s what church is supposed to be like.\u0026rdquo; A pastor laying it down, straight from the Gospel, and the Gospel as \u0026ldquo;GOOD NEWS.\u0026rdquo; Unapologetic good news, soul food for starving people. Singing from the heart. People expressing their adoration for God as they saw fit: Loud voices, clapping, raised hands, swaying to the music. Missions, both at home (Jail, Nursing Homes, Single Moms) and abroad (Guatemala, China, etc.)\nIt rung my bell, pretty hard. It was like God himself elbowed me like a knowing friend: \u0026ldquo;See? SEE? I told you.\u0026rdquo;\nThe rest of the summer was due diligence, searching other candidate churches, visits back to BACC\u0026ndash;yes, it was still great\u0026ndash;and then discussions between Whitney and myself.\nIn 45 minutes, I\u0026rsquo;m headed back there to get a preso on the pastor\u0026rsquo;s vision for the future.\n* * *\nThe Firearms So the whole thing that catalyzed the changes above was a class on Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) that my wife\u0026rsquo;s Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPs) group held at BACC one Saturday in early June. Hard to believe it was 2 months ago now, but we sat through 4 hours of (really, really boring) classroom work, and about 2 hours at a bowling alley converted to a shooting range in Paris, Ky.\nTo accomplish the class, my Dad let me have his Glock 17\nTo be honest with you, I\u0026rsquo;ve never liked handguns.\nMy dad has a fascination with .38 Caliber revolvers and I kinda hate them: They\u0026rsquo;re loud, heavy, and hard to hit the broad side of a barn with. Dad has a little S\u0026amp;W .22LR 6-shot revolver one could drive tacks with, but anything in bigger bores for me felt like the gun equivalent of a 426 Hemi\u0026ndash;brutish and hard to control.\nThen I shot Dad\u0026rsquo;s Glock.\nOkay, so it\u0026rsquo;s a 17, meaning it\u0026rsquo;s a full-size \u0026ldquo;Service Pistol,\u0026rdquo; chambered in 9mm (There\u0026rsquo;s also a Glock 22 on the same frame chambered in .40 Caliber S\u0026amp;W). Sweet, sweet trigger. Magazine capacity for 17 (!) rounds. That\u0026rsquo;s a whole lot of (relatively) powerful, accurate ammo in a lightweight package.\nI could go on and on\u0026hellip;.I\u0026rsquo;ve shot the gun twice since, and I can see why people love Glocks so much. For one thing, they\u0026rsquo;re mechanical pornography: Simple\u0026hellip;.simple to field-strip, clean, and incredibly reliable. Racking the slide has this satisfying yet light action.\nSince then, I\u0026rsquo;ve been a bit of a semi-automatic handgun whore. I\u0026rsquo;ve gone to the local gun shop + firing range, and shot things like the Sig Sauer P229, Glock 19, Glock 26, Berreta 92FS, and various other .38 and .380 guns.\nWhere I\u0026rsquo;m at right now: I\u0026rsquo;m sold on 9mm. Plenty of punch, great designs out there (all-metal and polymer). What gets me now is the great divide between the striker fired pistols and the Double Action/Single Action designs with conventional safeties.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been around guns since I was born, and I\u0026rsquo;ve known how to safety a levergun since I was 4 or so\u0026ndash;honestly, I don\u0026rsquo;t even remember learning it, it was like I was born knowing how. While I love Glocks and the design, the lack of an integrated safety bothers me considering this will be a weapon I prospectively carry and keep in my home. I\u0026rsquo;ve been around my pal Whitlock at work long enough that the concept of carrying a Glock hot (1 in the chamber and the striker ready to fire) is a bit worrisome.\nEnough bloviating. Current crush objects:\nGlock 26 (Austrian, Striker fire, SA)\nBeretta PX4 Storm (Italian, DA/SA, hammer fired, polymer base)\nSig Sauer P229 (German, DA/SA, hammer fired)\nHaven\u0026rsquo;t bought anything yet, but it\u0026rsquo;s coming. :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/08/ch-ch-changes-2013-edition/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"the-dumb-phone\"\u003eThe Dumb Phone\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/miniharryc/status/366656075728027649\"\u003emy tweet\u003c/a\u003e stated:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQuit my smartphone cold turkey at noon.  Wonder how bad the DTs will be #addicted\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the supreme joys of ADHD is the vulnerability you have to, well, \u003cstrong\u003eanything\u003c/strong\u003e that stimulates your limbic system.  Basically, early in the day (pre meds) and late in the day (when the meds tail off), my brain turns into this mush of neurons that\u0026rsquo;s desperate for stimulation, for something to make the cacaphony of input from visual, auditory, and sensory signals even out and make sense.  However, early and late in the day is the only time I regularly see my family.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ch-ch-changes, 2013 Edition"},{"content":"I resolved to write down a few things to leave for my kids, some things I wished I\u0026rsquo;d heard from my parents. This is the first of those.\nMy Darling Joey, Maria, and Grace,\nI love each of you. As each one of you came into my life, you taught me more and more about love, and about myself. Joey, you taught me how to care so much it hurt, how to feel. Maria, you taught me how something was more valuable than momentary happiness. Grace_,_ you taught me the simple joy of fatherhood, how each child is a gift from God, and how a laugh from your beloved child is greater than any physical gift in the world. My children, this isn\u0026rsquo;t about my love for you, for that will not (and cannot) end. If I am cast into the darkest, hopeless pit of hell, I will still love you until the last conscious bit of my soul burns away. This is about \u0026ldquo;The World.\u0026rdquo; What I am to say is hard, but you need to hear it someday.\nThe world doesn\u0026rsquo;t revolve around you. Mom and I say this often, sometimes in anger, sometimes in exasperation\u0026ndash;but always in love. It\u0026rsquo;s the truth.\nYou will have seasons in your life where things go well. You will feel that you can do no wrong, that everything is going your way. Life will feel easy, like the ground rises to meet your feet, that every challenge melts away before you, that the boulders that staunch your path move of their own volition. You might conclude that \u0026ldquo;The World\u0026rdquo; likes you. This is not the case.\nAt other times, you will have seasons where it all collapses: You can\u0026rsquo;t do anything right. You will fail despite your best efforts. Relationships will collapse, and friends/loved ones will leave you or grow sick and die. Each day\u0026ndash;each hour\u0026ndash;will be a struggle to go on. You might conclude that \u0026ldquo;The World\u0026rdquo; is out to get you. This is not the case, either.\nThe hard truth is, \u0026ldquo;The World\u0026rdquo; is indifferent to you. You are a person like billions of your fellow human beings, and no one in the world owes you any favors, nor do they (in general) bid you ill. Attributing (or blaming) \u0026ldquo;the world\u0026rdquo; for your success or failure is an empty cop-out, one your Daddy wrestled with for many years. I would spare you that.\nI firmly believe in personal Agency\u0026ndash;that an individual by his own actions can affect the outcome of his life. With that, the implication is, you have to choose your own path and go after it. Your life will be the result of your choices. You must work and find your way to contribute to life using the talents given you and the skills you can acquire. Mom and I will do everything in our power to help, but we\u0026rsquo;ll not do things for you such that you feel like you\u0026rsquo;re entitled to life being easy. Thus you can become an adult, able to love yourself, and others, and God with your whole mind, soul, and spirit.\nGod bless and keep you.\nDad\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/07/to-my-kids-on-the-world/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI resolved to write down a few things to leave for my kids, some things I wished I\u0026rsquo;d heard from my parents.  This is the first of those.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy Darling Joey, Maria, and Grace,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI love each of you.  As each one of you came into my life, you taught me more and more about love, and about myself.  Joey, you taught me how to care so much it hurt, how to \u003cem\u003efeel\u003c/em\u003e.  Maria, you taught me how something was more valuable than momentary happiness.  Grace_,_ you taught me the simple joy of fatherhood, how each child is a gift from God, and how a laugh from your beloved child is greater than any physical gift in the world. \u003c/p\u003e","title":"To My Kids, On the World"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s been said, \u0026ldquo;A boat is a hole in the water you throw money into.\u0026rdquo; Corollary: \u0026ldquo;There are two great days of owning a boat: The day you buy it and the day you sell it.\u0026rdquo;\nIn my experience, the same is true of houses. A house is a hole in the ground you throw money into. But you own the hole, so it\u0026rsquo;s okay.\nWell, okay, after paying the bank 3x the purchase price over the term of a loan named after death, you own the hole.\nThen, you decide you need a bigger/smaller hole in a same/different locale (It\u0026rsquo;s like a MAD LIB!) and then you repeat the process.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t get me wrong, I love my house. I just wish it wasn\u0026rsquo;t so needy sometimes :-D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/06/on-houses/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been said, \u0026ldquo;A boat is a hole in the water you throw money into.\u0026rdquo;  Corollary: \u0026ldquo;There are two great days of owning a boat: The day you buy it and the day you sell it.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn my experience, the same is true of houses.  A house is a hole in the ground you throw money into.  But you own the hole, so it\u0026rsquo;s okay.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, okay, after paying the bank 3x the purchase price over the term of a loan named after death, you own the hole.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Houses"},{"content":"Ah, so, Google Reader. It\u0026rsquo;s going away in July 2013.\nYes, this is another rant decrying the shutdown of Google Reader. However, it\u0026rsquo;s my process for working through losing the app I\u0026rsquo;ve used every day since it was announced. I mean that. Every. Day.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve used Google Reader so long, I don\u0026rsquo;t remember what I used before it to read RSS feeds; I vaguely recall using NetNewsWire or some other installed application, but those never felt right. Just as with email, the concept of sync\u0026rsquo;ing internet content to my PC never felt right.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve gone on fasts; I\u0026rsquo;ve been off facebook for years at a time, I\u0026rsquo;ve demurred and neglected twitter, but if I\u0026rsquo;ve had access to an internet-connected anything (PC, laptop, smartphone, Kindle), rest assured I was checking my feeds.\nWhy? And why isn\u0026rsquo;t twitter or something similar a good substitute?\nLeaving aside twitter for a moment, the simple answer is speed and uniformity. Speed: Unlike most folks, the chrome and good design touches on those ultra-CMS\u0026rsquo;d sites out there make me want to die. Seriously, when I go to TTAC.com and the pageload time is \u0026gt; 5 seconds, it kills me. And that\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip;.for\u0026hellip;..each\u0026hellip;article.\nIf I wanted to spend time to catch-up, I\u0026rsquo;d just read a frickin\u0026rsquo; newspaper, okay?\nUniformity: With Reader, I could scan headlines by the dozen, read 12 articles each morning, and process the volume of useless drivel high concept innovation coming out of silicon valley each day from my perch out here in flyover country. I still firmly believe in tight English prose as a communication medium, and RSS boiled away the layers of DHTML, JS, CSS, and loud, layered images to a consistent format.\nLook, I know Reader never monetized. It probably never even paid for its own bandwidth, and I suppose reliance upon it kept many influencers/decision-makers away from the Golden Calf known as Google+. \u0026ldquo;Bow down and worship our boil-the-ocean social media push,\u0026rdquo; says Tommy Boy\nWell, we\u0026rsquo;re not buyin\u0026rsquo; it. Maybe the Social Media Fairy\u0026rsquo;s a glue sniffer, and sneaks into your house. Suddenly $50 is missing from your wallet and you\u0026rsquo;re daughter\u0026rsquo;s knocked-up. I\u0026rsquo;ve seen it a hundred times\u0026hellip;\nAhem. So, Google is choosing to sunset a product I never paid for. That\u0026rsquo;s its prerogative, certainly. I understand, I\u0026rsquo;m not entitled to jack, since no money changed hands and their terms of use flatly state in subparagraph 314159 that they can do that at any time.\nThere are alternatives. Currently, I\u0026rsquo;m evaluating Feedly, but it\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip;.pretty. It\u0026rsquo;s attempting to be all Web 2.0.1, and I don\u0026rsquo;t want that. I like things that scrape content, render reasonable amounts of inline images, and STFU. Per my software design principles, good software should disappear and let you focus on the task at hand, and Reader (prior to the last redesign anyway) did that fabulously.\nPerhaps this is just a nail in the coffin of RSS overall, where I\u0026rsquo;ll need to go to each site individually again just to read their 36px text and 70\u0026rsquo;s fantastic graphics (TechCrunch, I\u0026rsquo;m looking at you). Or maybe, I\u0026rsquo;ll just read less online content.\nSo, on this St. Patty\u0026rsquo;s Day, I pour one out for Reader as it slouches towards the bit bucket. You shall be missed.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/03/et-tu-google-google-reader-screed-ahead/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, so, \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/reader\"\u003eGoogle Reader\u003c/a\u003e.  It\u0026rsquo;s going away in July 2013.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, this is another rant decrying the shutdown of Google Reader.  However, it\u0026rsquo;s my process for working through losing the app I\u0026rsquo;ve used every day since it was announced.  I mean that.  Every. Day.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve used Google Reader so long, I don\u0026rsquo;t remember what I used before it to read RSS feeds; I \u003cstrong\u003evaguely\u003c/strong\u003e recall using NetNewsWire or some other installed application, but those never felt right.  Just as with email, the concept of sync\u0026rsquo;ing internet content to my PC never felt right.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Et Tu, Google? (Google Reader screed ahead)"},{"content":"Most New Year\u0026rsquo;s Resolutions fail.\nIf you doubt this, look at your waistline, your bank account, and the amount you spend on your particular vice(s).\nSo, how are mine going\nStatus at the moment:\nSmall Group leadership. I\u0026rsquo;ve sucked at this one, at least in the short term. I did ask my co-leader to take over, and he did a wonderful job. I\u0026rsquo;m back at the helm through the end of this term, but I remain undeterred that I\u0026rsquo;m going to step out of small group leadership (and small groups) next fall. Rating: Fail. Facebook. I\u0026rsquo;m out, and I\u0026rsquo;ve stayed out. The app is not on my phone, and I have no desire to go back. Rating: Winning. Kindle Bible study. This one was classic: I did it like gangbusters for 2 weeks, then\u0026hellip;uh. Basically, I was on day 12 of my study in January, then I loaded it this morning and I was on Day 12. Rating: Fail. Writing code every day. At this point, I\u0026rsquo;m writing code at least every week\u0026hellip;.Rating: Fail. Stop watching TV. I have stopped watching TV, other than watching things with Whitney or the occasional UK game. Rating: MEH Take walks every day. FAIL Give gifts without expectations. WIN. I think this has actually been the most important change in my attitude. Sufficient clothes + take care of them. FAIL. And I\u0026rsquo;m fatter than I was last year, so even that meager amount I had don\u0026rsquo;t fit. EPIC Fail. Visiting Parents once per month. Win. I\u0026rsquo;ve visited with them each month through March. Final Tally:\nWin: 3 Meh: 1 Fail: 5 Visualization, a Harry\u0026rsquo;s Rumination\u0026rsquo;s classic:\nThings are looking better: Longer days have lead to more activity, and I\u0026rsquo;m taking time each day for bible study.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/03/1q-in-hows-that-new-years-resolution-going/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMost New Year\u0026rsquo;s Resolutions fail.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you doubt this, look at your waistline, your bank account, and the amount you spend on your particular vice(s).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, how are \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/01/some-new-years-resolutions/\" title=\"Resolutions\"\u003emine going\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStatus at the moment:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSmall Group leadership.  I\u0026rsquo;ve sucked at this one, at least in the short term.  I did ask my co-leader to take over, and he did a wonderful job.  I\u0026rsquo;m back at the helm through the end of this term, but I remain undeterred that I\u0026rsquo;m going to step out of small group leadership (and small groups) next fall.  Rating: Fail.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFacebook.  I\u0026rsquo;m out, and I\u0026rsquo;ve stayed out.  The app is not on my phone, and I have no desire to go back.  Rating: Winning.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKindle Bible study.  This one was classic:  I did it like gangbusters for 2 weeks, then\u0026hellip;uh.  Basically, I was on day 12 of my study in January,  then I loaded it this morning and I was on Day 12.  Rating: Fail.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWriting code every day.  At this point, I\u0026rsquo;m writing code at least every week\u0026hellip;.Rating: Fail.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStop watching TV.  I have stopped watching TV, other than watching things with Whitney or the occasional UK game.  Rating: MEH\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTake walks every day.  FAIL\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGive gifts without expectations.  WIN.  I think this has actually been the most important change in my attitude.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSufficient clothes + take care of them.  FAIL.  And I\u0026rsquo;m fatter than I was last year, so even that meager amount I had don\u0026rsquo;t fit.  EPIC Fail.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eVisiting Parents once per month.  Win.  I\u0026rsquo;ve visited with them each month through March.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFinal Tally:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"1Q in, how's that New Year's Resolution going?"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Are these your kids?!\u0026rdquo; the 50-ish man leaned over and asked me. Despite the din of 100+ decibel music, he seemed calm and his voice was clear. We were second row back on the center stage, and Jamie Grace just got done strumming her guitar in a duet with Toby Mac. My son Joey was star struck, and Caleb looked like he\u0026rsquo;d just wet his pants when TobyMac strolled casually in on his part of the song, Hold Me.\n\u0026ldquo;Yup! Well, this one is and the one in the green is a kid from our church.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Want to come backstage with me?\u0026rdquo;\nAt that point, my mind went TILT. Seriously? Backstage\u0026hellip;I told the boys to follow on and I passed my dumbstruck wife and mouthed the words.\n\u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Going\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Backstage\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nHow did we get here? Remarkable coincidences abounded.\nOnce my wife saw on Facebook that Winterjam was coming to Rupp, she posed-up to get a group from our church together to go. There are two ways to get in: You can line up outside and pay $10 a head to get a first-come-first-served, general admission seat, or you can pay $30 to get priority seating, but again, it\u0026rsquo;s first come first served. We weighed the pros and cons: Weather was dodgy and people literally camped out for the GA seats, and the line gets alittle, uh\u0026hellip;long\nSo we went with the $30 tickets as part of a group buy from our church.\nLexington was hosting ComicCon, a Gun Show, a St. Patrick\u0026rsquo;s Day parade, and Winterjam on 16 March, so it did a reasonable impersonation of a city instead of the overgrown town it is. Therefore: Traffic was terrible trying to get to Rupp. Thankfully, we left around 1:30pm and had to arrive before the doors opened at 3:30 to let us in. We got to plan \u0026lsquo;C\u0026rsquo; on parking before we found a spot, observing the line wound around rupp and down to the Cox street lot below (see above). We got into position and found our cohorts (Christine, Kyle, Kelsey, and Caleb) like 3 people back (they\u0026rsquo;d been standing in line awhile).\nSo we got ready for about an hour\u0026rsquo;s wait, and I read the fine print on the voucher\u0026ndash;we had tickets at will call but we all had to be together at the same time to get them. So we line jumped^H^H^H^H^H\u0026hellip;uh\u0026hellip;joined our compatriots at the head of the line. Then, the next drama: Two of our group were foreign exchange students who were getting dropped off and trying to find us. They had roughly 20 minutes to do so, and they weren\u0026rsquo;t going to make it, so I volunteered to remain behind and look for them\u0026ndash;Zoey and Martha. One was a 5'9\u0026quot; Dutch Blonde, the other was a 6\u0026rsquo; Norwegian blonde. I figured they wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be hard to find.\nThey weren\u0026rsquo;t.\nSo, we go through the line again and joined our group, then found our seats, which were on the floor. On the second row. Facing a 6\u0026rsquo; tall subwoofer bank that was 15\u0026rsquo; wide. Where we sat, I could\u0026rsquo;ve folded a paper football and flicked it to hit the artists on the catwalk\u0026ndash;we were that close, with Joey and Caleb taking the two seats closest to the stage and catwalk. Mysteriously, there were two seats right beside the catwalk saying \u0026lsquo;Reserved for tour Pastor\u0026rsquo;\u0026hellip;.\n\u0026hellip;and that was the dude who was now leading me and the two kids backstage.\n* * *\nI was in shock, probably the most since the time I won 9th in the state in science competition when I was in 8th grade. I was dumbly following these folks, while Caleb\u0026rsquo;s mom, Christine, hurried to give me her camera. Her camera was a black Nikon, and I\u0026rsquo;d never used it before. Honestly, I hadn\u0026rsquo;t used *any* camera other than a smartphone camera in a very long time.\nSo we get about halfway there, and a 300lb bouncer collars me and asks what I\u0026rsquo;m doing, asking to see my pass badge. \u0026ldquo;Uh, I\u0026rsquo;m following that guy,\u0026rdquo; I said, pointing at the pastor dude. He sort of rolled his eyes (guess the guy does this sort of thing alot?) and waved me on. Ten paces later, I found myself in a small group surrounding Jamie Grace herself, resplendent in her stage garb of a coat, pants and cowgirl boots.\nShe was very gracious as a fumbled with the camera and got a shot of her hugging Caleb and Joey, even offering me tips on how to work the camera. I was all thumbs, but I held down my panic of not getting a shot and finally squeezed one off. Thanks to the miracles of autofocus, autoflash, and auto everything else it came out.\nPastor dude: \u0026ldquo;Come one\u0026hellip;let\u0026rsquo;s see if Toby\u0026rsquo;s backstage.\u0026rdquo; Shock level 12.\nSo, we open the door to \u0026lsquo;backstage\u0026rsquo; which was the area under the E-Rupption-Zone in Rupp, and it was a stark, flourescent lit area with ping-pong tables and people generally hanging out and having fun. The members of OBB were playing ping-pong and laughing with megawatt smiles, and sitting cross-legged on a folding riser amid two others was\u0026hellip;.TobyMac.\nPastor dude calls Toby over. \u0026ldquo;Toe-buh, I just wanted to bring these little fellers back; this little man here (Caleb) looked like he was gonna wet himself when you came out with Jamie just now.\u0026rdquo; Toby was very low-key and greeted the boys with a big smile and took a picture with them, signing Caleb\u0026rsquo;s shirt and Joey\u0026rsquo;s TM-logo\u0026rsquo;d cap we\u0026rsquo;d purchased just an hour before. I got the pic and stumbled out a \u0026ldquo;Thanks alot! See you later.\u0026rdquo; and shook his hand.\nBy way of explanation, Toby Mac and his cohorts\u0026ndash;Jamie Grace, Mandissa, etc.\u0026ndash;are basically the ongoing soundtrack of Chez Combs. We like to rock pretty hard, and Whitney\u0026rsquo;s been a TobyMac fan since the DC Talk days. So, walking away I realized something.\nI\u0026rsquo;m a dead man. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s never going to forgive me\u0026ndash;an interloper\u0026ndash;for getting back here and meeting TobyMac. \u0026ldquo;Joe,\u0026rdquo; I croaked as we walked towards the exit of backstage.\n\u0026ldquo;Yeah,\u0026rdquo; his eyes shone. He was loving this.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m a dead man. You\u0026rsquo;re mom\u0026rsquo;s gonna kill me.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yes. Yes, she is,\u0026rdquo; Ah, Phineas and Ferb phrasology\u0026ndash;how to know we Combs\u0026rsquo;s are paying attention.\n::sigh::\nSo, we get back, and I show the pictures and everyone that could hear us or understand our wild gesticulations over the Sidewalk Prophets set going on was hugely congratulatory. I saw a wash of emotions on Whitney\u0026rsquo;s face\u0026ndash;excitement, gladness, and disappointment\u0026ndash;but honestly I was still in shock. I sat out the whole Sidewalk Prophet\u0026rsquo;s set and just processed what had happened.\n* * *\nAs the evening wore on, the bands got bigger and louder\u0026ndash;Red had enough pyrotechnics to bring down the place, and Matthew West was the consummate showman.\nThen TobyMac came on.\nUnderstand, when he took the stage, there\u0026rsquo;d been music for nearly 5 hours. We\u0026rsquo;d seen loud, we\u0026rsquo;d seen hip-hop, we\u0026rsquo;d seen glam-scream-punk. By about 2 songs in, I\u0026rsquo;d forgotten this was anything but a TobyMac concert. That\u0026rsquo;s no dig on the other bands; in particular, Royal Tailor was great with a super showman frontman, a rocking rhythm section, and a lead guitarist with Van Halen-esque chops. It\u0026rsquo;s just Toby and his \u0026lsquo;Diverse City\u0026rsquo; band was that good.\nI mean, they were all over the place, and we were about 3 feet away: Full Drumline treatment, choreography, and a great DJ holding court in a 40 foot tower above the stage. Toby walked out in the crowd, did some slow stuff, and he made sure everyone knew this was about Christ and our Lord, not him. There were perfect tempo changes from frenetic and loud to soft. I hadn\u0026rsquo;t really noticed, but Pastor Dude had rejoined his seats adjacent to the catwalk, and he tapped me on the shoulder, \u0026ldquo;Would your boys and your wife like to join Toby onstage for the last song?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;YES!!!!\u0026rdquo;\nTwo thoughts: \u0026ldquo;I wish I had a real camera.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m so glad Whitney\u0026rsquo;s getting to do this.\u0026rdquo;\nSo, they move out and head to the wings of the stage, and Kelsey and I prepare to take pictures, me with Whitney\u0026rsquo;s iPhone 4S. My Galaxy Rugby pro hadn\u0026rsquo;t gotten a full charge the night before, and it hadn\u0026rsquo;t made it past the photo I took above.\nThey last song rolled, and people swarmed the stage, jumping in rhythm to the music, Whitney throwing goats from her upraised right hand as she headbanged through the number, and Joey looking as joyful as I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen.\nThen Joey got to ride home in the backseat of our Fusion, between the Dutch girl and the Norwegian girl.\nCue the Wonder Years theme.\nFricking awesome.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/03/winterjam-2013-or-wow-that-bass-is-loud./","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Are these your kids?!\u0026rdquo; the 50-ish man leaned over and asked me.  Despite the din of 100+ decibel music, he seemed calm and his voice was clear.  We were second row back on the center stage, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.jamiegrace.com/\"\u003eJamie Grace\u003c/a\u003e just got done strumming her guitar in a duet with Toby Mac.  My son Joey was star struck, and Caleb looked like he\u0026rsquo;d just wet his pants when TobyMac strolled casually in on his part of the song, \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISgr8SgCYbY\"\u003eHold Me\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Winterjam 2013, or 'Wow, that Bass is loud.'"},{"content":"I hear this today as a planted sales question:\n\u0026ldquo;Why shouldn\u0026rsquo;t I just use an Open Source solution instead of [my company\u0026rsquo;s dooflotchy]?\u0026rdquo;\nSo help me, this is what I recall as being what the speaker wanted the salesperson to respond.\nWell, first of all, you get what you pay for. Would you really want to trust your sensitive data to a piece of Open Source? We will support and stand behind our solution, and you have every opportunity to influence the product roadmap if you go with us.\nYeah, I didn\u0026rsquo;t really make it past the first two sentences either. Of the last two, I have no complaints. Of the first two I listened in disbelief. What is this? A 1997 Microsoft pamphlet?\nLet me be as clear as possible: If you lead with that, you will lose. Selling anyone on fear unless the fear is real is a losing proposition.\nAlso, categorically, you\u0026rsquo;re wrong. You get much MORE than you pay for with alost any software you buy, or (these days) that you download from the internet for free. I say this typing on Blogger (free) in Google Chrome (free) on my Mac (pay) that\u0026rsquo;s based upon BSD (public domain Open Source), tethered to my Android phone (pay) that runs android OS (Open Source).\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re using technology today, you\u0026rsquo;re using Open Source. Get over yourself.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/02/selling-fud-doesnt-sell/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI hear this today as a planted sales question:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Why shouldn\u0026rsquo;t I just use an Open Source solution instead of [my company\u0026rsquo;s dooflotchy]?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo help me, this is what I recall as being what the speaker wanted the salesperson to respond.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWell, first of all, you get what you pay for.  Would you really want to trust your sensitive data to a piece of Open Source?  We will support and stand behind our solution, and you have every opportunity to influence the product roadmap if you go with us.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Selling FUD Doesn't Sell"},{"content":"I remember distinctly being in Don Napier\u0026rsquo;s 6th grade Language Arts class in Sebastian Middle School in Jackson, KY and getting one of those writing assignments everyone hates. Write an essay arguing a position.\nIt was the early days of the Kentucky Education Reform Act in Kentucky. The Supreme Court of Kentucky (SCOK) had decided that the education system in Kentucky was unconstitutional, that our perennial position just above Mississippi on every aptitude test was not good enough, so out with the old, in with the new.\nWrite More! Went the mandate. We\u0026rsquo;ll no longer grade you on objective things (neatness, grammar, spelling, content) but on subjective things called a \u0026ldquo;writing portfolio.\u0026rdquo; Thus, prompt like the genius nugget above.\nLet me put it further in context: I was writing this paper out of sheer boredom. A blizzard raged outside, an honest-to-God, Minnesota worthy 4-5 feet of snow with drifts. It was so bad my Dad stayed in our tiny, 1000-square-foot ranch house for 3 days, a feat not repeated since, unless he had a fever \u0026gt; 102.\nSo what to write\u0026hellip;what to write\u0026hellip;CARS!\nI had a love affair with cars that I can absolutely give you the time and place for. It was August 1991, I\u0026rsquo;d just gotten glasses to solve my extreme nearsightedness, and I found myself facing the magazine rack at Winn-Dixie (sign scrawled: \u0026ldquo;This is not a library. Buy something.\u0026rdquo;). This was the cover I faced\nThis was the article\nPatrick Bedard would go on to bore me to death in years to come, with articles about how airbags killed people, antilock brakes didn\u0026rsquo;t work, and any sort of \u0026lsquo;alternative fuel\u0026rsquo; was a charlatan\u0026rsquo;s game. But this article, this was pure LOVE here. It was dangerous, it was unsettling, it was like I was there, racing a Ferrari and winning.\nIt was car POV Porn. I would remain in possession of this issue of C\u0026amp;D and remain a faithful subscriber for 20 years until all I knew and loved about the publication was dead. When I got married and moved out of my apartment to a house, the C\u0026amp;D collection went to a recycler.\nSo there, facing my Gateway 2000 486DX2/50Mhz with it\u0026rsquo;s unfillable 200MB hard drive and copy of Wordperfect, I new what I had to write: A screed about why I preferred cars that could turn, accelerate, and brake, and why all the idiots buying land yachts and that newfangled Ford Explorer were\u0026hellip;idiots. How driving was something transcendent, something that was a privilege that represented a melding of a driver and a machine. I\u0026rsquo;d watched Ayrton Senna. I knew what that sort of pairing meant.\nI got an A on the paper, with a snarky comment from Mr. N that \u0026lsquo;My son is the same as you; I fear for his life when he gets a Driver\u0026rsquo;s license.\u0026quot; Cars, then, remained my passion undimmed from that day to this.\nAnd they\u0026rsquo;re dying, not with a bang, but with a whimper. But that\u0026rsquo;s a story for another day.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/01/reflections-on-reflections-of-what-started-my-car-addiction/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI remember distinctly being in Don Napier\u0026rsquo;s 6th grade Language Arts class in Sebastian Middle School in Jackson, KY and getting one of those writing assignments everyone hates.  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWrite an essay arguing a position.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was the early days of the Kentucky Education Reform Act in Kentucky.  The Supreme Court of Kentucky (SCOK) had decided that the education system in Kentucky was unconstitutional, that our perennial position just above Mississippi on every aptitude test was not good enough, so out with the old, in with the new.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reflections on Reflections of what started my Car addiction"},{"content":"The other day, I found myself wallowing a tad, and I cried out to God, simply: \u0026ldquo;God, please help me.\u0026rdquo;\nAt the time, I was writing in my journal, some pretty negative, emotionally-charged stuff, like:\nI feel like a failure as a husband. I feel like a failure as a father. My career isn\u0026rsquo;t working out the way I really would like. I\u0026rsquo;m certainly duller than I was in 2010, and I feel overwhelmed all the time. I\u0026rsquo;m not coding regularly anymore. Writing the above, I literally stopped in mid sentence and immediately wrote these words:\nSo, fuck it. What am I going to DO? Blah, bah, blah. I\u0026rsquo;ve been here, what, a dozen times before? What the fuck to do?\nHere\u0026rsquo;s (part of) what I plan to do.\nI think it\u0026rsquo;s time to step out of small group leadership. I strongly think going off Facebook+ again would be healthy. I\u0026rsquo;m tired of seeing all the happy people of the world when I\u0026rsquo;m sad, and at the same time, I\u0026rsquo;m wasting inordinate amounts of time there when I could be working, interacting with my family, or learning. I will read the bible on my Kindle. Every day. I will write code every day, even if it\u0026rsquo;s just one function for fun. Real code, not some bullshit UML. I will stop watching TV, period. I can listen to basketball and football games on the radio easily enough, and I can watch movies and programs with the family on Amazon.com via Prime Instant Video easily enough. And news I can get from my twitter stream. I will take walks everyday no matter the weather. I\u0026rsquo;m tired of being sedentary. I will give gifts without expectations upon the recipient. I will by myself sufficient clothes and take care of them. I will schedule time to visit my parents at least once per month. So far, I\u0026rsquo;ve got #1 and #2 in process. I\u0026rsquo;ve sent my resignation as Small Group leader to my pastor, and I\u0026rsquo;ve deactivated my FB account. I\u0026rsquo;ve also taken security measures against my online accounts using LastPass so I don\u0026rsquo;t keep using the same 3 passwords everywhere.\nAlso, as the year dawns, I\u0026rsquo;m in a considerable amount of debt so my (realistic) goal is to have all the Medial and CC expenses paid off by end of 2013, leaving us with just the Fusion and Mortgage payment. It will be tough, especially given the economic climate at the moment, but hey, it\u0026rsquo;s a goal. I have a great wife who\u0026rsquo;s great with money, so I don\u0026rsquo;t doubt we can accomplish it.\nLastly, this article hit me square between the eyes, especially its judgement that America is a hyper-competitive yet complacent place where we have no concept of relationship. I don\u0026rsquo;t know how to get there, but I\u0026rsquo;d like to have more and stronger relationships at the end of next year than as I write this.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2013/01/some-new-years-resolutions/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe other day, I found myself wallowing a tad, and I cried out to God, simply: \u0026ldquo;God, please help me.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt the time, I was writing in my journal, some pretty negative, emotionally-charged stuff, like:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI feel like a failure as a husband.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI feel like a failure as a father.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMy career isn\u0026rsquo;t working out the way I really would like.  I\u0026rsquo;m certainly duller than I was in 2010, and I feel overwhelmed all the time.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not coding regularly anymore.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWriting the above, I literally stopped in mid sentence and immediately wrote these words:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some New Years' Resolutions"},{"content":"Few things in this world make me fighting mad. But then, there\u0026rsquo;s this.\nhttp://www.kentucky.com/2012/12/07/2435663/rare-state-takeover-of-school.html\nThis is my hometown. This where my formative years were spent. And, because of idiotic graft, nepotism, and malfeasance, this is where my blood relations remain trapped in a cycle of hopelessness compounded by cronyism, intent on keeping power (what pathetic excuse for power it is!) for themselves.\nWere I Dante, there\u0026rsquo;d be some Terza Rima regarding Arch Turner and his ilk\u0026rsquo;s future in Hell, but words fail me.\nWHY ARE THERE NOT RIOTS IN THE STREETS OF JACKSON?!\nWhat sort of combination of (Apocryphal, yet apt) \u0026ldquo;Boiled Frog\u0026rdquo; syndrome and Stockholm Syndrome exists on the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River that tolerates this? Yes, I understand a large percentage of people find primary or secondary employment from the school system or the (almost as nepotistic!) District 11 of the Ky DOT. Everything is political, and being on the \u0026ldquo;outs\u0026rdquo; is a 1-way ticket to welfare. Still yet, I hope this state intervention enflames the populace to take back their school board and keep them on a short leash henceforth.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/12/on-the-breathitt-county-school-system/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFew things in this world make me fighting mad.  But then, there\u0026rsquo;s this.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/2012/12/07/2435663/rare-state-takeover-of-school.html\"\u003ehttp://www.kentucky.com/2012/12/07/2435663/rare-state-takeover-of-school.html\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is my hometown.  This where my formative years were spent.   And, because of idiotic graft, nepotism, and malfeasance, this is where my blood relations remain trapped in a cycle of hopelessness compounded by cronyism, intent on keeping power (what pathetic excuse for power it is!) for themselves.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWere I Dante, there\u0026rsquo;d be some Terza Rima regarding Arch Turner and his ilk\u0026rsquo;s future in Hell, but words fail me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the Breathitt County School system"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m afraid quite a bit. It\u0026rsquo;s getting on my nerves.\nI understand I shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be afraid, both from a Biblical and a rational perspective. I have been redeemed, and life\u0026rsquo;s never been better. Nevertheless, that\u0026rsquo;s not really helping me at the moment.\nI\u0026rsquo;m going to try and apply something I learned about grief: You have to grieve. You can\u0026rsquo;t avoid or deny it, or you will grieve at the most inconvenient time possible. Likewise, fear seems something you must face and give name to, then you can move past it. So, here goes.\nI\u0026rsquo;m afraid of being alone. Years of no peers and only cattle to talk to will do that. I\u0026rsquo;m not afraid of dying, but I am afraid of outliving my wife. I\u0026rsquo;m afraid of my own carnal nature\u0026ndash;my selfishness, laziness, apathy. I\u0026rsquo;m afraid my ADD will ruin my life, despite my best efforts. I\u0026rsquo;m afraid of my temper, and what I\u0026rsquo;m capable of when I\u0026rsquo;m mad. I\u0026rsquo;m afraid being abandoned by those I love\u0026ndash;wife, kids, friends. I see or have seen all those as an inevitability. Basically, my judgemental self concluded that if anyone knew me\u0026ndash;REALLY knew me\u0026ndash;the only logical conclusion they\u0026rsquo;d arrive at would be to reject me. I\u0026rsquo;m afraid of being incompetent at my work. As I said, the above are irrational fears. Here\u0026rsquo;s the kicker though\u0026hellip;most of them have affected my reality, in some cases becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.\nOf being alone: I get so clingy, controlling, and paranoid that I push people away. Of outliving my wife: I\u0026rsquo;m not taking care of my body, not one iota. (Not saying that\u0026rsquo;s the only reason!) Of my own carnal nature: I\u0026rsquo;ve overworked or overstressed myself to the point of\u0026hellip;apathy and laziness. Of my ADD: Well, working on that one, certainly, but for years I\u0026rsquo;d do anything to avoid overstimulation and acting-out randomly in public settings, especially meetings @ work Of my temper: I get mad at myself for getting mad, feeling impotent rage, and then\u0026hellip;yeah, goes nowhere good. Of being abandoned: Not viewing myself as lovable, I\u0026rsquo;ve disdained and treated those that try to love me as deficient, just for choosing to love me. End result is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Incompetence: Obsession with knowing \u0026ldquo;everything\u0026rdquo; has me knowing increasingly\u0026hellip;.nothing. So that\u0026rsquo;s where it\u0026rsquo;s at, me on my own couch. I shared the above with my accountability group yesterday and the leader gave me this story that I\u0026rsquo;ll share with you. So, are you familiar with Louisville\u0026rsquo;s football coach? Charlie Strong is his name. He\u0026rsquo;s brought Louisville Cardinals football to a great level. At yet, when you go on the fan message boards, all you see are people fretting: \u0026lsquo;He might leave!\u0026rsquo; Literally, unless they hear him say \u0026lsquo;I will stay at Louisville for the rest of my career, without question,\u0026rsquo; they won\u0026rsquo;t be satisfied. They don\u0026rsquo;t show up to all the games, and they jeer him for being irresolute, thinking he may leave for a better coaching job at one of the SEC schools.\nYou know what? We\u0026rsquo;re going to the Sugar Bowl this year. The f****** Sugar Bowl. Major bowl game, national exposure, and $10 million for the Athletic programs at UofL, all because of Charlie Strong\u0026rsquo;s leadership. If you worry about what might be, you won\u0026rsquo;t enjoy the reality of what is. Don\u0026rsquo;t obsess about what might be. Take a look at what\u0026rsquo;s bothering your and keep it in perspective of what you have.\nIn short, enjoy the Sugar Bowl.\nSo LORD, thank You for all that You blessed me with. Thank You for my wife and my beautiful children. Thank You for the ability to earn money for my family doing something I (usually) like doing. Thank You for people that love me no matter what, and people that love me enough to tell me I\u0026rsquo;m wrong and encourage me when I\u0026rsquo;m right.\nIn short, thank You for the Sugar Bowl, and giving me at least a moment of perspective where I enjoy it. Amen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/12/on-being-afraid/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m afraid quite a bit.  It\u0026rsquo;s getting on my nerves.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI understand I \u003cstrong\u003eshouldn\u0026rsquo;t\u003c/strong\u003e be afraid, both from a Biblical and a rational perspective.  I have been redeemed, and life\u0026rsquo;s never been better.  Nevertheless, that\u0026rsquo;s not really helping me at the moment.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m going to try and apply something I learned about grief:  You have to grieve.  You can\u0026rsquo;t avoid or deny it, or you will grieve at the most inconvenient time possible.  Likewise, fear seems something you must face and give name to, then you can move past it.  So, here goes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Being Afraid"},{"content":"http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/\nEngineers are hired to create business value, not to program things: Businesses do things for irrational and political reasons all the time (see below), but in the main they converge on doing things which increase revenue or reduce costs. Status in well-run businesses generally is awarded to people who successfully take credit for doing one of these things. (That can, but does not necessarily, entail actually doing them.) The person who has decided to bring on one more engineer is not doing it because they love having a geek around the room, they are doing it because adding the geek allows them to complete a project (or projects) which will add revenue or decrease costs. Producing beautiful software is not a goal. Solving complex technical problems is not a goal. Writing bug-free code is not a goal. Using sexy programming languages is not a goal. Add revenue. Reduce costs. Those are your only goals.\nPeter Drucker — you haven’t heard of him, but he is a prophet among people who sign checks — came up with the terms Profit Center and Cost Center. Profit Centers are the part of an organization that bring in the bacon: partners at law firms, sales at enterprise software companies, “masters of the universe” on Wall Street, etc etc. Cost Centers are, well, everybody else. You really want to be attached to Profit Centers because it will bring you higher wages, more respect, and greater opportunities for everything of value to you. It isn’t hard: a bright high schooler, given a paragraph-long description of a business, can usually identify where the Profit Center is. If you want to work there, work for that. If you can’t, either a) work elsewhere or b) engineer your transfer after joining the company.\nEngineers in particular are usually very highly paid Cost Centers, which sets MBA’s optimization antennae to twitching. This is what brings us wonderful ideas like outsourcing, which is “Let’s replace really expensive Cost Centers who do some magic which we kinda need but don’t really care about with less expensive Cost Centers in a lower wage country”. (Quick sidenote: You can absolutely ignore outsourcing as a career threat if you read the rest of this guide.) Nobody ever outsources Profit Centers. Attempting to do so would be the setup for MBA humor. It’s like suggesting replacing your source control system with a bunch of copies maintained on floppy disks.\n(emphasis above in original)\nIf I could give a protege of mine only one piece of advice, it\u0026rsquo;d be the above. The fact that I (effectively) work for a cost center is a root cause of much of the crap I complain about to whomever will stand still. Simple enough, doofus (speaking to myself there): If you work for a for-profit business, find yourself a part that, you know, MAKES A PROFIT.\nCorollary: Try to find a position where they began making a profit\u0026ndash;or at least pursued the same\u0026ndash;lest the mentality of a cost center pervade every decision and neuter the profit you\u0026rsquo;re after.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/12/predictable-frustration/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/\"\u003ehttp://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEngineers are hired to create business value, not to program things\u003c/strong\u003e:  Businesses do things for irrational and political reasons all the time (see below), but in the main they converge on doing things which increase revenue or reduce costs.  Status in well-run businesses generally is awarded to people who successfully take credit for doing one of these things.  (That can, but does not necessarily, entail actually doing them.)  The person who has decided to bring on one more engineer is not doing it because they love having a geek around the room, they are doing it because adding the geek allows them to complete a project (or projects) which will add revenue or decrease costs.  Producing beautiful software is not a goal.  Solving complex technical problems is not a goal.  Writing bug-free code is not a goal.  Using sexy programming languages is not a goal.  Add revenue.  Reduce costs.  Those are your only goals.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Predictable Frustration"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;For seven years\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;For SEVEN years\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;FOR SEVEN years, Harold\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo;\nJust as a child knows when his full given name comes from his flustered parent\u0026rsquo;s mouth, a husband knows when his wife starts naming the time they\u0026rsquo;ve been married, he\u0026rsquo;s in trouble.\nWell, honey, for SEVEN YEARS tomorrow\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;you\u0026rsquo;ve stood by me.\n\u0026hellip;you\u0026rsquo;ve watched me break, and grow, and break again.\n\u0026hellip;you\u0026rsquo;ve watched me struggle, and doubt, and blame, and generally resist any form of responsibility or accountability.\n\u0026hellip;you\u0026rsquo;ve watched addictions and off-kilter brain chemistry steal me away from you.\nAnd for SEVEN YEARS, you\u0026rsquo;ve remained. And you\u0026rsquo;ve loved me, even when that \u0026rsquo;love\u0026rsquo; is telling me no and getting me help and screaming right back at me louder until I\u0026rsquo;ll listen. You\u0026rsquo;ve born me two beautiful girls, both in the most difficult way possible, sacrificing your body\u0026rsquo;s long-term well-being in the process.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ve seen me fed something besides rice and hamburger helper. You are THE wonderful person God had for me in this life, and when I think I\u0026rsquo;m away from you physically or emotionally, I feel like half of me is gone, like a shell of myself.\nSo I\u0026rsquo;m glad tomorrow will be a day we\u0026rsquo;ll be together. No matter how much money we have, or what my job is, you are\u0026ndash;and have always been\u0026ndash;part of my REAL life. Times are hard, and look to get harder. Reading the back of The Book, we both see how this story ends.\nThere is, however, no one I\u0026rsquo;d like to face that future with, than you.\nLove always,\nHarold\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/09/on-my-anniversary-to-my-wife/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;For seven years\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;For SEVEN years\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;FOR SEVEN years, Harold\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as a child knows when his full given name comes from his flustered parent\u0026rsquo;s mouth, a husband knows when his wife starts naming the time they\u0026rsquo;ve been married, he\u0026rsquo;s in trouble.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, honey, for SEVEN YEARS tomorrow\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;you\u0026rsquo;ve stood by me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;you\u0026rsquo;ve watched me break, and grow, and break again.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;you\u0026rsquo;ve watched me struggle, and doubt, and blame, and generally resist any form of responsibility or accountability.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On My Anniversary, to My Wife"},{"content":"My last 36 hours.\nIn 4-5pm daily meeting on Monday (that\u0026rsquo;s a #win by itself), the manager in charge ejaculates a \u0026ldquo;well, shit!\u0026rdquo; in the middle of the meeting. Turns out a 7am all-managers meeting was scheduled the next day by the CEO. \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s never good,\u0026rdquo; he noted. #obviouslynot Tuesday, 6am, I saw this tweet. It was real, and it was not spectactular; seventeen hundred worldwide jobs evaporated, including 350 in Lexington. Gory details here. I came into work to a morgue. First and second line managers were going around talking to individuals and my \u0026ldquo;talking to\u0026rdquo; seemed ambiguously in the future. I checked on a couple guys from church and both seemed safe, and my small group was praying for my job. There was the appropriate level of gallows humor, but it just felt different than times we\u0026rsquo;ve done this in the past. By ~11am we had an \u0026ldquo;all building\u0026rdquo; meeting scheduled in our main conference room downstairs, lead by my boss. The meeting was to be at 2. Throughout the rest of the day, people and contractors were told what their futures held. At the meeting it was announced that we\u0026rsquo;re undergoing a reorganization in our area, but we were not offered the names of people who would be departing. We were told that our deliverables for the Fall were not rescheduled or delayed in any way, despite losing a significant percentage of the people responsible for final delivery checklists. The remainder of the day was weird discussions with others, hallway talk, and a poignant departure note sent to a department-wide distribution list. I went home and felt empty. Just utterly empty. . .and I don\u0026rsquo;t do well with that typically. In lieu of going in for dinner\u0026ndash;and probably spewing my pent up emotions at my wife and kids\u0026ndash;I grabbed a pickaxe and shovel and dug up some more posts in my back yard Per my Dad\u0026rsquo;s sage advice, physical activity is often the best stress relief, and it truly helped. For awhile.\nSo, today\u0026rsquo;s a new day, and I\u0026rsquo;m still stuck not knowing what to do with all this. I\u0026rsquo;ve endured 8 months of this horse shit, mostly behind the scenes: One farcical no-win assignment, some boondoggles of my own making, a re-org, a layoff, and now another re-org in the wings.\nYay?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/08/yesterday-sucked/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy last 36 hours.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIn 4-5pm daily meeting on Monday (that\u0026rsquo;s a #win by itself), the manager in charge ejaculates a \u0026ldquo;well, shit!\u0026rdquo; in the middle of the meeting.  Turns out a 7am all-managers meeting was scheduled the next day by the CEO.  \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s never good,\u0026rdquo; he noted.  #obviouslynot\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTuesday, 6am, I saw \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/LexmarkNews/status/240389553003851776\"\u003ethis tweet\u003c/a\u003e.  It was real, and it was not spectactular; seventeen hundred worldwide jobs evaporated, including 350 in Lexington.  Gory details \u003ca href=\"http://newsroom.lexmark.com/2012-08-28-Lexmark-announces-restructuring\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI came into work to a morgue.  First and second line managers were going around talking to individuals and my \u0026ldquo;talking to\u0026rdquo; seemed ambiguously in the future.  I checked on a couple guys from church and both \u003cem\u003eseemed\u003c/em\u003e safe, and my small group was praying for my job.  There was the appropriate level of gallows humor, but it just felt different than times we\u0026rsquo;ve done this in the past.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBy ~11am we had an \u0026ldquo;all building\u0026rdquo; meeting scheduled in our main conference room downstairs, lead by my boss.  The meeting was to be at 2.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThroughout the rest of the day, people and contractors were told what their futures held.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAt the meeting it was announced that we\u0026rsquo;re undergoing a reorganization in our area, but we were not offered the names of people who would be departing.  We were told that our deliverables for the Fall were not rescheduled or delayed in any way, despite losing a significant percentage of the people responsible for final delivery checklists.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe remainder of the day was weird discussions with others, hallway talk, and a poignant departure note sent to a department-wide distribution list.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI went home and felt empty.  Just utterly empty. . .and I don\u0026rsquo;t do well with that typically.  In lieu of going in for dinner\u0026ndash;and probably spewing my pent up emotions at my wife and kids\u0026ndash;I grabbed a pickaxe and shovel and dug up some more posts in my back yard  Per my Dad\u0026rsquo;s sage advice, physical activity is often the best stress relief, and it truly helped.  \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Yesterday sucked"},{"content":"I sat in this very seat a month ago a broken man, a failure.\nI intended to send my pastor a quick note asking him to pray for me. What actually happened was time disappeared, and what\u0026rsquo;d been pent up for months spewed out of my heart, down my touch-typing to an email that Scott said was too long to even attempt reading on his smartphone.\nThe subject line: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m broken\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nAnd I was. Uncertainty and doubt clouded me, truth and lies were my constant companions. I put so much crap on myself that I was paralyzed to do anything about it. I was angry and entitled, all the time. That very week, I\u0026rsquo;d exploded at one of my colleagues in a meeting (mom taught me a great phrase for this: \u0026ldquo;Tearing your ass\u0026rdquo;), then done the same things to my kids multiple times. I just couldn\u0026rsquo;t stand\u0026hellip;anybody.\nWithin, I just felt shame, shame that I\u0026rsquo;d let my past transgressions leak back into my life, that I wasn\u0026rsquo;t strong enough to shy away from them, that I wasn\u0026rsquo;t strong enough to overcome my deficient brain chemistry and self-destruction. In short, I resented myself for not being perfect and letting everyone down. Home, work, friends, some poor schmuck I met at the gas station\u0026ndash;they all got the \u0026ldquo;Baptized in vinegar\u0026rdquo; me, so to speak.\nNot. Good.\nSo, that email, that cry of barrenness was a step. And there were more painful steps to follow: Busting the crappy distant relationship I had with my wife to replace it with honesty and accountability, letting some things go at work, remaining clean through another dose of the UK Emergency Room, staring at my bank account, my empty FSA, and the \u0026ldquo;no raises\u0026rdquo; memo from the powers-that-be and understanding how long it\u0026rsquo;d be \u0026rsquo;til I saw Dave Ramsey baby step 2 complete again.\nSo, how is this hope? Because I feel different. Hopeful, blessed even. Last night, I stared up at the Perseid meteor shower with my wife, after what remains of my diaspora Small Group watched 29 kids for 4 hours so people could have some \u0026ldquo;adult time\u0026rdquo; for themselves.\u0026quot; Rather than feeling down, depressed or exhausted, I felt *energized*. Some of the conversations I\u0026rsquo;d had with my small group were those moments where you realize you\u0026rsquo;re exactly where God wants you to be. I talked with my wife, had some libations and understood how blessed I am in that moment.\nIn short, I\u0026rsquo;ve learned the kernel of James 1:2-4:\nConsider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (NASB)\nI\u0026rsquo;m such a baby, and such a baby Christian. I just don\u0026rsquo;t want to remain that way, and I\u0026rsquo;m excited (and scared) about where that\u0026rsquo;s going to take me and my family.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/08/sometimes-you-cry-out-and-it-makes-all-the-difference/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI sat in this very seat a month ago a broken man, a failure.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI \u003cem\u003eintended\u003c/em\u003e to send my pastor a quick note asking him to pray for me.  What actually happened was time disappeared, and what\u0026rsquo;d been pent up for months spewed out of my heart, down my touch-typing to an email that Scott said was too long to even attempt reading on his smartphone.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe subject line:  \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m broken\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sometimes, you cry out, and it makes all the difference"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;This is definitely the kind of seizure you want your kid to have.\u0026rdquo;\nWhat?!\nShe was an ER resident with an icy, direct gaze and a no-frills haircut. At that moment, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t remember her name because I was busy trying to get my wife to drink something as she held our daughter, who, an hour before, had just had a grand mal seizure in our downstairs bathtub. An hour or so later, our other two kids were at a friend\u0026rsquo;s house, my car had a Check Engine Light because I flogged it so hard getting to UK Hospital, and we were both trying to process what happened.\n* * *\nScalett Fever. Those two words hit me like a ton of bricks the previous day when Whitney came home from Georgetown Pediatrics. Immediately my mind sprang to two movie scenes: One from Oh God! You Devil with George Burns where the mom pleads with God to not let her baby die because its fever was so high. Another was some dead-people movie where a kid gets thrown into an icy bath and dies anyway.\nScarlett Fever is serious business. The doc didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to think so, as he gave us some Amoxicillin and recommended alternating Motrin and Tylenol ever 4 hours. We needn\u0026rsquo;t cancel our vacation plans, just watch it and keep on the regimen throughout.\nOkaaaay\u0026hellip;.\nFast forward to Sunday night. We were going to head out to Gatlinburg the next day, all 5 of us in our Ford Fusion Hybrid. Yeah, the one with 25% less trunk space. I was concerned how I was going to get everything packed, how we didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be ready, how I was going to handle my two eldest bickering in close quarters for 6 hours in the backseat. Mostly, I was afraid of me, if I\u0026rsquo;d act out like I\u0026rsquo;ve done countless times before, ruining everything for everybody. Whitney and I both agreed I needed a break. In any case, Grace seemed to be on an upswing, her fever stabilized and she had quite the appetite when I left.\nSo, I headed out around 5-ish, got some ice cream, then hit the Georgetown theaters for a showing of The Amazing Spiderman. I\u0026rsquo;d heard it was a good movie, and that the interplay between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy was worth watching in a totally not Romantic Comedy sort of way. Movie started 7ish, so I was just getting to the climax\u0026ndash;Lizard dude was attacking the school\u0026ndash;when my phone rang.\nNot texted. Not Google Voice or Google Chat. No, Whitney was calling me. Offhandedly, I took note that my phone was also almost out of battery. Damn, I thought_, must not have plugged it in last night, or some Android app has gone haywire and drained it._\nI declined the call, doing the \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll call you back in a few minutes\u0026rdquo; auto-text response.\nSo she texted me back: \u0026ldquo;Your daughter is having convulsions.\u0026rdquo;\nI texted back \u0026ldquo;OMW\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;on my way\u0026ndash;and hit send and the phone died. I didn\u0026rsquo;t even know if the phone had gotten the message out before it died. Another problem: I had no way of communicating with her as I\u0026rsquo;d left my car charger in her car.\nI sprinted out of the theatre to my car. It\u0026rsquo;s about 10 minutes or so to get from the theatre through central G\u0026rsquo;town to my house. I made it in ~5, trying to staunch my panic. I\u0026rsquo;ve been here before, you see, same scenario: Away from the family, something goes down, trying to get in contact with Whitney and can\u0026rsquo;t.\nAnyway, I get to the house, just in time to see the ambulance (!) pulling out the other way. Every light in the house was still burning so I screech into the back carport and try to get in. Every door is locked and\u0026ndash;#fail again\u0026ndash;I didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to have a key. Peaking in, I didn\u0026rsquo;t see anyone in the house, so I assumed my wife and all 3 kids must be in the ambulance.\nI assumed they\u0026rsquo;d go to the closest hospital, so I burned it into the Georgetown Hospital ER, but she wasn\u0026rsquo;t there. I waited behind a fat woman who was giving the triage nurse \u0026rsquo;tude, until I finally\u0026ndash;wild eyed with urgency\u0026ndash;went to the poor intern/candy striper who was also behind the counter. \u0026ldquo;I need to find out where my wife was. They let me use their landline and call the EMT dispatch, who promptly put me on hold. The triage nurse took pity on me and called somebody I didn\u0026rsquo;t see or hear, then came back to me and whispered, \u0026ldquo;U\u0026hellip;K\u0026hellip;.\u0026quot; I tore out of there and tried making speed down US25 to UK hospital. I missed my E30 325 and its manual transmission. Actually, I yearned for my GTO and its 350 hp, or possibly a helicoper. My poor, tired Camry shunted between 2nd and 3rd gear, rarely straying below 3000 rpm as I passed people as much as I could.\nI got into the Pediatric ER at UK\u0026ndash;much nicer than it had been in 2007, your tax $ at work\u0026ndash;and the triage nurse there pretty much waved me in to room 14 where I was surprised to find Grace alert and awake, in Whitney\u0026rsquo;s lap.\nWhitney was very chatty and random, a sure sign she was nervous and stressed. She was also holding tight to Grace talking to the hospital staff who administered Motrin and checked her vitals. I took Grace and tried to get Whitney to drink some fluids and calm down. Then I learned what had happened\u0026hellip;\nApparently, after Grace destroyed a bowl of ABC\u0026rsquo;s \u0026amp; 123\u0026rsquo;s, Whitney put her into a bath. The bath had neither been too cold nor too hot, and Grace seemed to enjoy playing in it. Then she became unresponsive. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she began to convulse all over, a classic Grand Mal seizure. She seized for ~17 minutes, during which time Whitney texted me and then she called 911. As luck\u0026ndash;or God\u0026rsquo;s plan\u0026ndash;would have it, some people from our church were driving by and saw the EMT\u0026rsquo;s out front, then grabbed Joey and Maria.\nOur piercing-gazed resident interviewed us pretty extensively, and we were to learn why: There\u0026rsquo;s a certain type of seizure called a Febrile Seizure. \u0026ldquo;This is certainly the type of seizure you want your child to have,\u0026rdquo; they said. This seizure type has pretty strict criteria: Must be related to a fever or change in body temp, must last for a certain period of time, must have a short recovery period, and it must be a whole body (Grand Mal) seizure. Ergo, if your feverish kid has a scary-as-hell convulsion for a relatively short period of time, it\u0026rsquo;s probably okay. There\u0026rsquo;s something like a 40% chance they\u0026rsquo;ll have a second one throughout the remainder of their life, and only a 20% chance of 3 or more. There\u0026rsquo;s only a slightly elevated risk of epilepsy or other seizure disorder.\nReading the literature, it seems to be correlated to people with genetic neuronal hypteractivity (read: ADD/ADHD). Ah, makes sense, then. :-)\nSo, no neuro consult, and we got home and collected our kids a tad after midnight, and collapsed. We watched G improve all Monday, then set out on our vacation on Tuesday.\nScary stuff, but everyone\u0026rsquo;s been very supportive, and several have shared how they went through similar things with their kids, only to never see a relapse.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/08/febrile-seizures-this-is-the-seizure-you-want-to-have...wait-what/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;This is definitely the kind of seizure you want your kid to have.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat?!\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nShe was an ER resident with an icy, direct gaze and a no-frills haircut.  At that moment, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t remember her name because I was busy trying to get my wife to drink something as she held our daughter, who, an hour before, had just had a \u003cem\u003egrand mal\u003c/em\u003e seizure in our downstairs bathtub.  An hour or so later, our other two kids were at a friend\u0026rsquo;s house, my car had a Check Engine Light because I flogged it so hard getting to UK Hospital, and we were both trying to process what happened.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Febrile Seizures: \"This is the Seizure You Want to Have\"...Wait, WHAT?"},{"content":"http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/ff_stevejobs\nI work in technology. I\u0026rsquo;m writing this on a second generation Macbook Air. My family owns or has owned: 2 ipod classics, 3 ipod nano\u0026rsquo;s, 1 Intel iMac, 3 iPhones (1 3G, 1 iphone 4, 1 4s). I\u0026rsquo;m not a fanboi, but I\u0026rsquo;m in the neighborhood.\nThat disclosed, let me be very clear in my position: Fuck Steve Jobs.\nNot because of what he did\u0026ndash;he did great things (Apple, NeXT, Pixar, Apple\u0026hellip;again), nor for his tyrannical management. I raise the cyber middle finger to Jobs because people conflate the two. They conclude that to do great things, you must be a tyrant, and that\u0026rsquo;s just wrong. In fact, the collateral damage of Jobs may take more than a decade to undo, just because people misunderstand who he was.\nI find little to respect in Jobs the man or Jobs the leader. He bred fear and distrust in his subordinates. He surrounded himself with people afraid of him, and destroyed people for fun. He was an awful father, the the point of self delusion. His egomania in the 1980\u0026rsquo;s left a company poised to fail once he was pushed out. He was the autocrat; it\u0026rsquo;s surprising he didn\u0026rsquo;t mutter Apres moi, le deluge! on his exit.\nSo, why am I so twisted about the axle about this? Because there can be one (EXACTLY ONE) Jobs within an organization, and he\u0026rsquo;d damn well better be the boss. If Yegge is to be believed, Bezos is that for Amazon, minus the \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re an idiot\u0026rdquo; customer beratement. Henry Ford was that for his eponymous company. However, thanks to the best-selling biography and his cannonization, I fear a generation of middle managers who all want to be Steve Jobs.\nThis is already happening, as mentioned in the article, in an anecdote about a Professor of Management and Engineering at Standford:\nIn it he describes teaching an innovation seminar to a group of Chinese CEOs who seemed infatuated with Jobs. They began debating in high-volume Mandarin whether copying Jobs’ bad behavior would improve their ability to lead. After a half-hour break, Sutton returned to the classroom to find the CEOs_still_hollering at one another, many of them emphatic that Jobs succeeded because of—not in spite of—his cruel treatment of those around him.\nGo ahead and try to be Atilla, Rasputin, and Ghengis Khan. I\u0026rsquo;m sure you\u0026rsquo;ll be temporally successful.\nLook, you\u0026rsquo;re not Steve Jobs. For one thing, you made it past the first paragraph of this blog. Jobs was a Sociopath, from my understanding of the term. If you\u0026rsquo;re Steve Jobs\u0026rsquo; scion, you don\u0026rsquo;t give a shit about anyone else\u0026rsquo;s opinion but your own. You have no tolerance for anyone who wastes your time or tears you down (even if they\u0026rsquo;re right). If you have a shred of reflection or self-doubt, you\u0026rsquo;re not Steve Jobs (YNSJ). Basically, if you can look around your organization and you\u0026rsquo;re not the boss\u0026ndash;that is, if you can STAND not being the boss, YNSJ.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll leave you with this quote from the article:\n“Jobs was like dynamite,” Syal says. “Dynamite clears paths, but it also destroys everything around it.” Syal didn’t think much of Bill Gates before, but he does now. “Gates evolved from an asshole into a human being,” he says. “Jobs remained an ass.”\nIndeed.\nGood on you, Apple employees, for creating great stuff. I hope that continues.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/07/on-steve-jobs-nsfw/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/ff_stevejobs\"\u003ehttp://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/ff_stevejobs\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI work in technology.  I\u0026rsquo;m writing this on a second generation Macbook Air.  My family owns or has owned: 2 ipod classics, 3 ipod nano\u0026rsquo;s, 1 Intel iMac, 3 iPhones (1 3G, 1 iphone 4, 1 4s).  I\u0026rsquo;m not a fanboi, but I\u0026rsquo;m in the neighborhood.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat disclosed, let me be very clear in my position:  Fuck Steve Jobs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot because of what he did\u0026ndash;he did great things (Apple, NeXT, Pixar, Apple\u0026hellip;again), nor for his tyrannical management.  I raise the cyber middle finger to Jobs because people conflate the two.  They conclude that to do great things, you must be a tyrant, and that\u0026rsquo;s just wrong.  In fact, the collateral damage of Jobs may take more than a decade to undo, just because people misunderstand who he was.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Steve Jobs (NSFW)"},{"content":"After a great date night last night\u0026ndash;long, in-depth conversations and understanding\u0026ndash;I awoke this morning feeling like crap.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll spare you the details, but the quote of the morning was, \u0026ldquo;Great. You apparently have Cholera.\u0026rdquo; Given the symptoms, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t disagree.\nSo, I slept \u0026rsquo;til about noon, with Whitney insisting I stay hydrated, then I watched a few episodes of \u0026lsquo;Glee\u0026rsquo; on Amazon Prime (okay, the first 6 eps of the first season).\nThe girls went out to Evans Orchard for the late afternoon. Naturally, amid our drought, today was a day for spotty downpours, so they didn\u0026rsquo;t get to have much fun, but the did return with three movies: \u0026ldquo;Happy Feet 2,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Ghostrider 2,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;This Means War.\u0026rdquo;\nHappy Feet 2 was a plotless mess.\nThis Means War surprised in its punchy simplicity and appeal to both male and female audiences :-) We both liked it. Honestly, it\u0026rsquo;s the only time I\u0026rsquo;ve seen Chelsea Handler in a still or moving image and haven\u0026rsquo;t been nauseated.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/07/a-sick-sunday-gross-with-lots-of-tv/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter a great date night last night\u0026ndash;long, in-depth conversations and understanding\u0026ndash;I awoke this morning feeling like crap.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll spare you the details, but the quote of the morning was, \u0026ldquo;Great.  You apparently have Cholera.\u0026rdquo;  Given the symptoms, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t disagree.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, I slept \u0026rsquo;til about noon, with Whitney insisting I stay hydrated, then I watched a few episodes of \u0026lsquo;Glee\u0026rsquo; on Amazon Prime (okay, the first 6 eps of the first season).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Sick Sunday: Gross, with Lots of TV"},{"content":"Just wanted to jot down a few notes so I\u0026rsquo;d remember this week:\nSunday I heard a great sermon at church, then took Maria and Grace down to see Mom \u0026amp; Dad. We had a nice little visit, then drove back through 1 hour of solid downpour. It didn\u0026rsquo;t rain at all in Georgetown, though. Monday I had a quasi-regular day at work and then spent 2.5 hours with my pastor thereafter. Tuesday I had a somewhat regular day at work, though my \u0026ldquo;Driving Change\u0026rdquo; group\u0026ndash;Dave Ellison and Patricia Ritchie\u0026ndash;were back in town so we had some practice and preliminary work to do. Wednesday was Driving Change, all day, and a webchat with Cebu from 7-\u0026gt;7:30 am. I was late showing up for the first presentation and was behind most of the day. At lunchtime, we got to sit with our CEO Paul Rooke and my Division Vice President, Marty Canning, to discuss how to move change through Lexmark. Thursday was the big presentation day. I woke up nauseated and threw up twice\u0026hellip;couldn\u0026rsquo;t tell if it was nerves or if I was just sick. (In general, I don\u0026rsquo;t get nauseated by nerves) I made it through my presentation, but felt progressively sicker as the day wore on. Friday I didn\u0026rsquo;t really feel like going in\u0026ndash;stomach hurt like hell and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t stray too far from a bathroom. I went in anyway, though, as I had a sizing for a future project due by 5:01pm. I submitted it by 5:01pm. A treat though: I got to hang with Gracie while Maria and Whitney went out to dinner and watched \u0026ldquo;Brave.\u0026rdquo; Also, the LXK stock managed to drop by ~20% yesterday, and Jim Cramer slapped us with a SELL SELL SELL on his charts, because we\u0026rsquo;re \u0026ldquo;Just an awful business. Awful.\u0026rdquo; ::sigh:: It was a tough week and I\u0026rsquo;m still not fully recovered. I beginning to wonder if all the stress of things I know and don\u0026rsquo;t know is giving me some serious physical effects.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/07/stomachaches-headaches-and-stress/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust wanted to jot down a few notes so I\u0026rsquo;d remember this week:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSunday I heard a great sermon at church, then took Maria and Grace down to see Mom \u0026amp; Dad.  We had a nice little visit, then drove back through 1 hour of solid downpour.  It didn\u0026rsquo;t rain at all in Georgetown, though.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMonday I had a quasi-regular day at work and then spent 2.5 hours with my pastor thereafter.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTuesday I had a somewhat regular day at work, though my \u0026ldquo;Driving Change\u0026rdquo; group\u0026ndash;Dave Ellison and Patricia Ritchie\u0026ndash;were back in town so we had some practice and preliminary work to do.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWednesday was Driving Change, all day, and a webchat with Cebu from 7-\u0026gt;7:30 am.  I was late showing up for the first presentation and was behind most of the day.  At lunchtime, we got to sit with our CEO Paul Rooke and my Division Vice President, Marty Canning, to discuss how to move change through Lexmark.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThursday was the big presentation day.  I woke up nauseated and threw up twice\u0026hellip;couldn\u0026rsquo;t tell if it was nerves or if I was just sick.  (In general, I don\u0026rsquo;t get nauseated by nerves)  I made it through my presentation, but felt progressively sicker as the day wore on.  \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFriday I didn\u0026rsquo;t really feel like going in\u0026ndash;stomach hurt like hell and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t stray too far from a bathroom.  I went in anyway, though, as I had a sizing for a future project due by 5:01pm.  I submitted it by 5:01pm.  A treat though: I got to hang with Gracie while Maria and Whitney went out to dinner and watched \u0026ldquo;Brave.\u0026rdquo;  Also, the LXK stock managed to drop by ~20% yesterday, and Jim Cramer slapped us with a SELL SELL SELL on his charts, because we\u0026rsquo;re \u0026ldquo;Just an awful business. Awful.\u0026rdquo;  ::sigh::\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a tough week and I\u0026rsquo;m still not fully recovered.  I beginning to wonder if all the stress of things I know and don\u0026rsquo;t know is giving me some serious physical effects.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Stomachaches, headaches, and stress"},{"content":"In Ecclesiastes 6:3-7, we read:\n3If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, \u0026ldquo;Better the miscarriage than he, 4 for it comes in futility and goes into obscurity ; and its name is covered in obscurity. 5 \u0026ldquo;It never sees the sun and it never knows anything; it is better off than he. 6 \u0026ldquo;Even if the other man lives a thousand years twice and does not enjoy good things -do not all go to one place ?\u0026rdquo; 7All a man\u0026rsquo;s labor is for his mouth and yet the appetite is not satisfied. My pastor told me a story last night:\nI once had a trusted colleague, a Christian, who held me accountable when I was young in Christ. Like me, he was a lawyer, but he seemed to have that work/life balance thing figured out. I asked him how he did it.\n\u0026ldquo;You know,\u0026rdquo; the man said, \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s funny. I\u0026rsquo;d go to work and have all these accomplishments\u0026ndash;had my own law practice, argued and won important cases, made plenty of money. I knew I was at the top of my game. Then I\u0026rsquo;d go home to my wife and kids, and you know what? I was just Dad. I\u0026rsquo;d have to take out the garbage, do grunt work, and generally be nobody that special. It felt like my work me was the real life and my home life was just\u0026hellip;fake. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t satisfied at all.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Then, as I got older, I realized: That\u0026rsquo;s completely backwards. The WORK life is the fake life, and the home life is the real life. What I say or do at work won\u0026rsquo;t matter in a day, a week, a month. It\u0026rsquo;s the crisis of the day. When I retire, I\u0026rsquo;m forgotten. What I say and do at home and with my friends, my kids, and my wife matters decades from now.\u0026rdquo; So, there it is, if you pour all your hope and energy into what\u0026rsquo;s essentially a FAKE existence, you become angry, frustrated, hopeless, and entitled. Eventually, once you realize this, you see people acting-out at work and you just want to shake them and say, \u0026ldquo;Snap out of it! Don\u0026rsquo;t you realize this is FAKE!\u0026rdquo;\nFor some reason, the second Scott told me this, Ecclesiastes\u0026ndash;the depressing book of wisdom from the Old Testament\u0026ndash;clicked for me. The tagline for Ecclesiastes is \u0026ldquo;All is vanity.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s right: Wisdom, possessions, work, etc. it\u0026rsquo;s all meaningless.\nThe thing that changed in me was Ecclesiastes doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean \u0026lsquo;All\u0026rsquo;. It might be rewritten like this: \u0026ldquo;All that \u0026lsquo;fake life\u0026rsquo; stuff is meaningless.\u0026rsquo;\nAnd then it makes perfect sense. In context, the author or \u0026lsquo;Teacher\u0026rsquo; mentioned in Ecclesiastes is Solomon, reputed to be the wisest man ever, because his wisdom was a gift from God. This is the book in which he reflects on his life and understands that, in many ways, he was a fool. He didn\u0026rsquo;t enjoy life while he had it, he kept trying to get more. As it says in vv 7 there: \u0026ldquo;All his labors are for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not satisfied.\u0026rdquo; Truly, once Solomon died, the kingdom if Israel would divide into Israel and Judah under Jeroboham and Rehoboam, and the long slide into eventual captivity would begin, with each side of Solomon\u0026rsquo;s bloodline sliding into debauchery and idolatry.\nThis book, once a huge downer for me, is now an essential keystone of how one ought live.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/07/real-life-v-fake-life-ecclesiastes/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ca href=\"http://www.biblestudytools.com/nas/ecclesiastes/passage.aspx?q=ecclesiastes+6:3-7\"\u003eEcclesiastes 6:3-7\u003c/a\u003e, we read:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e3\u003c/strong\u003eIf a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, \u0026ldquo;Better the miscarriage than he, \u003cstrong\u003e4\u003c/strong\u003e for it comes in futility and goes into obscurity ; and its name is covered in obscurity. \u003cstrong\u003e5\u003c/strong\u003e \u0026ldquo;It never sees the sun and it never knows anything; it is better off than he. \u003cstrong\u003e6\u003c/strong\u003e \u0026ldquo;Even if the other man lives a thousand years twice and does not enjoy good things -do not all go to one place ?\u0026rdquo; \u003cstrong\u003e7\u003c/strong\u003eAll a man\u0026rsquo;s labor is for his mouth and yet the appetite is not satisfied.  \u003c/p\u003e","title":"Real life -v- Fake life: Ecclesiastes"},{"content":"Two months into our new house, amid the Drought of 1988 (redux).\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s gone wrong:\nMold. Pervasive mold on every floor, especially in the basement. At the moment, my wife refuses to go down there for any length of time. HVAC. Turns out the mold on the top floor was caused by the 23-year-old HVAC unit that was listed as \u0026lsquo;7 years old\u0026rsquo; on the disclosure form. In reality, the AC coil was leaking, and the drip pan was rusted out, so whenever it ran, it ran moisture down into the drywall in my girls\u0026rsquo; room. New HVAC system installed upstairs, on credit. #facepalm TV reception. Despite my current efforts (the booster we had on our old house) the Jerry-rigged (asshole was named \u0026lsquo;Jerry\u0026rsquo;) coax from the attic VHF/UHF antenna won\u0026rsquo;t pull in our local PBS affiliate after 8am. Dishwasher leaks on the lower left front corner. Plumbing fun: Slow drain in the downstairs bath, indifferent water pressure (cold or hot) in downstairs bath, leaky trap O-ring under the kitchen sink. Our garage door spring snapped ~2 weeks in, cost ~$400 to fix. Still yet, the house is utterly solid, and build to a \u0026ldquo;they don\u0026rsquo;t build them like this anymore\u0026rdquo; level that has Whitney and myself thrilled. The hardwood in the foyer, stairs, and Den is holding up great, and the garage has plenty of possibilities.\nThe neighbors have been friendly, and we haven\u0026rsquo;t had any run-ins. Before the Heat Wave took hold, most folks were out each night walking, riding bikes, and just generally being neighborly.\nI\u0026rsquo;m still loving the house and the possibilities it presents, and the extra room for kids. Also, Whitney\u0026rsquo;s doing an awesome job with the \u0026rsquo;library,\u0026rsquo; turning it into a place of respite we just didn\u0026rsquo;t have at the old house.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/07/serenity/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwo months into our new house, amid the Drought of 1988 (redux).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s gone wrong:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMold.  Pervasive mold on every floor, especially in the basement.  At the moment, my wife refuses to go down there for any length of time.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHVAC.  Turns out the mold on the top floor was caused by the 23-year-old HVAC unit that was listed as \u0026lsquo;7 years old\u0026rsquo; on the disclosure form.  In reality, the AC coil was leaking, and the drip pan was rusted out, so whenever it ran, it ran moisture down into the drywall in my girls\u0026rsquo; room.  New HVAC system installed upstairs, on credit. #facepalm\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTV reception.  Despite my current efforts (the booster we had on our old house) the Jerry-rigged (asshole was named \u0026lsquo;Jerry\u0026rsquo;) coax from the attic VHF/UHF antenna won\u0026rsquo;t pull in our local PBS affiliate after 8am.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDishwasher leaks on the lower left front corner.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePlumbing fun: Slow drain in the downstairs bath, indifferent water pressure (cold or hot) in downstairs bath, leaky trap O-ring under the kitchen sink.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOur garage door spring snapped ~2 weeks in, cost ~$400 to fix.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill yet, the house is utterly solid, and build to a \u0026ldquo;they don\u0026rsquo;t build them like this anymore\u0026rdquo; level that has Whitney and myself thrilled.  The hardwood in the foyer, stairs, and Den is holding up great, and the garage has plenty of possibilities.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Serenity?\""},{"content":"As of June 23rd last year, I was \u0026ldquo;promoted\u0026rdquo; to the title of Architect within my organization, reporting directly to a Third line manager. I was taken off of regular, day-to-day delivery activities and basically given freedom to involve myself wherever I thought best, or wherever my boss needed me.\nAt the time, I was given the following commentary and advice:\n\u0026ldquo;Welcome to being the bitch.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;So, are they going to let you code anymore?\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re going to have to get used to being very broad, and very shallow. You have to know alot and have a high-level understanding of almost everything, but not get mired in the day-to-day.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re more of an advisor than an architect. Your job is to advise those making decisions and help do technical mediation for those teams.\u0026rdquo; Those quotes came from the first week. At some time or another in the past year, they\u0026rsquo;ve all been true.\nSome awesome things about my job in the past year:\nI get exposed to what really goes on in middle management. I got to participate in our strategy discussions last year. I participated in the vetting process of at least one acquisition. I got to run an internal Software Architecture Board. I got to push several initiatives on my own: Continuous Integration consolidation under JenkinsCI, Artifact publication and consumption, technical skills improvements, and \u0026ldquo;skunkworks\u0026rdquo; projects. I\u0026rsquo;ve learned the importance of politics and sponsorship to initiatives. Good ideas without proper support won\u0026rsquo;t go anywhere. Opportunity to travel a bit and interact with other developers. Some not-so-awesome things:\nI\u0026rsquo;m not a manager. I\u0026rsquo;m also not an individual contributor on a team. In my organization, that\u0026rsquo;s a good way to get steamrolled whether agressively or passive-aggressively I\u0026rsquo;ve seen behavior an average middle school teacher would expect, yet would not tolerate. I\u0026rsquo;ve failed. Many times. I\u0026rsquo;ve started things that fizzled for lack of my attention. I\u0026rsquo;ve started things that fizzled despite lots of effort on my own part. I\u0026rsquo;ve known frustration at levels I thought impossible when I was dealing with purely technical problems. I can\u0026rsquo;t make things happen anymore. At least, not on my own. I was warned adequately about this by my colleague Mark, who said, \u0026ldquo;You have to understand you can\u0026rsquo;t come in and take some incompetent prima-donna\u0026rsquo;s code and \u0026lsquo;fix it\u0026rsquo; for him anymore. You have to trust and be trusted among those who are moving the thousand pieces of things on a big project.\u0026rdquo; Actually, the not-so-awesome things outweigh the awesome things most of the time. Provisionally, my current theory is this:\nThe best person to be a Software Architect is someone who doesn\u0026rsquo;t want to be one, yet who sees the need and will serve the role.\nThere seem to be three ultimate destinations where my current job goes: (1) You\u0026rsquo;re a narcissistic egotist who believes you know better than everyone else and, by God, they\u0026rsquo;d better listen to you because YOU ARE RIGHT. (2) You can\u0026rsquo;t broaden your mind beyond a certain domain, so you\u0026rsquo;re basically limited to \u0026lsquo;architecting\u0026rsquo; a single thing, which is what good Developers do, anyway. (3) You turn into a Business Analyst, and you do a little technical and a lot of \u0026ldquo;slideware,\u0026rdquo; selling and communicating to others.\nIn summary, I don\u0026rsquo;t feel like my current position will continue in its current fashion. Our development community has outright rejected (1) behavior above, as they should. Those fulfilling a (2) position above are getting burned-out at an incredible rate. And (3) isn\u0026rsquo;t a role we value, for good or for bad. At the moment, I\u0026rsquo;m headed for #2, being consumed by a multi-division \u0026ldquo;cluster\u0026rdquo; project.\nThese are all my sober opinions, on a hot Saturday afternoon, a year into being an \u0026ldquo;Architect.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/07/a-year-as-an-architect-looking-back./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs of June 23rd last year, I was \u0026ldquo;promoted\u0026rdquo; to the title of Architect within my organization, reporting directly to a Third line manager.  I was taken off of regular, day-to-day delivery activities and basically given freedom to involve myself wherever I thought best, or wherever my boss needed me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt the time, I was given the following commentary and advice:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;Welcome to being the bitch.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;So, are they going to let you code anymore?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re going to have to get used to being very broad, and very shallow.  You have to know alot and have a high-level understanding of almost everything, but not get mired in the day-to-day.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re more of an advisor than an architect.  Your job is to advise those making decisions and help do technical mediation for those teams.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose quotes came from the first week.  At some time or another in the past year, they\u0026rsquo;ve all been true.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Year as an \"Architect,\" looking back."},{"content":"Ah yes, John Carter, aka \u0026ldquo;John Carter of Mars,\u0026rdquo; aka \u0026ldquo;A Princess of Mars.\u0026rdquo; You single handedly assured that Andrew Stanton of Pixar will never, ever be granted final cut again. You lost something like a quarter of a billion dollars for your parent company, Disney.\nYou know I\u0026rsquo;ve seen many bad films in my life (current nadir being \u0026ldquo;Tristan and Isolde\u0026rdquo;), and John Carter isn\u0026rsquo;t one of them.\nIt isn\u0026rsquo;t a great film. Comparison to other alien epics like Cameron\u0026rsquo;s Avatar inevitably come, and Carter does poorly. We don\u0026rsquo;t truly care about our hero until well into the second act. Worse, the framework of the story\u0026ndash;that John Carter has died suddenly on earth and his nephew Edgar Rice Burroughs (get it?) is reading his fantastic account of his Barsoon Exploits\u0026ndash;just feels like faux epic claptrap right up to the end.\nFurther, there\u0026rsquo;s much to laugh at: Plenty of deus ex machina, from a magic potion that is \u0026ldquo;The Voice of Mars\u0026rdquo; to actual machina that Carter learns to fly\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;on the fly. And the NAMES! \u0026ldquo;Let us go to the city of Helium\u0026hellip;,\u0026rdquo; says the hottie in the bikini who happens to be beautiful, incredibly intelligent, self sufficient in a battle, and yet emotionally needy like a spoiled princess. And her name\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Deja,\u0026rdquo; as in deja vu. Which wasn\u0026rsquo;t bad, in that I mentally enjoyed the concept of a woman this easy-on-the-eyes being named \u0026ldquo;Again.\u0026rdquo; The fanfic writes itself.\nAND YET. It was entertaining for me. The movie benefits from Stanton\u0026rsquo;s singular vision and eye for detail and vistas. In particular, the action set-pieces are quite good without being Michael Bay-esque ADHD disasters. One can see what\u0026rsquo;s going on and most every inch of the screen is interesting.\nAlso, there was plenty of character development: Carter moves from being a shell of a Lost Cause Confederate gold-digger to being a Spartacus-level hero; Deja learns to trust; and the Tharks experience most of the American Indian tropes you\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen, with the advantage of being little green men.\nCould it be better? Sure. Lots isn\u0026rsquo;t explained, not even tantalized. Issus \u0026amp; the power of the Ninth Ray, for example.Why do the Red Martians look like humans? Therns? Lacking a Barsoon equivalent of the Silmarillion, the mythology and consistency of the movie is difficult.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/07/review-john-carter/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh yes, \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401729/\"\u003eJohn Carter\u003c/a\u003e, aka \u0026ldquo;John Carter of Mars,\u0026rdquo; aka \u0026ldquo;A Princess of Mars.\u0026rdquo;  You single handedly assured that Andrew Stanton of Pixar will never, ever be granted final cut again.  You lost something like a quarter of a billion dollars for your parent company, Disney.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I\u0026rsquo;ve seen many bad films in my life (current nadir being \u0026ldquo;Tristan and Isolde\u0026rdquo;), and \u003cem\u003eJohn Carter\u003c/em\u003e isn\u0026rsquo;t one of them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt isn\u0026rsquo;t a great film.  Comparison to other alien epics like Cameron\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eAvatar\u003c/em\u003e inevitably come, and Carter does poorly.  We don\u0026rsquo;t truly care about our hero until well into the second act.  Worse, the framework of the story\u0026ndash;that John Carter has died suddenly on earth and his nephew Edgar Rice Burroughs (get it?) is reading his fantastic account of his Barsoon Exploits\u0026ndash;just feels like faux epic claptrap right up to the end.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: John Carter"},{"content":"So, we moved.\nWe sold our old house on the east side of Georgetown, KY and moved to a house on the west side. I\u0026rsquo;m currently so tired and overwrought I can\u0026rsquo;t even remember if one capitalizes \u0026rsquo;east\u0026rsquo; in a sentence. I think you do, but capital letters just hurt my eyes right now.\nWe couldn\u0026rsquo;t have done it without lots of help from folks at church, especially folks from our small group. We got T\u0026rsquo;s Chevy Colorado truck (2.8L 4-cylinder, AT for those scoring at home) for almost a week, and schlepped stuff to T\u0026rsquo;s garage, B\u0026amp;D\u0026rsquo;s basement, our storage building, my office at work, and a Mobile Attic. Most of the stuff (at least the things not in the mobile attic, actually got moved *twice*.\nThe week before closing sale on Sardula was crazy. Sunday, I chose to have another group member lead my small group at church as Whitney and I packed things into boxes. I liked smaller boxes; she like the efficiency of larger boxes. Monday I was at work, dealing with a special project that was supposed to be delivered that week that I was supposed to be at work.\nAside: So, our closing got moved up from Monday, 30 April to Friday, 27 April. This meant instead of taking off the entire week of the 30th, I scraped together the Wednesday through Friday the week of the 23rd, then monday the 30th. Compressed timelines, yeah.\nAnyway, so I basically had a sit-down with my special project team at work and laid out what was remaining for the demo coming up the next week, then Tuesday I worked a half-day and drove Grace to the Gastrointerologist in Cincinnati to see if he thought her not eating was anything medical. They basically took a detailled history and scheduled a follow-up appointment for June. Understand, I\u0026rsquo;m glad they didn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026lsquo;scope my daughter\u0026rsquo;s esophagus, but at the same time, it was incredibly frustrating to get the medical profession\u0026rsquo;s version of a condescending pat on the head. Fact: My daughter lost 3 lbs from her 12 month to 15 month appointment, and has plateaued since. That I kept repeating, repeating, and reiterating that to the nurse, intern, doctor, and dietician never seemed to register.\nSo that\u0026hellip;was Tuesday. Then we packed some more.\nHonestly, Wednesday I don\u0026rsquo;t remember at all, aside from schlepping kids and stuff and continuing to sleep on the floor in sleeping bags because we packed our beds the weekend prior. Thursday was D-Day. We had a walk-through on the house at 10am Friday morning, with sale to close in Lexington (yay, 1 hour roundtrip!) at noon. By Thursday, I\u0026rsquo;d come to several conclusions: First, my back was with me through the move. I don\u0026rsquo;t know if it was necessity or providence, but my arthritic lower back didn\u0026rsquo;t go out during the process, even when moving the TempurPedic King mattress. Second, I realized we didn\u0026rsquo;t have enough space to fit all our crap.\nOur goal was to have a yard sale during April to shed some crap before we moved. That did not occur, so the detritus of 5 people had to go along with everything else. Eventually, we resorted to stuffing the Mobile Attic to the gills (we tried to open it upon delivery and the crap was stacked so high close to the back that the mechanism jammed), packing both cars, ripping the back seat out of my Camry of Doom, and throwing the remainder in T\u0026amp;K\u0026rsquo;s garage.\nThursday, for me, lasted from 5am to 3am the next morning. We secured a hotel room for the night and a babysitter, so Whitney, C, and myself could clean, patch holes, paint, and move things. By 11 Whitney and C had to leave (school night), and there I was painting, cleaning, and moving. I got a second wind\u0026ndash;thanks, podcasts\u0026ndash;and pushed through it as best I could. Then I got 3 hours\u0026rsquo; sleep at the hotel before we woke-up and I took Joey and Maria to school, then dashed back to Sardula to finish up.\nTurns-out, I\u0026rsquo;d done a crappy job on the finishing touches. Fair enough; I\u0026rsquo;d cut enough corners to make a circle. I oversaw the Mobile Attic moving over to our new house, and came back to throw more crap in cars and the Colorado, pulling out just as the buyers were driving down the block for their walkthrough. First hurdle, surmounted.\nFrom there, we went to close sale of the house with a hungry 19 month old and Maria whom we\u0026rsquo;d picked-up for preschool. The closing attorney had a dog. It was an absolute boondoggle intitially, with G screaming DOGGY! DOGGY! DOGGY! while the attorney was trying to go through the myriad forms for the buyers. Eventually, it worked out and we got our check for the proceeds of the sale.\nWe went to R\u0026rsquo;s insurance office to sign forms for our new insurance on house \u0026amp; cars.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll continue some more later. I need to drive home and find my wife\u0026rsquo;s toothbrush which I\u0026rsquo;ve lost.\nH\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/05/on-the-other-side-of-moving-exhausted/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, we moved.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe sold our old house on the east side of Georgetown, KY and moved to a house on the west side. I\u0026rsquo;m currently so tired and overwrought I can\u0026rsquo;t even remember if one capitalizes \u0026rsquo;east\u0026rsquo; in a sentence.  I think you do, but capital letters just hurt my eyes right now.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe couldn\u0026rsquo;t have done it without lots of help from folks at church, especially folks from our small group.  We got T\u0026rsquo;s Chevy Colorado truck (2.8L 4-cylinder, AT for those scoring at home) for almost a week, and schlepped stuff to T\u0026rsquo;s garage, B\u0026amp;D\u0026rsquo;s basement, our storage building, my office at work, and a \u003ca href=\"http://www.mobileattic.com/\"\u003eMobile Attic\u003c/a\u003e.  Most of the stuff (at least the things not in the mobile attic, actually got moved *twice*.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the other side of moving. Exhausted."},{"content":"So, Buzz Out Loud ended this past week, which sucks considering I only discovered it last month when I started using Doggcatcher as my go-to podcast reader (I\u0026rsquo;m aware of the term \u0026lsquo;podcatcher\u0026rsquo; and its symmetry with \u0026lsquo;podcaster,\u0026rsquo; I just think it\u0026rsquo;s a terrible word.)\nSo, I had to go in and remove BoL from my subscription list. While I was in there, I the following subscriptions for the following reasons:\nMintcast \u0026ndash; This is actually a really good Linux podcast; they do news around new Linux distros, the latest in the Gnome/Cinnamon schism from the Linux Mint team, and general sys-admin-y stuff. Nothing wrong with the cast itself, other than it\u0026rsquo;s middle age sys-admin guys talking about linux Linux Outlaws \u0026ndash; This one hurt. I\u0026rsquo;ve listened to Linux Outlaws for almost a year now\u0026ndash;started right after I got my Atrix. The issue I have is the main creative force behind the show\u0026ndash;Fabian Scherchel\u0026ndash;has moved on. He\u0026rsquo;s acting like he hasn\u0026rsquo;t, but he\u0026rsquo;s really been phoning-in the podcasts lately. His co-host, Dan Lynch, is the ever-present straight-man and I still subscribe to his RatholeRadio podcast, but LO is don\u0026rsquo;t for me. NPR Culturtopia \u0026ndash; Once I discovered that Pop Culture Happy Hour had its own podcast link, random stories from Netta Ulabe (sp?) became superfluous. PCHH is my favorite podcast\u0026ndash;bar none\u0026ndash;and it\u0026rsquo;s a welcome change from my normal diet of tech, tech, programming, nerd, tech stuff. Current subscriptions remaining:\nTWiT \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Leo Laporte and John Dvorak bloviating for 1 1/2 hours. Rarely listen to the whole thing. It\u0026rsquo;s on the bubble This American Life. Best-produced program out there, period. Not always interesting, but engaging and educational APM: Tales from Lake Woebegone. Rarely listen to this anymore; since his stroke, Garrison doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be putting much into this. On the bubble. APM: Marketplace Tech Report. 2 Minute segments, which is 1 minute less than my attention span for such things How Was Your Week with Julie Klausner. Funny. I usually enjoy it, thought it\u0026rsquo;s bluer than necessary and downright turn-it-off raunchy at intervals. NPR Wait Wait Don\u0026rsquo;t Tell Me. Yeah, I\u0026rsquo;m an NPR/news nerd. Sue me Pragmatic Podcasts. Seems like they\u0026rsquo;re not publishing these anymore. Rathole Radio. As mentioned above, ecclectic mix of music from Dan Lynch. Good to VERY Good. Software Engineering Radio Podcast. Another podcast that I seem to have caught at the end of its run. They\u0026rsquo;ve been absorbed by IEEE radio and new content seems sparse. Sourcetrunk. Great show by a Hollander who reviews OSS by looking at it and its sourcecode/design. VERY good, with a nice European twist. Stuff You Missed in History Class. Hasn\u0026rsquo;t been the same since Katie Lambert left, but good content and interesting. Could use tighter editing on some topics, though. The Moth Podcast. LOVE, Love, love these honest, unscripted tales from real people and celebrities told in \u0026lt; 10 minutes with no Powerpoint, no notes, nothing but you and a microphone. I\u0026rsquo;ve laughed, cried, and cheered listening to these. The Nerdist. Without a doubt, the funniest, filthiest thing on my list. These guys interview entertainment industry folk and they get REAL with them. Lots of behind-the-baseball items. The interview with the voices of Pinky and the Brain is my favorite so far. Java Posse. If you\u0026rsquo;re a developer looking to get to the next level, FOLLOW THESE GUYS. They\u0026rsquo;re top-notch devs from Google, Netflix, etc. and they\u0026rsquo;re tracking the pulse of the industry. Lastly, a reason I tailed off on some of my Linux podcasts\u0026hellip;.I have this feeling that Linux is hopelessly fragmented and it\u0026rsquo;s turning into a bunch of developers and server-side guys who happen to kick along with sub-par desktop environments \u0026amp; applications. It seems like the rest of the industry has moved on: Unable to tackle linux/GNU directly, stuff\u0026rsquo;s gone to the cloud and mobile. I doubt my children will even have a \u0026ldquo;Personal Computer\u0026rdquo; as we know it today, instead they\u0026rsquo;ll have personal devices from palm tablets (we call them \u0026lsquo;smartphones\u0026rsquo; today) through things like the forthcoming Chromebook with days of battery life. Linux and personal computer hobbyists don\u0026rsquo;t play anywhere in that mix, and I think that\u0026rsquo;s unfortunate. It feels like we\u0026rsquo;re regressing to the mainframe days, or perhaps the vision of MULTICS as it was pitched\u0026ndash;utility computing sold by metering. We\u0026rsquo;re largely there\u0026ndash;metered data plans, metered API usage, metered compute resource via Amazon EC2. Ironically, the thing powering all this stuff is Linux, while the desktop/mobile is ceded to MacOS (read: Mach + BSD + Proprietary) and Windows NT-derived kernels.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/04/podcasts-ragequit-some-stuff-this-weekend/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnet.com/buzz-out-loud-podcast/\"\u003eBuzz Out Loud\u003c/a\u003e ended this past week, which sucks considering I only discovered it last month when I started using \u003ca href=\"http://www.doggcatcher.com/\"\u003eDoggcatcher\u003c/a\u003e as my go-to podcast reader (I\u0026rsquo;m aware of the term \u0026lsquo;podcatcher\u0026rsquo; and its symmetry with \u0026lsquo;podcaster,\u0026rsquo;  I just think it\u0026rsquo;s a terrible word.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, I had to go in and remove BoL from my subscription list.  While I was in there, I the following subscriptions for the following reasons:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.mintcast.org/\"\u003eMintcast\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ndash; This is actually a really good Linux podcast; they do news around new Linux distros, the latest in the Gnome/Cinnamon schism from the Linux Mint team, and general sys-admin-y stuff.  Nothing wrong with the cast itself, other than it\u0026rsquo;s middle age sys-admin guys talking about linux\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://sixgun.org/linuxoutlaws/\"\u003eLinux Outlaws\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ndash; This one hurt.  I\u0026rsquo;ve listened to Linux Outlaws for almost a year now\u0026ndash;started right after I got my Atrix.  The issue I have is the main creative force behind the show\u0026ndash;Fabian Scherchel\u0026ndash;has moved on.  He\u0026rsquo;s acting like he hasn\u0026rsquo;t, but he\u0026rsquo;s really been phoning-in the podcasts lately.  His co-host, Dan Lynch, is the ever-present straight-man and I still subscribe to his RatholeRadio podcast, but LO is don\u0026rsquo;t for me.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=126677937\"\u003eNPR Culturtopia\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ndash; Once I discovered that \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=129472378\"\u003ePop Culture Happy Hour\u003c/a\u003e had its own podcast link, random stories from Netta Ulabe (sp?) became superfluous.  PCHH is my favorite podcast\u0026ndash;bar none\u0026ndash;and it\u0026rsquo;s a welcome change from my normal diet of tech, tech, programming, nerd, tech stuff.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCurrent subscriptions remaining:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Podcasts: Ragequit some stuff this weekend"},{"content":"I was sick all weekend (hayfever). Hot/cold, freeze/pollen, dust/grass\u0026hellip;thankfully, none of it\u0026rsquo;s made it to my lungs. Yet.\nGrace was sick all weekend (Hand/Foot/Mouth). Hasn\u0026rsquo;t eaten normally since middle of last week. Nobody slept well. I didn\u0026rsquo;t get to go to church, as I stayed home with Grace.\nA bright spot was we had a new couple from our church over to the house to have Easter dinner, Tyler and Kayla Williams. Really enjoyed their company, their sunny disposition. Whitney and I are SO FILLED WITH HOPE. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/04/crappy-easter-weekend/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was sick all weekend (hayfever).  Hot/cold, freeze/pollen, dust/grass\u0026hellip;thankfully, none of it\u0026rsquo;s made it to my lungs.  Yet.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGrace was sick all weekend (Hand/Foot/Mouth).  Hasn\u0026rsquo;t eaten normally since middle of last week.  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNobody slept well.  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn\u0026rsquo;t get to go to church, as I stayed home with Grace.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA bright spot was we had a new couple from our church over to the house to have Easter dinner, Tyler and Kayla Williams.  Really enjoyed their company, their sunny disposition.  Whitney and I are SO FILLED WITH HOPE. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Crappy Easter Weekend"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Why do you like Europe?\u0026rdquo;\nIn our house, we do lots of \u0026ldquo;apropos of nothing\u0026rdquo; discussion. One minute, you\u0026rsquo;re talking soccer, the next you\u0026rsquo;re analyzing the selfishness of the Baby Boom generation. Last night\u0026rsquo;s verbal ejaculation came in the middle of another dull, overwrought Shonda Rhimes pilot, Scandal--or as I like to call it \u0026ldquo;Scrawny balloon-lipped gal who flounces through every scene.\u0026rdquo;\nAnywho\u0026hellip;.\u0026ldquo;What, you mean like to live there or to visit?\u0026rdquo; I replied.\n\u0026ldquo;Yeah, why do you like it?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Because most of Western History happened there.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;So?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Uh\u0026hellip;.Art, music, historic sights. It\u0026rsquo;s all there. You can stand where Caesar stood, where Charlemage, Henry-the-eighth stood. And there\u0026rsquo;s all the old buildings from different eras.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;So, dead people and old buildings?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yep\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/04/on-europe/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Why do you like Europe?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn our house, we do lots of \u0026ldquo;apropos of nothing\u0026rdquo; discussion.  One minute, you\u0026rsquo;re talking soccer, the next you\u0026rsquo;re analyzing the selfishness of the Baby Boom generation.  Last night\u0026rsquo;s verbal ejaculation came in the middle of another dull, overwrought Shonda Rhimes pilot, \u003cem\u003eScandal\u003c/em\u003e--or as I like to call it \u0026ldquo;Scrawny balloon-lipped gal who flounces through every scene.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnywho\u0026hellip;.\u0026ldquo;What, you mean like to live there or to visit?\u0026rdquo; I replied.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Europe"},{"content":"I typically abhor facebook. It\u0026rsquo;s banal. It\u0026rsquo;s boring. And, 20% of the world\u0026rsquo;s population is on there, so\u0026ndash;like a bad High School Reunion\u0026ndash;you sorta have to be there too.\nThis thread I\u0026rsquo;m about to copy/pasta reshare single-handedly changed my perception of FB:\nStatus:\nOn cruise shuttle. Entering radio silence. I hope the world can survive without my exciting posts for a few days\u0026hellip;.\nOkay okay, a little self-important, but hey, this is the Twitter/Facebook generation where every meal and waste elimination is comment worthy. But then\u0026hellip;.in the comment stream:\nI can stand in for ___ if anyone is having withdrawl? \u0026ldquo;Well, rode the new bike for 48 miles, stopped to get some salmon steaks to grill for the fam\u0026hellip; then I replaced all the tile in the downstairs bath because, hey, why not?\u0026hellip; buffed out a scratch in the Porsche and rewired the sound system\u0026hellip; changed all the door thresholds used to contain the dogs to a titanium blend that I smelted myself in my handyman garage laboratory\u0026hellip; had a brewski and watched the game\u0026hellip; danced til 2 with the hot, little wifey, and then I aerated the entire back yard with a toothpick, by flashlight.\nIt gets better:\nGot to the gym early today, so I changed the factory default torque and incline on all the bikes in the spin room - a little modification I like to call \u0026ldquo;Mounting Everest\u0026rdquo;. And then, after everyone started passing out, I administered CPR, simultaneously, to a half a dozen gym patrons - and then we all went out for a beer. Then I stopped at Sam\u0026rsquo;s and picked up a side of buffalo (on sale) because I had a hankering for homemade buffalo jerky. I strapped it to my back with some bungee cords and rode home on the new bike. Got quite a few admiring looks, not sure if it was for the bike or the meat? Anyway, took me a few hours with a rental backhoe, but I got a smoke pit dug by moonlight, and now we have about a dozen yummy flavors of jerky to feed 500 - which will be just about right for Memorial Day if I smoke a few turkeys and a small goat. Anyway, since I had the backhoe for a few more hours on the rental, I put in a koi pond, with a big blue lighted fountain, in the front yard as a surprise for the wifey and kiddos. Am thinking about changing the slope on the sanitary storm sewer collection basin before I have to turn this puppy back in.\n(By that point, I was laughing on my kitchen floor. At 5am.)\nWell, friends, the cruise was a blast! I ate my weight in carbs on the ship, though, so I jimmied the door to the engine room and rigged up a little cardio-generator from 12 empty St. Pauli Girl kegs and around a thousand twirling, fuschia drink umbrellas. Sure, it looked kind of like a hamster wheel for humans, or a float in a gay pride parade, but it worked great. In my spare time, (that is, between 3-5 am), I disengaged the midship engines and single-footedly kept us humming at 20 knots in rough seas via self-propulsion; not too shabby for an immense sea-going vessel loaded with 5K people. Sadly, the hot, little wifey got a little sunburn on her tender parts, so I whipped up a distillate of coconut oil, champagne and ice cream lipids that was very soothing to the skin - once I got the proportions and viscosity just right. Imagine my delight to find that my fabricated cardio hamster device doubled as the perfect lotion centrifuge. All it took was a coupla Red Bulls and \u0026ldquo;Eye of the Tiger\u0026rdquo; in rotation on the ipod and I was good to go.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/04/funniest-facebook-thread-ive-ever-seen/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI typically abhor facebook.  It\u0026rsquo;s banal.  It\u0026rsquo;s boring.  And, 20% of the world\u0026rsquo;s population is on there, so\u0026ndash;like a bad High School Reunion\u0026ndash;you sorta have to be there too.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis thread I\u0026rsquo;m about to copy/pasta reshare single-handedly changed my perception of FB:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStatus:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eOn cruise shuttle. Entering radio silence. I hope the world can survive without my exciting posts for a few days\u0026hellip;.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay okay, a little self-important, but hey, this is the Twitter/Facebook generation where every meal and waste elimination is comment worthy.  But then\u0026hellip;.in the comment stream:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Funniest Facebook Thread I've Ever Seen"},{"content":"In working on my small group lesson this week, I\u0026rsquo;m stuck again in James 1, and there\u0026rsquo;s this verse (26)\nIfanyonethinks himself to be religious, and yet does not [bb](http://www.biblestudytools.com/nas/james/1.html#fn-descriptionAnchor-bb \u0026ldquo;Or \u0026ldquo;control\u0026rdquo;\u0026quot;)bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, thisman\u0026rsquo;sreligion is worthless.\nYou could pretty much summarize my last 5 or 6 years right there. I\u0026rsquo;ve deceived myself time and again, focusing on what was easy, felt good. I can rationalize anything, it seems.\n\u0026ldquo;Worthless\u0026rdquo;\nIf accountability has taught me anything, though, it\u0026rsquo;s that so long as you\u0026rsquo;re sucking wind, you can change. Goes right along with my One Step \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Focus less on myself and more on others.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/03/worthless-religion/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn working on my small group lesson this week, I\u0026rsquo;m stuck again in James 1, and there\u0026rsquo;s this verse (26)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIfanyonethinks himself to be religious, and yet does not [bb](\u003ca href=\"http://www.biblestudytools.com/nas/james/1.html#fn-descriptionAnchor-bb\"\u003ehttp://www.biblestudytools.com/nas/james/1.html#fn-descriptionAnchor-bb\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ldquo;Or \u0026ldquo;control\u0026rdquo;\u0026quot;)bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, thisman\u0026rsquo;sreligion is worthless.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou could pretty much summarize my last 5 or 6 years right there.  I\u0026rsquo;ve deceived myself time and again, focusing on what was easy, felt good.  I can \u003cstrong\u003erationalize\u003c/strong\u003e anything, it seems.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Worthless\" religion"},{"content":"When I was born, my head was almost too big to fit through the birth canal.\nThat explains much about me to this day. Just sayin'.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/02/musing/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen I was born, my head was almost too big to fit through the birth canal.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat explains much about me to this day.  Just sayin'.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Musing"},{"content":"You know how you go out looking for the right car, with a checklist and a list of requirements? I\u0026rsquo;ve been doing that for the better part of two years. I\u0026rsquo;ve driven every small car known to man at intervals, trying to find some reasonable personal transportation when the Camry of Doom goes kaput.\nWhat I\u0026rsquo;m *really* looking to do is duplicate the love I had for the 1998 Impreza 2.5RS, a car with All-Wheel Drive, a sweet 5-speed manual transmission and the turn-in responses of a B13 Sentra SE-R. I still remember the test drive I took at the now-defunct Oldhan\u0026rsquo;s Subaru in Nicholasville Kentucky back in college, and whoo boy, was it FUN. Pity I had no job at the time. :-)\nAnyway, fast forward \u0026gt; 1 decade, and here I am. Camry is getting lose about the\u0026hellip;.well, everything. The Front end wobbles. The transmission slips. There\u0026rsquo;s the every-present water leak in the trunk that\u0026rsquo;s never bad enough to fix. It smells like vomit so badly that none of the females in my family want to ride in it. It drives like a wet sponge, basically\u0026ndash;easy and unchallenging.\nAnyway x 2: I took a personal sanity afternoon this past Friday. I\u0026rsquo;m quickly becoming one of those overstressed, no-perspective corporate drones, and it\u0026rsquo;s following me home. Looking at the weather forecast (4\u0026quot; snow by Sunday) I decided to pull a Ferris Bueller and call in disheartened (well, at least the second half of the day).\nI drove by Green\u0026rsquo;s Toyota and beheld the new scion of the Prius sub-brand, the Prius V. This is basically a Prius with a full wagon rear-end. Think of it like the dearly departed Kia Rondo or the slow-selling Mazda5. It drives just like a Prius; slightly heavier as you\u0026rsquo;d expect, but it seems to have all the (effective) utility of our Honda Odyssey, while getting 3x better mileage.\nAnd it was boring. Well, it\u0026rsquo;s a Toyota, so that goes without saying. You buy a Toyota with your head, not with your heart.\nSo\u0026hellip;I was itching to see if I could rekindle some of that Subaru love, so I swung by the new Quantrell Subaru on East New Circle in Lexington. This was a former Saturn dealership and it shows: The sales personnel treat you like an adult and they have the discretion to send you out on personal test drives. Roy send me out in their only 2012 Impreza with a stick. Before I left, I snapped this picture indicative of a NICE engineering touch on the new 2.0L engine: The oil filter is a standard canister, and it\u0026rsquo;s right at the very top-right of the cam-chain driven engine:\nSo, I got my unassisted test-drive, spinning the car and its manual transmission from Palumbo drive down to Tates Creek Rd and back on New Circle.\nI can\u0026rsquo;t express my disappointment. Aside from the obvious snarl of it\u0026rsquo;s boxer engine, this car could easily have been any Kia, Toyota, or GM econo-car of the modern era. The seats tortured my back, the steering felt numb, and the gearbox (while reasonably precise and pleasantly notchy) unlocked no joy. This is a vastly undersquare engine, and it has NO top-end to reward one for venturing above 4500 rpm. I downshifted two gears to slice around merge traffic, and it\u0026rsquo;s like the car frowned at me and asked if I really wanted to be doing that. Finally\u0026ndash;and I\u0026rsquo;m no audiophile, mind\u0026ndash;the stereo was a tinny nightmare: FM sounded like AM. AM sounded like a bad WW2 movie. Not. Good.\nDejected, I came back and Roy Olbersheim said w/o me saying a word \u0026ldquo;Not enough power for you, right?\u0026rdquo; Right, Roy. \u0026ldquo;How about a Legacy with the 2.5L?\u0026rdquo; I enjoyed a complimentary decaf cup of Lexington Coffee and Tea as Roy juggled 3 other customers expertly and produced some keys to a silver 2012 Legacy with the 6 speed manual.\nI knew I was in trouble from the moment I got in. YES! This was a Subaru, with its cockpit feel that brought the WRX to mind\u0026ndash;black surround with black guages. The seats were comfortable and supportive and they evoked that 2.5RS in that pleasant way they suctioned to my lower back and haunches. Off again\u0026ndash;alone\u0026ndash;the clutch and I negotiated how we\u0026rsquo;d work. The engagement was super-progressive, and 1st was short enough that no slippage was necessary. There was even a little \u0026ldquo;Low temp\u0026rdquo; warning light on the guage cluster to advise you the coolant wasn\u0026rsquo;t up to temp so avoid piling on the revs. The tranny and I both had to warm up; she to my ham-fist and me to her utter reluctance to engage 2nd. It felt like this car\u0026rsquo;d been sitting for quite some time and the gearbox oil resembled tar. So, I babied it and after about 1/4 mile, things got more interesting.\nSubarus bark. They all feature boxer engines, and when they hit real snort, they sound like baby Porsches. This Legacy warmed up, loosened-up and hit its stride, notching into 6th on the freeway and tracking like, well like nothing else I\u0026rsquo;ve ever driven. I did the same 6th-to-4th downshift and the car lept ahead LOVING the 3k-6k range on the tach. I know it\u0026rsquo;s only a 30hp difference between the EB20 engine in the Impreza and the EJ25 in the Legacy, but this engine felt so much more eager and alert.\nNot everything was rosy\u0026ndash;in particular the vague shift linkage had me banging FIIIIIIRST\u0026hellip;.SECOND\u0026hellip;.fifth\u0026hellip;.on the up-hill onramp to New Circle outer loop from Tates Creek. If I bought this car, I think I\u0026rsquo;d have to look into a short-shifter.\nI texted Bella stopped at a stop light. I was in love. And she\u0026rsquo;s a bad, bad car: Only 27 mpg with a tailwind on level ground. The way she begged to be flogged like the naughty rally-bred girl she is, I\u0026rsquo;d be lucky to see the 23mpg I average in my Camry. Throughout, this Legacy was aptly named\u0026ndash;no bluetooth, no Direct Injection engine, no navigation, no satelite/onstar/telematics nonsense.\nOn the whole, the experience did teach me some things: I\u0026rsquo;m not dead, for one. Seriously, there are days where I\u0026rsquo;ve been ROI\u0026rsquo;ing buying a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt. I think that\u0026rsquo;s pretty-much done. My next car will have \u0026ldquo;adequate\u0026rdquo; power, coming from a gasoline-burning engine hitched to a manual transmission. Secondly, I think I\u0026rsquo;m going to stop trying to buy a micro-car. I\u0026rsquo;m by no means a giant, but I do have 3 kids and I\u0026rsquo;d like to drive them around concurrently, safely, and with enough power and handling that the four of us can have (safe) fun.\nIt was a fun way to spend a couple of hours, and a re-affirmation that I\u0026rsquo;m still a car guy :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/02/damn.-fell-in-love-with-the-wrong-car./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou know how you go out looking for the right car, with a checklist and a list of requirements?  I\u0026rsquo;ve been doing that for the better part of two years.  I\u0026rsquo;ve driven every small car known to man at intervals, trying to find some reasonable personal transportation when the Camry of Doom goes kaput.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat I\u0026rsquo;m *really* looking to do is duplicate the love I had for the 1998 Impreza 2.5RS, a car with All-Wheel Drive, a sweet 5-speed manual transmission and the turn-in responses of a B13 Sentra SE-R.  I still remember the test drive I took at the now-defunct Oldhan\u0026rsquo;s Subaru in Nicholasville Kentucky back in college, and whoo boy, was it FUN.  Pity I had no job at the time. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Damn.  Fell in Love with the wrong car."},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s been a rough few weeks, almost entirely self-inflicted.\nAs the Eastern KY saying goes: \u0026ldquo;Work is aggravating me to death.\u0026rdquo; Nothing about what I\u0026rsquo;m doing is hard; tedious and frustrating, sure, but not difficult. Basically, I fight whatever fires appear, and 90% of the time these are communications issues between teams, not technical problems. Corporations tend to self-select for people who can hide within bureaucracy, stifle their own opinions, and dumbly line-up behind meaningless mandates. That\u0026rsquo;s wearisome, to say the least.\nI feel like the same passionate guy I was eight years ago. It\u0026rsquo;s just tough keeping that passion going when all it does is get you in trouble with the political animals who smell blood in the water. If what happened Friday blows-up on me, well\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ll own my mistake and learn from it. I did a lot of learning last week.\n* * *\nThe grind of keeping the house clean and picking-it-up for showing is wearing on us.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s been alot of sickness; Whitney in particular his\nI acted like an idiot last Wednesday night. No details, but Old Me made a raging reappearance. Overstimulated, flooded, inapropriate, caustic, hurtful, and public. Y-A-Y.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not getting any rest, feels like. This weekend was a killer: Ran to Louisville for the 2nd weekend in a row to go to M\u0026rsquo;s birthday party that featured not a single child her own age, despite our request that the host invite the multitude. Another broken parental relationship seems in the offing. Eventually, I plan to relate only to rocks upon which I\u0026rsquo;ve drawn faces and whom I call \u0026lsquo;Spalding\u0026rsquo;. That seems to be the endgame of our Roger Williams-esque separatism.\nWhen we returned from Louisville, W and I cleaned house until 11, then I stayed-up until 12:30 rewriting my communion meditation. Then, it was up at 7am, church until almost 12:30, lunch out with the family until 2, watch the kids until 5, a banzai trip to Kroger, small group until 8, 8-\u0026gt;9 put the kids in bed, watch Downton Abbey for 2 hours, then quietly piss-off my wife until 11:30. Fabulous day, really. :-(\n* * *\nPerhaps last week would\u0026rsquo;ve been much better if I *had* been required to fly to wherever for the week.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/02/weary/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been a rough few weeks, almost entirely self-inflicted.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs the Eastern KY saying goes: \u0026ldquo;Work is aggravating me to death.\u0026rdquo;  Nothing about what I\u0026rsquo;m doing is hard; tedious and frustrating, sure, but not difficult.  Basically, I fight whatever fires appear, and 90% of the time these are communications issues between teams, not technical problems.  Corporations tend to self-select for people who can hide within bureaucracy, stifle their own opinions, and dumbly line-up behind meaningless mandates.  That\u0026rsquo;s wearisome, to say the least.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weary"},{"content":"The listing\nYes, there\u0026rsquo;s Kitchen-Aid porn in that picture. Jealous?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/01/elves-took-over-my-house-cleaned-and-took-pictures/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://search.lbar.com/mls/details/residential/1200465.html\"\u003eThe listing\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://search.lbar.com/residentialimages/1200/1200465/14.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://search.lbar.com/residentialimages/1200/1200465/14.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, there\u0026rsquo;s Kitchen-Aid porn in that picture.  Jealous?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Elves took over my house, cleaned, and took pictures"},{"content":"Nothing like a deadline, I guess.\nSo, we\u0026rsquo;ve known we needed photographs of our house up on various MLS/Zillow.com sites, and our realtor scheduled a photographer for today.\nToday?!\nYeah, lots of work had/has to be done. We were up last night until after 1am, and back at it again this morning ~7am. I had a Diet Mountain Dew influenced crisis of confidence at 11pm, but\u0026hellip;uh\u0026hellip;pushed through it. I stuck my head in our oven.\nI left at 9:15 to go to work, with Whitney still at it.\nIf you hear a thud followed by a snore, that\u0026rsquo;s my head hitting the keyboard, asleep.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/01/picture-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNothing like a deadline, I guess.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, we\u0026rsquo;ve known we needed photographs of our house up on various MLS/Zillow.com sites, and our realtor scheduled a photographer for today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday?!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, lots of work had/has to be done.  We were up last night until after 1am, and back at it again this morning ~7am.  I had a Diet Mountain Dew influenced crisis of confidence at 11pm, but\u0026hellip;uh\u0026hellip;pushed through it.  I stuck my head in our oven.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Picture Day"},{"content":"So, my home sweet home is on the market.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a long road getting here. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s been feeling the tug to get out of the house since before the housing crash (!), and she\u0026rsquo;s been a steady force there throughout financial crises.\nAnyway, so it\u0026rsquo;s up. We\u0026rsquo;re supposed to be hosting a photographer Thursday, so it\u0026rsquo;s been continuous clean/declutter/reclutter/clean/declutter since New Year\u0026rsquo;s. I\u0026rsquo;ll give Whitney all the credit\u0026ndash;she\u0026rsquo;s got the place looking great, especially the paint, staging, and her attention to detail.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re not after any specific place at the moment, though we have some stringent requirements. Okay one: Must have a basement, preferably in our current area. Given that our area is a huge limestone dome from the Orodivcian period, \u0026ldquo;basements\u0026rdquo; are few and far between. Also, our water is hard enough to chew, but our bones (and those of our famous Kentucky Thoroughbreds) are stout from all that lime/calcium.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/01/house-is-on-the-market/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, my home sweet home is \u003ca href=\"http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/100-Sardula-Pl-Georgetown-KY-40324/96971219_zpid/\"\u003eon the market\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been a long road getting here.  Whitney\u0026rsquo;s been feeling the tug to get out of the house since before the housing crash (!), and she\u0026rsquo;s been a steady force there throughout financial crises.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, so it\u0026rsquo;s up.  We\u0026rsquo;re supposed to be hosting a photographer Thursday, so it\u0026rsquo;s been continuous clean/declutter/reclutter/clean/declutter since New Year\u0026rsquo;s.  I\u0026rsquo;ll give Whitney all the credit\u0026ndash;she\u0026rsquo;s got the place looking great, especially the paint, staging, and her attention to detail.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"House is on the market!"},{"content":"Prove: Authoritarian Decision-making is myopic\nAssume: You work in a engineering-centric corporation with attendant corporate hierarchy.\nEngineers believe no one is as intelligent as an engineer. (Dilbert\u0026rsquo;s Razor) Engineers view non-quantifiable job skills as unimportant (Scientific Postulate) Engineers age and seek more salary, responsibility (That\u0026rsquo;s life) Engineers become managers (by 3) Engineers often communicate poorly (self-evident) Persuasiveness is not quantifiable (self-evident) Charsima is not quantifiable (self-evident) Persuasiveness and Charisma are unimportant (by 2, 6, 7) New idea implementation requires persuasion (The \u0026ldquo;He who has the Gold makes the rules\u0026rsquo; axiom) Engineer managers must persuade to promote new ideas (by 4, 9) Engineer managers will be told \u0026lsquo;No\u0026rsquo; (by 5, 10) There\u0026rsquo;s no point in resubmitting the idea; all pertinent facts were included, by definition. We were told \u0026lsquo;No\u0026rsquo; (by 2, 8, 11). Those in power will only see an idea once, no matter change in market conditions (by 12). Those in power will not be given a chance to change their mind (by 8, 13) THEREFORE: Authoritarian decision making in an engineering-centric corporation is myopic. (13,14). QED * * *\nAnother way of putting it:\nSalemen get told \u0026lsquo;No,\u0026rsquo; and hear, \u0026ldquo;Wow, thanks for talking to me, please seek to change my mind at your earliest opportunity. And, hey, nice polo shirt \u0026amp; cologne, sport!\u0026rdquo; Engineers get told \u0026lsquo;No,\u0026rsquo; and hear, \u0026ldquo;YOUR LOGIC WAS INSUFFICIENT TO CONVINCE ME. YOU SUCK. GO BACK TO YOUR CUBE AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU\u0026rsquo;VE DONE.\u0026rdquo; (Okay, maybe that\u0026rsquo;s just me.) ::sigh::\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/01/proof-sometimes-you-need-a-salesman/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eProve: Authoritarian Decision-making is myopic\u003cbr\u003e\nAssume: You work in a engineering-centric corporation with attendant corporate hierarchy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEngineers believe no one is as intelligent as an engineer. (Dilbert\u0026rsquo;s Razor)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEngineers view non-quantifiable job skills as unimportant (Scientific Postulate)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEngineers age and seek more salary, responsibility (That\u0026rsquo;s life)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEngineers become managers (by 3)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEngineers often communicate poorly (self-evident)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePersuasiveness is not quantifiable (self-evident)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCharsima is not quantifiable (self-evident)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePersuasiveness and Charisma are unimportant (by 2, 6, 7)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNew idea implementation requires persuasion (The \u0026ldquo;He who has the Gold makes the rules\u0026rsquo; axiom)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEngineer managers must persuade to promote new ideas (by 4, 9)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEngineer managers will be told \u0026lsquo;No\u0026rsquo; (by 5, 10)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s no point in resubmitting the idea; all pertinent facts were included, by definition. We were told \u0026lsquo;No\u0026rsquo; (by 2, 8, 11).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThose in power will only see an idea once, no matter change in market conditions (by 12).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThose in power will not be given a chance to change their mind (by 8, 13)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTHEREFORE: Authoritarian decision making in an engineering-centric corporation is myopic. (13,14). QED\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Proof: Sometimes, you need a Salesman"},{"content":"I can\u0026rsquo;t be honest. Not anymore\u0026hellip;not since 2008, basically. My honest, analytical opinion would hurt too many feelings and likely get me fired, or sued, or jailed.\nSuffice it to say, there are things I\u0026rsquo;d like to get off my chest and express that I just can\u0026rsquo;t. That\u0026rsquo;s hard, because my blog has always been the place where I did that, consequences be damned. Well, these days, \u0026ldquo;consequences\u0026rdquo; includes four other people.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve considered abandoning blogging entirely, in true \u0026ldquo;omit needless words\u0026rdquo; tradition, but I\u0026rsquo;ve resisted it thus far. Dunno.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2012/01/missing-honesty--the-puck-problem/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI can\u0026rsquo;t be honest.   Not anymore\u0026hellip;not since 2008, basically.  My honest, analytical opinion would hurt too many feelings and likely get me fired, or sued, or jailed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuffice it to say, there are things I\u0026rsquo;d like to get off my chest and express that I just can\u0026rsquo;t.   That\u0026rsquo;s hard, because my blog has always been the place where I did that, consequences be damned.  Well, these days, \u0026ldquo;consequences\u0026rdquo; includes four other people.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Missing: Honesty -- the \"Puck\" problem"},{"content":"\nPerhaps I came out of the womb worrying.\nPehaps it\u0026rsquo;s learned behavior.\nLuke 12:25 says:\n5 And which of you by worrying can add a single [a](C)hour to his [b]life’s span?26 If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters?\nWhat does this have to do with 2011, anyway?\nI worried alot this year. I worried about myself, my wife, my kids, my parents, my job, my church obligations. And, frankly, I freaked-out. Often. So often, that yesterday and today, I talked myself through \u0026ldquo;this is usually the part where I freak out,\u0026rdquo; because the triggers were all there. Self-awareness is all that I have sometimes whenever I see fear, rage, selfishness, hate, guilt, jealousy, betrayal, disappointment, anger, etc. building. I finally can see it coming and I believe I can choose something different.\nIn summary, in 2011, I stopped believing life was fair. The church-y answer there is, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m glad life\u0026rsquo;s not fair; it it was fair, I deserve death and Hell.\u0026rdquo; True enough. Still, there\u0026rsquo;s enough cocky Protestant in me to believe that Providence might shine my way. Well, sometimes, that\u0026rsquo;s just not going to happen, at least not in my time, per my expectations.\nThis is probably blasphemous to quote, but here it is (Luke 22:42)\n42 saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this (A)cup from Me; (B)yet not My will, but Yours be done.”\nGod didn\u0026rsquo;t want me to have a motorcycle this year. He didn\u0026rsquo;t want my wife to worry every second I was on one that I was going to die. He didn\u0026rsquo;t want me to have a new car this year. He didn\u0026rsquo;t want strife in my household. That was my will there, through and through.\nThings I feel He did want:\nMy wife and I to talk and love one another, to be vulnerable. Me to be home for my kids\u0026rsquo; things. The Good from the year:\nI got a new position at work, exposing me to more and more of how the Software Business really works (or doesn\u0026rsquo;t) I got to do a campout with my son in September. I really enjoyed that. I got to do a man trip with him earlier in the year to Bowling Green. Great time there, too. M started preschool this fall. She\u0026rsquo;s growing up, sociable, never met a stranger (how\u0026rsquo;d THAT happen?) G began walking and talking. Bella really has the house looking great\u0026ndash;new carpet, new paint, fixes for most of the issues that were driving us batty. Ready to sell (we hope!) Bella and I both lost weight. I got to attend the No Fluff, Just Stuff conference in Columbus. What a fun time, and mentally challenging. I\u0026rsquo;ve watched two of my mentees go on to great things, both at our company and outside. There\u0026rsquo;s plenty of bad. Reams of it. Some of it was my fault, either by commission or omission. Much of it was just the way events unfolded. Mostly, I miss people, people who\u0026rsquo;ve moved on to bigger and better things, old friends and support who\u0026rsquo;ve moved to other areas of the company. Some friends I just can\u0026rsquo;t have anymore. That\u0026rsquo;s my regret, I guess, exiting this year with more acquaintances and fewer trusted friends.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a cynicism brewing within me, a hardness at how selfish and hurtful people can be, how extreme. I\u0026rsquo;m beginning to expect it. Partway through the year, I began to answer leading questions with, \u0026ldquo;So, are you looking to screw me?\u0026rdquo; People move like a rote chess gambit, often.\nTechnology lets you forget all that nasty wetware and escape to a place of puzzles, logic, and order. Except of course, when it let\u0026rsquo;s you capture your thoughts on the _dis_order.\nMay you have a happy beginning to 2012. Christ\u0026rsquo;s peace and blessings be with you all.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/12/sayonara-2011/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eeyore61_5881.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eeyore61_5881.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePerhaps I came out of the womb worrying.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePehaps it\u0026rsquo;s learned behavior.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLuke 12:25 says:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5 And which of you by worrying can add a \u003cem\u003esingle\u003c/em\u003e [\u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+12:24-26\u0026amp;version=NASB#fen-NASB-25485a\" title=\"See footnote a\"\u003ea\u003c/a\u003e](\u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+12:24-26\u0026amp;version=NASB#cen-NASB-25485C\" title=\"See cross-reference C\"\u003eC\u003c/a\u003e)hour to his [\u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+12:24-26\u0026amp;version=NASB#fen-NASB-25485b\" title=\"See footnote b\"\u003eb\u003c/a\u003e]life’s span?26 If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat does this have to do with 2011, anyway?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI worried alot this year.  I worried about myself, my wife, my kids, my parents, my job, my church obligations.  And, frankly, I freaked-out.  Often.  So often, that yesterday and today, I talked myself through \u0026ldquo;this is usually the part where I freak out,\u0026rdquo; because the triggers were all there. Self-awareness is all that I have sometimes whenever I see fear, rage, selfishness, hate, guilt, jealousy, betrayal, disappointment, anger, etc. building.  I finally can see it coming  and I believe I can choose something different.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sayonara 2011"},{"content":"Some things are stories.\nSome things are not. There are facts I remember about my idiosynracies and ticks, and those of my fellow humans that just don\u0026rsquo;t go anywhere. They\u0026rsquo;re kinda just\u0026hellip;there.\nThese are those:\nI once roomed with a guy D.E.F. D had this curious Pavlovian response to riding in a car for any length of time \u0026gt; 2 minutes. He\u0026rsquo;d go to sleep. My other roomie once took him on a road trip from Georgetown, Kentucky, to Jackson, TN. D slept the entire way there and the entire way back. I hate the blue ring optometrists use for glaucoma checks. Basically it goes like this: They dilate your eyes, you can\u0026rsquo;t open them for love or money, and then you need to open like a droog from Clockwork Orange so the optometrist can move this DEATH MACHINE towards your eyeball. Really, it looks like a scene out of a Bond Movie, complete with bad dialog. Only here the thing\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not Sean Connery\u0026rsquo;s penis they\u0026rsquo;re going to ginsu, it\u0026rsquo;s YOUR EYEBALL. Usually, this procedure takes like 2 minutes at the end of the exam. Poor Dr. Jones in Jackson, Ky used to devote 20 minutes to this and we both dreaded it. Supposedly, there\u0026rsquo;s a puff-of-air thing they can do to check for glaucoma. I believe this is a lie perpetrated by optometrists, cruelly giving false hope there will be no more BLUE RING DEATH MACHINE. Once something reaches a certain level of messiness, I mentally refuse to deal with it. I focus my attention somewhere else, like a pair of shiny keys or maybe the weather outside. This drives my wife nuts, part 1. When I\u0026rsquo;m upset, I fold things. I\u0026rsquo;ve compulsively folded an entire load of towels without realizing it. When I\u0026rsquo;m REALLY upset, I clean things. I once reorganized my DVD collection at 2am while listening to PCHH I have an extreme fear/fascination thing with knives. Once when I was 2 or 3, I got my dad\u0026rsquo;s jacknife out and cut my fingertip to ribbons. Whenever I see my kids near one, I\u0026rsquo;m sure the same thing will happen to them. Yet, I like knives very much\u0026ndash;my father and I used to bond over them every Christmas\u0026ndash;and my cherished birthday present this year from my wife was a Ken Onion Chive by Kershaw. Segue: I used my pocket knife in lieu of scissors when wrapping all my gifts this year. Yes, I\u0026rsquo;m unaccountably proud of this. I seemingly can\u0026rsquo;t do household chores without music or a podcast playing. This drives my wife nuts, part 2. I have a mental block about the following things: Housepainting, Barbecue Grilling, Drum Brakes, carburetors, general carpentry, automatic transmissions, audio/visual equipment, HVAC operation \u0026amp; repair. I\u0026rsquo;m sure I could think of others. People with explosive tempers and feelings of paranoia oughtn\u0026rsquo;t own firearms. I do not own firearms. Tempur-pedic isn\u0026rsquo;t all hype. Try one for yourself. As I get older, I find increasingly fewer things offer any escape. Video games, meh. Kids\u0026hellip;sometimes. Joey\u0026rsquo;s gone this week, and I miss him pretty badly. My phone is like a security blanket. Seriously can\u0026rsquo;t believe how fast I got here from May \u0026rsquo;til now. This drives my wife nuts, part 3. I basically couldn\u0026rsquo;t care less what I wear, provided it\u0026rsquo;s decent and has \u0026lt; 2 holes in it. #tdmwn ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/12/stream-of-consciousness-randomness/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome things are stories.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome things are not.  There are facts I remember about my idiosynracies and ticks, and those of my fellow humans that just don\u0026rsquo;t go anywhere.  They\u0026rsquo;re kinda just\u0026hellip;there.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese are those:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI once roomed with a guy D.E.F.  D had this curious Pavlovian response to riding in a car for any length of time \u0026gt; 2 minutes.  He\u0026rsquo;d go to sleep.  My other roomie once took him on a road trip from Georgetown, Kentucky, to Jackson, TN.  D slept the entire way there and the entire way back.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI hate the blue ring optometrists use for glaucoma checks.  Basically it goes like this: They dilate your eyes, you can\u0026rsquo;t open them for love or money, and then you need to open like a droog from Clockwork Orange so the optometrist can move this DEATH MACHINE towards your eyeball.  Really, it looks like a scene out of a Bond Movie, complete with bad dialog.  Only here the thing\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not Sean Connery\u0026rsquo;s penis they\u0026rsquo;re going to ginsu, it\u0026rsquo;s YOUR EYEBALL.  Usually, this procedure takes like 2 minutes at the end of the exam.  Poor Dr. Jones in Jackson, Ky used to devote 20 minutes to this and we both dreaded it.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSupposedly, there\u0026rsquo;s a puff-of-air thing they can do to check for glaucoma.  I believe this is a lie perpetrated by optometrists, cruelly giving false hope there will be no more BLUE RING DEATH MACHINE.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOnce something reaches a certain level of messiness, I mentally refuse to deal with it.  I focus my attention somewhere else, like a pair of shiny keys or maybe the weather outside.  This drives my wife nuts, part 1.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhen I\u0026rsquo;m upset, I fold things.  I\u0026rsquo;ve compulsively folded an entire load of towels without realizing it. \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhen I\u0026rsquo;m REALLY upset, I clean things.  I once reorganized my DVD collection at 2am while listening to \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=129472378\"\u003ePCHH\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI have an extreme fear/fascination thing with knives.  Once when I was 2 or 3, I got my dad\u0026rsquo;s jacknife out and cut my fingertip to ribbons.  Whenever I see my kids near one, I\u0026rsquo;m sure the same thing will happen to them.  Yet, I like knives very much\u0026ndash;my father and I used to bond over them every Christmas\u0026ndash;and my cherished birthday present this year from my wife was a Ken Onion Chive by Kershaw.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSegue: I used my pocket knife in lieu of scissors when wrapping all my gifts this year.  Yes, I\u0026rsquo;m unaccountably proud of this.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI seemingly can\u0026rsquo;t do household chores without music or a podcast playing.  This drives my wife nuts, part  2.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI have a mental block about the following things:  Housepainting, Barbecue Grilling, Drum Brakes, carburetors, general carpentry, automatic transmissions, audio/visual equipment, HVAC operation \u0026amp; repair.  I\u0026rsquo;m sure I could think of others.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeople with explosive tempers and feelings of paranoia oughtn\u0026rsquo;t own firearms.  I do not own firearms.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTempur-pedic isn\u0026rsquo;t all hype.  Try one for yourself.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAs I get older, I find increasingly fewer things offer any escape.  Video games, meh.  Kids\u0026hellip;sometimes.  Joey\u0026rsquo;s gone this week, and I miss him pretty badly.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMy phone is like a security blanket.  Seriously can\u0026rsquo;t believe how fast I got here from May \u0026rsquo;til now.  This drives my wife nuts, part 3.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI basically couldn\u0026rsquo;t care less what I wear, provided it\u0026rsquo;s decent and has \u0026lt; 2 holes in it.  #tdmwn\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e","title":"Stream of Consciousness Randomness"},{"content":"When I was about 5 years old, my mom decided to drop me off with my aunt at her office while she did business in town. As my aunt worked in the District 10 Department of Highways in Jackson, Kentucky, her job was utterly regular and somewhat dull unless something extraordinary happened\u0026ndash;\u0026gt;lots of overtime, somebody got fired, that sort of thing.\nView Larger Map\nAs it was the middle of summer, nothing like that happened. Anyway, my mom rented a VHS video of Pound Puppies and dropped me off. My Aunt took me to the big conference room in the middle of the cinder-block building and plopped me in front of the television, daring me to move.\nOf course, I moved. I was a fat, indolent kid, but curious as hell. The room was fascinating\u0026ndash;there was a huge map on the wall showing the toll plaza at Slade, Kentucky, an IBM PC/XT with a Daisy Wheel printer in the corner, and the TV itself. The TV was a pretty big jobber for back then\u0026ndash;probably 25\u0026quot;, and atop it sat this massive VHS VCR, pride of 1984. I thought the TV stand was interesting too, as it seemed to have a hinge\u0026hellip;\nYeah, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t a TV stand. It was a drafting table, jury-rigged to support the television. I did a few practice arm-ups on the thing and by the 3rd one, it tilted at an unexpected 50 degree angle. The television slid off, catching me square in the torso, and the VCR was smack in my face. The whole works probably weighed 90 pounds, and I had most of it against me. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t push it back up, and I was struggling to keep it where it was. Once gravity had its way with my (lack of) muscles, I thudded to the floor, TV atop me. Pound Puppies\u0026ndash;the episode where they had a dog from a firehouse who tried to squirt water on everything\u0026ndash;was still playing.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s right. I was dying by bad 1980\u0026rsquo;s cartoon. Fitting, considering how much time I spent in front of the TV. In hell, I\u0026rsquo;d get the same, only it\u0026rsquo;d be \u0026ldquo;Three\u0026rsquo;s Company\u0026rdquo; with me not realizing Jack was gay.\nAnyway, I managed to lever the TV off me and plop it tube first (yeah, still playing) on the ground. I gained my feet and considered my options. Never seeing my aunt again seemed paramount; she wouldn\u0026rsquo;t kill me, but she had an evil, witchy voice when she was pissed that made you wish for some stones to cover you. I thought for a minute of running out and finding my mom. I considered crawling back under the TV, just for the \u0026ldquo;he\u0026rsquo;s not dead\u0026rdquo; relief to cushion the \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re about to get fired from a cushy state job\u0026rdquo; reality.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t remember how, but I think I shuffled the 25 feet back to her office, walked her down to see the TV, bore her hysterics on how I\u0026rsquo;d screwed-up, the bore her explanation to my Mom on what happened.\nWe did get the VHS video back to Radio Shack on time, as I recall. My aunt didn\u0026rsquo;t lose her job. I don\u0026rsquo;t think I spent much time at District 10 after that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/12/death-by-pound-puppy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen I was about 5 years old, my mom decided to drop me off with my aunt at her office while she did business in town. As my aunt worked in the District 10 Department of Highways in Jackson, Kentucky, her job was utterly regular and somewhat dull unless something extraordinary happened\u0026ndash;\u0026gt;lots of overtime, somebody got fired, that sort of thing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q\u0026amp;source=embed\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;geocode=\u0026amp;q=473+Highway+15+S+41339\u0026amp;aq=\u0026amp;sll=37.561577,-83.398098\u0026amp;sspn=0.008488,0.013357\u0026amp;vpsrc=6\u0026amp;g=473+Highway+15+S+Jackson,+KY+41339\u0026amp;safe=on\u0026amp;ie=UTF8\u0026amp;hq=\u0026amp;hnear=Kentucky+15,+Breathitt,+Kentucky+41339\u0026amp;ll=37.558412,-83.372272\u0026amp;spn=0.008488,0.013357\u0026amp;t=h\u0026amp;z=14\"\u003eView Larger Map\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e As it was the middle of summer, nothing like that happened. Anyway, my mom rented a VHS video of \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090503/\"\u003ePound Puppies\u003c/a\u003e and dropped me off.  My Aunt took me to the big conference room in the middle of the cinder-block building and plopped me in front of the television, daring me to move.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Death by Pound Puppy"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m rolling off a 16 month stint as the sole proprietor of a Java library used internally where I work. Yep, it was an almost unheard-of situation within corporate America: I had no project manager, no marketing rep, no support staff, no unique testers. I was responsible for API design, test plan, interfacing with multiple teams, delivery, support, infrastructure. The works.\nIn short, I loved it.\nI loved getting to code 6 to 12 hours a day, every work day, working through design decisions, collaborating with other teams. I\u0026rsquo;d go to bed noodling on design problems, I\u0026rsquo;d often get insight into them over coffee, then I\u0026rsquo;d have them implemented by that next night. Most of the people I worked with were colleagues of mine from way back. My only mandate was \u0026ldquo;make them happy,\u0026rdquo; and take care of my own stuff. I had a project manager for the first month or so; once he was satisfied I had my stuff together, the reigns were off.\n(Insert maniacal laughter here)\nPrior to this assignment, I\u0026rsquo;d had an uneven career path\u0026ndash;I was a (non-coding) team lead for a product amid an unclebob-esque phase of bit-rot, mostly dealing with customer issues. Then I took an assignment doing C++ / Win32 comm work in our driver group for a year. It was a very mature subsystem, so again\u0026ndash;most of the work was break/fix and stability. After that, I hopped on a classic deathmarch project for 18 months, and did utility infielder work while trying to lead/architect a system on the fly. I coded where I could, the largest piece of which was a small application written in ActionScript 2 (!)\nAnywho\u0026hellip;\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;d been out of Java since 1.4. Right when I stepped out of my project to go to driver-land, they were looking at going to Java 5, with its myriad syntax oddities:\nAlso, having just come off ActionScript, which has the same root as JavaScript, I\u0026rsquo;d gotten used to asynchronous programming. It took much pain, but I broke myself of needing a new Thread to do everything, instead learning to live in callback land.\nThat is all to say, my perspective on tackling a J2SE 1.5 library were somewhat fresh and unbiased, other than a deep-seated hatred for the Singleton pattern\nWithout further ado, some random ruminations on Java in 2010-\u0026gt;2011:\nYes, it\u0026rsquo;s verbose and ugly. Use Guava, and it\u0026rsquo;s less so. It\u0026rsquo;s also standard, powerful, and runs everywhere. Logging is still a heterogeneous mess. Use slf4j and it\u0026rsquo;s less so. Okay, that\u0026rsquo;s a cop-out: It\u0026rsquo;s still a mess but your library will be insulated from whichever religion\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;method your consumers genuflect before. Modularity, in a word, sucks. I understand this is a hard problem that no one has solved satisfactorily. Still yet, I imagine there\u0026rsquo;s something more advanced than java.util.ServiceLoader yet less-onerous than Spring, Guice, or (heaven help you) OSGI bundles. I ended up combining ServiceLoader with a bit of hand-rolled setter injection (a la Guice) to manage it without requiring another library. (Nonsequitur) Git is indescribably cool, while remaining unintelligible to the untrained. That is, I\u0026rsquo;ve taught managers and graphic designers to use Subversion (\u0026ldquo;download Tortoise\u0026hellip;now click here\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;); I couldn\u0026rsquo;t imagine doing the same for git. Granted I\u0026rsquo;m no Matthew McCullough. * * *\nBuild. Ah, Java build. If ORM is the Vietnam of Computer Science, surely build management is the Land of the Lotus Eaters for Java/JVM devs. In the time I\u0026rsquo;d been away from java, the zeitgeist moved from (deep breath now\u0026hellip;.): Ant, Maven1, Ivy, Gant, Maven2, Gradle, Maven3. I probably missed a few in there.\nBuild gets its own section, because this is one where I can\u0026rsquo;t make a pithy epigrammatic recommendation, at least not in good conscience. Here\u0026rsquo;s some ways I slice at it.\nRight out: Maven1 or Gant. Obsolete given the others on the list. Ant: most mature \u0026amp; crufty. Most Java devs can work with it, unless they\u0026rsquo;ve been suckling the teat of IDE for years. Easy to do non-standard stuff. Verbose, since Ant makes you spell-out explicitly everything you want it to do. Ironically, then, it\u0026rsquo;s not programmable unless you\u0026rsquo;re masochistic. Maven2/Maven3: It pains me to say this, but these are probably the most mature and tractable of the bunch. They move you into the Transitive Dependency (warning, math ahead!) world and simplify your build. They also shackle you into the \u0026ldquo;maven way.\u0026rdquo; Structure your files, tests, resources, and build steps just so, and maven will make it trivial to build, test, release, document your module. Need to do something novel, and maven will make you long for the \u0026ldquo;freedom\u0026rdquo; of ant or even makefiles. Ivy: I haven\u0026rsquo;t messed with ivy too much, but it seems like a good compromise between ant and maven. You get dependency management and transitivity, without giving up the control inherent in an ant file. It has ALOT of moving parts to understand and since it\u0026rsquo;s so customizable, it\u0026rsquo;s easy to get wrong. I had one top notch dev and one poseur (me) looking at an ivy file problem for three days before we figured out it was a missing \u0026lsquo;-\u0026gt;\u0026rsquo; operator. Yep, finicky, and the docs aren\u0026rsquo;t the best, mainly because most people use either maven2 or\u0026hellip;. Gradle: Gradle burst on the scene recently, and as of today, it hasn\u0026rsquo;t hit 1.0. It\u0026rsquo;s an amalgam of every good idea in the above, and dumps XML in favor of a Groovy DSL. It\u0026rsquo;s terse\u0026ndash;not Scala terse, but small, and does most things for you, in the style of Maven. The big difference: It\u0026rsquo;s actually Groovy code, so you can put as much imperative logic in there as you like. That\u0026rsquo;s a double-edged sword. It gives you ample opportunity to shoot yourself in the foot, and its free-form nature brings us (ironically) back to Ant: It\u0026rsquo;s easy to do non-standard stuff. Dince it\u0026rsquo;s not at 1.0 yet, it\u0026rsquo;s almost CANNONICAL to do non-standard stuff. (hope you enjoy reading mailing lists\u0026hellip;) That being said, one opportunity in being a one-man-show was I had no one to convince if I wanted to try something out, so I switched from Maven2 to Gradle. My unvarnished opinion at the moment is, it\u0026rsquo;s not ready for prime time. As of today, we\u0026rsquo;ve had 6 milestone releases moving towards gradle 1.0, and each has been less stable than the last. Milestone 5, in particular was so problematic that they pulled it from the downloads section. If I had it to do over again, I don\u0026rsquo;t see the ROI in converting a working Maven2/Maven3 build to Gradle right now for these reasons:\nThe plugins aren\u0026rsquo;t there, or they\u0026rsquo;re duct-tape \u0026amp; bailing wire bolt-ons of Ant tasks. This is where Maven really shines: If I want to add a plugin to my build (say, Cobertura) I find the Cobertura plugin, I add it do my pom.xml in the plugins section, and it\u0026rsquo;s there, pulled-down from MavenCentral the next time I build. Gradle, it\u0026rsquo;s not that easy, and it\u0026rsquo;s almost PERL-like in its TMTOWTDI-ness. There\u0026rsquo;s churn. They\u0026rsquo;re racing for 1.0, and they\u0026rsquo;re adding features not just at the 11th hour, but at 11:55. I happened to like the site generation \u0026amp; documentation features of maven, and gradle doesn\u0026rsquo;t have anything to match. Granted, I may be in the minority, as Maven3 ditched the default site stuff from core moving it to a plugin. Look, Pluto is a planet, Han fired first, and MAVEN CAN BUILD A SITE, okay?! /rant Suppose, however, that you have a greenfield project, or one that\u0026rsquo;s on Ant or Maven1? Go Gradle, in my opinion. You\u0026rsquo;ll need to dedicate one person to learning \u0026ldquo;The right way to do it\u0026rdquo; so you don\u0026rsquo;t end up with a spaghetti build.gradle, but that\u0026rsquo;s pretty much the same way in everything but maven. In maven-land, every pom.xml is equally mired in verbose angle-bracket hell.\n* * *\nSo, there you have it, my (mostly unsupported) ramblings on doing a java library in 2010 and 2011. Tools are great and I hope some of the suggestions I have above either help you or help you pity the sorry state of things before people had ____________ in year __________, when you\u0026rsquo;re reading this. (Suggestion: \u0026ldquo;neural programming, 2016\u0026rdquo;)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/12/outrageous-statements-on-java-guava-modularity-build/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m rolling off a 16 month stint as the sole proprietor of a Java library used internally where I work.  Yep, it was an almost unheard-of situation within corporate America: I had no project manager, no marketing rep, no support staff, no unique testers.  I was responsible for API design, test plan, interfacing with multiple teams, delivery, support, infrastructure.  The works.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn short, I loved it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI loved getting to code 6 to 12 hours a day, every work day, working through design decisions, collaborating with other teams.  I\u0026rsquo;d go to bed noodling on design problems, I\u0026rsquo;d often get insight into them over coffee, then I\u0026rsquo;d have them implemented by that next night.  Most of the people I worked with were colleagues of mine from way back.  My only mandate was \u0026ldquo;make them happy,\u0026rdquo; and take care of my own stuff.  I had a project manager for the first month or so; once he was satisfied I had my stuff together, the reigns were off.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Outrageous statements on Java: Guava, Modularity, Build"},{"content":"Update: We didn\u0026rsquo;t really have Neural Programmi\u0026hellip; Harold Combs - Aug 3, 2019\nUpdate: We didn\u0026rsquo;t really have Neural Programming in 2016.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/12/outrageous-statements-on-java-guava-modularity-build-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"update-we-didnt-really-have-neural-programmi\"\u003eUpdate: We didn\u0026rsquo;t really have Neural Programmi\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarold Combs\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 3, 2019\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUpdate: We didn\u0026rsquo;t really have Neural Programming in 2016.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Outrageous statements on Java: Guava, Modularity, Build (Comments)"},{"content":"Wow, the blogger.com interface sure has changed since the last time I posted!\nWell, to catch-up a few things:\nMy job title is now \u0026lsquo;Software Architect\u0026rsquo;. This is avowed to be one of the most despised roles in all Software, since Developers resent architects\u0026rsquo; unrealistic, out-of-date ideas, and managers resent anyone besides them directing their teams. Yay, me. I had a motorcycle residing at my house for ~1 week in late June. This was one of the worst episodes in my life, and rocked me to my very core. In a true case of \u0026lsquo;be careful what you wish for\u0026rsquo;, I lied and manipulated my way to take advantage of a tragic situation (my uncle\u0026rsquo;s motorcycle accident) to come by a bike that I didn\u0026rsquo;t really want. My inner King Baby came to the fore in many ways. I hurt everybody. The bike left a week later, and relations with my parents haven\u0026rsquo;t been the same since. Joey is now a Webelos II, the last stage of Cub Scouts before becoming a Boy Scout. We attended the district camp-out at the R.J.Corman property this past weekend and had a blast. Gracie is now walking, taking 27 steps unassisted yesterday. Maria is now in pre-school at the First Methodist Church in Georgetown 3 days a week. She\u0026rsquo;s loving it, and seems to be flourishing amid the social interaction and learning environment. Whitney and I are making the first halting steps toward selling our house and buying another. This is possibly the worst time to sell a house since WWII, but hey, when you get The Call, one needs to answer it. We already absorbed several huge maintenance issues with our disaster of a house by ignoring this leading. Whitney currently has car fever, and if you read this blog you know I *always* have car fever. Current target de lust is a Toyota Prius 5. Fifty one miles per gallon sounds pretty ideal for the day-to-day operations of Whitney and the kids, plus it would make my bi-weekly trips to Louisville cost 1/2 as much versus the Camry of Doom. Whitney believes the Camry of Doom has a terminal mold problem. I can\u0026rsquo;t smell any mold, which she says is part of the problem. Andy Rooney is retiring from 60 Minutes as of this weekend. This man has been doing weekly essay commentary my entire life (1978-present). Wow. My current daily car fix comes from www.thetruthaboutcars.com The site is everything I always wanted www.autoextremist.com to be, and has one awesome refugee from VWVortex, Jack Baruth. I ramble sometimes. My current work notebook is a 13\u0026quot; Macbook Air, with a 128GB SSD. This thing is pure sex, and I love it. I hit an all-time adult weight low of 190 lbs a few weeks ago, at which time people started asking me if I had cancer or something. I don\u0026rsquo;t\u0026ndash;the tests came back negative. Basically, the meds I\u0026rsquo;m on increase your metabolism, particularly of protein. In short, my body\u0026rsquo;s been eating my muscles since March. Since my last doctor\u0026rsquo;s visit, I\u0026rsquo;ve been eating Cliff Bars and mainlining protein like an Atkins Addict, and my weight, muscles, and energy level seem stable. I\u0026rsquo;m involved in an addiction accountability group that strengthens me every week, and if this were an anonymous blog, I\u0026rsquo;d love to tell you all about it. If you\u0026rsquo;re interested in details, please email me. We got a new dishwasher at home. It\u0026rsquo;s the little things that make you smile. I think Google+ is a great idea, but it\u0026rsquo;s like a bar with no women\u0026ndash;not that interesting. I\u0026rsquo;m a twitter fiend. Love it and the immediate access to some of the best minds in the world, particularly in tech. I no longer sleepwalk or wake up exhausted. Yay, modern chemistry! I no longer feel the need to disrupt, destroy, or be defensive all the time. Ibid. I still love my Motorola Atrix 4G, and think Android fits my mind better than iOS. My wife loves iOS. God has a sense of humor, what can I say? ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/09/blogger.com/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWow, the blogger.com interface sure has changed since the last time I posted!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, to catch-up a few things:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMy job title is now \u0026lsquo;Software Architect\u0026rsquo;.  This is avowed to be one of the most despised roles in all Software, since Developers resent architects\u0026rsquo; unrealistic, out-of-date ideas, and managers resent anyone besides them directing their teams.  Yay, me.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI had a motorcycle residing at my house for ~1 week in late June.  This was one of the worst episodes in  my life, and rocked me to my very core.  In a true case of \u0026lsquo;be careful what you wish for\u0026rsquo;, I lied and manipulated my way to take advantage of a tragic situation (my uncle\u0026rsquo;s motorcycle accident) to come by a bike that I didn\u0026rsquo;t really want.  My inner King Baby came to the fore in many ways.  I hurt everybody.  The bike left a week later, and relations with my parents haven\u0026rsquo;t been the same since.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJoey is now a Webelos II, the last stage of Cub Scouts before becoming a Boy Scout.  We attended the district camp-out at the R.J.Corman property this past weekend and had a blast.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGracie is now walking, taking 27 steps unassisted yesterday.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMaria is now in pre-school at the First Methodist Church in Georgetown 3 days a week.  She\u0026rsquo;s loving it, and seems to be flourishing amid the social interaction and learning environment.  \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhitney and I are making the first halting steps toward selling our house and buying another.  This is possibly the worst time to sell a house since WWII, but hey, when you get The Call, one needs to answer it.  We already absorbed several huge maintenance issues with our disaster of a house by ignoring this leading.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhitney currently has car fever, and if you read this blog you know I *always* have car fever.  Current target de lust is a Toyota Prius 5.  Fifty one miles per gallon sounds pretty ideal for the day-to-day operations of Whitney and the kids, plus it would make my bi-weekly trips to Louisville cost 1/2 as much versus the Camry of Doom.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhitney believes the Camry of Doom has a terminal mold problem.  I can\u0026rsquo;t smell any mold, which she says is part of the problem.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAndy Rooney is retiring from 60 Minutes as of this weekend.  This man has been doing weekly essay commentary my entire life (1978-present).  Wow.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMy current daily car fix comes from \u003ca href=\"http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/\"\u003ewww.thetruthaboutcars.com\u003c/a\u003e The site is everything I always wanted \u003ca href=\"https://www.autoextremist.com\"\u003ewww.autoextremist.com\u003c/a\u003e to be, and has one awesome refugee from VWVortex, Jack Baruth.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI ramble sometimes.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMy current work notebook is a 13\u0026quot; Macbook Air, with a 128GB SSD.  This thing is pure sex, and I love it.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI hit an all-time adult weight low of 190 lbs a few weeks ago, at which time people started asking me if I had cancer or something.  I don\u0026rsquo;t\u0026ndash;the tests came back negative.  Basically, the meds I\u0026rsquo;m on increase your metabolism, particularly of protein.  In short, my body\u0026rsquo;s been eating my muscles since March.  Since my last doctor\u0026rsquo;s visit, I\u0026rsquo;ve been eating Cliff Bars and mainlining protein like an Atkins Addict, and my weight, muscles, and energy level seem stable.  \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m involved in an addiction accountability group that strengthens me every week, and if this were an anonymous blog, I\u0026rsquo;d love to tell you all about it.  If you\u0026rsquo;re interested in details, please email me.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe got a new dishwasher at home.  It\u0026rsquo;s the little things that make you smile.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI think Google+ is a great idea, but it\u0026rsquo;s like a bar with no women\u0026ndash;not that interesting. \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m a twitter fiend.  Love it and the immediate access to some of the best minds in the world, particularly in tech.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI no longer sleepwalk or wake up exhausted.  Yay, modern chemistry!\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI no longer feel the need to disrupt, destroy, or be defensive all the time.  \u003cem\u003eIbid.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI still love my Motorola Atrix 4G, and think Android fits my mind better than iOS.  My wife loves iOS.  God has a sense of humor, what can I say?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e","title":"Blogger.com"},{"content":"Definition: Dutch Disease\nAfter reading Alan Greenspan\u0026rsquo;s book last year, one concept that\u0026rsquo;s remained with me is Dutch Disease, which I (over-)simplify to mean: When you have one huge cash cow industry/revenue stream, then all your other industries suffer.\nCombine that with this article on tech crunch.\nI see a similarity there, in that tech companies that were formerly innovative latch onto a current upper-bound revenue source (Let\u0026rsquo;s say MS Office) and short-change other opportunities, or (worse yet) view them in terms of the current technology.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s interesting to look at one company that hasn\u0026rsquo;t fallen prey to this: Amazon. Amazon survived the dot-com bubble, and looks to survive and thrive through the Great Recession, too. Why? To me, the answer is counter intuitive: They do the opposite of \u0026ldquo;focusing on [their] core competencies]\u0026quot;. They do off-the-wall stuff.\nRemember the first Kindle? Totally ahead of the market, and totally against their current business model. Amazon started out as a bookstore, yet here\u0026rsquo;s a platform that will lead to fewer book sales. Why? They knew books would die, someday. \u0026ldquo;Someday\u0026rdquo; might just be Real Soon Now. Instead of sticking their heads in the sand, they innovated and introduced a new hardward and software platform to get them directly engaged (and sticky) with their customers.\nThe reason I thought of Dutch Disease is that current corporate thinking is quarter-to-quarter, and that gives you precious little leeway to destroy one business model in the birth of another. The obvious conclusion: Given an even playing field (no monopolies or anti-competitive practices), every company will be destroyed by a better, cheaper, faster competitor, unless that competitor is itself. Otherwise, the myopia of a current \u0026ldquo;95% of our revenue comes from X\u0026rdquo; view will blind them to whatever disruption has hit the market.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/06/tech-companies-dutch-disease/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDefinition: \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease\"\u003eDutch Disease\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter reading Alan Greenspan\u0026rsquo;s book last year, one concept that\u0026rsquo;s remained with me is Dutch Disease, which I (over-)simplify to mean: When you have one huge cash cow industry/revenue stream, then all your other industries suffer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCombine that with this \u003ca href=\"http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/13/yawn-how-did-big-tech-companies-turned-into-big-boring-banks/?utm_source=feedburner\u0026amp;utm_medium=feed\u0026amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29\u0026amp;utm_content=Google+Reader\"\u003earticle on tech crunch\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI see a similarity there, in that tech companies that were formerly innovative latch onto a current upper-bound revenue source (Let\u0026rsquo;s say MS Office) and short-change other opportunities, or (worse yet) view them in terms of the current technology.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tech Companies' Dutch Disease"},{"content":"I attended the Central Ohio Software Symposium in Columbus, Ohio this past weekend. What follows are my reviews of the event overall and the individual sessions I attended.\nOverview\nMost conferences suck, frankly. They\u0026rsquo;re usually put on by a single company, and are a combination of too much marketing pitch, too little content \u0026amp; reality. As it\u0026rsquo;s name would suggest, a No Fluff/Just Stuff conference is none of that. No vendors. No showy crap. Just industry-leading experts presenting what they\u0026rsquo;re doing and how they\u0026rsquo;re doing it.\nThis conference was at the Embassy Suites Airport. I found the rooms and venue nice (It\u0026rsquo;s a Hilton Hotel!), though the conference rooms themselves were too cramped for the # of attendees. This conference was sold-out, and it showed. Day 1\nExecutable Specifications: Automating Your Requirements Document with Geb and Spock by Matt Stine\nThis session was a passionate examination of how specs/requirements/stories get lost in translation to code, and how you might use a Behavior Driven Development Framework (Spock), combined with Geb (pronounced \u0026ldquo;Jeb\u0026rdquo;) to basically write your specs VIA the tests. This removes the impedence mismatch between natural languages and computer code, as the customer can see that you do/do not have tests to verify his requirements.\nI liked Matt\u0026rsquo;s style and delivery. I think we\u0026rsquo;re working towards integrating a BDD framework now thanks to this talk and others at the conference about Spock.\nResource-Oriented Architecture: REST II by Brian Sletten\nLet\u0026rsquo;s get this out of the way. Brian and Kevin Smith were separated at birth. This session was a meaty dive into the nuances below the REST movement: How to do security, how to allow flexibility and cache performance. Basically, how to allow the Internet\u0026rsquo;s architecture to work with you, rather than forcing it to be something it\u0026rsquo;s not. Good talk; obviously transitional between the intro and the later talks on Resource-orientation that I\u0026rsquo;d miss.\nNoSQL w/MongoDB and CouchDB by Peter Bell\nWe have new \u0026ldquo;Not Only SQL\u0026rdquo; databases, and Peter took us through a high-level view of MongoDB and CouchDB. Loved Peter\u0026rsquo;s accent, as well as his delivery. I didn\u0026rsquo;t like this session much, as I\u0026rsquo;d expected it to be a live-example session. It was not. It was lecture and whiteboarding (?!) in a tiny packed room. Also, the treatment was uneven (We got a blurb on Couch, and then an hour or so on Mongo), as Mongo\u0026rsquo;d attracted Peter\u0026rsquo;s attention and he\u0026rsquo;s using it in a startup currently. Peter did set expectations at the start of the talk about that, so I don\u0026rsquo;t hold it against him.\nDay 2\nScala for the Intrigued by Venkat Subramaniam\nThis was probably my favorite session. Venkat wrote the book on Scala. His presentation had no pre-canned slides. It was an hour and a half of him doing live coding and evaluation, while fielding questions from the attendees. Realistically, it was like getting the first 90 minutes of a 3 day training on Scala, and it was wonderful. Pumped to do this language in \u0026ldquo;7 Languages in 7 Weeks\u0026rdquo; soon.\nThe Busy Java Developer\u0026rsquo;s Guide to Akka by Ted Neward\nLet\u0026rsquo;s get this out of the way: Ted Neward is an alpha geek asshole. He\u0026rsquo;s also captivating, engaging, and challenging. This was the first time I got to hear the man speak, on a topic near and dear to me \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Making parallelism and concurrency usable by the average developer. The Akka framework makes that possible from Java (or Scala), and shows promise to be at least one answer (if not The Answer) to our multicore scaling issues in the years ahead. Enjoyed this talk, and I\u0026rsquo;m looking for way to prototype something with Akka for our big iron server projects.\nGit Going with Distributed Version Control by Matthew McCullough\nI lied. This was my favorite session. We had geunine \u0026ldquo;ooh\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;ahh\u0026rdquo; moments, and Matthew\u0026rsquo;s style was the anti-Ted: He puts himself in the background (while remaining confident and assertive); He manages his slides and time well; and he leaves you feeling like you\u0026rsquo;re a better person/developer after the talk. Great, great stuff.\nBusy Java Developer\u0026rsquo;s Guide to Android: Basics by Ted Neward\nTed again\u0026ndash;Funny, loose, and uneven (while realistic!). I got enough out of this to want to go develop on Android, and he gave us some \u0026ldquo;inside baseball\u0026rdquo; on it all to keep things moving.\nDay 3\nHow to Select and Adopt a Technology by Peter Bell\nPeter again. This was a good \u0026ldquo;business to technologist\u0026rdquo; overview of how to evaluate tech and get it adopted in your context, without any BS or \u0026ldquo;win-lose\u0026rdquo; thinking. I think, long term, this preso will be the one most useful back at LXK, as it formalizes the interactions and players required to move something from a geeky new idea to something that makes you money.\n_ Hello Groovy by Dave Klein_\nDave is a gentle soul, and I found his introductory treatment of Groovy engaging. His presentation style is SO gentle, however, that it was sometimes difficult to get excited about what was (really) some cool stuff going on up on the screen. His preso was a good mix of live coding (Venkat) and Pre-canned examples (Matt).\nPragmatic Architecture by Ted Neward\nI\u0026rsquo;d pretty-much had enough Ted by this point, and this is the sorest topic within my soul: Architecture. WE NEED ARCHITECTURE. However, software architects have no common notation or language for the things we are building, and most developers reject architects as \u0026ldquo;people who can no longer code who get paid more than I do to tell me to do the wrong thing.\u0026rdquo; Ted drove home that point over. And over. And OVER AGAIN. Yeah, I get it. My issue with it is, he drove it home for an hour and 15 minutes, leaving only 15 minutes to talk about the \u0026ldquo;Periodic table of architecture elements.\u0026rdquo; I felt cheated \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; I needed a non-BS treatment of those topics and he \u0026ldquo;[left] those to the reader.\u0026rdquo; To me, that was crap.\nTakeaways\nBase Java may be in its dotage (Java 7? Really?), but the JVM ecosystem is vibrant and growing, especially in the Grails/Groovy space. Also, the new Actor-model (Scala/Akka) and STM (Clojure) models show promise for solving the shared mutable state concurrency issues that we\u0026rsquo;ll face when 8 core processors become 64 to 256 cores Columbus is a heck of a nice place to live ;-) Git or Mercurial is where every dev shop needs to move. It\u0026rsquo;s (potentially) a bigger leap for productivity than the change from (PVCS/CVS/ClearCase) to SVN. They need a bigger venue. The 2nd-tier conference rooms were too darn small. Having the realtime tweets during sessions via the #nfjs hashtag was great, if only for the @TedNeward quotes. Overall, I really enjoyed the conference, and the \u0026ldquo;meat\u0026rdquo; available was amazing. Looking forward to going again.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/06/central-ohio-software-symposium-2011-wrapup-no-fluff-just-stuff/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI attended the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nofluffjuststuff.com/conference/columbus/2011/06/schedule\"\u003eCentral Ohio Software Symposium\u003c/a\u003e in Columbus, Ohio this past weekend.  What follows are my reviews of the event overall and the individual sessions I attended.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOverview\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost conferences suck, frankly.  They\u0026rsquo;re usually put on by a single company, and are a combination of too much marketing pitch, too little content \u0026amp; reality.  As it\u0026rsquo;s name would suggest, a No Fluff/Just Stuff conference is none of that.  No vendors.  No showy crap.  Just industry-leading experts presenting what they\u0026rsquo;re doing and how they\u0026rsquo;re doing it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Central Ohio Software Symposium 2011 Wrapup (No Fluff, Just Stuff)"},{"content":"Thanks for the \u0026ldquo;Kevin Smith\u0026rdquo; link to my \u0026hellip; Doug - Jun 4, 2011\nThanks for the \u0026ldquo;Kevin Smith\u0026rdquo; link to my Twitter. :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/06/central-ohio-software-symposium-2011-wrapup-no-fluff-just-stuff-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"thanks-for-the-kevin-smith-link-to-my-\"\u003eThanks for the \u0026ldquo;Kevin Smith\u0026rdquo; link to my \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/15372500124956525560\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eDoug\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 4, 2011\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThanks for the \u0026ldquo;Kevin Smith\u0026rdquo; link to my Twitter. :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Central Ohio Software Symposium 2011 Wrapup (No Fluff, Just Stuff) (Comments)"},{"content":"Cleaning-up my life, mostly.\nNext week will mark 9 months on the upward swing, moving from a place of depression, passivity, and \u0026ldquo;life of quiet desperation\u0026rdquo; to a place of reality, assertiveness, and self-confidence. I\u0026rsquo;m not \u0026ldquo;there\u0026rdquo; yet. Likely, I never will be, fully\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s the humility that comes with this process. Growing-up and gaining contentment (NOT complacency!) is a continuous process.\nThings that have helped me along the way, so far:\nMy wife. Really, I can\u0026rsquo;t say enough about her. She is my match, in all ways, and I know now why God put her in my life, and BACK in my life. She\u0026rsquo;s taught me logic and certainty. Her belief is the bedrock of everything she does, and it\u0026rsquo;s led me back to God. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth (Ps 5:18) My children. It sounds like a platitude, perhaps it is: Having kids changes you forever. Joey made me understand vulnerability and self-control. Maria saved me from my selfishness at my darkest moments. Grace has taught me the simple pleasure of being a father. I thank God for all three. Behold, children are a gift of the LORD. The fruit of a womb is a a reward. (Ps 127:3) My accountability group, in particular A.G. There are certain things, as a man, you just need another (wiser) man\u0026rsquo;s perspective upon. With that, understanding that what I feel and want at any specific moment is different than what\u0026rsquo;s right. I can rationalize much in the moment; I can defend little of that upon further examination. The way of the fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel (Ps 12:15) The Bible. Read it. Drop your agenda, drop the footnotes and the glossary, and just READ a modern translation, particularly the Gospels. Love it or hate it, you won\u0026rsquo;t be indifferent to what\u0026rsquo;s there. So far, I\u0026rsquo;m through Matthew, Romans, and Hebrews via YouVersion on my Atrix. I discuss it w/Whitney and I find those passages coming to mind throughout my day. God. He loved me enough to die for me\u0026ndash;lying, cheating, selfish me. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16) ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/05/what-ive-been-doing-lately/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCleaning-up my life, mostly.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNext week will mark 9 months on the upward swing, moving from a place of depression, passivity, and \u0026ldquo;life of quiet desperation\u0026rdquo; to a place of reality, assertiveness, and self-confidence.  I\u0026rsquo;m not \u0026ldquo;there\u0026rdquo; yet.  Likely, I never will be, fully\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s the humility that comes with this process.  Growing-up and gaining contentment (NOT complacency!) is a continuous process.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThings that have helped me along the way, so far:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What I've been doing lately"},{"content":"In a phrase: It obviates your need to think. It encourages you to simply react.\nI\u0026rsquo;m reading this great book by Andy Hunt called, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning. A key thesis in Chapter 5 is \u0026ldquo;Think, Don\u0026rsquo;t React\u0026rdquo;. Reaction is emotional, and involves the fear-based lower brainstem, engaging in stuff like \u0026ldquo;Fight or Flight,\u0026rdquo; Territorialism, Hissing at problems. If you\u0026rsquo;ve read my blog from years past, I\u0026rsquo;ve done plenty of hissing at a problem.\nMy assertion is this: There\u0026rsquo;s a certain speed at which the human mind can absorb and process events. With the 24 hour news cycle, we surpass that mark and enter a land where Rachel Maddow and Rush Limbaugh compete with one another for the next superlative villification of another thinking, breathing human being, alternately lionizing their own cause and demonizing their opponent. Reaction breeds reaction, leading to escalation.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a national Jerry Springer episode, and I\u0026rsquo;m glad I\u0026rsquo;m no longer exposed to it. I consume news the same way I consume email: Morning, at noon, and in the evening before bed. I discuss it with my wife, whose opinion I value, and with my colleagues whose differing opinions and socio-economic values I also respect. That\u0026rsquo;s humanity, practiced by the Athenians in the agora down to today in Egypt, where they\u0026rsquo;re trying to formulate their new government.\nRadicals sitting alone watching MSNBC and Fox News in their bomb shelters will ruin America. People expressing their opinion in trust of their fellow human beings just might save it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/05/what-pisses-me-off-about...the-24-hour-news-cycle/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a phrase: It obviates your need to think.  It encourages you to simply react.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m reading this great book by Andy Hunt called, \u003cem\u003ePragmatic Thinking and Learning.\u003c/em\u003e  A key thesis in Chapter 5 is \u0026ldquo;Think, Don\u0026rsquo;t React\u0026rdquo;.  Reaction is emotional, and involves the fear-based lower brainstem, engaging in stuff like \u0026ldquo;Fight or Flight,\u0026rdquo; Territorialism, Hissing at problems.  If you\u0026rsquo;ve read my blog from years past, I\u0026rsquo;ve done \u003cstrong\u003eplenty\u003c/strong\u003e of hissing at a problem.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What pisses me off about...the 24 Hour News Cycle"},{"content":"This is part confessional, part \u0026ldquo;working it out on paper\u0026rdquo;.\nI am an intuitive, synthetic problem solver. That is, more often than not, a holistic solution pops into my head. I don\u0026rsquo;t really work it out; I just wait for inspiration to strike and then try like hell to keep up with it. It oftentimes feels like someone else solved the problem when I\u0026rsquo;m done.\nSo, what\u0026rsquo;s the big deal? I mean, the problems get solved, and my paychecks keep coming, so what of it? Well, it\u0026rsquo;s tough being a Computer Scientist with this frame of mind.\n\u0026ldquo;Computer Science\u0026rdquo; so my old professor used to say, is misnamed. Really, computer science is \u0026ldquo;Algorithmics,\u0026rdquo; as in the study of Algorithms. Algorithms, simply, are a sequence of unambigous instructions for solving a problem in a finite number of steps. The steps in the algorithm must be simple and unambigious, because the Computer Scientists job is to express, code, and combine them in such a way that they can be executed on a Computer, which is a TOMCAT -\u0026gt; Totally Obedient Moron; Can\u0026rsquo;t Actually Think. A computer can\u0026rsquo;t recognize what you indended to do based on context; at the lowest-level, it\u0026rsquo;s just doing this doing this a billion times a second:\nLoad the next thing to do. Do it (add 1+1 to get 2, see if two register contents are equal and change the next instruction if not, etc.) Store the result. Lather, rinse, repeat the above a billion times a second with 61 years of Computer Science in between and you have me writing this blog post.\nAnyway, so you can see the central problem in CS is one of analysis followed by synthesis, that is, break down the problem (whatever it may be) to its essence, then synthesize a solution to it via algorithms, data structures, and higher-level constructs.\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;m super at the synthesis. What I\u0026rsquo;m realizing is I\u0026rsquo;m stinking at the analysis portion\u0026ndash;I get frustrated too easily. If the problem is ill-defined, or super-hard, I\u0026rsquo;m realizing I crutch on my intuitive thinking side too much. If I\u0026rsquo;ve solved the problem before, or if I can find a suitable analog to a problem I\u0026rsquo;ve solved before, I\u0026rsquo;m dynamite \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; I can pattern match the solution from my memory and BLAMO, problem solved. The really hard stuff stymies me. Maybe I\u0026rsquo;ve just grown lazy after 10 years of drama. In any case, the first step to repentence is confession. I\u0026rsquo;m going to work on that analytical process a bit more. We\u0026rsquo;ll see how it goes.\nThis blog post brought to you by Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt, which melted my brain today.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/05/hi-my-name-is-harold-and-im-an-intuitive-thinker./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is part confessional, part \u0026ldquo;working it out on paper\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am an intuitive, synthetic problem solver.  That is, more often than not, a holistic solution pops into my head.  I don\u0026rsquo;t really work it out; I just wait for inspiration to strike and then try like hell to keep up with it.  It oftentimes feels like someone else solved the problem when I\u0026rsquo;m done.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, what\u0026rsquo;s the big deal?  I mean, the problems get solved, and my paychecks keep coming, so what of it?  Well, it\u0026rsquo;s tough being a Computer Scientist with this frame of mind.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hi, My Name is Harold, and I'm an Intuitive Thinker."},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been part of two SCRUM rollouts so far. One was a grassroots effort, the other organizational. I have some thoughts I\u0026rsquo;d like to share, in no particular order.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s no silver bullet. Repeat that last sentence 10, 50, 1000 times until you believe it. If your work habits, talent, training, and support roles suck, your (insert work product here) will still suck using SCRUM. On the bright side, you\u0026rsquo;ll understand that in 2 weeks to 2 months, instead of years after the product is in the field SCRUM teams: 10 people max, and that\u0026rsquo;s pushing it. Five is better. I was on a 6 person SCRUM team, and it was great. Team of Specialists versus Team of Generalists? I\u0026rsquo;ve no idea. I\u0026rsquo;ve arguments for either approach, and no one answer fits everywhere. Yay, \u0026ldquo;It depends.\u0026rdquo; I could be a consultant. The team must see the value in SCRUM. It\u0026rsquo;s a lightweight process, but it requires them to think and communicate on a level they haven\u0026rsquo;t before. If it\u0026rsquo;s a drag AND they have to communicate to one another, they\u0026rsquo;ll abandon both. Don\u0026rsquo;t B.S. the acceptance criteria. If you don\u0026rsquo;t complete a user story, you don\u0026rsquo;t get credit, period. This sort of boundary helps focus the SCRUM team when it\u0026rsquo;s committing to a story. Enable the team to organize itself once it\u0026rsquo;s gelled. Yes, that means kicking the dead weight overboard, too. Empower the SCRUM master to do his/her job. Measure if s/he does it. Project Manager != SCRUM Master. The skillset and attitude is different. For heaven\u0026rsquo;s sake, DO NOT MAKE THE TEAM LEAD THE SCRUM MASTER. I was a team lead and a scrum master for about 2 weeks. Disaster ensued, and I got help for my team. Basically, anything that lets the team lapse into a parent/child relationship will destroy a SCRUM team\u0026ndash;they must feel like they have the power to make something happen. Some things that I don\u0026rsquo;t think SCRUM wholly solves (nor seeks to, if you seek a cop-out):\n\u0026ldquo;Agile fatigue\u0026rdquo;: Teams get locked into a vicious cycle of committing to 100% of what they can possibly do, then Billy get sick. Or Bob\u0026rsquo;s mom dies. Then, the team is behind, and the sprints are/should be too short to recover the loss of resource, so the rest of the team rallies and does Bob/Billy\u0026rsquo;s work. That leads to resentment, and someone usually ends up as the \u0026ldquo;goat\u0026rdquo; for a given sprint. Sprints get into a rhythm, so a given team isn\u0026rsquo;t given opportunity to relax, and this ends-up fraying the team and fracturing the trust on the team. Once a SCRUM team is gelled and performing, there\u0026rsquo;s little worse that a breach of trust.\nIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t make up for management\u0026rsquo;s job. You must cultivate, measure, and weed-out your talent pool. There\u0026rsquo;s precious little slack in an Agile team. A team of 50 programmers is relatively easy to \u0026ldquo;Hands-off\u0026rdquo; manage\u0026ndash;I can make that outrageous claim, as I\u0026rsquo;ve never been a manager. If you have 1 unproductive layabout in 50 programmer department, no action is really required. His peers may know and resent his indolence, but as a manager, what\u0026rsquo;s the pressure to act? If you have a 5-person SCRUM and 1 person sucks, you\u0026rsquo;re down 20%, and that can\u0026rsquo;t go on. A SCRUM team is measured holistically on its output, and dead weight must not fester or the whole team suffers.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/05/scrum-two-months-or-years-into-it./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been part of two \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development)\"\u003eSCRUM\u003c/a\u003e rollouts so far.  One was a grassroots effort, the other organizational.  I have some thoughts I\u0026rsquo;d like to share, in no particular order.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s no silver bullet.  Repeat that last sentence 10, 50, 1000 times until you believe it.  If your work habits, talent, training, and support roles suck, your (insert work product here) will still suck using SCRUM.  On the bright side, you\u0026rsquo;ll understand that in 2 weeks to 2 months, instead of years after the product is in the field\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSCRUM teams: 10 people max, and that\u0026rsquo;s pushing it.  Five is better.  I was on a 6 person SCRUM team, and it was great.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTeam of Specialists versus Team of Generalists?  I\u0026rsquo;ve no idea.  I\u0026rsquo;ve arguments for either approach, and no one answer fits everywhere.  Yay, \u0026ldquo;It depends.\u0026rdquo;  I could be a consultant.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe team must see the value in SCRUM.   It\u0026rsquo;s a lightweight process, but it requires them to think and communicate on a level they haven\u0026rsquo;t before.  If it\u0026rsquo;s a drag AND they have to communicate to one another, they\u0026rsquo;ll abandon both.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDon\u0026rsquo;t B.S. the acceptance criteria.  If you don\u0026rsquo;t complete a user story, you don\u0026rsquo;t get credit, period.  This sort of boundary helps focus the SCRUM team when it\u0026rsquo;s committing to a story.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEnable the team to organize itself once it\u0026rsquo;s gelled.  Yes, that means kicking the dead weight overboard, too.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEmpower the SCRUM master to do his/her job.  Measure if s/he does it.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eProject Manager != SCRUM Master.  The skillset and attitude is different.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFor heaven\u0026rsquo;s sake, DO NOT MAKE THE TEAM LEAD THE SCRUM MASTER.  I was a team lead and a scrum master for about 2 weeks.  Disaster ensued, and I got help for my team.  Basically, anything that lets the team lapse into a parent/child relationship will destroy a SCRUM team\u0026ndash;they must feel like they have the power to make something happen.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome things that I don\u0026rsquo;t think SCRUM wholly solves (nor seeks to, if you seek a cop-out):\u003c/p\u003e","title":"SCRUM, two months (or years?) into it."},{"content":"So, the other day, Whitney and I found ourselves at the UK Arboretum enjoying one another\u0026rsquo;s company and remarking on how little clothing 18-22 year olds wear while exercising. As part of our walk, we discussed the next step in our lives.\nYou see, the last 5 years hasn\u0026rsquo;t been all roses for us. It\u0026rsquo;s only in the past 8 months that I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten my head screwed-on straight about my faith, my place in this world, and my attitude towards life. If you read enough of this blog, you can chart my up and downs like a sine wave, especially when I was 25-\u0026gt;30. Sometimes, I\u0026rsquo;ve been there for my family; other times, I\u0026rsquo;ve hidden at work or in my own destructive pursuits, leaving Whitney to be a single parent to 1, then 2, now 3 children.\nI\u0026rsquo;d like to say all that\u0026rsquo;s past now, and for 8 months this week, it has been. Here on out, it\u0026rsquo;s one day at a time of integrity.\nThe above is a long way of saying, my wife and I are in a really good place right now, praise God. So, on our walk we talked next steps, and the next step for us is moving. The recent tornadoes have convinced us that we need a basement, and we\u0026rsquo;d like to get into a place with more room, better overall layout, and more opportunities for the kids. All well and good, then Whitney said innocently, \u0026ldquo;You know, I really think this next house could be our last house.\u0026rdquo;\nAnd then I freaked out. Insight into my thought process:\nLast house?! LAST HOUSE?! Okay, that\u0026rsquo;s it\u0026hellip;pack it in. I\u0026rsquo;m dead. I can see the top of the mountain, and it\u0026rsquo;s all downhill after that. I\u0026rsquo;m going to work, chase after my kids, and pay bills for the rest of my existence until I die. Is this it?! There\u0026rsquo;s so much I haven\u0026rsquo;t done, and probably won\u0026rsquo;t do: Tour Europe, see the great places, have those sports cars I always wanted, take a motorcycle tour through the Southwest.\nTo put it in nerd terms, I flushed my entire \u0026ldquo;bucket list\u0026rdquo; cache in the 25 yards after Whitney said \u0026ldquo;last house\u0026rdquo;. It stuck with me through the rest of our date, and while I mowed our 4\u0026quot; high front yard once I got home. As I emptied the last bag, took a pause, looked up at the sky and just prayed, \u0026ldquo;God, is this really all there is to life?\u0026rdquo;\nThe answer was immediate and straight to the point:\n\u0026ldquo;No. That\u0026rsquo;s not all there is. That\u0026rsquo;s the LIE that the enemy wants you to believe, that possessions and experiences are what makes life worth living. If he can keep you believing that, he knows you\u0026rsquo;re no good to Me. I have a future plan for you. Remember, I gave up my only Son for you, that I love you that much. Yes, YOU. Stop worrying.\u0026rdquo;\nI took a deep breath in, felt the crisis ebb, and went inside.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/05/instantaneous-midlife-crisis-and-the-reply-thereto/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, the other day, Whitney and I found ourselves at the UK Arboretum enjoying one another\u0026rsquo;s company and remarking on how little clothing 18-22 year olds wear while exercising.  As part of our walk, we discussed the next step in our lives.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou see, the last 5 years hasn\u0026rsquo;t been all roses for us.  It\u0026rsquo;s only in the past 8 months that I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten my head screwed-on straight about my faith, my place in this world, and my attitude towards life.  If you read enough of this blog, you can chart my up and downs like a sine wave, especially when I was 25-\u0026gt;30.  Sometimes, I\u0026rsquo;ve been there for my family; other times, I\u0026rsquo;ve hidden at work or in my own destructive pursuits, leaving Whitney to be a single parent to 1, then 2, now 3 children.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Instantaneous midlife crisis, and the reply thereto"},{"content":"all I have to say is,\u0026ldquo;WHAT IS WITH YOU LEXING\u0026hellip; Whitney - May 3, 2011\nall I have to say is,\u0026ldquo;WHAT IS WITH YOU LEXINGTON PEOPLE AND THE RED?! Red is not an interior color that calms! It is ATROCIOUS - not attractive!\u0026rdquo; Is there such a thing as a colour lemming? ;)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/05/instantaneous-midlife-crisis-and-the-reply-thereto-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"all-i-have-to-say-iswhat-is-with-you-lexing\"\u003eall I have to say is,\u0026ldquo;WHAT IS WITH YOU LEXING\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 3, 2011\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eall I have to say is,\u0026ldquo;WHAT IS WITH YOU LEXINGTON PEOPLE AND THE RED?! Red is not an interior color that calms! It is ATROCIOUS - not attractive!\u0026rdquo; Is there such a thing as a colour lemming? ;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Instantaneous midlife crisis, and the reply thereto (Comments)"},{"content":"I went to college with a guy, M, who was homeschooled and had nearly perfect elocution. Bizarrely perfect, in fact, since he came from Winchester, Kentucky. To be precise M didn\u0026rsquo;t have elocution, he had diction\u0026ndash;his voice was distinctive and every word was measured. He also spoke, as Peter Egan would say, as though he was holding a pencil clenched in his back teeth.\nOne day he was describing the next course in his Business degree. I swore he said, \u0026ldquo;Mmmmkro\u0026rdquo;.\nBeing the insufferable know-it-all that I was/am, I knew it had to be \u0026lsquo;macroeconomics\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;microeconomics\u0026rsquo;. I probed on, \u0026ldquo;Uh\u0026hellip;M, did you mean \u0026lsquo;Macro\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;Micro\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;. He repeated, this time with more urgency, \u0026ldquo;MMMM-kro\u0026rdquo;. He might\u0026rsquo;ve shoved a schwa sound in there; I don\u0026rsquo;t know. In any case, I still couldn\u0026rsquo;t discern his target economics class.\nThis went on for some minutes, with increasing levels of M\u0026rsquo;s consternation and increasing emphasis from me on my Eastern Kentucky Accent (\u0026ldquo;Do yuh mean MEYE - Cro, or MAC - ro, M?!\u0026rdquo;) until finally we found a common ground:\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m taking the big economics, Harold.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Oh, MAC-ro, then.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s what I said.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/04/can-you-hear-me-now-big-and-small-economics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI went to college with a guy, M, who was homeschooled and had nearly perfect elocution.  Bizarrely perfect, in fact, since he came from Winchester, Kentucky.  To be precise M didn\u0026rsquo;t have elocution, he had diction\u0026ndash;his voice was distinctive and every word was measured.  He also spoke, as Peter Egan would say, as though he was holding a pencil clenched in his back teeth.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne day he was describing the next course in his Business degree.  I swore he said, \u0026ldquo;Mmmmkro\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Can you hear me now?  \"Big\" and \"Small\" Economics"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been a Dave Ramsey follower for 9 years now. Granted, I\u0026rsquo;ve never made it past baby step 3 because I\u0026rsquo;m a selfish spendthrift, but I\u0026rsquo;ve kept my debt load admirably low throughout that period. We\u0026rsquo;ve pretty much saved-up for everything we bought in that time, aside from our Honda Odyssey, and I swore with that one that I\u0026rsquo;d let that sick, in-debt feeling stay with me so I\u0026rsquo;d never make that mistake again.\nOkay, that lasted right until Grace was born.\nGrace is my (hopefully) last daughter, born October last year. Whitney and I rediscovered sleepless nights and random pain from sacking an infant and her jetsam around. We also discovered that the mattress she brought with her to the marriage was on its last legs, mainly because I didn\u0026rsquo;t put a third slat beneath the middle of the box spring. That pillow-top beauty was sagging like my 401k back in 2008.\nSo, a new mattress \u0026amp; box spring was in order. We set a budget. We shopped. Then, we went into the Healthy Back Store to look around, and we blew the budget. Big time. \u0026ldquo;Zero interest for 2 years!\u0026rdquo; they cried. So, I signed on the dotted line, after a hilarious identity verification call with GE Capital in which I threw down with the woman on the line that my MINI Cooper wasn\u0026rsquo;t green or white, it was BOTH British Racing Green (Metallic) and White. But I digress.\nThis is the bed we got:\nYes, it\u0026rsquo;s like sleeping on a large sponge, and no, you can\u0026rsquo;t have it back. I slept on my son\u0026rsquo;s bed last night and my back\u0026rsquo;s been killing me all day. Since we got the Tempurpedic, the arthritis in my back hasn\u0026rsquo;t been any trouble at all.\nStill, there was the debt aspect. Even at 0%, I was in debt to GE Capital. So, as of yesterday, we paid off GE capital and my bed that I financed now belongs to us.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/03/mea-culpa-dave-ramsey-we-bought-a-bed.-okay-its-paid-off...now/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been a Dave Ramsey follower for 9 years now.  Granted, I\u0026rsquo;ve never made it past baby step 3 because I\u0026rsquo;m a selfish spendthrift, but I\u0026rsquo;ve kept my debt load admirably low throughout that period.  We\u0026rsquo;ve pretty much saved-up for everything we bought in that time, aside from our Honda Odyssey, and I swore with that one that I\u0026rsquo;d let that sick, in-debt feeling stay with me so I\u0026rsquo;d never make that mistake again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mea Culpa, Dave Ramsey: We bought a bed.  Okay, it's paid off...now"},{"content":"I still argue it was worth the debt. I\u0026rsquo;ve nev\u0026hellip; Whitney - Mar 5, 2011\nI still argue it was worth the debt. I\u0026rsquo;ve never slept that well. A great night\u0026rsquo;s sleep was worth it.\nI think it was, too. Honestly, I assumed we\u0026rsquo;d be sending it back after 30 days and buy something sane.\nMuch like the Miele vacuum cleaner, though, GEEZE what a product. Great stuff\u0026hellip;look forward to 20 more years with it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/03/mea-culpa-dave-ramsey-we-bought-a-bed.-okay-its-paid-off...now-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-still-argue-it-was-worth-the-debt-ive-nev\"\u003eI still argue it was worth the debt. I\u0026rsquo;ve nev\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 5, 2011\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI still argue it was worth the debt. I\u0026rsquo;ve never slept that well. A great night\u0026rsquo;s sleep was worth it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think it was, too. Honestly, I assumed we\u0026rsquo;d be sending it back after 30 days and buy something sane.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuch like the Miele vacuum cleaner, though, GEEZE what a product. Great stuff\u0026hellip;look forward to 20 more years with it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mea Culpa, Dave Ramsey: We bought a bed.  Okay, it's paid off...now (Comments)"},{"content":"What do cars and electronics have in common?\nPornography improves the breed. More generally, both benefit from something that captures the imagination and drives obsessive behavior and improvements to the delivery medium. For electronics, this was VHS, DVDs, HDtv, internet, streaming video, etc. For cars, this was racing.\nWhere did most of the technology we use today come from? Rear-view mirrors, synchromesh transmissions, fuel injection, electronic engine controls, high compression/high rpm operation, turbochargers, ABS, traction control, stability control, all derived from the singular, \u0026ldquo;Racing improves the breed.\u0026rdquo;\nSo, where are the significant electric racing series? To my understanding, there are none. A 24 Hours of Daytona, contested by electric-only cars would be a supreme test of current technology. \u0026ldquo;I just ran out on the banking at 150 mph. Crap, my batteries are totally depleted.\u0026rdquo; I guarantee you, regenerative braking would improve by orders of magnitude if Roger Penske was signing the checks.\nJust a random thought.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/03/apropos-of-nothing-why-isnt-there-an-electric-car-race-series/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat do cars and electronics have in common?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePornography improves the breed.  \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMore generally, both benefit from something that captures the imagination and drives obsessive behavior and improvements to the delivery medium.  For electronics, this was VHS, DVDs, HDtv, internet, streaming video, etc.  For cars, this was racing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhere did most of the technology we use today come from?  Rear-view mirrors, synchromesh transmissions, fuel injection, electronic engine controls, high compression/high rpm operation, turbochargers, ABS, traction control, stability control, all derived from the singular, \u0026ldquo;Racing improves the breed.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Apropos of nothing: Why isn't there an electric car race series?"},{"content":"The best feature of a Toyota Camry XV20? External temperature gauge.\nYes, the car\u0026rsquo;s practically perfect, in that annoying Mary Poppins way, but I love clicking that button on the dash and seeing the outside air temperature.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/03/the-best-feature-of-the-toyota-camry.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe best feature of a Toyota Camry \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Camry_(XV20)\"\u003eXV20\u003c/a\u003e?  External temperature gauge.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, the car\u0026rsquo;s practically perfect, in that annoying Mary Poppins way, but I love clicking that button on the dash and seeing the outside air temperature.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Best feature of the Toyota Camry..."},{"content":"I deactivated my Facebook account today. Here are the reasons:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s overwhelming. The avalanche of minutiae from my fellow human beings was too much to process. It\u0026rsquo;s irresistible. I\u0026rsquo;d find myself checking it each morning at 5am, each night before going to bed, and during lunch each day, in lieu of actual human relationships up to and including my own wife and kids. You Social Network\u0026ndash;er, Facebook\u0026ndash; guys have done your job. You\u0026rsquo;ve invented crack for the mind. It\u0026rsquo;s way too easy to be a voyeur. The visual and emotional pornography available on Facebook far surpasses any romance novel or soap opera. Seriously, you can watch people hook up, argue, and witness their marriages dissolve in slow-motion. It\u0026rsquo;s real-life, emblazoned and sanitized behind an online profile. For myself, that kind of drama drains me. Which leads me to\u0026hellip; It dissolves actual relationships. Sure, IRC, chat rooms, AOL, and\u0026ndash;hell\u0026ndash;plain old love letters have done this before, but Facebook makes it too damned easy for every old-flame and crush to find you and weasel their way back into your life. Just like with internet pr0n, those relationships on FB are easy\u0026ndash;seductive, even\u0026ndash;and you can keep them at arms length. Real people are messy and they happen in real-time. That also makes them 10 million times more interesting than someone\u0026rsquo;s online persona. I think Mark Zuckerburg is evil. I think Facebook is evil. As of today I finally put my money where my mouth is and fled the other way. To a degree, I realize I\u0026rsquo;ve ostracized myself as of today. There is no true competitor to Facebook. Twitter, as one irreverent observer put it \u0026ldquo;is for nerds and [lose women]\u0026rdquo;. Certainly, twitter\u0026rsquo;s not for everyone\u0026ndash;my Aunt Norie is a great practitioner of FaceBook, but I can\u0026rsquo;t conceive of her using Twitter. On the other side of it, e-mail is dead\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s as much a chore to read and respond to email today as it once was to bang out a letter and send it via USPS. Peer-to-peer communication is via SMS, and looks to remain so into the near future, until we all kill ourselves texting while driving.\nAnyway, that\u0026rsquo;s the words around why I\u0026rsquo;m no longer on FB. To answer some questions:\nI don\u0026rsquo;t think you\u0026rsquo;re a bad person if you continue to use Facebook. Yes, I realize most people respond to questions about their lives with, \u0026ldquo;But, I posted that on FB\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo; and act offended if you haven\u0026rsquo;t read it. I look forward to not being one of those people now. No, I\u0026rsquo;m probably not coming back. I say \u0026lsquo;probably\u0026rsquo;, because I\u0026rsquo;m old enough to know the word \u0026rsquo;never\u0026rsquo; is naive. Yes, I will miss my Facebook friends. Characteristically, this morning was the most poignant expression of why I loved FB: Pictures of people\u0026rsquo;s kids, funny anecdotes about their lives, lively discussion from my cousin on his latest city council meeting. I will mourn not having Facebook. I am still on the internet and available, both on twitter and via email. ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/03/i-killed-my-facebook-account-today/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI deactivated my Facebook account today.  Here are the reasons:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s overwhelming.  The avalanche of minutiae from my fellow human beings was too much to process.    \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s irresistible.  I\u0026rsquo;d find myself checking it each morning at 5am, each night before going to bed, and during lunch each day, \u003cem\u003ein lieu of actual human relationships up to and including my own wife and kids.\u003c/em\u003e  You Social Network\u0026ndash;er, Facebook\u0026ndash; guys have done your job.  You\u0026rsquo;ve invented crack for the mind.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s way too easy to be a voyeur.  The visual and emotional pornography available on Facebook far surpasses any romance novel or soap opera.  Seriously, you can watch people hook up, argue, and witness their marriages dissolve in slow-motion.  It\u0026rsquo;s real-life, emblazoned and sanitized behind an online profile.  For myself, that kind of drama drains me.  Which leads me to\u0026hellip;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt dissolves actual relationships.  Sure, IRC, chat rooms, AOL, and\u0026ndash;hell\u0026ndash;plain old love letters have done this before, but Facebook makes it too damned easy for every old-flame and crush to find you and weasel their way back into your life.  Just like with internet pr0n, those relationships on FB are easy\u0026ndash;seductive, even\u0026ndash;and you can keep them at arms length.   Real people are messy and they happen in real-time.  That also makes them 10 million times more interesting than someone\u0026rsquo;s online persona.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI think Mark Zuckerburg is evil.  I think Facebook is evil.  As of today I finally put my money where my mouth is and fled the other way.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo a degree, I realize I\u0026rsquo;ve ostracized myself as of today.  There is no true competitor to Facebook.  Twitter, as one irreverent observer put it \u0026ldquo;is for nerds and [lose women]\u0026rdquo;.  Certainly, twitter\u0026rsquo;s not for everyone\u0026ndash;my Aunt Norie is a great practitioner of FaceBook, but I can\u0026rsquo;t conceive of her using Twitter.  On the other side of it, e-mail is dead\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s as much a chore to read and respond to email today as it once was to bang out a letter and send it via USPS.   Peer-to-peer communication is via SMS, and looks to remain so into the near future, until we all kill ourselves texting while driving.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I killed my Facebook account today"},{"content":"I think Mark Zuckerburg is evil too! Good for you \u0026hellip; Prathima - May 4, 2011\nI think Mark Zuckerburg is evil too! Good for you that you are not on Facebook anymore! P\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/03/i-killed-my-facebook-account-today-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-think-mark-zuckerburg-is-evil-too-good-for-you-\"\u003eI think Mark Zuckerburg is evil too! Good for you \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/11224164360329437920\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003ePrathima\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 4, 2011\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think Mark Zuckerburg is evil too! Good for you that you are not on Facebook anymore! \u003ca href=\"http://iaintablonde.me\"\u003eP\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"I killed my Facebook account today (Comments)"},{"content":" Joey and I went to TRON: Legacy 3D last night. On the way home, he posed the following question: \u0026ldquo;Hey Harold, so what if when I was a freshman in high school, I met some girl who had hair just like Quorra, and who looked just like Quorra, and who had a TRON outfit like Quorra?\u0026rdquo; My reply: \u0026ldquo;Turn and run the other way as fast as you can.\u0026rdquo; Yes, Olivia Wilde steals every scene she\u0026rsquo;s in. Oh, and the 3D wasn\u0026rsquo;t worth the extra $$$. Tron in 2D on an appropriate screen is still a beautiful film, the minimalist counterpart to the sensory overload of Cameron\u0026rsquo;s Avatar. Sometimes, gravity is not your friend. Ouch. I welcome our new Verizon overlords. I love the motorcycle shots in TRON (those in the real world, on the Ducati), but I think I\u0026rsquo;d like something more comfortable in real life. ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2011/01/randomness-01/03/11/","summary":"\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJoey and I went to \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/\"\u003eTRON: Legacy 3D\u003c/a\u003e last night.  On the way home, he posed the following question: \u0026ldquo;Hey Harold, so what if when I was a freshman in high school, I met some girl who had hair just like \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0176020/\"\u003eQuorra\u003c/a\u003e, and who looked just like Quorra, and who had a TRON outfit like Quorra?\u0026rdquo;  My reply: \u0026ldquo;Turn and run the other way as fast as you can.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eYes, Olivia Wilde steals every scene she\u0026rsquo;s in.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOh, and the 3D wasn\u0026rsquo;t worth the extra $$$.  Tron in 2D on an appropriate screen is still a beautiful film, the minimalist counterpart to the sensory overload of Cameron\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/\"\u003eAvatar\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSometimes, gravity is not your friend. Ouch.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20026896-1.html\"\u003eI welcome our new Verizon overlords\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI love the motorcycle shots in TRON (those in the real world, on the Ducati), but I think I\u0026rsquo;d like something more comfortable in real life.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e","title":"Randomness, 01/03/11"},{"content":" Each year I get to watch my boy appear and disappear in a 24 hour period. I hate that. It\u0026rsquo;s amazing how rewarding it can be to put something together with your kids. This year, I got to put together a playschool dollhouse, a K\u0026rsquo;Nex Twisted Coaster, and an er\u0026hellip;um\u0026hellip;.something to do with mechanized hamsters that need exercise. A toy is evil if and only if it requires batteries. I find Michael Bay\u0026rsquo;s Transformer\u0026rsquo;s movie mesmerizing in that \u0026ldquo;If its on, I have to watch it\u0026rdquo; way I usually reserve for Airplane!, Ferris Bueller\u0026rsquo;s Day Off, and The Ten Commandents. Bad news is worse at Christmas somehow. It\u0026rsquo;s like you\u0026rsquo;re in the foxhole, getting shelled, and the guy next to you farts. Nothing to do but smell it. The Mattress sales industry should be regulated tighter than casinos. Casinos at least offer comps. If you\u0026rsquo;re on the hook to feed your buddy\u0026rsquo;s dog while he\u0026rsquo;s on vacation, wear comfortable footwear. Said dog may be off her chain and feeling athletic. Bulleted lists get tiring after 4 bullets. I finished Meghan McCain\u0026rsquo;s Dirty Sexy Politics a few days ago, and I found it both naive and insightful. Naive in that the book\u0026rsquo;s the equivalent of the hot date that goes nowhere: Meghan tells all, but has frightfully little to tell of consequence, aside from her night in Nashville with John Rich and how she totally screwed-up that infamous GQ interview.\nThe real insights were from a cogent, engaged moderate Republican (YAY, we DO EXIST!) embedded in a party moving towards the radical fringe. It refreshes one to hear a Republican who\u0026rsquo;s true to the ideals of small government, personal freedom, and lower taxes, without pushing a specific moral agenda.\nOverall, it was a fluffy, inconsequential book that didn\u0026rsquo;t live up to its promise.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/12/ruminations-on-christmas/december/solstice/","summary":"\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEach year I get to watch my boy appear and disappear in a 24 hour period.  I hate that.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s amazing how rewarding it can be to put something together with your kids.  This year, I got to put together a playschool dollhouse, a K\u0026rsquo;Nex Twisted Coaster, and an er\u0026hellip;um\u0026hellip;.something to do with mechanized hamsters that need exercise.  \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA toy is evil if and only if it requires batteries.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI find Michael Bay\u0026rsquo;s Transformer\u0026rsquo;s movie mesmerizing in that \u0026ldquo;If its on, I have to watch it\u0026rdquo; way I usually reserve for Airplane!, Ferris Bueller\u0026rsquo;s Day Off, and The Ten Commandents.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBad news is worse at Christmas somehow.  It\u0026rsquo;s like you\u0026rsquo;re in the foxhole, getting shelled, and the guy next to you farts.  Nothing to do but smell it.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Mattress sales industry should be regulated tighter than casinos.  Casinos at least offer comps.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;re on the hook to feed your buddy\u0026rsquo;s dog while he\u0026rsquo;s on vacation, wear comfortable footwear.  Said dog may be off her chain and feeling athletic.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBulleted lists get tiring after 4 bullets.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI finished Meghan McCain\u0026rsquo;s Dirty Sexy Politics a few days ago, and I found it both naive and insightful.  Naive in that the book\u0026rsquo;s the equivalent of the hot date that goes nowhere:  Meghan tells all, but has frightfully little to tell of consequence, aside from her night in Nashville with John Rich and how she totally screwed-up that infamous \u003ca href=\"http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q/2008/03/raising-mccain.html\"\u003eGQ interview\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ruminations on Christmas/December/Solstice"},{"content":"So, the other day, J-man and I were trekking to Shelbyville, Maria in the back seat. Joey was bored and he started the \u0026ldquo;Guess a number between\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; Each time we play this game, I calc the ceil(lg(N)) of the higher number and request that many guesses, and I win every time. (\u0026quot;Stand back, I\u0026rsquo;m going to try science!\u0026quot;)\nAnyway\u0026hellip;.Maria wanted to get in on this, too. Which is fascinating, since she CAN\u0026rsquo;T COUNT.\nM: I\u0026rsquo;m thinking of a number between four and nine.\nJ: 7\nM: No\nH: 5\n\u0026hellip;we proceed to guess every number between 4 and 9, inclusive. Twice.\nM: No guys\u0026hellip;you\u0026rsquo;re doing it wrong!\nInspiration struck.\nH: Is it forty nine?\nM: YES! VERY GOOD DADDY.\n* * *\nMy one parental gift is a capacity to think like a 3 year old.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/12/inside-the-mind-of-my-3-year-old/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, the other day, J-man and I were trekking to Shelbyville, Maria in the back seat.  Joey was bored and he started the \u0026ldquo;Guess a number between\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;  Each time we play this game, I calc the ceil(lg(N)) of the higher number and request that many guesses, and I win \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/\"\u003eevery time\u003c/a\u003e.  (\u0026quot;\u003ca href=\"http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/xkcd/dacb/\"\u003eStand back, I\u0026rsquo;m going to try science\u003c/a\u003e!\u0026quot;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway\u0026hellip;.Maria wanted to get in on this, too.   Which is fascinating, since she CAN\u0026rsquo;T COUNT.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Inside the mind of my 3 year old"},{"content":"Ruminations for today:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a crime there\u0026rsquo;s no site where you can put in reasonable search criteria (\u0026ldquo;manual diesel wagon\u0026rdquo;) and have it monitor AutoTrader, eBayMotors, Cars.com, Craigslist, etc. Sort of like Kayak.com does for airline tickets or Mint.com does for finances. Corollary thought: Some techno-geek/gear head like me invented just such a program, but loved it so much never left his Mom\u0026rsquo;s basement. Plurality of choice sucks. Both \u0026lsquo;cancelled\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;canceled\u0026rsquo; are correct English. The single-L form makes my brain want to explode. So, okay\u0026hellip;until we invent telepathy, we\u0026rsquo;re stuck with language of some form to communicate ideas. Each language has its own strengths and weaknesses: brevity, density, beauty, expressiveness. Could we come up with something BETTER THAN ENGLISH, please?! Corporate communications is where English majors go to die. In no particular order, here are the new cars I want to test drive:\nMazda 2 Mazda RX-8 Ford Fiesta hatch VW Golf TDI manual Subaru WRX Hatch Fiat 500 BMW 128i Nissan Juke (yes, I\u0026rsquo;ll keep my eyes closed as I get in) Caddilac CTS Pretty much, small, sporty and nimble are my tastes. I was on the interstate last night at 70 and began wiggling the steering on my Camry 15 degrees either side of center, and it didn\u0026rsquo;t change direction. It\u0026rsquo;s like driving a C-17 without the thrust reversers.\n(Yes, I had some time to kill while my integration tests ran on my code\u0026hellip;can ya tell?)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/12/randomness-december-21st-edition/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRuminations for today:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a crime there\u0026rsquo;s no site where you can put in reasonable search criteria (\u0026ldquo;manual diesel wagon\u0026rdquo;) and have it monitor AutoTrader, eBayMotors, Cars.com, Craigslist, etc. Sort of like Kayak.com does for airline tickets or Mint.com does for finances. Corollary thought: Some techno-geek/gear head like me invented just such a program, but loved it so much never left his Mom\u0026rsquo;s basement. Plurality of choice sucks.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBoth \u0026lsquo;cancelled\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;canceled\u0026rsquo; are correct English. The single-L form makes my brain want to explode.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSo, okay\u0026hellip;until we invent telepathy, we\u0026rsquo;re stuck with language of some form to communicate ideas. Each language has its own strengths and weaknesses: brevity, density, beauty, expressiveness. Could we come up with something BETTER THAN ENGLISH, please?!\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCorporate communications is where English majors go to die.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn no particular order, here are the new cars I want to test drive:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Randomness, December 21st edition"},{"content":"I sit here in office 249, staring down the last work week of the year, the Meghan McCain tome Dirty Sexy Money winking at me. Outside, the temperature hovers at 17 F, as arctic air chills most of America.\nYes, I blinked, and the weekend was over.\nSo, what happened?\nFirst, I saw Despicable Me with Maria Thursday night (yes, a little Daddy/Daughter time). Wonderful film, even if the tickets cost us $3 and the concessions cost $19. I laughed a lot, and Steve Carell is a genius. I\u0026rsquo;ve subjected Whitney to my (bad) Gru impression since Friday.\nFriday was an odd day. I got my soul RotoRootered on Thursday afternoon, so I felt off-center Friday. Emotional and talkative, rather like my Real Self© got to come out and play for a few hours. That\u0026rsquo;s me that isn\u0026rsquo;t crushingly overbearing, self-absorbed, defensive, etc. The guy who wrote poems, played (and liked) music, and put himself out there every day. \u0026lsquo;Twas nice.\nAnyway, so I had a couple of meetings on interviewing technique Friday, then I ran out to Ken Towrey\u0026rsquo;s Auto Care to get the Blizzaks mounted on Bessie, our 2004 Honda Odyssey. Beautiful afternoon to just be out-and-about.\nThen, I came home and had to take Joe to Louisville, and I got some sleep. Sleep is wonderful; I recommend it.\nSaturday dawned with both Whitney and I cursing our mattress. \u0026ldquo;Curse you, mattress!\u0026rdquo; we yelled. Whitney fell on some ice last week, and I have a bad back. Saturday, we made a great 60-year-old surly couple, though neither of us have the requisite dentures. In any case, we resolved to buy a mattress on Saturday. Then Whitney fell back to sleep for 2 hours and I looked at my TODO list, and we resolved to feel resentful that we couldn\u0026rsquo;t buy a mattress on Saturday.\nIf the above sounds like a passage of absurdity from a Johnathan Swift essay, welcome to Chez Combs.\nAnyway, Saturday was productive. Everyone bathed, which at Infant DefCon 1 is an accomplishment. I took the recycling out, and went to Kroger, then we hit ReKid to recycle some clothes and the Lexington Ice Center where Whitney and Maria skated. I got to hold Grace and watch them skate, which is fine by me. My panic attacks at the sight of skates have stopped, but only recently.\nSunday, I got some time to myself, which basically served to free up the logjam of crap in my psyche\u0026ndash;Things I haven\u0026rsquo;t dealt with, don\u0026rsquo;t want to deal with, and don\u0026rsquo;t have time to deal with.\nTo cap it all, the Midwest snowstorm sideswiped Kentucky just in time for me to fight snow all the way to Shelbyville and all the way back. At least the Blizzaks + Honda traction control made that easy enough.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/12/the-weekend-that-was-dec-11th-12th/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI sit here in office 249, staring down the last work week of the year, the Meghan McCain tome \u003cem\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Sexy-Politics-Meghan-Mccain/dp/1401323774/\"\u003eDirty Sexy Money\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/em\u003e winking at me. Outside, the temperature hovers at 17 F, as arctic air chills most of America.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51dgES6kqDL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, I blinked, and the weekend was over.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, what happened?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, I saw \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1323594/\"\u003eDespicable Me\u003c/a\u003e with Maria Thursday night (yes, a little Daddy/Daughter time). Wonderful film, even if the tickets cost us $3 and the concessions cost $19. I laughed a lot, and Steve Carell is a genius. I\u0026rsquo;ve subjected Whitney to my (bad) Gru impression since Friday.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The weekend that was: Dec 11th, 12th"},{"content":"Background: I have a 6 week old infant daughter.\nIn an ongoing effort to avoid sleep deprivation psychosis, my wife and I now alternate \u0026ldquo;standing watch\u0026rdquo; for Grace each night. Last night was my night. Man, a day that ends at midnight and begins at 4:30 sucks. Really could\u0026rsquo;ve done with another hour of sleep at least.\nStill, it beats Sunday night/Monday morning, at which time my daughter went to bed at 11:30, then woke up at 2:30 and screamed the next 18 hours.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/11/tradeoffs/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBackground: I have a 6 week old infant daughter.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn an ongoing effort to avoid sleep deprivation psychosis, my wife and I now alternate \u0026ldquo;standing watch\u0026rdquo; for Grace each night. Last night was my night. Man, a day that ends at midnight and begins at 4:30 sucks. Really could\u0026rsquo;ve done with another hour of sleep at least.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, it beats Sunday night/Monday morning, at which time my daughter went to bed at 11:30, then woke up at 2:30 and screamed the next 18 hours.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tradeoffs"},{"content":"Yes, I\u0026rsquo;ve caught the blogging bug. I feel different enough from my former self that it seems to make sense. Maybe I\u0026rsquo;m reading too much Peter Egan these days. Whatever, I\u0026rsquo;m here, again.\nThis weekend was another hole in my soul weekends when Joey gets to go to Louisville to be someone else with Dad #1. This is not how he phrases it, but that\u0026rsquo;s it in effect. From my perspective, I drop him off @ 7pm Friday, he goes into a fugue state for 48 hours, then I pick him up at 7pm Sunday. In any case, it kills me, as Joey\u0026rsquo;s my only defense against the giggly, shopping, toe-painting brigade known as the Combs Women.\nActually, I overstate. The women of my family are wonderful, well-rounded folks. Still, they\u0026rsquo;re women, and it\u0026rsquo;s difficult to crack jokes that begin and end with \u0026ldquo;poop,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;balls,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;fire.\u0026rdquo; With them. Joey and I could do 10 minutes of standup on the word \u0026ldquo;poop\u0026rdquo; alone. I think of us as the two stooges.\nAhem, anyway\u0026hellip;so I dropped-off Joe at 7, came back to the house around 9, then prepared myself for a night of being on duty. \u0026ldquo;On duty\u0026rdquo; in this case, meaning responsible for the \u0026lsquo;round 3 am feeding of my youngest daughter, Grace. On Friday night, this was not to be. She slept through the night. Ah, sweet Morpheus!\nSaturday dawned beautifully, and witnessed Whitney and Maria off to a Disney Character breakfast at the Cardome center. There, Whitney discovered the place wasn\u0026rsquo;t a dome and had nothing to do with cars. I was busy at home not going to the UK/Vanderbuilt game and straightening the kitchen. After they returned, I mowed the yard (yes, last time of the season!), took our recycling to the recycling center.\nAt this moment, I have no recollection of what happened from noon Saturday until Sunday morning, so let\u0026rsquo;s fast-forward. I vaguely recall washing egg off my house, staring agape at OSU football (GO BUCKS!), and an argument.\nSunday saw us attempt to make it to church on time, foiled again by our infant\u0026rsquo;s unreasonable desire to eat. We had brunch @ O\u0026rsquo;Charley\u0026rsquo;s, then had a surprise visit from my Mom \u0026amp; Dad around 4, then I ran up to pick-up Joe.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the weekend that was. I got 3 hours of sleep last night thanks to my infant daughter, so forgive a bit of rambling.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/11/the-weekend-that-was-nov-12-13th/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYes, I\u0026rsquo;ve caught the blogging bug. I feel different enough from my former self that it seems to make sense. Maybe I\u0026rsquo;m reading too much \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Egan_(columnist)\"\u003ePeter Egan\u003c/a\u003e these days. Whatever, I\u0026rsquo;m here, again.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis weekend was another hole in my soul weekends when Joey gets to go to Louisville to be someone else with Dad #1. This is not how he phrases it, but that\u0026rsquo;s it in effect. From my perspective, I drop him off @ 7pm Friday, he goes into a fugue state for 48 hours, then I pick him up at 7pm Sunday. In any case, it kills me, as Joey\u0026rsquo;s my only defense against the giggly, shopping, toe-painting brigade known as the Combs Women.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Weekend that was: Nov 12, 13th"},{"content":"Hey. I laughed plenty this weekend about things r\u0026hellip; Whitney - Nov 1, 2010\nHey. I laughed plenty this weekend about things revolving around fire. and seriously? When was the last time I had my toenails painted? When was the last time I had toenails, come to think of it? See what happens? You call me female and the claws come out. oh. wait. shucks.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/11/the-weekend-that-was-nov-12-13th-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"hey-i-laughed-plenty-this-weekend-about-things-r\"\u003eHey. I laughed plenty this weekend about things r\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 1, 2010\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHey. I laughed plenty this weekend about things revolving around fire. and seriously? When was the last time I had my toenails painted? When was the last time I had toenails, come to think of it? See what happens? You call me female and the claws come out. oh. wait. shucks.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Weekend that was: Nov 12, 13th (Comments)"},{"content":"From time to time, I like to check-in on what daily life is like. Yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s mundane, but it helps me remember what I was like at any given moment.\n5 am: Alarm Clock Goes off. Hit snooze bar. 5:09am: Alarm Clock Goes off. Hit snooze bar 5:18am: Alarm Clock Goes off, wakes 6 week old infant. Wife hits me. I turn off alarm clock and get up 5:30-\u0026gt;6: Wash dishes from night before, read RSS feeds on Google Reader, listen to podcasts on iPod (particular favs: \u0026ldquo;Things you missed in History class\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;FLOSS weekly\u0026rdquo;, and \u0026ldquo;Wait, wait\u0026hellip;don\u0026rsquo;t tell me\u0026rdquo;.) 6: wake-up Joey for school, walk him to the bathroom. 6:15: go back to bathroom to rouse comatose Joey 6:30: Shower, shave, yada yada yada 7:15: Leave to take Joey to school 7:45: Pick up Del for carpool 8:15: Arrive at work 8:30-\u0026gt;10:30: Most productive time of the day 10:30: first SCRUM standup of the day. Dysfunctional, slightly dramatic team. Lots of contempt. Good product, though. 11: second SCRUM standup of the day. 11:30-\u0026gt;1: Intend to get lunch. Usually hack on code problems identified during morning standup meetings 1-\u0026gt;5: Program on my bread-and butter project. Ah, heaven! 5:15: Leave for home 6ish: Arrive at home, take screaming infant from wife 6-\u0026gt;6:30: Converse with wife while she prepares dinner 6:30-\u0026gt;7:30: Family dinner. Yes, we actually sit down to dinner most nights, and I LOVE IT. My wife\u0026rsquo;s an awesome cook, and I\u0026rsquo;m an awesome consumer of her cooking. 7:30-\u0026gt;8:30: Bath time for Maria, get Joey into bed. Grace usually has a feeding right around this time. 8:30-\u0026gt;10:30: Adult time, usually spent staring comatose @ television thinking we really ought to go to bed, because the baby will be up for a feeding soon. 10:30-\u0026gt;11:30: Last feeding of the \u0026lsquo;day\u0026rsquo; for Grace 3:30-\u0026gt;4:30am: Give Grace her nightly bottle, if it\u0026rsquo;s my turn (Whitney and I alternate.) So, it\u0026rsquo;s a busy, structured day almost every day. Back when I first got married, the above would\u0026rsquo;ve driven me mad. I hate/hated repetition and routine, and the daily grind got to me often. Two infants drive that sort of hubris right out of you, apparently. Nowadays, I yearn for those nights where I can get 6 uninterrupted hours of sleep.\nAnalyzing the above, it sucks in several areas: No exercise, no bible study/prayer time, and no real unstructured time for my older children. Basically, Whitney and I are 100% involved setting-up Grace\u0026rsquo;s routine right now, and there\u0026rsquo;s precious little time for our other two. I do expect it to stabilize, but it\u0026rsquo;s clear that the equilibrium we had with 2 kids just can\u0026rsquo;t exist with 3, especially as the older 2 get involved in activities.\nDespite the above, I feel like my little family is very tight-knit and supportive of one another. Joey\u0026rsquo;s very protective of his sisters, in particular. Whitney and I do a good job of accepting spousal influence, and just offering to help without being manipulative of meddlesome. We hear one another now; back in the first year or two, it seemed all we did was talk at one another.\nIf you can\u0026rsquo;t tell, I\u0026rsquo;m finally liking this marriage business. I don\u0026rsquo;t feel like a caged animal 95% of the time. That\u0026rsquo;s a big change.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/11/routine-these-days/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom time to time, I like to check-in on what daily life is like. Yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s mundane, but it helps me remember what I was like at any given moment.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e5 am: Alarm Clock Goes off. Hit snooze bar.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e5:09am: Alarm Clock Goes off. Hit snooze bar\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e5:18am: Alarm Clock Goes off, wakes 6 week old infant. Wife hits me. I turn off alarm clock and get up\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e5:30-\u0026gt;6: Wash dishes from night before, read RSS feeds on Google Reader, listen to podcasts on iPod (particular favs: \u0026ldquo;Things you missed in History class\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;FLOSS weekly\u0026rdquo;, and \u0026ldquo;Wait, wait\u0026hellip;don\u0026rsquo;t tell me\u0026rdquo;.)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e6: wake-up Joey for school, walk him to the bathroom.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e6:15: go back to bathroom to rouse comatose Joey\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e6:30: Shower, shave, yada yada yada\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e7:15: Leave to take Joey to school\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e7:45: Pick up Del for carpool\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e8:15: Arrive at work\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e8:30-\u0026gt;10:30: Most productive time of the day\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e10:30: first \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development)\"\u003eSCRUM\u003c/a\u003e standup of the day. Dysfunctional, slightly dramatic team. Lots of contempt. Good product, though.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e11: second SCRUM standup of the day.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e11:30-\u0026gt;1: Intend to get lunch. Usually hack on code problems identified during morning standup meetings\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e1-\u0026gt;5: Program on my bread-and butter project. Ah, heaven!\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e5:15: Leave for home\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e6ish: Arrive at home, take screaming infant from wife\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e6-\u0026gt;6:30: Converse with wife while she prepares dinner\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e6:30-\u0026gt;7:30: Family dinner. Yes, we actually sit down to dinner most nights, and I LOVE IT. My wife\u0026rsquo;s an awesome cook, and I\u0026rsquo;m an awesome consumer of her cooking.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e7:30-\u0026gt;8:30: Bath time for Maria, get Joey into bed. Grace usually has a feeding right around this time.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e8:30-\u0026gt;10:30: Adult time, usually spent staring comatose @ television thinking we really ought to go to bed, because the baby will be up for a feeding soon.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e10:30-\u0026gt;11:30: Last feeding of the \u0026lsquo;day\u0026rsquo; for Grace\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e3:30-\u0026gt;4:30am: Give Grace her nightly bottle, if it\u0026rsquo;s my turn (Whitney and I alternate.)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, it\u0026rsquo;s a busy, structured day almost every day. Back when I first got married, the above would\u0026rsquo;ve driven me mad. I hate/hated repetition and routine, and the daily grind got to me often. Two infants drive that sort of hubris right out of you, apparently. Nowadays, I yearn for those nights where I can get 6 uninterrupted hours of sleep.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Routine these days"},{"content":"I like how it says it twice, like you don\u0026rsquo;t be\u0026hellip; Randal L. Schwartz - Nov 5, 2010\nI like how it says it twice, like you don\u0026rsquo;t believe it the first time.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/11/routine-these-days-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-like-how-it-says-it-twice-like-you-dont-be\"\u003eI like how it says it twice, like you don\u0026rsquo;t be\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/15769772519087568807\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eRandal L. Schwartz\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 5, 2010\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI like how it says it twice, like you don\u0026rsquo;t believe it the first time.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Routine these days (Comments)"},{"content":"Inspired by @tr0x on Twitter.com, here\u0026rsquo;s my anti-bragging list @ age 32.\nI suck at most anything sports related. I\u0026rsquo;m egotistical and I hate to lose, from which naturally follows I never liked being on any sports team. I was on a T-Ball team when I was 6. I played right field, couldn\u0026rsquo;t catch a ball to save my life, and that team ended-up winning the league championship. I chose to retire on top, you might say.\nI\u0026rsquo;m physically incapable of cleaning a bathroom adequately. Sad, ain\u0026rsquo;t it?\nInvariably, I start a project, get 25% to 75% through it, then let it languish until it\u0026rsquo;s overdue, then half-ass it to the finish. Yes, this drives me nuts about myself. I\u0026rsquo;ve no idea why I do it. Yes, it makes my longsuffering wife want to kill me.\nI suck at simple arithmetic, particularly that done in my head. Love higher math, but simple addition and subtraction is like kryptonite. I\u0026rsquo;m almost phobic about it; I have nightmares where I run a cash register and I can\u0026rsquo;t ever count back the change correctly.\nI\u0026rsquo;m self-centered. I started a blog and talked about myself for 9 years, didn\u0026rsquo;t I? Thought my opinion was worth disseminating through the interwebs. Note: I haven\u0026rsquo;t blogged much lately because I finally realized how egotistical it was. Then I moved to FB \u0026amp; Twitter to do the same thing, only from a mobile device :-)\nI like people\u0026hellip;until I don\u0026rsquo;t. Caught this particular bug from my mom. I love people, and I get lonely without them. But, at the most inopportune times, I just want time to myself. I\u0026rsquo;m a lonely loner, if that makes any sense. Ergo, I want relationships, so long as they suit me. Then I want to drop them. Which leads me to\u0026hellip;\nI\u0026rsquo;m a flake. If *anything* about myself sucks the most, it\u0026rsquo;s this. I\u0026rsquo;ll promise you the world, then forget, get occupied with something else, or half-ass doing it. If I overreact when people flake out on me, it\u0026rsquo;s because I loathe that quality about myself.\nI\u0026rsquo;m too hard on myself. I don\u0026rsquo;t have fun, because all I can think about is how much I suck, how dumb I look, and how much of a loser I am. Getting too wrapped-up in the whole \u0026ldquo;here\u0026rsquo;s how I look,\u0026rdquo; versus the real effects to other people, my wife, my kids. Ugh.\nI\u0026rsquo;m ridiculously bad to my body. I don\u0026rsquo;t exercise. I don\u0026rsquo;t sleep. I don\u0026rsquo;t eat correctly. Aside from smoking, drugs, or Fight Club, not sure how I could be worse to myself.\nI worry. Again, going with the self-centered stuff. I think everything is fixable/controllable if I work hard enough at it, which is just ego. I know, logically, that my sphere of control is pretty darn small, but part of me just doesn\u0026rsquo;t care. Which leads me to\u0026hellip;.\nI\u0026rsquo;m a control freak. The duality of my nature is one part whiny, indolent child and another part incredibly strict parent pushing that child to do what\u0026rsquo;s required no matter the circumstance. I\u0026rsquo;d settle for being an integrated \u0026ldquo;adult\u0026rdquo; who genuinely wanted to do things without the driving taskmaster of the \u0026ldquo;parent\u0026rdquo; part. (Yes, that borrowed heavily from \u0026lsquo;I\u0026rsquo;m okay, You\u0026rsquo;re okay\u0026rsquo;. Thank you, Judy Brashear, AP English Senior Year, Breathitt High School).\nI\u0026rsquo;m just frigging dull. Dull, dull, dull. When you work, worry, eat, and sleep (and not much else) it\u0026rsquo;s not like you can be a good raconteur. I\u0026rsquo;ve got a great story about how I debugged a deadlock in a mulithreaded library yesterday. What\u0026hellip;not interested?\nI\u0026rsquo;m narcissistic. Pretty much sums up all the above, except maybe the cleaning a bathroom part.\n* * *\nIn spite of all the above, my wife loves me. My kids love me. God loves me. I have no idea why, sometimes.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve reached that point in life not where I\u0026rsquo;m slowing down or anything, but I realize my place. I\u0026rsquo;m a father, husband, son, worker, (bad) friend. I still look through the window of life and see others enjoying, where I\u0026hellip;don\u0026rsquo;t. Not really. I expect too much, and am thankful not enough. Sort of poisons everything else.\n::sigh::\nThis got a lot heavier than I wanted at first. I just\u0026hellip;.I get alot of crap for being a narcissist, and I am, but I\u0026rsquo;d like to show that I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;m all that. I\u0026rsquo;ve got alot of \u0026lsquo;anti-brag\u0026rsquo; stuff sloshing around inside this over-inflated ego, too. Maybe you do, too. Maybe you should admit that to yourself and move on.\nSo, with that, my first 32 years were a blur. May the next 32 be less so.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/11/anti-bragging/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eInspired by \u003ca href=\"http://trx0x.posterous.com/anti-bragging-all-the-cool-kids-are-doing-it\"\u003e@tr0x on Twitter.com\u003c/a\u003e, here\u0026rsquo;s my anti-bragging list @ age 32.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI suck at most anything sports related\u003c/strong\u003e. I\u0026rsquo;m egotistical and I hate to lose, from which naturally follows I never liked being on any sports team. I was on a T-Ball team when I was 6. I played right field, couldn\u0026rsquo;t catch a ball to save my life, and that team ended-up winning the league championship. I chose to retire on top, you might say.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anti-Bragging"},{"content":"You are not a bad friend. We all get wrapped up in\u0026hellip; Susan - Nov 4, 2010\nYou are not a bad friend. We all get wrapped up in life sometimes and that is that. Friends are people that you can talk to at any point and it seems that no time has truly passed. :-0\nYeah, commenting on my own post.\nReading this is revelatory after my ADD diagnosis in Spring 2011. I\u0026rsquo;m doing much better concentrating, finishing, and driving my (also ADD) wife less crazy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/11/anti-bragging-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"you-are-not-a-bad-friend-we-all-get-wrapped-up-in\"\u003eYou are not a bad friend. We all get wrapped up in\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/14266500429112482921\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eSusan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 4, 2010\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou are not a bad friend. We all get wrapped up in life sometimes and that is that. Friends are people that you can talk to at any point and it seems that no time has truly passed. :-0\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, commenting on my own post.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anti-Bragging (Comments)"},{"content":"I was in a training class last week, and thought these quotes were interesting:\nGame time is not the time to improve skills. It\u0026rsquo;s the time to apply the skills. Projects have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Operations go on forever. Marry not the person that makes you happiest, but the person that makes you least unhappy. Metrics allow you to get rid of the losers. They DO NOT let you pick the winners The difference between a job and a career? About 20 hours a week. ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/09/quotable-quotes-from-class-last-week/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was in a training class last week, and thought these quotes were interesting:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGame time is not the time to improve skills. It\u0026rsquo;s the time to \u003cem\u003eapply\u003c/em\u003e the skills.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eProjects have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Operations go on forever.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMarry not the person that makes you happiest, but the person that makes you least unhappy.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMetrics allow you to get rid of the losers. They DO NOT let you pick the winners\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe difference between a job and a career? About 20 hours a week.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e","title":"Quotable quotes from class last week"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m 31, and I have arthritis in my lower back.\nTHIRTY ONE YEARS OLD.\nMom\u0026rsquo;s prophesy has come true: \u0026ldquo;You need to get up and move, or you\u0026rsquo;ll have arthritis by the time you\u0026rsquo;re 30.\u0026rdquo; You were off by one, mom.\nCan\u0026rsquo;t really lay blame on anyone but myself here. I\u0026rsquo;m the one who decided sitting around like Jabba the Hut for the last decade was the way to go. Twenty six percent body fat, zero flexibility, and no core strength.\nSorry, this is my first \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rsquo;ll have this for the rest of your life\u0026rdquo; moment.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/07/pissed-at-myself/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m 31, and I have arthritis in my lower back.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTHIRTY ONE YEARS OLD.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMom\u0026rsquo;s prophesy has come true: \u0026ldquo;You need to get up and move, or you\u0026rsquo;ll have arthritis by the time you\u0026rsquo;re 30.\u0026rdquo; You were off by one, mom.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCan\u0026rsquo;t really lay blame on anyone but myself here. I\u0026rsquo;m the one who decided sitting around like Jabba the Hut for the last decade was the way to go. Twenty six percent body fat, zero flexibility, and no core strength.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pissed at myself"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been pulling lots of OT at work lately (as has my whole team) and this past week, the walls started closing in on me. That\u0026rsquo;s appropriate\u0026ndash;I work in a windowless lab surrounded by high-walled cubicles and machines that wouldn\u0026rsquo;t pass FCC Class B certification with a bribe and a reactor radiation shield. Our lab has a sign with fake (?) blood on it that says: \u0026ldquo;Stress relief: Bang head here.\u0026rdquo;\nAnyway, my manager strongly suggested some time off. As did my wife. As did the janitor. So, I took today off and took Maria to see Toy Story 3, the latest computer-animated masterpiece from Disney/Pixar.\nOkay, so our family is a Pixar family. We often don\u0026rsquo;t speak English; we speak in citations from Pixar movies, our favorite being Finding Nemo and Cars\nNevertheless, after suffering through the turdly Shrek: Somebody Shoot Me a month ago, I was gunshy about walking into the 3rd installment from this franchise. Where could the story go?\nTo another plane of existence, that\u0026rsquo;s where. Pixar topped itself again. For all the marvel of the original _Toy Stor_y and subsequent feature films, THIS FILM IS INCREDIBLE.\n* * *\nAs before, we join the story in Andy\u0026rsquo;s room, only now we\u0026rsquo;re in on the joke: The toys are anthropomorphic and live secret lives when humans aren\u0026rsquo;t around. We quickly find out, for Woody and Buzz and the (diminished) rest, that\u0026rsquo;s often nowadays\u0026ndash;Andy\u0026rsquo;s grown up, leaving for college soon. His mom insists he clean out his room and assign everything to three piles: College, Attic, and Trash. Woody gets the \u0026lsquo;College\u0026rsquo; box, everyone else gets the attic trash bag.\nPredictably, a mixup occurs, and the Woody-less crew find themselves on the curb, with the garbage truck approaching. They escape the hydraulic garbage compactor in the truck, just barely, but the damage is done\u0026ndash;the toys think Andy sent them to the landfill. Like a wronged ex-girlfriend, they decide to jump in the \u0026lsquo;donate to Daycare\u0026rsquo; box, and Woody gets mixed-up with them.\nDaycare seems like a utopia, run by a Southern-fried teddy bear who takes them on a tour before assigning them to a room where they\u0026rsquo;ll be \u0026lsquo;played with every day\u0026rsquo;.\n(Aside: At this point, I was bored to death with this movie. Yes, the \u0026lsquo;will they get thrown away\u0026rsquo; scene was exciting, but it all seemed formulaic and like any other kids movie. M was enthralled, but I was checking my watch.)\nFrom there, the plot really kicks off. We find-out that the daycare\u0026rsquo;s really a cross between Cool Hand Luke and The Great Escape. The benevolent bear reveals himself to be psychopath, feeding new toys to the toddler room, where they\u0026rsquo;re rent stitch-from-stich by the \u0026ldquo;appropriate for kids 3 and under\u0026rdquo; crowd. The place is a prison.\nStill, this is no simple \u0026ldquo;breakout from jail\u0026rdquo; story. This story is nuanced, and each character developed. Even the \u0026ldquo;big bad bear\u0026rdquo; has a backstory, and a chance at redemption. Throughout, we see themes of perseverance, friendship, and justice. After that facile first act, the remainder is a mix of tension, temptation, action, and release\u0026ndash;all in succession. Woody remains our protagonist, and it\u0026rsquo;s startling the number of times he can just \u0026lsquo;walk away\u0026rsquo;, leaving his friends to their fate.\nHe never does, and in Andy\u0026rsquo;s poignant valediction to his toys as the movie closes, he reminds us Woody never will give up. In getting there, we see characters change, grow, and transcend themselves. Pixar knows character development, and they know that the STORY must take precedence above their incredible technology. It always does, and their movies are better for it.\n* * *\nIn a way, Toy Story 3 is many things outside it\u0026rsquo;s story line. A generation matured on these movies, and is now moving on just as Andy did, to college, career, and children. We\u0026rsquo;ve had much to leave behind: Toys, pets, friends, and parents. We\u0026rsquo;ve had to understand our own mortality and our \u0026ldquo;place\u0026rdquo; in this infinite stream of humanity. This story reminds us it\u0026rsquo;s okay to let go, to pass-on to future generations and take our place on the next stage.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/06/review-toy-story-3/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been pulling lots of OT at work lately (as has my whole team) and this past week, the walls started closing in on me. That\u0026rsquo;s appropriate\u0026ndash;I work in a windowless lab surrounded by high-walled cubicles and machines that wouldn\u0026rsquo;t pass FCC Class B certification with a bribe and a reactor radiation shield. Our lab has a sign with fake (?) blood on it that says: \u0026ldquo;Stress relief: Bang head here.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Toy Story 3"},{"content":"ummm\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;yeah\u0026hellip;.\u0026gt;I don\u0026rsquo;t think you\u0026rsquo;r\u0026hellip; Whitney - Jun 3, 2010\nummm\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;yeah\u0026hellip;.\u0026gt;I don\u0026rsquo;t think you\u0026rsquo;re part of the generation that grew up on these movies and thus including yourself in the \u0026ldquo;moving on\u0026rdquo; generation is absurd. You were 16 when the first one came out - mostly grown\u0026hellip;..\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/06/review-toy-story-3-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"ummmyeahi-dont-think-your\"\u003eummm\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;yeah\u0026hellip;.\u0026gt;I don\u0026rsquo;t think you\u0026rsquo;r\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 3, 2010\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eummm\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;yeah\u0026hellip;.\u0026gt;I don\u0026rsquo;t think you\u0026rsquo;re part of the generation that grew up on these movies and thus including yourself in the \u0026ldquo;moving on\u0026rdquo; generation is absurd. You were 16 when the first one came out - mostly grown\u0026hellip;..\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Review: Toy Story 3 (Comments)"},{"content":"Most of my Saturdays involve me getting to \u0026ldquo;sleep in\u0026rdquo; to 7am. Today was special\u0026ndash;I got to sleep in to 8:30, at which point Bella declared, \u0026ldquo;Well, I\u0026rsquo;ve been awake for 2 hours at this point, might as well get up.\u0026rdquo;\nTo encourage domestic sanity, Whitney and I have an arrangement\u0026ndash;each of us gets alone time for around 4 hours each weekend. Traditionally, Whitney gets hers Saturday mornings \u0026rsquo;til 1pm.\nYep, I\u0026rsquo;m to be a single parent for the next 4 hours or so. Easy enough, right?\nActually, it\u0026rsquo;s pleasant. Usually. I have great kids\u0026ndash;conversant, responsive, unspoiled. They appreciate time with Dad, especially when he puts the laptop down and unplugs his NPR-podcast laden iPod.\nToday was going to be great\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;d take the recycle to the recycling center, hit a motorcycle shop or 3, maybe con our way into a test-drive of a car with a manual transmision, then hit the UK arboretum and some other goings-on in Lex.\nPlans change.\nGot everyone in the van, loaded-up our recycling bing, and keyed the ignition. Grind, grind, clickclickclickclickclick\u0026hellip;.Battery was toast. Called AAA, and they got a guy out to help me understand that 100 amps isn\u0026rsquo;t QUITE sufficient to crank-over a 3.5L Honda V-6. One new battery later, we were off.\nSo, the rest of the day, in brief:\n* Hit Waffle House in G\u0026rsquo;town for brunch. The kids and I love Waffle House. I love that 2 generations of waitresses work there. I love that a biker and his Old Lady showed up on a Sportster, followed by a 50 year old guy with Hair Band Hair.\n* We hit Bell\u0026rsquo;s Honda/Suzuki/Kawasaki in Georgetown. The kids love a motorcycle shop. They haven\u0026rsquo;t kicked us out yet, though the older lady there does recognize Maria.\n* Maria caught a nap after that. Joey and I went into suspended animation for the next 3 hours.\n* We had a great dinner.\n* Joey and I watched \u0026ldquo;Shrek the OH MY GOODNESS WILL THEY STOP MAKING THESE AWFUL MOVIES\u0026rdquo; at the Bourbon Drive In.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/05/eventful-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMost of my Saturdays involve me getting to \u0026ldquo;sleep in\u0026rdquo; to 7am. Today was special\u0026ndash;I got to sleep in to 8:30, at which point Bella declared, \u0026ldquo;Well, I\u0026rsquo;ve been awake for 2 hours at this point, might as well get up.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo encourage domestic sanity, Whitney and I have an arrangement\u0026ndash;each of us gets alone time for around 4 hours each weekend. Traditionally, Whitney gets hers Saturday mornings \u0026rsquo;til 1pm.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Eventful day"},{"content":"(As related to Kim Tegge, the lone coffee holdout at work)\nStage 0: Coffee?! BLECH! Does smell good, though.\nStage 1: Coffee?! BLECH! I\u0026rsquo;ll take a Mocha Frappuchino, please.\nStage 2: Coffee?! BLECH! I\u0026rsquo;ll take an instant French Vanilla Cappuccino, please. I drink one of these every couple of weeks or so.\nStage 3: Latte, please. I can\u0026rsquo;t stand coffee. This is my first one this week.\nStage 4: Hmm\u0026hellip;no latte? No Starbucks? Need something\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ll take some coffee with my cream and sugar. Never had this before.\nStage 5: Dark roast Starbucks house blend with a shot of cream. You know\u0026hellip;maybe a couple per day.\nStage 6: Black coffee. Any will do. 4 cups per day.\nStage 7: Reheated black coffee from yesterday while I\u0026rsquo;m brewing the extra-strength coffee at 5am because I\u0026rsquo;ve had a coffee headache since 4:30. 6 cups per day. Actually, I can\u0026rsquo;t remember how many I drink per day. I NEED ANOTHER CUP!\nSo, where do you fall on that scale?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/05/stages-of-coffee-addiction./","summary":"\u003cp\u003e(As related to Kim Tegge, the lone coffee holdout at work)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStage 0: Coffee?! BLECH! Does smell good, though.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStage 1: Coffee?! BLECH! I\u0026rsquo;ll take a Mocha Frappuchino, please.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStage 2: Coffee?! BLECH! I\u0026rsquo;ll take an instant French Vanilla Cappuccino, please. I drink one of these every couple of weeks or so.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStage 3: Latte, please. I can\u0026rsquo;t stand coffee. This is my first one this week.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStage 4: Hmm\u0026hellip;no latte? No Starbucks? Need something\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ll take some coffee with my cream and sugar. Never had this before.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Stages of Coffee Addiction."},{"content":"This morning, my daughter Maria, had a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy at an outpatient surgery center in Lexington. She did very well, considering. She wasn\u0026rsquo;t happy to have all that pain when she awoke.\nShe cried, and I held her in the recovery room as they took the IV out of her left arm. The nurses and staff at the outpatient center were attentive, answering our every question.\nWe took the slow trip back to Georgetown in the Cube (still no van \u0026rsquo;til next week), and she dozed lightly with mom keeping her company in the back seat. Since then she\u0026rsquo;s taken her Tylenol 3 (with yummy Codeine) and 2 popsicles.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/04/now-she-can-breathe/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis morning, my daughter Maria, had a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy at an outpatient surgery center in Lexington. She did very well, considering. She wasn\u0026rsquo;t happy to have all that pain when she awoke.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe cried, and I held her in the recovery room as they took the IV out of her left arm. The nurses and staff at the outpatient center were attentive, answering our every question.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe took the slow trip back to Georgetown in the Cube (still no van \u0026rsquo;til next week), and she dozed lightly with mom keeping her company in the back seat. Since then she\u0026rsquo;s taken her Tylenol 3 (with yummy Codeine) and 2 popsicles.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Now, she can breathe"},{"content":"This year, I was puzzling over the word \u0026lsquo;Easter\u0026rsquo; itself. Doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to have any religious connection, does it? All the Latin-derived languages borrow from \u0026ldquo;Pesach,\u0026rdquo; the Hebrew word for passover.\nSurprise, Easter is named for an Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring. Traditionally the goddess Eoastre saved a frozen bird by turning it into a bunny. A bunny who could lay eggs, like a bird. BANG\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;Easter Bunny\u0026rdquo;\nFor me, this Easter has been a real bust. Really, the whole Lenten season, too. Usually, I get into everything from Ash Wednesday through Pentecost\u0026ndash;purification, focus on religious life, prayer. This year, it\u0026rsquo;s been a succession of issues: Pregnancy, Mom\u0026rsquo;s cancer returning, ongoing illness in my wife \u0026amp; kids, work, a car accident, dealing with insurance company. This weekend\u0026rsquo;s been the exclamation point on that\u0026ndash;missed our Good Friday chorale because of shuttling J, then missed Easter because J\u0026rsquo;s got stomach flu. Three roundtrips to Louisville in 3 days, then I get to look forward to my boy being gone for a week. :-(\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/04/easter-what-easter-its-ressurection-sunday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis year, I was puzzling over the word \u0026lsquo;Easter\u0026rsquo; itself. Doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to have any religious connection, does it? All the Latin-derived languages borrow from \u0026ldquo;Pesach,\u0026rdquo; the Hebrew word for passover.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSurprise, Easter is named for an \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter#Anglo-Saxon_and_German\"\u003eAnglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring\u003c/a\u003e. Traditionally the goddess Eoastre saved a frozen bird by turning it into a bunny. A bunny who could lay eggs, like a bird. BANG\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;Easter Bunny\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor me, this Easter has been a real bust. Really, the whole Lenten season, too. Usually, I get into everything from Ash Wednesday through Pentecost\u0026ndash;purification, focus on religious life, prayer. This year, it\u0026rsquo;s been a succession of issues: Pregnancy, Mom\u0026rsquo;s cancer returning, ongoing illness in my wife \u0026amp; kids, work, a car accident, dealing with insurance company. This weekend\u0026rsquo;s been the exclamation point on that\u0026ndash;missed our Good Friday chorale because of shuttling J, then missed Easter because J\u0026rsquo;s got stomach flu. Three roundtrips to Louisville in 3 days, then I get to look forward to my boy being gone for a week. :-(\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Easter?  What Easter?  It's \"Ressurection Sunday\""},{"content":"\nSince March 22nd, my family\u0026rsquo;s been tooling around in a Nissan Cube.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s be honest: We hate it. We miss our Honda Odyssey and look forward to its return. Heck, this thing makes me yearn for the consistent handling, quiet competence of my 10 year old Toyota Camry.\nYep. This brick is Hello Kitty with wheels, and yikes has it overstayed its welcome.\nFor those who don\u0026rsquo;t know, a Nissan Cube is a Nissan Versa with a different body. A Nissan Versa is the smallest Nissan automobile sold in America, featuring a coarse 122 hp 1.8L engine and a Continuously Variable Transmission. Pic of the versa:\nBeauty is subjective, but I\u0026rsquo;d say ugly is obvious. How these TWO rolling monstrosities made it past clay models is beyond me. Anywho\u0026hellip;\nSo, what you have with the Cube is a box-it-came-in car, with amazing interior space. Let me describe what it\u0026rsquo;s like to drive this car: Imagine driving your patio deck around with an underpowered engine and Satan\u0026rsquo;s own transmission. Truly, the interior of the car is laid out as if they began with a completely flat floor, added \u0026ldquo;chairs\u0026rdquo; (not seats), and then welded sides and a roof on it.\nAnd the driving\u0026hellip;hoo boy. It\u0026rsquo;s beyond me how Nissan managed to make a tiny car drive like a 2/5ths scale Chevy Tahoe: Numb steering, incredibly stiff suspension (think Z71 offroad Tahoe), and complete indifference to direction changes combine to make driving this thing incredibly tiring. I just got back from taking my son to Shelbyville (85 mile roundtrip) and found myself utterly exhausted. Once again, my decade-old Camry seems like a 7-series BMW compared to this thing.\nTo be fair, it has some virtues:\nLots of cupholders Amazing headroom Fits both large and small drivers Returned double the mileage of our van on the \u0026ldquo;deliver children\u0026rdquo; test loop around the greater Georgetown metro area (27mpg) Good sound system Eyecatching, in a way that compels strangers to approach, ogle, and see if you\u0026rsquo;re feeling alright. (Thankfully, when I repeat by rote, \u0026lsquo;It\u0026rsquo;s a rental\u0026rsquo;, they seem relieved.) Truly awful little contraption.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/04/review-nissan-cube-loaner/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.sutherlinnissanmallofgeorgia.com/images/dealer/2009-Nissan-Cube-Live.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.sutherlinnissanmallofgeorgia.com/images/dealer/2009-Nissan-Cube-Live.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nSince March 22nd, my family\u0026rsquo;s been tooling around in a \u003ca href=\"http://www.edmunds.com/nissan/cube/2010/review.html\"\u003eNissan Cube\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s be honest: We hate it. We miss our Honda Odyssey and look forward to its return. Heck, this thing makes me yearn for the consistent handling, quiet competence of my 10 year old Toyota Camry.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep. This brick is Hello Kitty with wheels, and yikes has it overstayed its welcome.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor those who don\u0026rsquo;t know, a Nissan Cube is a Nissan Versa with a different body. A Nissan Versa is the smallest Nissan automobile sold in America, featuring a coarse 122 hp 1.8L engine and a Continuously Variable Transmission. Pic of the versa:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Nissan Cube (Loaner)"},{"content":"Chat convo with my wife:\nBella: I\u0026rsquo;m gonna need that $ back.\nHarvid: Sure, right after I put that deposit down on that motorcycle\nBella: Oh, so you\u0026rsquo;re leaving me then?\nHarvid: Oh, didn\u0026rsquo;t the guy show up with the papers? ;)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/03/and-thats-married-life..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChat convo with my wife:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBella: I\u0026rsquo;m gonna need that $ back.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarvid: Sure, right after I put that deposit down on that motorcycle\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBella: Oh, so you\u0026rsquo;re leaving me then?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarvid: Oh, didn\u0026rsquo;t the guy show up with the papers? ;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"And that's married life...."},{"content":"\nFinished reading this book Saturday night\nIt was an interesting tale of an entitled, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) whose life completely unravelled in his late 50\u0026rsquo;s. This true story follows Michael Gates Gill, son of Brendan Gill of The New Yorker magazine fame, graduate of Yale, member of Skull \u0026amp; Bones. Gill\u0026rsquo;s never worked a real job in his life\u0026ndash;he moved from Yale to a prestigious Madison Avenue ad agency, living a jet-set life and leaving his kids behind. As he entered his 50\u0026rsquo;s, he got downsized and went home (for the first time, really) to a wife he didn\u0026rsquo;t know and children who grew up without him. He descended further, carrying-on an affair with a younger woman and fathering a child at 60 years old. Then his wife left him. Then his ad clients stopped calling him back.\nThen he had a young African American woman ask him at Starbucks: \u0026ldquo;Do you want a job today?\u0026rdquo; Yes. Yes, he did, and so begins our story.\nThe book is a very quick read, with the central narrative\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;Mike\u0026rdquo; learning to work at a Starbucks in Manhattan\u0026ndash;interspersed with anecdotes from Gill\u0026rsquo;s past. This is where the book gets annoying\u0026ndash;Gill\u0026rsquo;s reign on his material evaporates, as we see flashback after flashback. The book\u0026rsquo;s more memoir than narrative.\nWithin that irritation lurks a gem\u0026ndash;an honest tale of a man learning honest work, and an honest approach to work. Throughout his years in advertising, Mike never learned to respect anyone. He learned corporate BS\u0026ndash;how to intimidate, project power, and self-aggrandize. He took himself WAY too seriously.\nHaving struggled with the above myself, his exploration of how he felt during that process was interesting.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/03/review-how-starbucks-saved-my-life/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41fka5jRDAL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41fka5jRDAL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nFinished reading \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/How-Starbucks-Saved-Life-Privilege/dp/1592402860/\"\u003ethis book\u003c/a\u003e Saturday night\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was an interesting tale of an entitled, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) whose life completely unravelled in his late 50\u0026rsquo;s. This true story follows Michael Gates Gill, son of Brendan Gill of \u003cem\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c/em\u003e magazine fame, graduate of Yale, member of Skull \u0026amp; Bones. Gill\u0026rsquo;s never worked a real job in his life\u0026ndash;he moved from Yale to a prestigious Madison Avenue ad agency, living a jet-set life and leaving his kids behind. As he entered his 50\u0026rsquo;s, he got downsized and went home (for the first time, really) to a wife he didn\u0026rsquo;t know and children who grew up without him. He descended further, carrying-on an affair with a younger woman and fathering a child at 60 years old. Then his wife left him. Then his ad clients stopped calling him back.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: \"How Starbucks Saved my Life\""},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ll get some pics up soon\u0026hellip;just some thoughts from attending the 2010 Louisville Auto show\nIt\u0026rsquo;s much better going with your 3 year old daughter than with your 1 year old daughter. Maria was my wingman\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;wingdaughter. Awesome! The Ford display triumphed. They had position right in front of the entrance, and the cars were great. They (understandably) didn\u0026rsquo;t have the 2011 5.0 Mustang GT on display\u0026ndash;who would by the 2010 4.6? The new Taurus is incredible. Great styling. Sumptuous interior. I can\u0026rsquo;t believe this platform began as the VW Passat-derivative Five Hundred. It\u0026rsquo;s a completely different car just when America\u0026rsquo;s ready to return to cars after gorging on SUV\u0026rsquo;s for 20 years. That being said, the new Fiesta\u0026rsquo;s too small. Unless they can make money on this car at $14k or less, forget it. People will buy the redesigned Focus instead. Toyota\u0026rsquo;s display, right next to the entrance as well, was a ghost town. I felt sorry for these guys as there are some superb cars in the lineup. Maria loved the Scion xD, and I thought the the new Prius to be the perfect replacement for my 2000 Camry\u0026ndash;only it gets double the mileage. BMW has lost its way, big time. I though things were bad when Bangle took over, but $100,000 UGLY, IRRELEVANT cars (X6? 5 series GT?). Those posers snatching-up the Beamers are BROKE, you Bavarian Dullards. Those who remain are the hardcore faithful, and you\u0026rsquo;ve given them nothing but complicated, overpriced, ugly cars that break with British regularity. ::sigh:: Still want an E39 530i Sport. Probably a 2001 model. :-) Honda: WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING?! The Oddysey withers on the vine, the Civic is a disaster, and the Accord remains ugly (as it has since 1998). Meanwhile, we get the Accord Crosstour. Meanwhile, the Fit remains a joy. Pity it\u0026rsquo;s overpriced and lacks taller gearing for the highway. Still, play with those folding rear seats, work that snick/snick shifter, and feel the quality of the controls\u0026ndash;this is Honda Motor we-can-engineer-better-than-you Company at its best. Jump in a Mazda 6, then into a Hyundai Sonata, and tell me why Mazda\u0026rsquo;s still in business. The Mazda 2 won\u0026rsquo;t sell. It\u0026rsquo;s an uglier Fiesta, with less space. GM is still the \u0026ldquo;too many divisions, too many nameplates\u0026rdquo; company. And the new Regal (a rebadged Opel offering only a 4-cylinder engine) is too small. Finally got in a Camaro. Maria liked it because it\u0026rsquo;s red. It has so little headroom and such bad outward visibility, I felt like I was in a coffin. I don\u0026rsquo;t see that car having even the legs of the 4th Gen Camaro/Firebird. GM has a talent for useless styling exercised (SSR, anyone?) This feels exactly like that. Acuras make BMWs seem attractive. Yikes. So yeah, I feel like an old fart\u0026ndash;I like reasonable cars, with good styling, interior appointments, and room. I dislike gimmicks and needless complexity\u0026ndash;they seem like sleight-of-hand to hide bad engineering.\nFord\u0026rsquo;s definitely got it going on, as does Hyundai.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/02/notes-from-the-2010-louisville-auto-show/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll get some pics up soon\u0026hellip;just some thoughts from attending the \u003ca href=\"http://www.carlcasper.com/\"\u003e2010 Louisville Auto show\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s much better going with your 3 year old daughter than with your 1 year old daughter. Maria was my wingman\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;wingdaughter. Awesome!\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Ford display triumphed. They had position right in front of the entrance, and the cars were great. They (understandably) didn\u0026rsquo;t have the 2011 5.0 Mustang GT on display\u0026ndash;who would by the 2010 4.6?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe new Taurus is incredible. Great styling. Sumptuous interior. I can\u0026rsquo;t believe this platform began as the VW Passat-derivative Five Hundred. It\u0026rsquo;s a completely different car just when America\u0026rsquo;s ready to return to cars after gorging on SUV\u0026rsquo;s for 20 years.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThat being said, the new Fiesta\u0026rsquo;s too small. Unless they can make money on this car at $14k or less, forget it. People will buy the redesigned Focus instead.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eToyota\u0026rsquo;s display, right next to the entrance as well, was a ghost town. I felt sorry for these guys as there are some superb cars in the lineup. Maria loved the Scion xD, and I thought the the new Prius to be the perfect replacement for my 2000 Camry\u0026ndash;only it gets double the mileage.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBMW has lost its way, big time. I though things were bad when Bangle took over, but $100,000 UGLY, IRRELEVANT cars (X6? 5 series GT?). Those posers snatching-up the Beamers are BROKE, you Bavarian Dullards. Those who remain are the hardcore faithful, and you\u0026rsquo;ve given them nothing but complicated, overpriced, ugly cars that break with British regularity. ::sigh:: Still want an E39 530i Sport. Probably a 2001 model. :-)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHonda: WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING?! The Oddysey withers on the vine, the Civic is a disaster, and the Accord remains ugly (as it has since 1998). Meanwhile, we get the Accord Crosstour.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMeanwhile, the Fit remains a joy. Pity it\u0026rsquo;s overpriced and lacks taller gearing for the highway. Still, play with those folding rear seats, work that snick/snick shifter, and feel the quality of the controls\u0026ndash;this is Honda Motor we-can-engineer-better-than-you Company at its best.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJump in a Mazda 6, then into a Hyundai Sonata, and tell me why Mazda\u0026rsquo;s still in business.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Mazda 2 won\u0026rsquo;t sell. It\u0026rsquo;s an uglier Fiesta, with less space.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGM is still the \u0026ldquo;too many divisions, too many nameplates\u0026rdquo; company. And the new Regal (a rebadged Opel offering only a 4-cylinder engine) is too small.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFinally got in a Camaro. Maria liked it because it\u0026rsquo;s red. It has so little headroom and such bad outward visibility, I felt like I was in a coffin. I don\u0026rsquo;t see that car having even the legs of the 4th Gen Camaro/Firebird. GM has a talent for useless styling exercised (SSR, anyone?) This feels exactly like that.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAcuras make BMWs seem attractive. Yikes.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo yeah, I feel like an old fart\u0026ndash;I like reasonable cars, with good styling, interior appointments, and room. I dislike gimmicks and needless complexity\u0026ndash;they seem like sleight-of-hand to hide bad engineering.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Notes from the 2010 Louisville Auto show"},{"content":"I live in a dysfunctional state.\nActually scratch that\u0026hellip;I live in a dysfunctional Commonwealth.\nLooking at this logically:\nWe have 4.3 million people We rank 22nd in population density We have a state sales tax of 6%, except on foodstuffs. We have a state income tax of 6%, basically for everybody. We pay property tax assessed on cars, yearly. We pay property tax on LEASED CARS. Think about that for a minute. Lots of our local municipalities levee income taxes as well Yeah, so of course we\u0026rsquo;re flat broke. Comically so, like your friend who\u0026rsquo;s lived off credit cards for the last 10 years, then can\u0026rsquo;t convince Citibank to up his limit.\nThere are some bright spots. Crit Luallen, our auditor, is a gem. She\u0026rsquo;s the all-seeing eye. She causes embezzlers and graft-takers to shudder, as they should. When things go wrong, she arrives like a pissed off Darth Vader hunting Princess Leia. (As my commenter, Dash, corrected me, the muckrakers at the Herald-Leader play a huge role, as well. They discovered abuses at KACo, Bluegrass Airport, and the Lexington Public Library.)\nFurther, there\u0026rsquo;s the government teat. We\u0026rsquo;ve suckled more than our fair share since the Great Society, and Hal sure keeps it coming. Honestly, without the Bailout Money last year, basic services in Kentucky would\u0026rsquo;ve dried-up.\nStill. STILL. You\u0026rsquo;re taking 6% off the top whenever people do ANYTHING in this state. Buy a car\u0026hellip;that\u0026rsquo;ll be 6% (unless you buy it from your parent). Earn a decent salary\u0026hellip;that\u0026rsquo;ll be 6%. Honestly, the only thing that the tax structure in our state encourages is subsistence agriculture and hunting/fishing your own food. Do that and you could probably avoid the taxman altogether. Well, if you rent your house.\nThis is just insane. . .We have SO MUCH in this state. Natural resources. Cheap labor. Good transportation (well, the best FUNDED transportation department anywhere\u0026hellip;).\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/01/kentuckys-broke...wait-what/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI live in a dysfunctional state.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eActually scratch that\u0026hellip;I live in a dysfunctional \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_(U.S._state)\"\u003eCommonwealth\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLooking at this logically:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe have 4.3 million people\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe rank 22nd in population density\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe have a state sales tax of 6%, except on foodstuffs.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe have a state income tax of 6%, basically for everybody.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe pay property tax assessed on cars, yearly.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe pay property tax on LEASED CARS. Think about that for a minute.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLots of our local municipalities levee income taxes as well\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, so of course we\u0026rsquo;re \u003ca href=\"http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/Kentucky_state_budget\"\u003eflat broke\u003c/a\u003e. Comically so, like your friend who\u0026rsquo;s lived off credit cards for the last 10 years, then can\u0026rsquo;t convince Citibank to up his limit.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kentucky's broke...wait, What?"},{"content":"Sorry. KACO financial abuses was discovered by Le\u0026hellip; Dash - Jan 2, 2010\nSorry. KACO financial abuses was discovered by Lexington Herald\u0026ndash;not State auditor, as was the Lexington Airport financial abuse and League of cities abuse.\nC.J. State Salares:\nAgency is U of Lou\n2616 employees High of $912,288-to low of $351,487\nagency is U of KY\n4469 employees high of $804,726-Low of $412,500\nAgency: Ky Community College\n1498 employees from High of $212,484-to low of $145,714\nAgency: KY JUDICIAL SYSTEM:\n545 employees from high of $139,164-to low of $128,760\nAgency: Legislative Research Comm\n196 employees from high of $132,840-to low of $99,744\nAgency: LOTTO\n62 employees from high of $220,200to low of $99,100\nAgency:KY HOUSING CORP\n95 employees from high of $137,957 to low of $76,500\nSTATE 5269 $222,718-50,000\nEXECUTIVE BRANCH ADMINISTRATION ASSISTANTS\n86 EMPLOYEES from high of $100,000 to low of $55,650\nSorry. KACO financial abuses was discovered by Lexington Herald\u0026ndash;not State auditor, as was the Lexington Airport financial abuse and League of cities abuse.\nC.J. State Salares:\nAgency is U of Lou\n2616 employees High of $912,288-to low of $351,487\nagency is U of KY\n4469 employees high of $804,726-Low of $412,500\nAgency: Ky Community College\n1498 employees from High of $212,484-to low of $145,714\nAgency: KY JUDICIAL SYSTEM:\n545 employees from high of $139,164-to low of $128,760\nAgency: Legislative Research Comm\n196 employees from high of $132,840-to low of $99,744\nAgency: LOTTO\n62 employees from high of $220,200to low of $99,100\nAgency:KY HOUSING CORP\n95 employees from high of $137,957 to low of $76,500\nSTATE 5269 $222,718-50,000\nEXECUTIVE BRANCH ADMINISTRATION ASSISTANTS\n86 EMPLOYEES from high of $100,000 to low of $55,650\n@Dash \u0026ndash; thanks for the clarification. Amended the post.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/01/kentuckys-broke...wait-whati-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"sorry-kaco-financial-abuses-was-discovered-by-le\"\u003eSorry. KACO financial abuses was discovered by Le\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/09150514295114277201\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eDash\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 2, 2010\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSorry. KACO financial abuses was discovered by Lexington Herald\u0026ndash;not State auditor, as was the Lexington Airport financial abuse and League of cities abuse.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eC.J. State Salares:\u003cbr\u003e\nAgency is U of Lou\u003cbr\u003e\n2616 employees High of $912,288-to low of $351,487\u003cbr\u003e\nagency is U of KY\u003cbr\u003e\n4469 employees high of $804,726-Low of $412,500\u003cbr\u003e\nAgency: Ky Community College\u003cbr\u003e\n1498 employees from High of $212,484-to low of $145,714\u003cbr\u003e\nAgency: KY JUDICIAL SYSTEM:\u003cbr\u003e\n545 employees from high of $139,164-to low of $128,760\u003cbr\u003e\nAgency: Legislative Research Comm\u003cbr\u003e\n196 employees from high of $132,840-to low of $99,744\u003cbr\u003e\nAgency: LOTTO\u003cbr\u003e\n62 employees from high of $220,200to low of $99,100\u003cbr\u003e\nAgency:KY HOUSING CORP\u003cbr\u003e\n95 employees from high of $137,957 to low of $76,500\u003cbr\u003e\nSTATE 5269 $222,718-50,000\u003cbr\u003e\nEXECUTIVE BRANCH ADMINISTRATION ASSISTANTS\u003cbr\u003e\n86 EMPLOYEES from high of $100,000 to low of $55,650\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kentucky's broke...wait, What?I (Comments)"},{"content":"Trying to journal a few things from the past weekend:\nMy wife likes Ducatis and Triumphs. She thinks that a Nighthawk 250 and the Honda Rebel are ridiculously too small for me. In other news, I actually got Whitney to go to a motorcycle shop with me :-) I\u0026rsquo;m considering selling some of my Voigtlander R1 Rangefinder kit, particularly the 15mm Heliar f/4.5 and the 90mm f/3.5. I haven\u0026rsquo;t snapped any pictures with this camera in 2 years, and the 35mm and cannon 50mm f/1.2 are good enough. I keep waiting for the day when my kids go, \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s that stuff you\u0026rsquo;re putting into that camera? \u0026lsquo;Film\u0026rsquo;\u0026hellip;is that like a coating for light sensor? Where\u0026rsquo;s the 32GB memory card go in that thing? What do you mean it doesn\u0026rsquo;t use BATTERIES!?\u0026rdquo; I had chills and low-grade fever Saturday evening through Sunday morning, and still don\u0026rsquo;t feel 100% Currently reading Peter Egan\u0026rsquo;s excellent compillation Side Glances. It\u0026rsquo;s much the same old stuff\u0026ndash;Peter buying old cars, stories of his childhood with his friend Pat Donnelly, long road trips hither and yon. It gets a bit repetitive, but so what? Part of me wants to be this guy when I grow-up, minus the Hepatitis C. Helped Whitney out with the 4 + 5-year old Sunday School class this week. Seven girls and one irrepressible boy, Noah. Saw an excellent free concert from the Central Kentucky Brass Trio at Christ the King Cathedral Sunday afternoon. Many thanks to Betsey Keating for watching Maria so Whitney and I could have some time together. ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/01/the-weekend-that-was-and-other-musings/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTrying to journal a few things from the past weekend:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMy wife likes \u003ca href=\"http://www.ducati.com/\"\u003eDucatis\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://www.triumph.co.uk/usa/2010_Scrambler_Overview_2010Scrambler.aspx\"\u003eTriumphs\u003c/a\u003e. She thinks that a Nighthawk 250 and the Honda Rebel are ridiculously too small for me. In other news, I actually got Whitney to go to a motorcycle shop with me :-)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m considering selling some of my Voigtlander R1 Rangefinder kit, particularly the 15mm Heliar f/4.5 and the 90mm f/3.5. I haven\u0026rsquo;t snapped any pictures with this camera in 2 years, and the 35mm and cannon 50mm f/1.2 are good enough. I keep waiting for the day when my kids go, \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s that stuff you\u0026rsquo;re putting into that camera? \u0026lsquo;Film\u0026rsquo;\u0026hellip;is that like a coating for light sensor? Where\u0026rsquo;s the 32GB memory card go in that thing? What do you mean it doesn\u0026rsquo;t use BATTERIES!?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI had chills and low-grade fever Saturday evening through Sunday morning, and still don\u0026rsquo;t feel 100%\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCurrently reading Peter Egan\u0026rsquo;s excellent compillation \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Side-Glances-Americas-Popular-Automotive/dp/1855207281\"\u003eSide Glances\u003c/a\u003e. It\u0026rsquo;s much the same old stuff\u0026ndash;Peter buying old cars, stories of his childhood with his friend Pat Donnelly, long road trips hither and yon. It gets a bit repetitive, but so what? Part of me wants to be this guy when I grow-up, minus the Hepatitis C.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHelped Whitney out with the 4 + 5-year old Sunday School class this week. Seven girls and one irrepressible boy, Noah.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSaw an excellent free concert from the Central Kentucky Brass Trio at Christ the King Cathedral Sunday afternoon. Many thanks to Betsey Keating for watching Maria so Whitney and I could have some time together.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e","title":"The weekend that was, and other musings"},{"content":"\nI paid $4.00 at a matinee to watch Avatar, now 3 weeks after its worldwide release. The 2.5 hour video game movie amazed me, and at the same time, its overarching vanity and irony haunts me. Let\u0026rsquo;s talk.\nThe movie itself tells the story of former marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington)\u0026rsquo;s journey the new world Pandora, where he\u0026rsquo;s embedded with a corporate mining operation of \u0026lsquo;Unobtainium\u0026rsquo;, a mineral essential to old Terra. Jake takes over for his Ph.D. identical twin, who\u0026rsquo;s killed months before he\u0026rsquo;s supposed to ship out to be an Avatar driver. In return, they\u0026rsquo;ll fix his paraplegic legs after his 6 year hitch on Pandora.\nPandora\u0026rsquo;s an earth-like planet orbiting a gas giant with several other moons (think Titan, only habitable). Not only habitable\u0026hellip;the planet\u0026rsquo;s teaming with life, including an indiginous group of 10 foot tall blue natives, the Na\u0026rsquo;vi. The Avatar drivers remote-control company-grown Na\u0026rsquo;vi bodies, enabling them to walk and talk among the Na\u0026rsquo;vi and gain their trust. On the ground in Pandora, there are human scientists studying the Na\u0026rsquo;vi, company men mining for Unobtaninium, and mercenaries charged with protecting the operation. Not surprisingly, the mercenaries want to blow-up the Na\u0026rsquo;vi and get back home \u0026lsquo;before dinner\u0026rsquo;.\nOn his first mission out in the bush, Jake gets lost escaping from a Pandoran monster. Left overnight in the jungle, a pack of dog-like predators attack him and he\u0026rsquo;s rescued by Netyri, the chief\u0026rsquo;s daughter from a local tribe of Na\u0026rsquo;vi. She\u0026rsquo;s learned English, and takes him to her tribe to be judged\u0026ndash;he ought to be killed (well, his Avatar body at least), but her Mom says Jake should stay with their tribe and learn their ways, in hopes of \u0026lsquo;curing the Skypeople insanity\u0026rsquo;.\nIf the above sounds familiar, it is\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s Dances with Wolves, minus Kevin Costner\u0026rsquo;s bad acting. Once you strip off the technology, this film is nothing more a cowboys-and-Indians tale.\nSome random thoughts:\n* Is there a law that Michelle Rodriguez has to wear a tank top in every role?\n* Any sci-fi film that references \u0026lsquo;Unobtanium\u0026rsquo; (*cough*The Core*cough*)\u0026hellip;FAIL!\n* The central lovestory between Jake and Neytiri grows organically, and it\u0026rsquo;s a treat. I\u0026rsquo;ve no idea how much emoting/acting was motion capture versus animation\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s seamless and I bought it.\n* This is a film about environmentalism, collective good, harmony, contrasted with evil corporations bent on profit. It cost half a billion dollars to make. It\u0026rsquo;s enriching James Cameron and his evil corporate backers. How many starving people could eat on $500 million?\n* Sigourney Weaver. Still beautiful after all these years\u0026ndash;great performance!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/01/review-james-camerons-avatar/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.reelmovienews.com/images/gallery/avatar-movie-poster_353x529.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI paid $4.00 at a matinee to watch \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/\"\u003eAvatar\u003c/a\u003e, now 3 weeks after its worldwide release. The 2.5 hour video game \u003cem\u003emovie\u003c/em\u003e amazed me, and at the same time, its overarching vanity and irony haunts me. Let\u0026rsquo;s talk.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe movie itself tells the story of former marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington)\u0026rsquo;s journey the new world Pandora, where he\u0026rsquo;s embedded with a corporate mining operation of \u0026lsquo;Unobtainium\u0026rsquo;, a mineral essential to old Terra. Jake takes over for his Ph.D. identical twin, who\u0026rsquo;s killed months before he\u0026rsquo;s supposed to ship out to be an Avatar driver. In return, they\u0026rsquo;ll fix his paraplegic legs after his 6 year hitch on Pandora.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: James Cameron's 'Avatar'"},{"content":"you post a link on ur fb. BTW, Joey and I just ha\u0026hellip; Whitney - Jan 1, 2010\nyou post a link on ur fb.\nBTW, Joey and I just had the misfortune to watch this movie that was released in 2007, titled \u0026ldquo;Terra\u0026rdquo;. Same story, right down to brother being killed, humans looking for mineral to run their habitat, etc. comp gen\u0026rsquo;d animation of course. im actually surprised cameron and crew hasn\u0026rsquo;t been sued over this adult adaptation. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0858486/\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/01/review-james-camerons-avatar-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"you-post-a-link-on-ur-fb-btw-joey-and-i-just-ha\"\u003eyou post a link on ur fb. BTW, Joey and I just ha\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 1, 2010\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eyou post a link on ur fb.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBTW, Joey and I just had the misfortune to watch this movie that was released in 2007, titled \u0026ldquo;Terra\u0026rdquo;. Same story, right down to brother being killed, humans looking for mineral to run their habitat, etc. comp gen\u0026rsquo;d animation of course. im actually surprised cameron and crew hasn\u0026rsquo;t been sued over this adult adaptation. \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0858486/\"\u003ehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0858486/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: James Cameron's 'Avatar' (Comments)"},{"content":"Yes, the blogging fad is over.\nWhen it was invented, blogging was a giant leap beyond \u0026ldquo;creating your own website\u0026rdquo; by hand-coding HTML or using a program to \u0026lsquo;publish\u0026rsquo; your site. Suddenly, you could type out your thoughts, embed images and let some other program handle all the layouts, storage, archiving, and hosting. Blogging exploded.\nHowever, blogging is lonely, hierarchical. Comments made it better, allowing you to engage with other people. Still, it\u0026rsquo;s not a *conversation*. It\u0026rsquo;s like standing in a room with one person yelling statements and thoughts, then yelling \u0026lsquo;Whatta ya think of that?\u0026rsquo;\nSo, sites like MySpace (*shudder*), Facebook (yay), and Twitter flattened that all out. You weren\u0026rsquo;t the tip of a conversational pyramid; you were part of a web of conversing people. Sometimes, you can be blabby; other times, you can just hang out.\nSo where did that leave blogging? The 90% of blogging that was \u0026ldquo;here\u0026rsquo;s what I\u0026rsquo;m doing today/right now\u0026rdquo; moved to twitter/facebook. Vibrant blogs withered.\nStill, I see a role for blogs: Facebook \u0026amp; twitter updates have no value hours after they\u0026rsquo;re posted. When I read my blog entries from 2004 or 2005, I get a much better sense of who I was and what I was trying to accomplish there.\nSo, in that niche, I see blogging living on.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/01/niches-blogs-versus-facebook/twitter/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYes, the blogging fad is over.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen it was invented, blogging was a giant leap beyond \u0026ldquo;creating your own website\u0026rdquo; by hand-coding HTML or using a program to \u0026lsquo;publish\u0026rsquo; your site. Suddenly, you could type out your thoughts, embed images and let some other program handle all the layouts, storage, archiving, and hosting. Blogging exploded.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, blogging is lonely, hierarchical. Comments made it better, allowing you to engage with other people. Still, it\u0026rsquo;s not a *conversation*. It\u0026rsquo;s like standing in a room with one person yelling statements and thoughts, then yelling \u0026lsquo;Whatta ya think of that?\u0026rsquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Niches: Blogs versus Facebook/Twitter/*"},{"content":"So, here we are, at the end of the Awful Aughts. The automobile in America has pretty much jumped the shark, maybe for good (Exact moment: The day the movie \u0026lsquo;Cars\u0026rsquo; was released).\nStill, I\u0026rsquo;m a gearhead. I\u0026rsquo;ll die a gearhead. The 2000\u0026rsquo;s coincided with my twenties; having no debt to speak of, a well-paying job, and no one to answer to besides myself, I wasted as much of my own money and my inheritance on cars as I could. Motorcycles are much cheaper and more fun\u0026hellip;wish I\u0026rsquo;d figured that out 10 years ago. Anyway, onward. This list is pretty-much chronological:\n* 1995 Nissan 200SX SE-R: (140hp/FWD). Nickname: \u0026ldquo;Little Green\u0026rdquo;. My parents bought me this car, brand new, when I was 16. I drove the crap out of it until 2001, when I traded it (and my soul) for a VW Jetta. This car was my first love. I dated my future wife in this car. Yes, it got some rattles after SIX YEARS OF ABUSE. Honestly, I redlined this car every time I drove it if I could.\n* 2001 Volkswagen Jetta Wolfsburg edition: (150 hp/FWD + Turbocharged). Nickname: \u0026ldquo;(none)\u0026rdquo;. My first manual transmission car. I hated this car. I had the opportunity to buy the first WRX in Lexington that March day back in 2001, but I chose the Jetta because it was the yuppie-BMW wannabe car. Lots of good ideas, poor execution. About as involving to drive as a Buick\u0026ndash;soft, soft, SOFT suspension. Dismal reliability. When the clearcoat started chipping off I decided to dump it in August 2002.\n* 2003 MINI Cooper (115hp/FWD). Nickname: \u0026ldquo;The Pup\u0026rdquo;. Objectively, this was as bad a car a the Jetta, and the dealer was a 2 hour roundtrip away from me. It leaked water from a weld in the hatch area. Thankfully, it didn\u0026rsquo;t have the Stay-Cracked windshield like the 2002 models were famous for. Despite all that, I DID NOT CARE. I loved this car. Amazing combination of fun, frugality, great looks, practicality (hauled a Lay-Z-Boy), and great Clown-Car stories. There was the time I drove back I-64 in a Blizzard. Then the time I had both my parents in the BACK, putting along like a 2CV at 45mph because we\u0026rsquo;d just invaded Iraq and \u0026rsquo;needed to conserve resources\u0026rsquo;. This car WAS my identity from 2003-\u0026gt;2005. My email address starts with \u0026lsquo;mini\u0026rsquo; to this day.\n* 2000 Chevy Silverado (255hp/4WD). Nickname: \u0026ldquo;Big Red\u0026rdquo;. Here\u0026rsquo;s the sore thumb. My dad GAVE me this truck in 2004. Yep, outright gave it to me, with only 100k on the clock. \u0026ldquo;Everybody oughta have a truck, son.\u0026rdquo; And, in the throes of hating the VW, I\u0026rsquo;d considered buying a light pickup, like a ranger or Nissan Frontier. \u0026ldquo;Pah!\u0026rdquo; said my dad, \u0026ldquo;Those tin-cans get worse mileage than a full-size. I\u0026rsquo;ll just give you my truck when I\u0026rsquo;m done with it.\u0026rdquo; And he did. Single-cab, basic V-8, reeking of cigarette smoke that no febreeze could cure. I\u0026rsquo;d probably still have this truck if it didn\u0026rsquo;t send my girlfriend/future wife into asthma at 10 paces. In any case it make a great trade-in on\u0026hellip;\n* 2004 Pontiac GTO (350hp/RWD). So, yeah, I went insane one day, and saw that the slow-selling \u0026lsquo;04 GTO, that Holden import from Australia, was selling for TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS OFF. Yep\u0026hellip;December of 2004. The 2005 models were in, and they had 50 more horsepower and the new LS2 V8 (\u0026rsquo;04s had the LS1 and \u0026lsquo;only\u0026rsquo; 350 hp). So, the next day before I could come to my senses, I impulse bought this thing 10 minutes after Courtesy Pontiac opened in Lexington. This was the most brutal car I\u0026rsquo;ll probably ever own\u0026ndash; 6-speed Tremec transmission, clutch like a tractor, exhaust note like a NASCAR. Cruised at 90mph too easily for my own good\u0026ndash;thankfully, the anonymous styling didn\u0026rsquo;t attract too much attention from the cops. Came to my senses right after buying my house (and backing into the GTO with my mom\u0026rsquo;s dually\u0026ndash;Dharma at work?). It sold within 2 days of being listed on the GTO fanboi site.\n* 1990 BMW 325iS (170hp/RWD). Nickname: \u0026ldquo;The White Elephant\u0026rdquo; Ah, marriage. Suddenly, having a brand new car and debts didn\u0026rsquo;t sit well with me. Also, I\u0026rsquo;d liked BMW\u0026rsquo;s since I could read Car and Driver at age 7. So, I resolved to sell the MINI, find the best clean E30 BMW I could find. And, wow, did I find a creampuff\u0026ndash;2nd owner, all records, needed nothing. I sold my MINI on April Fool\u0026rsquo;s day, 2006 and bought this car 3 days later. It was a wonderful car, built like a tank. Whitney hated it\u0026ndash;never should\u0026rsquo;ve bought a car she didn\u0026rsquo;t like and couldn\u0026rsquo;t drive. Finally, the ongoing maintenance costs of having a 20-year-old car for a daily driver drove me to sell it in October 2008. Sold in something like 1 week, for about what I paid for it.\nSo, for those of you keeping track @ home, that left me without a car. So now, I\u0026rsquo;m driving..\n* 2000 Toyota Camry (120hp/FWD) Nickname: \u0026ldquo;Yoda\u0026rdquo;. Undoubtedly, the best engineered, most reliable car I\u0026rsquo;ve ever driven. Yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s boring. Yes, I keep scheming to get rid of it. Still, it\u0026rsquo;s safe, reliable transportation, including a back seat and a trunk. :-)\nKeeping it means my next \u0026rsquo;exciting\u0026rsquo; car can have 2 wheels:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2010/01/cars-ive-owned-in-the-awful-aughts/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, here we are, at the end of the Awful Aughts. The automobile in America has pretty much jumped the shark, maybe for good (Exact moment: The day the movie \u0026lsquo;Cars\u0026rsquo; was released).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, I\u0026rsquo;m a gearhead. I\u0026rsquo;ll die a gearhead. The 2000\u0026rsquo;s coincided with my twenties; having no debt to speak of, a well-paying job, and no one to answer to besides myself, I wasted as much of my own money and my inheritance on cars as I could. Motorcycles are much cheaper and more fun\u0026hellip;wish I\u0026rsquo;d figured that out 10 years ago. Anyway, onward. This list is pretty-much chronological:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cars I've owned in the Awful Aughts"},{"content":"In the beginning, man created paper, and it was good. It was permanent, stateful, and could be used for warmth if the auditor got too close. Man could transfer the paper to another man, certain his message would get across. Man could doodle and mark-up the paper. For a backup solution, there was carbon paper. And, there was much rejoicing.\nAnd, lo, God saw Man enjoying paper, and said, \u0026ldquo;\u0026ldquo;If as one people they use the paper, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.\u0026rdquo; And so, God invented e-mail and the Blackberry. And suddenly, man\u0026rsquo;s communication was much faster, yet intent and meaning was lost. Yet, there was much rejoicing. (?)\nFinally, in the business, Man created Groupware. \u0026ldquo;Email is no longer sufficient! We need Lotus Notes databases, and Wikis, and Blogs, and forums, eRooms, and FocalPoints.\u0026rdquo; And vendors grew rich providing solutions to the business Men. And no one knew where to find the information. Putting information into these systems became all anyone did. And there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/10/genesis-of-a-paper-trail/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the beginning, man created paper, and it was good. It was permanent, stateful, and could be used for warmth if the auditor got too close. Man could transfer the paper to another man, certain his message would get across. Man could doodle and mark-up the paper. For a backup solution, there was carbon paper. And, there was much rejoicing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd, lo, God saw Man enjoying paper, and said, \u0026ldquo;\u0026ldquo;If as one people they use the paper, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.\u0026rdquo; And so, God invented e-mail and the Blackberry. And suddenly, man\u0026rsquo;s communication was much faster, yet intent and meaning was lost. Yet, there was much rejoicing. (?)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Genesis of a Paper Trail"},{"content":"Could this be extended for security frameworks too\u0026hellip; Shubhashish - Nov 0, 2009\nCould this be extended for security frameworks too.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/10/genesis-of-a-paper-trail-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"could-this-be-extended-for-security-frameworks-too\"\u003eCould this be extended for security frameworks too\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10804411117937270617\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eShubhashish\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 0, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCould this be extended for security frameworks too.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Genesis of a Paper Trail (Comments)"},{"content":"Randomness:\n* This month marks 2 years since Mom\u0026rsquo;s cancer was diagnosed. She\u0026rsquo;s still kickin'.\n* I\u0026rsquo;m going to try and blog much more. Facebook\u0026rsquo;s great. Twitter\u0026rsquo;s great. Sometimes, though, I just can\u0026rsquo;t hear myself think in there. Blogging\u0026rsquo;s much more composition and reflection.\n* I\u0026rsquo;ve learned to say \u0026lsquo;No\u0026rsquo;. I\u0026rsquo;ve de-committed some things at church. Whitney and I have worked out some ways to get time for ourselves: Every other Saturday morning, we get \u0026lsquo;Off\u0026rsquo;. The opposite parent takes the kids, no questions asked. It\u0026rsquo;s still a work in progress, but I like where it\u0026rsquo;s going.\n* I\u0026rsquo;m melodramatic. I see drama where there is none. When I recognize this in myself, I\u0026rsquo;m trying to be self-deprecating, since my other problem is I TAKE MYSELF TOO DAMN SERIOUSLY. :-)\n* After coming back from vacation, I\u0026rsquo;m re-evaluating lots of things. I don\u0026rsquo;t know if it\u0026rsquo;s really healthy for me to get up at 5am every day, for instance. I don\u0026rsquo;t exercise; that\u0026rsquo;s unhealthy. I have very little energy in the afternoon.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/10/quick-hits-im-not-dead/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRandomness:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* This month marks 2 years since Mom\u0026rsquo;s cancer was diagnosed. She\u0026rsquo;s still kickin'.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* I\u0026rsquo;m going to try and blog much more. Facebook\u0026rsquo;s great. Twitter\u0026rsquo;s great. Sometimes, though, I just can\u0026rsquo;t hear myself think in there. Blogging\u0026rsquo;s much more composition and reflection.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* I\u0026rsquo;ve learned to say \u0026lsquo;No\u0026rsquo;. I\u0026rsquo;ve de-committed some things at church. Whitney and I have worked out some ways to get time for ourselves: Every other Saturday morning, we get \u0026lsquo;Off\u0026rsquo;. The opposite parent takes the kids, no questions asked. It\u0026rsquo;s still a work in progress, but I like where it\u0026rsquo;s going.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quick Hits: I'm not dead"},{"content":"I was staring at myself in the mirror a moment ago, washing my hands, thinking of a time years past, when I sat across from a Hazel Eyed woman:\n\u0026ldquo;Why do you keep doing that?\u0026rdquo; she asked.\n\u0026ldquo;What?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You keep doing sign language when you\u0026rsquo;re talking. Why?\u0026rdquo;\nIt was the Fall of 1999. That summer, I thought I\u0026rsquo;d lost my soul mate, the woman who\u0026rsquo;d taught me a little bit of sign language. Her name was Whitney. I loved her so much I couldn\u0026rsquo;t see straight. Even this sparkling gal from Menifee County couldn\u0026rsquo;t cheer me up.\nNow, in the Fall 2009, 10 years on, I realized God returned to me that woman I love.\nFact is, I got a second chance. Sad to say, I\u0026rsquo;ve spent most of the last 4 years in bitterness and self-delusion. When you bottle up so much darkness, it\u0026rsquo;s hard to see the light shining through. Back in 1999, I would\u0026rsquo;ve given everything for even a glimpse of the blessings I have now\u0026ndash;a life with Whitney, children, memories, laughter. Yet, I never felt blessed.\nStaring into that mirror, looking at my nearly 31-year-old self, I felt blessed. Truly blessed. I love my wife. I always have. I always will.\nStrange, rambling, meodramatic (\u0026ldquo;Squirrels in my pants\u0026rdquo;) I know\u0026hellip;just wanted to capture it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/10/a-strange-sort-of-love-story/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was staring at myself in the mirror a moment ago, washing my hands, thinking of a time years past, when I sat across from a Hazel Eyed woman:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Why do you keep doing that?\u0026rdquo; she asked.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;What?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You keep doing sign language when you\u0026rsquo;re talking. Why?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was the Fall of 1999. That summer, I thought I\u0026rsquo;d lost my soul mate, the woman who\u0026rsquo;d taught me a little bit of sign language. Her name was Whitney. I loved her so much I couldn\u0026rsquo;t see straight. Even this sparkling gal from Menifee County couldn\u0026rsquo;t cheer me up.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A strange sort of love story"},{"content":"User story:\nAs a developer, I want to tag my code every so often, so that other people can get code that\u0026rsquo;s stable, not bleeding edge.\nThis is the classic CVS usecase: Commit your code, and then tag it as \u0026lsquo;Production\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;Released\u0026rsquo; or whatever. In CVS, that entails touching every file. In Subversion, that\u0026rsquo;s a constant-time operation you can do wholly on the server.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s say you want to copy your current /trunk to /tags/release-1.0 tag. Issue this sort of command\nsvn copy http://server.foo.com/Repo/trunk http://server.foo.com/Repo/tags/release-1.0\nGreat huh?\nThing is, that\u0026rsquo;s great for leaving a trail of tags in your wake (Beta 1 -\u0026gt; Beta \u0026lsquo;N\u0026rsquo;, Release 1.0 -\u0026gt; 2600). What it\u0026rsquo;s NOT good for is for the \u0026lsquo;moving tag\u0026rsquo; usecase: I want to tag my code and then change that tag to point at a new revision of code. This is useful for when 2 modules are evolving towards a release:\n\\\\module1 \\\\trunk \\\\common \\\\module2 \\\\trunk \\\\common \u0026lt;-- grabs code from module1 via an `svn:externals` link Typically, you want that external in module 2 to point at a /tag, not at /trunk (You can always have your external specify an explicit revision number, but that smells bad to me\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s a maintenance point)\nAn alternate solution, using a /tag:\n\\\\module1 \\\\tags \\\\PRODUCTION \\\\trunk \\\\common \\\\module2 \\\\trunk \\\\common \u0026lt;-- grabs code from module1 via an \u0026#39;svn:externals\u0026#39; link in the above, the svn:external points at /tags/PRODUCTION, instead of /trunk. Great\u0026hellip;so what happens when you\u0026rsquo;re on the team responsible for module1 and you want to publish the next baseline of code? You can do one of two things, based on your environment:\nCreate a new tag and have everyone alter their svn:externals defintion\nDelete the old tag (using svn delete) and then create the same tag again with a new revision (svn copy, as shown above)\n#1 is the \u0026lsquo;opt in\u0026rsquo; solution where the consuming team makes a conscious choice to get the new code. This is better if they need to do integration work.\n#2 is some great sleight-of-hand for when you want things to all share code invisibly, without resorting to pointing at /trunk.\nFinally, the punchline: That #2 item above is so fall-off-the-log obvious, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t even conceptualize it until this week. Made a 1 line change to my \u0026rsquo;tagger\u0026rsquo; ruby script that wraps the svn command line and now I can overwrite my old PRODUCTION tag with a new baseline and all the downstream components see the change when they \u0026lsquo;svn up\u0026rsquo;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/09/a-dummys-way-of-doing-cvs-tagging-in-subversion/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUser story:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs a developer, I want to tag my code every so often, so that other people can get code that\u0026rsquo;s stable, not bleeding edge.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the classic CVS usecase: Commit your code, and then tag it as \u0026lsquo;Production\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;Released\u0026rsquo; or whatever. In CVS, that entails touching every file. In Subversion, that\u0026rsquo;s a constant-time operation you can do wholly on the server.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s say you want to copy your current /trunk to /tags/release-1.0 tag. Issue this sort of command\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Dummy's way of doing CVS tagging in Subversion"},{"content":"[Insert obligatory apology/observation about not updating my blog here]\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a brand new me, folks. Less introspective. Focused on \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;How\u0026rdquo;, not \u0026ldquo;Why.\u0026rdquo; \u0026lsquo;Why\u0026rsquo; is an empty question where one can spend one\u0026rsquo;s whole life.\nI\u0026rsquo;m 30 now. I\u0026rsquo;m married. I have two kids I love very much. I also have no idea who I really am. Most of this blog from these many years is complete B.S., I\u0026rsquo;m afraid\u0026ndash;at least the stuff about me.\nI\u0026rsquo;m hoping I\u0026rsquo;ve turned a corner, and I got a sign about that the other day: I got something back that I thought was lost.\nYears ago, the last time I thought I \u0026ldquo;had it together\u0026rdquo; I had a coffee cup that I used to take everywhere with me at work. I drank less coffee then, but I\u0026rsquo;d still fill it with water in the afternoons. Right after I proposed to Whitney, I lost it. Last Wednesday, I found it on a shelf, forgotten in one of our labs.\nMaybe certain things go away and just return when it\u0026rsquo;s time. I hope so.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/09/randomness-found-my-coffee-cup/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e[Insert obligatory apology/observation about not updating my blog here]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a brand new me, folks. Less introspective. Focused on \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;How\u0026rdquo;, not \u0026ldquo;Why.\u0026rdquo; \u0026lsquo;Why\u0026rsquo; is an empty question where one can spend one\u0026rsquo;s whole life.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m 30 now. I\u0026rsquo;m married. I have two kids I love very much. I also have no idea who I really am. Most of this blog from these many years is complete B.S., I\u0026rsquo;m afraid\u0026ndash;at least the stuff about me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Randomness: Found my coffee cup"},{"content":"Someone gunned-down George Tiller in cold blood in his church Sunday. That he happened to be an abortion clinic doctor is immaterial. Vigilante justice, retribution, and demagoguery are not roads we need go down in this country\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s been done before.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/06/on-the-murder-of-george-tiller/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSomeone gunned-down George Tiller in cold blood in his church Sunday. That he happened to be an abortion clinic doctor is immaterial. Vigilante justice, retribution, and demagoguery are not roads we need go down in this country\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s been \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Marat\"\u003edone before\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the Murder of George Tiller"},{"content":"i don\u0026rsquo;t get ur reference to Marat\u0026hellip;.esp since tha\u0026hellip; Whitney - Jun 2, 2009\ni don\u0026rsquo;t get ur reference to Marat\u0026hellip;.esp since that wasn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;in this country\u0026rdquo; (see entry)\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;..\n???\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a stretch, I admit. We haven\u0026rsquo;t been there in this country, but France has, and it\u0026rsquo;s a bitter lesson. That\u0026rsquo;s the parallel I was trying to draw.\nMarat was an influential writer during the French Revolution. At his word, many were guillotined for treason against the young (and paranoid) Republic. Proof wasn\u0026rsquo;t required, just heresay and inuendo.\nTo staunch this, a female assassin caught him in the bath and stabbed him through the heart. Her statement at trial: \u0026ldquo;I killed one man to save 100,000.\u0026rdquo;\nIronically, that violence deepened the Reign of Terror. Those in power saw conspiracies at every turn. Thousands met the guillotine before the Terror ended and Napoleon arose.\nNow, here, in our country, we have an act of violence. I can only imagine it was done to save innocent lives. Likely, it will entrench abortion further.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/06/on-the-murder-of-george-tiller-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-dont-get-ur-reference-to-maratesp-since-tha\"\u003ei don\u0026rsquo;t get ur reference to Marat\u0026hellip;.esp since tha\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 2, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ei don\u0026rsquo;t get ur reference to Marat\u0026hellip;.esp since that wasn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;in this country\u0026rdquo; (see entry)\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;..\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e???\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a stretch, I admit. We haven\u0026rsquo;t been there in this country, but France has, and it\u0026rsquo;s a bitter lesson. That\u0026rsquo;s the parallel I was trying to draw.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the Murder of George Tiller (Comments)"},{"content":"I enjoyed Memorial Day quite a bit. Our trip to Kings Island (formerly Paramount\u0026rsquo;s Kings Island) was great. I would actually call it an achievement\u0026ndash;we didn\u0026rsquo;t overtire ourselves, and we never had a desire to strangle one another.\nFor the Combs clan, that\u0026rsquo;s an achievement.\nWe got there at 6pm Friday, having checked-in to our excellent Courtyard Inn in Blue Ash and settled our stuff. A 20 minute wait for our Gold passes later, we were in the park and headed towards Nickelodeon, standing in awe of the new ride, Diamondback. As I\u0026rsquo;ve tweeted and Facebooked\u0026mdash;WOW, what a ride. Beautiful, graceful curves\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s a transcendent beauty that\u0026rsquo;s really themed the wrong way. The ride\u0026rsquo;s not a snake at all, it\u0026rsquo;s a tour de force of elegance and grace. A shark theme would have been better.\nAnyway, so we settled into an alternating pattern\u0026ndash;Joey would ride, then Maria would ride. Where we could, we rode all togeter. As the sun set, Whitney piped-up: \u0026ldquo;Harold hasn\u0026rsquo;t gotten to ride any rides\u0026hellip;let\u0026rsquo;s let him pick one for himeself.\u0026rdquo; What a woman! I picked Diamondback initially, but then I supposed the line for the Beast (a 3 minute walk away in Rivertown) would be non-existent. I was right. Beast was nearly a walk-on.\nAfter my ride, I got a text that Maria had fallen out of the stroller and hit her head. I sprinted down the side of Kings Island (let\u0026rsquo;s be honest\u0026ndash;a Jog. I\u0026rsquo;m fat.). First Aid confirmed\u0026ndash;no big deal, just a scrape on her head.\nWe stayed until the fireworks at 10, and settled in to our hotel room at 11:15.\nSaturday was great, if a little flat because of the crushing # of people at KI. We were pooped by ~3:30, so we came home. Maria collapsed and began snoring even before I got the car seat buckled.\nSunday was\u0026hellip;well\u0026hellip;hard. Our family has a certain tolerance for one another. We love one another deeply, but we can\u0026rsquo;t stand one another after a certain point. Sunday ~9am was that point.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll spare you the details, but we basically shipped the kids off to my Mom on Monday morning just so we could have some peace and adult time. We went to see the new Star Trek movie at Movie Tavern. Whitney seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/05/memorial-day-hangover/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI enjoyed Memorial Day quite a bit. Our trip to Kings Island (formerly Paramount\u0026rsquo;s Kings Island) was great. I would actually call it an achievement\u0026ndash;we didn\u0026rsquo;t overtire ourselves, and we never had a desire to strangle one another.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor the Combs clan, that\u0026rsquo;s an achievement.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe got there at 6pm Friday, having checked-in to our excellent Courtyard Inn in Blue Ash and settled our stuff. A 20 minute wait for our Gold passes later, we were in the park and headed towards Nickelodeon, standing in awe of the new ride, Diamondback. As I\u0026rsquo;ve tweeted and Facebooked\u0026mdash;WOW, what a ride. Beautiful, graceful curves\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s a transcendent beauty that\u0026rsquo;s really themed the wrong way. The ride\u0026rsquo;s not a snake at all, it\u0026rsquo;s a tour de force of elegance and grace. A shark theme would have been better.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Memorial Day Hangover"},{"content":"Linky\nSimply put, this regulation will be the end of the automobile industry (and possibly the automobile itself). They want 42mpg fleet AVERAGE? Given current regulations, the 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid gets 42mpg average. Nearly EVERY OTHER CAR on the road will underperform.\nThey want these regulations by 2016\u0026hellip;understand, that\u0026rsquo;s ONE GENERATION in automotive terms, given the 5-year product lifecycles the carmakers deal with. The 2011 and 2012 cars are already done and in the pipeline at this point.\nSheesh, not like the automakers had much choice. . .so they now have consumers who can\u0026rsquo;t buy a car and a government that ties both hands behind their backs.\nAmericans won\u0026rsquo;t buy cars that run on pixie farts, go 0-60 in a couple weeks, and hold 2 people. We\u0026rsquo;re big people spread across a large continent who assume safe, comfortable transportation.\nMy prediction: The next shoe to drop is a $5/gallon tax on gasoline. That\u0026rsquo;s the only way you\u0026rsquo;re going to drive the meat of the bell curve to drive an imaginary-mobile like the ones this law will require. Failing that, cars produced now through 2016 will become VERY popular for a long time, much like cars made before 1973 were in the 1970\u0026rsquo;s. Cars will be WORSE for a very long time, and certain market segments won\u0026rsquo;t be available anymore. There\u0026rsquo;ll be buyers, but no company willing to lower their CAFE to service those buyers.\nAny way you slice it, it\u0026rsquo;s an Extinction-Level Event for the automobile industry\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/05/this-is-total-crap..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30810514/\"\u003eLinky\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSimply put, this regulation will be the end of the automobile industry (and possibly the automobile itself). They want 42mpg fleet AVERAGE? Given current regulations, the 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid gets 42mpg average. Nearly EVERY OTHER CAR on the road will underperform.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey want these regulations by 2016\u0026hellip;understand, that\u0026rsquo;s ONE GENERATION in automotive terms, given the 5-year product lifecycles the carmakers deal with. The 2011 and 2012 cars are already done and in the pipeline at this point.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"This is total crap...."},{"content":"We have a socialist gov\u0026rsquo;t now. whatdya expect? Whitney - May 2, 2009\nWe have a socialist gov\u0026rsquo;t now. whatdya expect?\nI strip away the old debris\nThat hides a shining car:\nA brilliant red Barchetta\nFrom a better vanished time.\nWe fire up the willing engine\nResponding with a roar.\nTires spitting gravel,\nI commit my weekly crime.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/05/this-is-total-crap....-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"we-have-a-socialist-govt-now-whatdya-expect\"\u003eWe have a socialist gov\u0026rsquo;t now. whatdya expect?\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 2, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe have a socialist gov\u0026rsquo;t now. whatdya expect?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI strip away the old debris\u003cbr\u003e\nThat hides a shining car:\u003cbr\u003e\nA brilliant red Barchetta\u003cbr\u003e\nFrom a better vanished time.\u003cbr\u003e\nWe fire up the willing engine\u003cbr\u003e\nResponding with a roar.\u003cbr\u003e\nTires spitting gravel,\u003cbr\u003e\nI commit my weekly crime.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"This is total crap.... (Comments)"},{"content":"So, as anyone who\u0026rsquo;s followed my blog for a year or more knows, I got motorcycle fever last spring and summer.\nIt all started innocently enough. I got a ride on my father in law\u0026rsquo;s scooter (hey, I had the helmet already thanks to autocross, right?) It was something of a disaster\u0026ndash;maneuvering the 600cc scooter at low speed wasn\u0026rsquo;t *quite* as easy as I thought.\nLong boring story later, I had full-blown fever. I took the MSF course and REALLY learned how to ride, FINE-C, the whole deal.\nThen came the apodiction: \u0026ldquo;YOU WILL NOT BUY A MOTORCYCLE.\u0026rdquo;\nFair enough.\nThought I had a loophole today\u0026ndash;an ATV. Del, my carpool buddy, hatched a plan of engineering perfection. An ATV\u0026rsquo;s offroad vehicle, far away from Semi\u0026rsquo;s and other could-squash-you-like-a-bug stuff. Fits quite well, no?\nNo. They\u0026rsquo;re deathtraps.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s also a NO on Dirtbikes.\nJetski\u0026rsquo;s show promise\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/05/the-solution...well...or-not-/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, as anyone who\u0026rsquo;s followed my blog for a year or more knows, I got motorcycle fever last spring and summer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt all started innocently enough. I got a ride on my father in law\u0026rsquo;s scooter (hey, I had the helmet already thanks to autocross, right?) It was something of a disaster\u0026ndash;maneuvering the 600cc scooter at low speed wasn\u0026rsquo;t *quite* as easy as I thought.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLong boring story later, I had full-blown fever. I took the MSF course and REALLY learned how to ride, FINE-C, the whole deal.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The solution...well...or not :-)"},{"content":"So, Sunday, I decided to do something completely out of character\u0026ndash;I took a nap.\nMy wife took one look at my cranky-pants self after church and said, \u0026ldquo;You need a Nap for Jesus.\u0026rdquo;\nWhich is a polite way of saying, \u0026ldquo;Jesus, Harold\u0026hellip;take a nap!\u0026rdquo;\nAnyway, my bizarro dream went like this:\n[Interior. Lab environment. Soft lighting, muted hum of machinery]\nSerge: Hello, Harold. I\u0026rsquo;m Sergey Brin. This is Larry Page. You might know us\u0026hellip;we founded Google.\nHarold: Umm\u0026hellip;.Hi.\nSerge: So, we\u0026rsquo;ve been studying this Twitter phenomenon for quite a few years now. What do you think of Twitter?\nHarold: Oh, I like it.\nLarry: Hmm\u0026hellip;interesting.\n[Harold notices he\u0026rsquo;s reclined on a couch, his brain wired up to some sort of halo device]\nHarold: Are you READING MY THOUGHTS?\nSerge: Possibly. So, Harold, tell us how your mother laughs.\nHarold: What? NO!\nSerge: Nevermind\u0026hellip;this one\u0026rsquo;s uninteresting. Send him back to his bed.\n[White light. Fade to black]\n* * *\nAnd, then I woke up. In my bed. :-)\nYeah, between too much House, and too much tech stuff\u0026hellip;maybe I\u0026rsquo;m getting paranoid.\nStill\u0026hellip;.FREAKY!\n(Yes, I get the irony of writing this on blogger, an entity wholly controlled by Google)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/05/bizarro-dream-of-the-weekend..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, Sunday, I decided to do something completely out of character\u0026ndash;I took a nap.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy wife took one look at my cranky-pants self after church and said, \u0026ldquo;You need a Nap for Jesus.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhich is a polite way of saying, \u0026ldquo;Jesus, Harold\u0026hellip;take a nap!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, my bizarro dream went like this:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[Interior. Lab environment. Soft lighting, muted hum of machinery]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSerge: Hello, Harold. I\u0026rsquo;m Sergey Brin. This is Larry Page. You might know us\u0026hellip;we founded Google.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bizarro Dream of the weekend...."},{"content":"Naptime for Jesus is appropriately sung to Springt\u0026hellip; Whitney - May 1, 2009\nNaptime for Jesus is appropriately sung to Springtime for Hitler and does not encapsulate taking the Lord\u0026rsquo;s name in vain but rather means,\u0026ldquo;It is not humanly possibly for you to be able to approach being civil at this point much less Jesus\u0026rsquo;s standards for us thus I think it would be in everyone\u0026rsquo;s best interest if you napped\u0026rdquo;. :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/05/bizarro-dream-of-the-weekend....-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"naptime-for-jesus-is-appropriately-sung-to-springt\"\u003eNaptime for Jesus is appropriately sung to Springt\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 1, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNaptime for Jesus is appropriately sung to Springtime for Hitler and does not encapsulate taking the Lord\u0026rsquo;s name in vain but rather means,\u0026ldquo;It is not humanly possibly for you to be able to approach being civil at this point much less Jesus\u0026rsquo;s standards for us thus I think it would be in everyone\u0026rsquo;s best interest if you napped\u0026rdquo;. :D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bizarro Dream of the weekend.... (Comments)"},{"content":"I haven\u0026rsquo;t blogged in forever\u0026hellip;I guess it\u0026rsquo;s just the omnipresence of Twitter and Facebook that have me being \u0026ldquo;unfaithful\u0026rdquo; to my blog.\nOver the years, I\u0026rsquo;ve liked to record the way my day goes, just so I can look back and say, WHAT WAS I THINKING?!\nA rundown of a typical day for me:\n5am \u0026ndash; wake up, hit snooze button\n5:09 \u0026ndash; wake up\n5:18 \u0026ndash; NO REALLY, WAKE UP.\n5:18 -\u0026gt; 6am \u0026ndash; Listen to \u0026ldquo;Countdown with Keith Olbermann\u0026rdquo; podcast while doing dishes, making coffee, eating pop-tart, reading RSS feeds (depends on the day)\n6am: Get Joey up. Bring Whitney coffee\n6:15 -\u0026gt; get in the shower\n7am \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Whitney, Joey, and Maria in the van to leave for school\n7:15 to ~8 carpool to work\n8 - 9: relish the quiet. Get work done\n9: 15 minute social time with Jim.\n9:15-\u0026gt;11: work\n11 -\u0026gt; 15 minute stand-up meeting with my team\n11:15: Lunch\n1-\u0026gt;5: work\n5:35 -\u0026gt; arrive back home\n6 to 6:30 -\u0026gt; DINNER\n6:30 to 7:30 -\u0026gt; Help Joey with his homework\n8: Time with Whitney\n10: Bed, if I haven\u0026rsquo;t fallen asleep on the couch before then\nSo, that\u0026rsquo;s pretty much my day, every day. It\u0026rsquo;s 5am to 10pm, daily grind. Then, on the weekends, I \u0026ldquo;sleep in\u0026rdquo; to 7. Much past that, and the coffee headache drives my irritable self out into the downstairs to acquire coffee or drive somewhere that already has some brewed. Another way to look at my day:\n5:30 \u0026ndash; coffee\n7 \u0026ndash; coffee on the way out the door\n9am \u0026ndash; coffee from the \u0026ldquo;coffee club\u0026rdquo; at work\n2pm \u0026ndash; coffee from the \u0026ldquo;coffee club\u0026rdquo;\n7pm \u0026ndash; after dinner coffee.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a reason my twitter avatar is a coffee poster!!\nObvious things missing from my day:\n-- fun time (though I pathologically enjoy doing dishes\u0026hellip;don\u0026rsquo;t know why)\n-- exercise\n-- Alone time with God.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/05/my-day-these-days./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI haven\u0026rsquo;t blogged in forever\u0026hellip;I guess it\u0026rsquo;s just the omnipresence of Twitter and Facebook that have me being \u0026ldquo;unfaithful\u0026rdquo; to my blog.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOver the years, I\u0026rsquo;ve liked to record the way my day goes, just so I can look back and say, WHAT WAS I THINKING?!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA rundown of a typical day for me:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5am \u0026ndash; wake up, hit snooze button\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5:09 \u0026ndash; wake up\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5:18 \u0026ndash; NO REALLY, WAKE UP.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My Day, these days."},{"content":"funny\u0026hellip;.I\u0026rsquo;ve recently discovered that my exercise\u0026hellip; Whitney - May 3, 2009\nfunny\u0026hellip;.I\u0026rsquo;ve recently discovered that my exercise time is my fun time too. Yes, I\u0026rsquo;m turning into one of THOSE people (gasp). Yes, it has alot to do some with particular music involved. yes I am getting bored with said music thus mandating purchase of various albums. darn :D GO EXERCISE!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/05/my-day-these-days.-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"funnyive-recently-discovered-that-my-exercise\"\u003efunny\u0026hellip;.I\u0026rsquo;ve recently discovered that my exercise\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 3, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003efunny\u0026hellip;.I\u0026rsquo;ve recently discovered that my exercise time is my fun time too. Yes, I\u0026rsquo;m turning into one of THOSE people (gasp). Yes, it has alot to do some with particular music involved. yes I am getting bored with said music thus mandating purchase of various albums. darn :D GO EXERCISE!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"My Day, these days. (Comments)"},{"content":"You know, growing-up I had three examples of \u0026ldquo;real life\u0026rdquo; to go by: My mom, my Dad, and my Aunt Norie. Each led vastly different lives: Mom was a schoolteacher; Dad was a travelling salesman; and Norie did payroll for the local office of the D.O.T.\nLike most schoolteachers, Mom\u0026rsquo;s life existed on two levels\u0026ndash;the \u0026ldquo;regular\u0026rdquo; hours that looked so attractive, and the reality. On paper, it was a sweet enough deal: Work 7 to 2, 5 days a week, get Summer Vacation and lots of \u0026ldquo;snow days\u0026rdquo;. Reality wasn\u0026rsquo;t so rosy, with Mom doing lesson plans in her off time, grading papers \u0026rsquo;til the wee hours of the morning, and running extracurriculars all the time.\nSo yeah, I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to be a teacher.\nDad\u0026rsquo;s job wasn\u0026rsquo;t just bad\u0026ndash;it was an anathema. He was gone 10 to 14 hours every day selling groceries to every God-forsaken grocery store in Eastern Kentucky. He put 50,000 miles per year on his car, and only got off on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Actually, scratch that\u0026ndash;he would work the following Saturday to make up for the time off. He never got a day off. He never made it to any of my important events.\nYeah, I didn\u0026rsquo;t want that either.\nSo, Norie\u0026ndash;office work in an air-conditioned building from 7:30 to 4:30 every day, with an hour\u0026rsquo;s worth of lunch and never any work to take home. Pay wasn\u0026rsquo;t that great, but it seemed like easy (if mundane) work. Granted, she existed oh the whim of her Benefactor, the all powerful S.F., who would later become the center of the infamous \u0026ldquo;Blackberry Jam\u0026rdquo; scandal that brought down the Fletcher administration. And, she was in a female-only profession surrounded by a bunch of catty wide-bottomed women.\nStill, this office-work gig seemed to show promise.\nThe reality? Soul-sucking and ugly. As one Philosopher once opined to me:\nThis is crap, Harold. I write emails all day, write reports, write test plans. Who does it help? Shuffling paper isn\u0026rsquo;t what life\u0026rsquo;s about!! It\u0026rsquo;s about helping people!\nCan\u0026rsquo;t disagree with that. Still, work is (and shows all signs of always being), well, work. Labor, aggravation, politics, triumph, tribute, and some humiliation\u0026ndash;all in a day\u0026rsquo;s work. Some folks turn around and see a new house built, a new car rolling off the line. I turn around and see my wife and kids provided-for.\nMaybe that\u0026rsquo;s the lesson my Dad was trying to teach me so long ago: It really doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter what you do. Do your best at it and take care of your responsibilities, and the rest will take care of itself.\nBut yeah, 10 years on in the workaday world, it sure wasn\u0026rsquo;t what I expected. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/04/man-the-real-world-sure-is-different-that-i-expected/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou know, growing-up I had three examples of \u0026ldquo;real life\u0026rdquo; to go by: My mom, my Dad, and my Aunt Norie. Each led vastly different lives: Mom was a schoolteacher; Dad was a travelling salesman; and Norie did payroll for the local office of the D.O.T.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLike most schoolteachers, Mom\u0026rsquo;s life existed on two levels\u0026ndash;the \u0026ldquo;regular\u0026rdquo; hours that looked so attractive, and the reality. On paper, it was a sweet enough deal: Work 7 to 2, 5 days a week, get Summer Vacation and lots of \u0026ldquo;snow days\u0026rdquo;. Reality wasn\u0026rsquo;t so rosy, with Mom doing lesson plans in her off time, grading papers \u0026rsquo;til the wee hours of the morning, and running extracurriculars all the time.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Man, the real world sure is different that I expected"},{"content":"Linky\nOh, Jim Carrey, how far and hard you\u0026rsquo;ve fallen.\nLast night, Whitney and I RedBox\u0026rsquo;d Yes Man, a movie completely devoid of plot. Plot: A progression of a story through introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution (denoument).\nYeah, this story has none. It has a terrific *premise*, that of a man who is stuck in a rut until he magically transforms into a guy who can\u0026rsquo;t lie and hilarity ensues (wait, that\u0026rsquo;s that other movie by the same guy). No, this time, he\u0026rsquo;s a guy who can\u0026rsquo;t say \u0026lsquo;Yes,\u0026rsquo; until he goes to a life-changing \u0026ldquo;Say Yes\u0026rdquo; seminar taught by General Zod.\nAfter this, he experiences a Benny Hinn-style conversion, saying \u0026ldquo;yes\u0026rdquo; to everything. Compulsively.\nAnd that\u0026rsquo;s pretty much the movie. Back the truck up, there\u0026rsquo;s no plot from that premise on in. Oh, there\u0026rsquo;s lots of peripheral characters, vignettes, and sketches, but it\u0026rsquo;s much closer to \u0026ldquo;Kentucky Fried Movie\u0026rdquo; than \u0026ldquo;Citizen Kane.\u0026rdquo;\nOn the BRIGHT side, my gal Zooey is in it and SINGING!\nZooey reminds me very much of my beloved Bella\u0026ndash;awesome eyes, great smile, mischief and fun just lurking below the surface. And I like hearing both of \u0026rsquo;em sing.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/04/review-yes-man/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1068680/\"\u003eLinky\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, Jim Carrey, how far and hard you\u0026rsquo;ve fallen.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast night, Whitney and I RedBox\u0026rsquo;d \u003cem\u003eYes Man\u003c/em\u003e, a movie completely devoid of plot. Plot: A progression of a story through introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution (denoument).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, this story has none. It has a terrific *premise*, that of a man who is stuck in a rut until he magically transforms into a guy who can\u0026rsquo;t lie and hilarity ensues (wait, that\u0026rsquo;s that \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119528/\"\u003eother movie by the same guy\u003c/a\u003e). No, this time, he\u0026rsquo;s a guy who can\u0026rsquo;t say \u0026lsquo;Yes,\u0026rsquo; until he goes to a life-changing \u0026ldquo;Say Yes\u0026rdquo; seminar taught by General Zod.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Yes Man"},{"content":"yeah he has to say that to get away with the crush\u0026hellip; Whitney - Apr 5, 2009\nyeah he has to say that to get away with the crush. which is why the tyra crush stopped talking so much. so how many ppl out there really think ZD and I are similar\u0026hellip;.in\u0026hellip;.anything? ;)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/04/review-yes-man-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"yeah-he-has-to-say-that-to-get-away-with-the-crush\"\u003eyeah he has to say that to get away with the crush\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 5, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eyeah he has to say that to get away with the crush. which is why the tyra crush stopped talking so much. so how many ppl out there really think ZD and I are similar\u0026hellip;.in\u0026hellip;.anything? ;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Review: Yes Man (Comments)"},{"content":"Perhaps Cal\u0026rsquo;s a bargain at that price.\nHowever, when I look at the budget presentation here, I see a $2.2 Billion budget for the University of Kentucky (slide 5). Calipari\u0026rsquo;s $4,375,000 per year is right at 0.2% of the total budget. A pittance? Again, perhaps.\nHowever, when we flip over to slide 11, notice a budget slashed to meet declining revenue projections, with 188 positions eliminated.\nIt makes me sick to my stomach to read the last slide, Dr. Todd\u0026rsquo;s valediction to those whose education become unaffordable, and those staff who lost their jobs:\nThe budget before you is far from perfect. There is pain here\nthat no one seeks and no one deserves. In it lies the sacrifice of\nour students, who will pay more tuition. In it too lies the\nsacrifice of our faculty and staff, who will not see their pay\nincrease.\nYet, you found $35 million to pay some scoundrel who\u0026rsquo;ll probably lead us straight to NCAA sanctions.\nI can\u0026rsquo;t believe my tax dollars support this kind of crap.\n/rant\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/04/rant-thirty-five-million-dollars/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePerhaps Cal\u0026rsquo;s a bargain at that price.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, when I look at the budget presentation \u003ca href=\"http://www.uky.edu/OPBPA/docs/2008-09BudgetPresentation.pdf\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, I see a $2.2 Billion budget for the University of Kentucky (slide 5). Calipari\u0026rsquo;s $4,375,000 per year is right at 0.2% of the total budget. A pittance? Again, perhaps.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, when we flip over to slide 11, notice a budget slashed to meet declining revenue projections, with 188 positions eliminated.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt makes me sick to my stomach to read the last slide, Dr. Todd\u0026rsquo;s valediction to those whose education become unaffordable, and those staff who lost their jobs:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rant: Thirty Five Million Dollars???"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been informed that these are not my tax dolla\u0026hellip; HarryC - Apr 3, 2009\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been informed that these are not my tax dollars, and that the athletics budget is completely separate from the rest of the university.\nAdmittedly, both Football and Basketball are net revenue generation sports. I welcome being wrong, if someone can spell it out for me.\ni initially thought and felt the same as you, but was informed the same thing, that the athletics budget is separate, and that the profit from basketball and football is essentially needed to fund other sports and areas of the university. Here\u0026rsquo;s a link to an article someone sent me:\nhttp://www.cnbc.com/id/29992697/\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/04/rant-thirty-five-million-dollars-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"ive-been-informed-that-these-are-not-my-tax-dolla\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been informed that these are not my tax dolla\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 3, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been informed that these are not my tax dollars, and that the athletics budget is completely separate from the rest of the university.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdmittedly, both Football and Basketball are net revenue generation sports. I welcome being wrong, if someone can spell it out for me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ei initially thought and felt the same as you, but was informed the same thing, that the athletics budget is separate, and that the profit from basketball and football is essentially needed to fund other sports and areas of the university. Here\u0026rsquo;s a link to an article someone sent me:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnbc.com/id/29992697/\"\u003ehttp://www.cnbc.com/id/29992697/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rant: Thirty Five Million Dollars??? (Comments)"},{"content":"Too long for a tweet, to short for proper blog. Here goes:\nOn Gillespie\nYes, you woke up the next day, and Billy Clyde Gillespie is really gone. He\u0026rsquo;s trying to \u0026ldquo;win\u0026rdquo; the breakup, showing the world his smiling public face, but make no mistake\u0026ndash;you hurt him. You took him right off the turnip truck, threw him in front of the most rabid fan base this side of Notre Dame football, and now he\u0026rsquo;ll be laughing all the way to the bank as he deposits $6 million. I\u0026rsquo;m no lawyer, but I think that\u0026rsquo;s what that \u0026ldquo;Memorandum of Understanding\u0026rdquo; implies.\nI hate this state sometimes. We generate illiterate sheeple via our public education system, we\u0026rsquo;re closing down higher education programs left and right, and we have to pay someone $6 million TO LEAVE. Brilliant!\n* * *\nOn Corporate Jargon\nMy wife hates corporate jargon. And general wordiness. And fuzzy-logical things. I laid this gem on her last night:\nPlans are useless, planning is essential \u0026ndash; Dwight D. Eisenhower\nWhich she rejected as corporate junk intuitively (a paradox, basically). I told her it was a military axiom (though I improperly attributed it to Napoleon, who said something similar: \u0026ldquo;Screw the plan, march toward the sound of the battle!\u0026rdquo;)\nShe took this as an assertion that I found plans pointless. We discussed further, and agreed that plans aren\u0026rsquo;t pointless, but if something occurs that keeps plans from working you have to re-plan. I restated it this way: If something impacts the critical-path, you must adjust the schedule.\nI thought she was going to retch. She HATES when we corporate a-holes take simple enough concepts and put buzzwords around them. \u0026ldquo;Critical Path?!\u0026rdquo; she exclaimed, \u0026ldquo;A 4 year old could figure out that concept. Why give it some nonsense name?\u0026rdquo;\nBecause it sounds sexy in a meeting, love. Another, particularly phallic one: \u0026ldquo;Long pole\u0026rdquo;\nAh, Project Management, how I love/hate you so.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/03/a-few-updates/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToo long for a tweet, to short for proper blog. Here goes:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOn Gillespie\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nYes, you woke up the next day, and Billy Clyde Gillespie is really gone. He\u0026rsquo;s trying to \u0026ldquo;win\u0026rdquo; the breakup, showing the world his smiling public face, but make no mistake\u0026ndash;you hurt him. You took him right off the turnip truck, threw him in front of the most rabid fan base this side of Notre Dame football, and now he\u0026rsquo;ll be laughing all the way to the bank as he deposits $6 million. I\u0026rsquo;m no lawyer, but I think that\u0026rsquo;s what that \u0026ldquo;Memorandum of Understanding\u0026rdquo; implies.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A few updates"},{"content":"For a brain-dead rube, Gillespie sure did make out\u0026hellip; Organic Meatbag - Mar 1, 2009\nFor a brain-dead rube, Gillespie sure did make out like a bandit\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/03/a-few-updates-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"for-a-brain-dead-rube-gillespie-sure-did-make-out\"\u003eFor a brain-dead rube, Gillespie sure did make out\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/00740368286985980207\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eOrganic Meatbag\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 1, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor a brain-dead rube, Gillespie sure did make out like a bandit\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"A few updates (Comments)"},{"content":"It was a hot Friday evening, the pavement sizzling though the sun was just about to clock out for the day.\nWork stank today, in that \u0026ldquo;Where else you gonna get a job, loser?\u0026rdquo; sort of way. Fear and loathing in Lexington, yup. But, she waited.\nShe was hundreds of horsepower, rear wheel drive, and leather interior. She didn\u0026rsquo;t run, she purred. Red\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve NEVER had a red car, but nothing else seemed to fit. Those 4 50-series tMIGHT last 10,000 miles, if I never drove hard.\nTonight was for driving hard.\nSlide in, flip the ignition to \u0026lsquo;run\u0026rsquo; just to hear the fuel pump engage. Six individual throttle bodies need lots of pressure, after all. Grind the starter. Yeah, baby\u0026hellip;I know it\u0026rsquo;s been a whole week. Sorry.\nClutch in, left and up for reverse, ease her out. Idle lopes along\u0026hellip;cams, cams, cammmmms\u0026hellip;. Lights on. It\u0026rsquo;s twilight, but I don\u0026rsquo;t want anyone missing me on the windy road as I speed by.\nCoolant temp\u0026rsquo;s coming up, but it\u0026rsquo;ll be awhile before the oil warms. Still, out of the neighborhood, the throttle blips, and that punk in the Civic Si wrinkles his nose.\nFive minutes later, I\u0026rsquo;m slamming down Ky 227, ridge running towards the sun, the windows down, the sunroof back, and the sweet sound of 7000 rpm in second echoing off every trailer and shack I pass. Rhythm builds. The sweetness of the steering and throttle dance, the seat gripping me.\nThat little girl at the elbow bend is back out tonight, she looks up and points. As I flash by, I see her mouth the words \u0026ldquo;Mommy, it\u0026rsquo;s that GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUY!\u0026rdquo;.\n* * *\nThen I woke up. Someday, maybe.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/03/i-had-a-dream-last-night.-.-./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt was a hot Friday evening, the pavement sizzling though the sun was just about to clock out for the day.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWork stank today, in that \u0026ldquo;Where else you gonna get a job, loser?\u0026rdquo; sort of way. Fear and loathing in Lexington, yup. But, \u003cem\u003eshe\u003c/em\u003e waited.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe was hundreds of horsepower, rear wheel drive, and leather interior. She didn\u0026rsquo;t run, she purred. Red\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve NEVER had a red car, but nothing else seemed to fit. Those 4 50-series tMIGHT last 10,000 miles, if I never drove hard.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I had a dream last night. . ."},{"content":"Ah, Revolution.\nRomantic thought, isn\u0026rsquo;t it? Taking an untenable social and political situation and hitting the big \u0026lsquo;Reset\u0026rsquo; button on the old Nintendo. Start fresh. Start clean. Do it RIGHT this time. Certainly, it worked for our Founding Fathers.\nYou see, I\u0026rsquo;ve been hearing the \u0026lsquo;R\u0026rsquo; word bandied about quite a bit in the last few weeks. Casually, as if people were trying it on for size, or as a rhetorical caper: \u0026ldquo;Do __________, and you\u0026rsquo;ll have revolution in the streets, Mr. Chairman!\u0026rdquo;\nAs Peter Griffin would say, \u0026ldquo;Whoa, whoa, whoa\u0026hellip;.whoa\u0026hellip;.whoa!\u0026rdquo;\nTake a step back and THINK for a moment what revolution would mean in modern America. We are no longer a decoupled society of self-sufficient frontiersmen, able to handle the gamut from Native American attack through plague through famine in stride. We\u0026rsquo;re 300 million \u0026ldquo;entitlement\u0026rdquo; people without basic survival skills other than driving to Kroger to buy fuel.\nGlen Beck said it best this weekend: You don\u0026rsquo;t get 1776, you get Katrina 2005 or Robespierre\u0026rsquo;s reign of terror in France. Riots in the streets, pogroms against disliked minorities (or the rich, take your pick), and demagoguery:\nYeah, so put the pitchforks down and let Democracy work. It survived the Great Depression. It can\u0026rsquo;t turn this country on a time, no, but you don\u0026rsquo;t WANT THAT.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/03/on-politics-why-revolution-in-america-is-a-really-bad-idea.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, Revolution.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRomantic thought, isn\u0026rsquo;t it? Taking an untenable social and political situation and hitting the big \u0026lsquo;Reset\u0026rsquo; button on the old Nintendo. Start fresh. Start clean. Do it RIGHT this time. Certainly, it worked for our Founding Fathers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou see, I\u0026rsquo;ve been hearing the \u0026lsquo;R\u0026rsquo; word bandied about quite a bit in the last few weeks. Casually, as if people were trying it on for size, or as a rhetorical caper: \u0026ldquo;Do __________, and you\u0026rsquo;ll have revolution in the streets, Mr. Chairman!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On politics: Why Revolution in America is a REALLY bad idea..."},{"content":"As I sit here at 5:15 am, drinking coffee and eating Raisin Bran, this is pretty much the first time in 2 weeks I\u0026rsquo;ve felt like myself. A head cold turned into bronchitis, then back into a severe head cold. I had fever \u0026amp; chills 3 out of 4 days last week. Finally, the doctor prescribed a course of antibiotics and two days later I couldn\u0026rsquo;t hear out of my right ear.\nFun times.\nSo, Dr. Whitney prescribed strict rest\u0026ndash;don\u0026rsquo;t do anything unessential. Weld my butt to the couch, drink lots of fluids, stay warm\u0026ndash;all good advice. Nearly drove me batty, but at least we started a RedBox-fueled movie marathon. Reviews below:\nBolt: Amazing this pointless, self-important, slow 3-D animation came out of the same people who brought us The Incredibles. It\u0026rsquo;s a very small movie, essentially a rip-off of Homeward Bound, starring vocal talents (!) of John Travolta and Miley Cyrus. Like the title character in \u0026ldquo;The Truman Show\u0026rdquo;, bolt is a TV superstar who has no idea he\u0026rsquo;s on TV\u0026ndash;he believes he really is a superdog responsible for loving and saving his person, Penny, from the evil Calico. To boost ratings, the producers decide to kidnap Penny, and Bolt strikes out to find her, getting himself shipped across the country from LA to NYC in the process. What follows is a standard \u0026lsquo;road story\u0026rsquo; plot that gets more and more tiresome \u0026amp; predictable. Overall, a waste of time.\nGet Smart (2008). This was a delightful comedy with great performances out of Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, and Dwayne \u0026ldquo;The Rock\u0026rdquo; Johnson. Like the 1965 series its based on, it stars Maxwell Smart, the hapless (yet not hopeless) secret agent who bumbles his way into saving the day assissting Agent 99. Anne Hathaway NAILS Agent 99. Watch this film!\nThe Women. This movie has two hingepoints: First, It has no men onscreen (\u0026ldquo;The WOMEN, get it?\u0026rdquo;). Second, it stars EVERY ACRESS IN HOLLYWOOD OVER 40. And Eva Mendes as the prefume counter whore trying to steal Meg Ryan\u0026rsquo;s husband. Like Sex in the City, it\u0026rsquo;s an interesting snapshot into the female mind, but beyond that, it\u0026rsquo;s a draggy tale about meg ryan\u0026rsquo;s character overcoming her goody two-shoes image to become a fully realized woman. Or Meg Ryan herself doing that\u0026hellip;\nBurn After Reading. One of the most pointless, profane, pointless, cold films I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen. I mean, SERIOUSLY Coen Brothers? Did we need 2 hours to reinforce the Nihilistic world view that people have no point? I mean, it\u0026rsquo;s just NOT THAT FUNNY\u0026hellip;\n* * *\nTwilight: Yeah, we wrapped it up Sunday from 9:30 to 11:30 watching the phenomenon known as Twilight. Maybe every vampire movie requires slow-motion, self-importance, and a sepia filter, but Whitney and I were looking for the exit by about 15 minutes in.\nI mean, I see the attraction\u0026ndash;the heroine, Bella Swan, is the perfection of an angsty-yet-functional brunette (no blondes need apply!). Bella exhibits none of the Afterschool Special issues\u0026ndash;she doesn\u0026rsquo;t drink, smoke, do drugs, have an eating disorder, and she appears to be virginal. Yet, she\u0026rsquo;s not a spaz and she\u0026rsquo;s instantly the shinest new thing in the town of Forks, Washington, where it\u0026rsquo;s sunny one day every other year.\nIn all of that, enter the Cullen family, the attractive yet vegetarian Vampires, who live in the Frank Loyd Wright house just up the hill there. The only unattached one, Edward, catches Bella\u0026rsquo;s eye, and she fixates on him, sloughing-off the other overeager boys at Forks High with ease. Edward seems to want to eat her whole, yet he refuses to touch her or otherwise lower his guard.\nOh he MUST like her. Or he\u0026rsquo;s a recovering serial killer. Depends which movie you\u0026rsquo;re watching.\nThankfully, only 1:10 in, the plot starts moving when Edward deflects a van from hitting Bella broadside and cutting short the forthcoming book trilogy. Following that, they become an item and a running commercial for the DOA hatchback Volvo C30. Yeah, get a good look at Edward\u0026rsquo;s car\u0026ndash;you\u0026rsquo;ll never see one in real life.\nAnyway, the last 45 minutes or so of the movie is fairly worthy, turing into a more-and-more implausible chase movie with a certain Silence of the Lambs flair thanks to a psychotic killer Vampire names James. Lives are in danger, tension rises (or, ARRIVES at least), and the vast cast of characters finally has something to do besides stand around and brood.\nYeah, call me silly, but I\u0026rsquo;d take a couple of episodes of Buffy over this \u0026lsquo;phenomenon\u0026rsquo; any day. But, I\u0026rsquo;m a Joss Whedon fanboi (right down to \u0026lsquo;Dollhouse\u0026rsquo;), so sue me.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/03/convalescence-in-brief--and-a-twilight-review./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs I sit here at 5:15 am, drinking coffee and eating Raisin Bran, this is pretty much the first time in 2 weeks I\u0026rsquo;ve felt like myself. A head cold turned into bronchitis, then back into a severe head cold. I had fever \u0026amp; chills 3 out of 4 days last week. Finally, the doctor prescribed a course of antibiotics and two days later I couldn\u0026rsquo;t hear out of my right ear.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Convalescence, in brief--and a 'Twilight' review."},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/03/maria-loads-another-16....rolls/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mtJHUTc0OdE/ScPb0dRtTOI/AAAAAAAAAvg/d5FeffmJVxs/s1600-h/maria_tp.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mtJHUTc0OdE/ScPb0dRtTOI/AAAAAAAAAvg/d5FeffmJVxs/s320/maria_tp.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maria loads another 16....rolls?"},{"content":"Cheaper than legos\u0026hellip;doesn\u0026rsquo;t hurt if you bounce th\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Mar 6, 2009\nCheaper than legos\u0026hellip;doesn\u0026rsquo;t hurt if you bounce them off your brother\u0026rsquo;s head\u0026hellip;genius!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/03/maria-loads-another-16....rolls-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"cheaper-than-legosdoesnt-hurt-if-you-bounce-th\"\u003eCheaper than legos\u0026hellip;doesn\u0026rsquo;t hurt if you bounce th\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 6, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCheaper than legos\u0026hellip;doesn\u0026rsquo;t hurt if you bounce them off your brother\u0026rsquo;s head\u0026hellip;genius!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Maria loads another 16....rolls? (Comments)"},{"content":"Once you have been tagged, you are supposed to write down 25 movies you cannot live without. You know, the ones you can watch over and over and never get tired of. They don\u0026rsquo;t have to be in any particular order. These are the movies that make you laugh, cry, think of an old friend, whatever the reason.\nPlease note that these are not in any particular order, these are just the 25 films I feel are my favorites, and ones I return to often.\n1. Airplane!\n2. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon\n3. 30 Seconds over Tokyo\n4. WALL-E\n5. Empire Strikes Back\n6. Top Secret\n7. The Godfather, Part II\n8. The Godfather\n9. Bridge over the River Kwai\n10. Patton\n11. Risky Business\n12. The Secretary :-)\n13. Top Gun\n14. Grand Prix\n15. The Italian Job (original w/Michael Caine)\n16. Ferris Bueller\u0026rsquo;s Day Off\n17. The Ten Commandments\n18. National Lampoon\u0026rsquo;s Vacation\n19. Dr. Strangelove\n20. War Games\n21. The Last Starfighter\n22. Major League\n23. Die Hard\n24. Elf\n25. American Pie\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/03/meme-25-movies-you-cannot-live-without/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOnce you have been tagged, you are supposed to write down 25 movies you cannot live without. You know, the ones you can watch over and over and never get tired of. They don\u0026rsquo;t have to be in any particular order. These are the movies that make you laugh, cry, think of an old friend, whatever the reason.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePlease note that these are not in any particular order, these are just the 25 films I feel are my favorites, and ones I return to often.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Meme: \"25 Movies you cannot live without\""},{"content":"Linky\nCity of Ember is a gripping, family-friendly tale of perserverence and survival. It stars some no-name child actors amid a cast of recognizable adult faces (Bill Murray, Tim Robbins) as the residents of an underground city called \u0026ldquo;Ember\u0026rdquo;.\nAs the story opens, we see a group of scientists in a \u0026ldquo;doomsday\u0026rdquo; scenario: Huddled around a time capsule device, they discern that 200 years is \u0026ldquo;enough\u0026rdquo; time to wait for\u0026hellip;something. Life to be sustainable on Earth again? The planet to give itself an enema? Memories of \u0026ldquo;Hannah Montana\u0026rdquo; to fade? Who knows.\nAnyways, as FerFAL would say, the SHTF\u0026ndash;globally\u0026ndash;and it\u0026rsquo;s time to hunker down and preserve English speaking society, dangit!\nSo, 200 years pass, and somehow, this city hundreds of feet below ground persists, despite running short of food, sanitation, spare parts, and any ability to do more than gaze at its own navel. It\u0026rsquo;s ILLEGAL in Ember to try to go outside.\nOh, and by the way, the bugs are REALLY big. Moths the size of a California Condor. Voles the size of an Elephant. That sort of thing\u0026hellip;.\nWe meet Doon Harrow and Lina Mayfleet, both High School graduates about to be \u0026ldquo;assigned\u0026rdquo; their future careers. You see, in Ember, everything\u0026rsquo;s deterministic\u0026ndash;you can\u0026rsquo;t choose what you want to be. They have to give people jobs by drawing them out of a hat. Makes sense\u0026hellip;no one WANTS to shovel refuse for life? Well, guess what Doon\u0026rsquo;s job is? Yep, Pipeworks\u0026ndash;trying to move sewage, basically. Lina (a great runner) gets to be a messenger, a job they invented because the phone system\u0026rsquo;s been down for ~100 years or so.\nWe find out Ember runs off a perpetual \u0026lsquo;generator\u0026rsquo; that resembels nothing so much as an industrial-age Tower of Babel. Basically, it\u0026rsquo;s a big waterwheel, and it\u0026rsquo;s breaking down, leaving the people of Ember in the dark for longer \u0026amp; longer periods.\nSo yeah, they\u0026rsquo;re too dumb to fix the machines of the builders, they\u0026rsquo;re running out of food, and they may soon be without electricity to provide artificial light. Also, they\u0026rsquo;re 200 feet underground and it\u0026rsquo;s illegal to try and leave.\nJust then, Lina finds the instructions on how to leave. Thus starts the plot.\n* * *\nI really enjoyed the movie\u0026hellip;it really doesn\u0026rsquo;t try to be more than it is, and it\u0026rsquo;s well done. The rising action and climax was gripping, and it found Whitney, Joey, and myself yelling at the screen.\nThe only unconfortable aspect of it all was when one considers the broader situation. Our whole planet may turn into a global manifestation of Ember, and we\u0026rsquo;ve got no place to escape to\u0026ndash;sort of the same feeling I got watching \u0026ldquo;Day after Tomorrow\u0026rdquo;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/03/review-city-of-ember/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970411/\"\u003eLinky\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCity of Ember\u003c/em\u003e is a gripping, family-friendly tale of perserverence and survival. It stars some no-name child actors amid a cast of recognizable adult faces (Bill Murray, Tim Robbins) as the residents of an underground city called \u0026ldquo;Ember\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs the story opens, we see a group of scientists in a \u0026ldquo;doomsday\u0026rdquo; scenario: Huddled around a time capsule device, they discern that 200 years is \u0026ldquo;enough\u0026rdquo; time to wait for\u0026hellip;something. Life to be sustainable on Earth again? The planet to give itself an enema? Memories of \u0026ldquo;Hannah Montana\u0026rdquo; to fade? Who knows.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: City of Ember"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/02/cutie-pie/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mtJHUTc0OdE/SaREk60MijI/AAAAAAAAAvQ/IFrL04vDh1Y/s1600-h/Maria.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mtJHUTc0OdE/SaREk60MijI/AAAAAAAAAvQ/IFrL04vDh1Y/s320/Maria.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cutie-pie"},{"content":"Definitely - and properly attired to boot! Jeff Roberts - Feb 2, 2009\nDefinitely - and properly attired to boot!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/02/cutie-pie-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"definitely---and-properly-attired-to-boot\"\u003eDefinitely - and properly attired to boot!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 2, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDefinitely - and properly attired to boot!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Cutie-pie (Comments)"},{"content":"Oligarchy\nThis country is an oligarchy\u0026ndash;a country ruled by a narrow, incestuous, elite class bent on maintaining their tenuous grip on power. Where once we had a broad spectrum of representative government and limited federal powers, we now have an all-encompassing federal government, controlled by two parties that look suspiciously like one another.\nWhere\u0026rsquo;s the healthy disagreement? Where are the extremist whackos (Libertarians, Greenies, Communists, Socialists, and\u0026hellip;heck\u0026hellip;Whigs) that are the hallmark of a functioning democracy? They don\u0026rsquo;t exist in this country. What we have instead are two centrist parties bent on maintaining the status quo, keeping the constituents fat, dumb, and happy.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s what grinds my gears\u0026ndash;the fat, dumb, and happy part. That\u0026rsquo;s the REASON Oligarchy exists, the REASON Socrates drank the hemlock: Oligarchs can\u0026rsquo;t have an educated, engaged populace. They can\u0026rsquo;t tolerate it, because the plebes just might start questioning them. Can\u0026rsquo;t have that!\nLiving in corporate America, I see that sort of thing all the time\u0026ndash;Leaders make poor decisions (or, decisions that in hindsight are poor), yet have no accountability. Management closes ranks rather than exposing internal problems. Courtesy breeds favoritism, favoritism breeds fealty, and fealty leads to Oligarchy. Doing what\u0026rsquo;s right by your internal circle is more important than doing what\u0026rsquo;s RIGHT for the people. That\u0026rsquo;s the definition of what\u0026rsquo;s happening in Washington right now.\nFor the nascent oligarchs, this crisis presents a wondrous opportunity to drive out the group that impedes them\u0026ndash;the middle class. The once-vibrant middle class finds itself underwater, overstressed, indebted, and fearing for their livelihood. Now, the government may offer an \u0026ldquo;out\u0026rdquo; in exchange for subservience. Many will accept outright Socialism to maintain their little slice of sanity\u0026ndash;the bigscreen TV, overwrought mortgage, and 2 cars in the driveway.\nErgo, we have Socialist Oligarchy. God help us all.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/02/america-the-oligarchy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy\"\u003eOligarchy\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis country is an oligarchy\u0026ndash;a country ruled by a narrow, incestuous, elite class bent on maintaining their tenuous grip on power. Where once we had a broad spectrum of representative government and limited federal powers, we now have an all-encompassing federal government, controlled by two parties that look suspiciously like one another.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhere\u0026rsquo;s the healthy disagreement? Where are the extremist whackos (Libertarians, Greenies, Communists, Socialists, and\u0026hellip;heck\u0026hellip;Whigs) that are the hallmark of a functioning democracy? They don\u0026rsquo;t exist in this country. What we have instead are two centrist parties bent on maintaining the status quo, keeping the constituents fat, dumb, and happy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"America, the Oligarchy"},{"content":"When do we \u0026ldquo;call in fed up\u0026rdquo; or start the march, du\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Feb 1, 2009\nWhen do we \u0026ldquo;call in fed up\u0026rdquo; or start the march, dude? I\u0026rsquo;m ready.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/02/america-the-oligarchy-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"when-do-we-call-in-fed-up-or-start-the-march-du\"\u003eWhen do we \u0026ldquo;call in fed up\u0026rdquo; or start the march, du\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 1, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen do we \u0026ldquo;call in fed up\u0026rdquo; or start the march, dude? I\u0026rsquo;m ready.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"America, the Oligarchy (Comments)"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been keeping up with twitter, but no so much on my blog. It just seems like such a futile time to be writing much of anything.\nThe world economy is dying. We have (er\u0026hellip;had) a super-optimized consumption machine going, with a supply-line stretching from the third world (where stuff was made) through the first world, where stuff got consumed and thrown away. The consumers bought the stuff with their white-collar paychecks funded by the 100,000+ people per year who became finance majors, because only suckers become engineers or scientists (too hard, involves math, can\u0026rsquo;t BS your way to the top).\nOnly\u0026hellip;the reality of it was, keeping up with the Jones\u0026rsquo;s destroyed the Jones\u0026rsquo;s as well. Like a vast game of Liars poker\u0026ndash;everyone saw what you had, but you didn\u0026rsquo;t know yourself. If everyone else could afford a 4000 square foot house, 3 new cars, 2 vacations per year, why shouldn\u0026rsquo;t we? I mean, THEY could make it work, why not us? Looking successful became all-important. Leverage (e.g. debt) is what corporations and the government used. It\u0026rsquo;s OPM, baby (other people\u0026rsquo;s money).\nSo, now it\u0026rsquo;s all correcting. People with no real net worth can\u0026rsquo;t escape. Housing prices are crashing. Pensions don\u0026rsquo;t exist anymore and 401(k) principle balances are off anywhere from 25% to 75%. People fear desperately for their jobs.\n* * *\nStill, spring is coming, my house has 1 working toilet (infinitely better than 0!), and everyone at my house is healthy. It\u0026rsquo;s the little things you\u0026rsquo;ve got to be happy about.\nAlso, my Dad\u0026rsquo;s thinking of buying a motorcycle again. w0000t!!!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/02/having-another-bi-polar-day./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been keeping up with twitter, but no so much on my blog. It just seems like such a futile time to be writing much of anything.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe world economy is dying. We have (er\u0026hellip;had) a super-optimized consumption machine going, with a supply-line stretching from the third world (where stuff was made) through the first world, where stuff got consumed and thrown away. The consumers bought the stuff with their white-collar paychecks funded by the 100,000+ people per year who became finance majors, because only suckers become engineers or scientists (too hard, involves math, can\u0026rsquo;t BS your way to the top).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Having another Bi-polar day."},{"content":"Maria\u0026rsquo;s second birthday was yesterday, at 10:40pm.\nAt that point, everyone else was asleep and I was at the computer working on our taxes for the year.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re having her party this weekend on Sunday.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/02/marias-2nd/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMaria\u0026rsquo;s second birthday was yesterday, at 10:40pm.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt that point, everyone else was asleep and I was at the computer working on our taxes for the year.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re having her party this weekend on Sunday.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maria's 2nd"},{"content":"As Easter grows near, this particular blog is going to haunt me again, it would seem.\nIn hopes of staving off another storm of firey, hurt emails, here\u0026rsquo;s my open letter those whose ire I\u0026rsquo;ve inspired.\nFirst, I am sorry if I upset you.\nIf you reread my post, you\u0026rsquo;ll see that I pointed out good and bad points about the particular night I attended a performance. And I stand by those opinions from one year ago.\nI agree I could\u0026rsquo;ve said some things differently in that post. Several comments were contemptuous, and they do not reflect the person I am as I respond to you today. Yes, the Southeast Easter Pageant is a massive undertaking, and in previous years\u0026rsquo; attendance, I was amazed at the production values and strong message for Christ it portrayed.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve considered removing that post entirely several times. That being said, my blog reflects both who I am, and who I have been. If I remove posts that are a snapshot of a prior time, that defeats why I blog in the first place.\nSincerely,\nHarold\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/02/an-open-letter-to-southeast-christian-church/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs Easter grows near, \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/03/review-the-southeast-christian-church-easter-pageant/\" title=\"review Southeast\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e particular blog is going to haunt me again, it would seem.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn hopes of staving off another storm of firey, hurt emails, here\u0026rsquo;s my open letter those whose ire I\u0026rsquo;ve inspired.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, I am sorry if I upset you.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you reread my post, you\u0026rsquo;ll see that I pointed out good and bad points about the particular night I attended a performance. And I stand by those opinions from one year ago.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"An Open Letter to Southeast Christian Church"},{"content":"Been a pretty stressful time lately\u0026ndash;co-teaching a class at church, layoffs at work, and kids bored OUT OF THEIR MINDS because of the Snowpocalypse.\nMy iPod\u0026rsquo;s been my one refuge. Listening to it today, I\u0026rsquo;ve learned something about my (new) self\u0026ndash;I hate lots of music.\nBasically, I hate atonic noise, overwrought compositions, and LOUD stuff. That\u0026rsquo;s ALOT of what people listen to\u0026ndash;and alot of what\u0026rsquo;s on my ipod.\nAbout the only thing that gives me peace these days is Miles Davis\u0026rsquo;s Kind of Blue\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a peace there\u0026ndash;amid the din of this insane, lost world\u0026ndash;that I just crave. It\u0026rsquo;s a basement jazz bar, a soothing glass of bourbon, warm conversation, and a pleasant feeling of \u0026ldquo;being\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;being yourself. There\u0026rsquo;s no anger here, just smooth jazz: \u0026ldquo;Everyone\u0026rsquo;s got issues, man. Just sit down and relax.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/something-completely-different--music/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBeen a pretty stressful time lately\u0026ndash;co-teaching a class at church, layoffs at work, and kids bored OUT OF THEIR MINDS because of the Snowpocalypse.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy iPod\u0026rsquo;s been my one refuge. Listening to it today, I\u0026rsquo;ve learned something about my (new) self\u0026ndash;I hate lots of music.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, I hate atonic noise, overwrought compositions, and LOUD stuff. That\u0026rsquo;s ALOT of what people listen to\u0026ndash;and alot of what\u0026rsquo;s on my ipod.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAbout the only thing that gives me peace these days is Miles Davis\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eKind of Blue\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Something completely different--Music"},{"content":"So, most of Kentucky is shut down because of this snow/ice mess we have currently, and my august company has decided to go forward with their yearly kickoff meeting, despite 50% absentee rate at the moment.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/this-is-getting-comical.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, most of Kentucky is shut down because of this snow/ice mess we have currently, and my august company has decided to go forward with their yearly kickoff meeting, despite 50% absentee rate at the moment.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"This is getting comical..."},{"content":"Stopping means bringing a moving object or system to a halt. Things naturally get slower as they get colder, down to absolute zero, when all motion (even molecular vibration) ceases.\nI was talking to Whitney last night before bed about it\u0026hellip;it just feels like everything\u0026rsquo;s stopping\u0026ndash;the economy, politics, people\u0026rsquo;s attitudes. Just grinding to a halt.\nYay, we have a new president. Yay, he signals an end to the basic racial divide in American history. So\u0026hellip;what now? That seems to be the gut reaction\u0026ndash;flowery rhetoric fails when cold reality frosts its dewy petals. I\u0026rsquo;m sure the last Byzantine emperor made many great speeches before the Turks battered down the walls with a cannon.\n* * *\nAmericans have seen many dark winters: The troops at Valley Forge, the siege of Petersburg, and the Depression and its interminable bread lines and hopelessness. This looks to be another slog; I just hope a spoiled and cosseted generation can live up to the example our forebears set.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/on-stopping/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStopping means bringing a moving object or system to a halt. Things naturally get slower as they get colder, down to absolute zero, when all motion (even molecular vibration) ceases.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was talking to Whitney last night before bed about it\u0026hellip;it just feels like everything\u0026rsquo;s stopping\u0026ndash;the economy, politics, people\u0026rsquo;s attitudes. Just grinding to a halt.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYay, we have a new president. Yay, he signals an end to the basic racial divide in American history. So\u0026hellip;what now? That seems to be the gut reaction\u0026ndash;flowery rhetoric fails when cold reality frosts its dewy petals. I\u0026rsquo;m sure the last Byzantine emperor made many great speeches before the Turks battered down the walls with a cannon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Stopping"},{"content":"Chuck\u0026rsquo;s Responses: \u0026ldquo;Welcome to capitalism, \u0026hellip; HarryC - Jan 1, 2009\nChuck\u0026rsquo;s Responses:\n\u0026ldquo;Welcome to capitalism, baby!\u0026rdquo;\nor\n\u0026ldquo;The Baby Boomers have had their moment in power. The most spoilt generation in history has handled affairs with its characteristic hedonism. The results are coming in. The blithering idiots.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/on-stopping-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"chucks-responses\"\u003eChuck\u0026rsquo;s Responses:\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Welcome to capitalism, \u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 1, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChuck\u0026rsquo;s Responses:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Welcome to capitalism, baby!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eor\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Baby Boomers have had their moment in power. The most spoilt generation in history has handled affairs with its characteristic hedonism. The results are coming in. The blithering idiots.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"On Stopping (Comments)"},{"content":"Every time I hear Norah Jones, I\u0026rsquo;m hear Joey snoring softly in the back on my MINI, dusk falling around us as we drive back from Somernites Cruise on US 127 from Danville.\nThe sun\u0026rsquo;s gone down on a perfect day, and Whitney\u0026rsquo;s looking at me every so often with so much love in her eyes, I just want to cry. She doesn\u0026rsquo;t know I see her looking. And that\u0026rsquo;s okay.\n* * *\nIt\u0026rsquo;s that time of the winter when you never know if you\u0026rsquo;ll know warmth again. That memory keeps me warm, as it has for many years since.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/on-norah-jones/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEvery time I hear Norah Jones, I\u0026rsquo;m hear Joey snoring softly in the back on my MINI, dusk falling around us as we drive back from Somernites Cruise on US 127 from Danville.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe sun\u0026rsquo;s gone down on a perfect day, and Whitney\u0026rsquo;s looking at me every so often with so much love in her eyes, I just want to cry. She doesn\u0026rsquo;t know I see her looking. And that\u0026rsquo;s okay.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"Norah Jones\""},{"content":"You know, I think I finally figured out where my temper comes from: My Mom\u0026rsquo;s side of the family.\nI sat here 2 minutes ago and had a full-blown Aunt Norie incredulous rant. At one point, I took a step back and heard myself speaking and it was like, \u0026ldquo;That sounds an awful lot like Norie at full tilt.\u0026rdquo;\nYep. Dad\u0026rsquo;s family is placid. Mom\u0026rsquo;s is a tad more assertive.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/where-my-temper-comes-from/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou know, I think I finally figured out where my temper comes from: My Mom\u0026rsquo;s side of the family.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI sat here 2 minutes ago and had a full-blown Aunt Norie incredulous rant. At one point, I took a step back and heard myself speaking and it was like, \u0026ldquo;That sounds an awful lot like Norie at full tilt.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep. Dad\u0026rsquo;s family is placid. Mom\u0026rsquo;s is a tad more assertive.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Where my temper comes from"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/contemptuous-image-of-the-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://farm1.static.flickr.com/1/8850_143dbaf5d4.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Contemptuous image of the day"},{"content":"Been a hectic couple of weeks around the Combs household. Whitney got a crash assignment from our pastor to develop a devotional handbook from scratch in a week. 50 days of devotional thoughts, on 7 different themes.\nJoey cut his hand trying to close his pocket knife on Saturday, requiring 3 stitches in the back of his hand (they come out in 8 more days).\nThey turned off our FSA (thank you, Humana), so we\u0026rsquo;re paying our medical copays out-of-pocket. Honestly, for all the trouble we go through with that frickin\u0026rsquo; thing, I\u0026rsquo;m tempted to set the amount to zero next year and just pay it with after-tax dollars.\nWork\u0026rsquo;s been\u0026hellip;well, they\u0026rsquo;re laying off 375 people this month. Not me (I don\u0026rsquo;t think), but people in middle and upper management are carrying-on as if nothing\u0026rsquo;s changed when people are fighting for their livelihoods. The \u0026ldquo;Dilbert\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Office Space\u0026rdquo; factor has gone up exponentially. Honesty and cooperation are disappearing.\nAnd I\u0026rsquo;ve been preparing to teach class tomorrow night on a section of Chuck Colson\u0026rsquo;s The Faith, this time on the bible\u0026rsquo;s role in Christianity and one\u0026rsquo;s Christian walk. I\u0026rsquo;m excited and terrified.\nHonestly, I\u0026rsquo;d just like to sit today, vedge, and watch the coronation like everyone else.\nOh, and I\u0026rsquo;m locked out of my office writing this on my laptop in the lab. Yay.\nTemp badge FTW.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/i-miss-my-family/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBeen a hectic couple of weeks around the Combs household. Whitney got a crash assignment from our pastor to develop a devotional handbook from scratch in a week. 50 days of devotional thoughts, on 7 different themes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoey cut his hand trying to close his pocket knife on Saturday, requiring 3 stitches in the back of his hand (they come out in 8 more days).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey turned off our FSA (thank you, Humana), so we\u0026rsquo;re paying our medical copays out-of-pocket. Honestly, for all the trouble we go through with that frickin\u0026rsquo; thing, I\u0026rsquo;m tempted to set the amount to zero next year and just pay it with after-tax dollars.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I miss my family"},{"content":"So, last night our small group topic was prayer. Not surprisingly, we used Matthew 6 as our text:\n9\u0026quot;This, then, is how you should pray:\n\u0026quot; \u0026lsquo;Our Father in heaven,\nhallowed be your name,\n10your kingdom come,\nyour will be done\non earth as it is in heaven.\n11Give us today our daily bread.\n12Forgive us our debts,\nas we also have forgiven our debtors.\n13And lead us not into temptation,\nbut deliver us from the evil one.\u0026rsquo;\nThen someone piped-up on \u0026ldquo;your will be done,\u0026rdquo; saying: \u0026ldquo;Well, I kinda expect God to answer and I get frustrated when He doesn\u0026rsquo;t.\u0026rdquo;\nOur leader\u0026rsquo;s reply: \u0026ldquo;I do the same thing. I think we both need the Prayer Drive-Thru: Drop off your prayer at the first window, get your answer at the second.\u0026rdquo;\nFun times.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/on-prayer/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, last night our small group topic was prayer. Not surprisingly, we used \u003ca href=\"http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206\u0026amp;version=31\"\u003eMatthew 6\u003c/a\u003e as our text:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e9\u0026quot;This, then, is how you should pray:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u0026quot; \u0026lsquo;Our Father in heaven,\u003cbr\u003e\nhallowed be your name,\u003cbr\u003e\n10your kingdom come,\u003cbr\u003e\nyour will be done\u003cbr\u003e\non earth as it is in heaven.\u003cbr\u003e\n11Give us today our daily bread.\u003cbr\u003e\n12Forgive us our debts,\u003cbr\u003e\nas we also have forgiven our debtors.\u003cbr\u003e\n13And lead us not into temptation,\u003cbr\u003e\nbut deliver us from the evil one.\u0026rsquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Prayer"},{"content":"Linky\nNeed to send somebody an svn link to the code you\u0026rsquo;re working on?\nsvn info . | grep URL | clip\nThen, just Ctrl-C and paste it into your email.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/nerd-copy-windows-command-line-stdout-to-clipboard-directly/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/copy-dos-command-line-output-clipboard-clip-exe/2506/\"\u003eLinky\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNeed to send somebody an svn link to the code you\u0026rsquo;re working on?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ccode\u003esvn info . | grep URL | clip\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen, just Ctrl-C and paste it into your email.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nerd: Copy windows command line STDOUT to clipboard, directly"},{"content":"So, you live in an organization for 10 years, and you acquire a certain rep. A reputation as a maverick, a guy who\u0026rsquo;s not too wrapped-up in procedure, kowtow\u0026rsquo;ing, and career. You\u0026rsquo;ve said some things in meetings that were career-limiting, but damn it, they were the RIGHT THINGS.\nSure, you broke into someones computer once to get their hard drive so you could deliver the code she REFUSED TO CHECK IN before going on vacation. Sure, you telnet\u0026rsquo;d in to a running test server to see if your hack worked and could save everyone working the weekend (it didn\u0026rsquo;t, you hosed the test run, and you worked round the clock that weekend). Sure, you\u0026rsquo;ve slapped your head at stupidity (both in others and your own), and welcome anyone who\u0026rsquo;ll do the same.\nHowever, 10 years, several promotions, two kids, a mortgage, and a car payment tend to make you forget who you are. For one sparkling moment this morning, you remembered. You asked an innocent email question last night to a technical person that got escalated to the high-muckety-muck (three forwards, with increasing levels of incredulity each time), until you had this waiting in your inbox this morning:\nJust what the hell do you think you\u0026rsquo;re doing?\nAnd in that sparkling moment, you wanted to reply: \u0026ldquo;Trying to make your under-architected crock-of-shit work. Thanks for bitchslapping me back into my place, massah sir. My status henceforth will be \u0026lsquo;73% complete\u0026rsquo;.\u0026rdquo;\nI\u0026rsquo;m tired, Tired, TIRED of trying to save something via a Byzantine process that would make 1980\u0026rsquo;s GM or IBM weep. My prediction for today: An \u0026ldquo;Office Space\u0026rdquo; style procession of people walking through my office asking if I got the memo from the higher-up guy.\nYay.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/rant-on-getting-smacked-down.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, you live in an organization for 10 years, and you acquire a certain rep. A reputation as a maverick, a guy who\u0026rsquo;s not too wrapped-up in procedure, kowtow\u0026rsquo;ing, and career. You\u0026rsquo;ve said some things in meetings that were career-limiting, but damn it, they were the RIGHT THINGS.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSure, you broke into someones computer once to get their hard drive so you could deliver the code she REFUSED TO CHECK IN before going on vacation. Sure, you telnet\u0026rsquo;d in to a running test server to see if your hack worked and could save everyone working the weekend (it didn\u0026rsquo;t, you hosed the test run, and you worked round the clock that weekend). Sure, you\u0026rsquo;ve slapped your head at stupidity (both in others and your own), and welcome anyone who\u0026rsquo;ll do the same.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rant On getting smacked down..."},{"content":"I totally understand it all. Susan - Jan 5, 2009\nI totally understand it all.\nI totally understand that blog.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/rant-on-getting-smacked-down...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-totally-understand-it-all\"\u003eI totally understand it all.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/14266500429112482921\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eSusan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 5, 2009\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI totally understand it all.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI totally understand that blog.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Rant On getting smacked down... (Comments)"},{"content":"Linky\nIn hindsight, certain things look foolish: Jewel-encrusted buggywhips, Pets.com, and GM\u0026rsquo;s interest in Hummer. I\u0026rsquo;m sure after enough time, this Web 2.0 foolishness will look just as silly. I loved some of the apps that resulted: RescueTime, Mint.com, etc. They\u0026rsquo;re neat.\nStill, eventually, you\u0026rsquo;ve got to have a business model. Something that doesn\u0026rsquo;t begin and end in \u0026ldquo;ad-supported\u0026rdquo;. Something people will pay for, that they NEED, and that has some complexity and barrier-to-entry. Government protection or an outright monopoly wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hurt, either.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve long bemoaned working at a hardware company, but having a revenue stream and an annuity-based business model is looking pretty good right now, just like it did in 2001.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/comment-web-2.0-is-over/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/07/technology/hempel_threepointo.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009010806\"\u003eLinky\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn hindsight, certain things look foolish: Jewel-encrusted buggywhips, Pets.com, and GM\u0026rsquo;s interest in Hummer. I\u0026rsquo;m sure after enough time, this Web 2.0 foolishness will look just as silly. I loved some of the apps that resulted: \u003ca href=\"http://www.rescuetime.com/\"\u003eRescueTime\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.mint.com\"\u003eMint.com\u003c/a\u003e, etc. They\u0026rsquo;re neat.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, eventually, you\u0026rsquo;ve got to have a \u003cem\u003ebusiness model\u003c/em\u003e. Something that doesn\u0026rsquo;t begin and end in \u0026ldquo;ad-supported\u0026rdquo;. Something people will pay for, that they NEED, and that has some complexity and barrier-to-entry. Government protection or an outright monopoly wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hurt, either.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Comment:  Web 2.0 is over?"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s been a long journey from terror, to disdain, to abidance, to curiousity, but now, HERE IT IS:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/maria-overcomes-vacu-phobia/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been a long journey from terror, to disdain, to abidance, to curiousity, but now, HERE IT IS:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mtJHUTc0OdE/SWIPpXjCUQI/AAAAAAAAAuQ/1Qwl3HjdkAs/s1600-h/MariaVacuum.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mtJHUTc0OdE/SWIPpXjCUQI/AAAAAAAAAuQ/1Qwl3HjdkAs/s320/MariaVacuum.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maria overcomes vacu-phobia"},{"content":"School\u0026rsquo;s back in session, the teacher\u0026rsquo;s hungover, the class is catatonic, and the assignment is \u0026ldquo;Essay on what you did over Christmas Break\u0026rdquo;.\n* * *\nOver my Christmas break, I enjoyed my family and relaxed. This was a novelty; usually by the 3rd day I feel cooped-up and restless and turn into a complete asshole. During this week-and-a-half, I really had no desire to put my fist through a wall, run away to Mexico, or otherwise dig a hole in the back yard and jump in it.\nFor that inner peace, I credit this journey I\u0026rsquo;ve been on for the last 4 months, learning to embrace some inner peace and become a better husband, father, friend, and human being, in general.\nNotable moments from the break:\nWhitney and I went to see A Tuna Christmas on January 2nd. This is the last time the show will be in Louisville and it was truly hilarious, if bawdy and downright offensive at times\nJoey and I went target shooting with my father on New Years Eve. Joey\u0026rsquo;s shown some interest in firearms and we thought it best to train him and demonstrate their destructive power, as well as how they\u0026rsquo;re handled and maintained. Yeah, as a parent it was scary, but I was proud Whitney entrusted this responsibility to me and everything went well. Only hitch\u0026ndash;Joey\u0026rsquo;s too short to shoulder a rifle properly. This was also the first time in my life my Dad said, \u0026ldquo;Good shot, son.\u0026rdquo;\nI started Twittering a lot. Thank you, unlimited TXT\u0026rsquo;ing plan!\nWe played Monopoly and watched movies on New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve\u0026ndash;Flight of the Navigator, Everyone\u0026rsquo;s Hero, and a tidbit of Mr. Holland\u0026rsquo;s Opus. I was exhausted from getting up at 5 am, but I pulled it together for a game of Uno right before the ball dropped at midnight\nChristmas was low-key and nice. We had an Apple-y sort of Christmas. We got 3 8GB iPod Nano\u0026rsquo;s and Whitney got her iPhone 3G, as previously described. I liked watching the kids open presents most of all\u0026ndash;Maria got a doll that she\u0026rsquo;s adopted completely.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2009/01/the-break-summarized/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSchool\u0026rsquo;s back in session, the teacher\u0026rsquo;s hungover, the class is catatonic, and the assignment is \u0026ldquo;Essay on what you did over Christmas Break\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOver my Christmas break, I enjoyed my family and relaxed. This was a novelty; usually by the 3rd day I feel cooped-up and restless and turn into a complete asshole. During this week-and-a-half, I really had no desire to put my fist through a wall, run away to Mexico, or otherwise dig a hole in the back yard and jump in it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Break, Summarized"},{"content":"Stolen from Susan\n* * *\n1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?\nTraveled to both coasts\u0026ndash;New England and Kalifournia.\n2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?\nDidn\u0026rsquo;t make any, so yep.\n3. Did anyone close to you give birth?\nNo.\n4. Did anyone close to you die?\nOne of the founders of our church died, but no one too close, no.\n5. What countries did you visit?\nUnited States of America. New England (\u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s, like, in America, right?\u0026rdquo;)\n6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?\nA hobby.\n7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory?\n10 February \u0026ndash; my daughter\u0026rsquo;s first birthday.\n17 September \u0026ndash; 3rd Anniversary!\n01 October \u0026ndash; sold my White Elephant. Gave up being a car guy.\n8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?\nLearning to love my family and live a genuine life free of contempt.\n9. What was your biggest failure?\nGaining 15 pounds. Mmm\u0026hellip;food.\n10. Did you suffer illness or injury?\nYeah, various colds, flu, stomach stuff.\n11. What was the best thing you bought?\nTime with Denise.\n12. Whose behavior merited celebration?\nMy wife\u0026rsquo;s.\n13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?\nEvery political and financial leader.\n14. Where did most of your money go?\nMortgage, vacations, food\u0026hellip;usual stuff.\n15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?\n- Buying upgrades for the BMW. Selling the Camry. Wait, that was in August.\n- Buying a motorcycle and going on rides with my Dad.\n16. What song/album will always remind you of 2008?\nKatie Perry\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;I Kissed a Girl\u0026rdquo;\n17. Compared to this time last year, are you: happier/sadder,thinner/heavier,richer/poorer?\nmuch happier, heavier, richer.\n18. What do you wish you’d done more of?\nExercise. Played with my kids.\n19. What do you wish you’d done less of?\n??\n20. How will you be spending Christmas?!\nFamily and in-laws.\n21. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?\nMy wife.\n22. Did you fall in love in 2008?\nLOL!\n23. How many one night stands in this last year?\nGaah! None!\n24. What was your favorite TV program?\nGrey\u0026rsquo;s Anatomy, House.\n25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?\nLOL. No.\n26. What was the best book(s) you read?\nUh\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;Programming ActionScript 2.0\u0026rdquo; :-(\n27. What was your greatest musical discovery?\nThat current music sucks. That I\u0026rsquo;d actually PREFER listening to the Backstreet Boys than anything currently on popular radio.\n28. What did you want and get?\nan iPod Nano\n29. What did you want and not get?\na motorcycle.\n30. What were your favorite films of this year?\nWall-E\n31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?\n30\n32. What\u0026rsquo;s one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?\nActually buying a dang motorcycle! (Provided I didn\u0026rsquo;t crash \u0026amp; die)\n33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?\nbusiness casual\u0026ndash;Izod shirts and docker pants.\n34. What kept you sane?\nPrayer. My wife \u0026amp; kids.\n35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?\n[redacted]\n36. What political issue stirred you the most?\nSarah Palin.\n37. Whom did you miss?\nFriendships that, in hindsight, never existed.\n38. Who was the best new person you met?\nProbably Tim or some of those very hardworking guys in CPD Firmware. Great guys, impossible mission.\n39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.\nYour attitude is your choice. You may choose joy or misery\u0026ndash;rest assured no one cares which. They will celebrate and feel affirmed if you remain mired alongside them; they will throw stones should you espouse joy and optimism. Choose again: Choose not to care. Choose to change regardless. Find reward in each smile and each genuine moment of friendship, caring and love.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/year-in-review/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStolen from \u003ca href=\"http://susangail.blogspot.com/2008/12/year-in-review-1.html\"\u003eSusan\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?\u003cbr\u003e\nTraveled to both coasts\u0026ndash;New England and Kalifournia.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?\u003cbr\u003e\nDidn\u0026rsquo;t make any, so yep.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3. Did anyone close to you give birth?\u003cbr\u003e\nNo.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4. Did anyone close to you die?\u003cbr\u003e\nOne of the founders of our church died, but no one too close, no.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Year in Review"},{"content":"I don\u0026rsquo;t know if this is common or not, but when I have prolonged time off work, I find it nearly impossible to relax. I always feel like I should be doing something or working towards something, even if it\u0026rsquo;s at home.\nTake right now, for instance. Whitney and I are granting one another some alone time today. Joey\u0026rsquo;s in Louisville until tomorrow night, and Maria\u0026rsquo;s enjoying her post-Christmas toys. She\u0026rsquo;s taking the morning shift watching Maria, and I\u0026rsquo;m taking the afternoon.\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;ve got hours to myself. HOURS. Not stolen moments sitting at the library playing hooky from my family duties: Honest-to-God downtime.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s like my brain won\u0026rsquo;t accept it. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t compute. On the way over here, all I could think about was how much I wanted to be changing the oil in the Camry, sweeping-up the back yard, and generally\u0026hellip;working.\nThe first 15 minutes over here, I got all excited about some mortgage refinancing stuff I heard on the radio, so I spent that time doing amortizations on our loan and seeing if it makes sense to refi our 5.nothing % 30-year fixed sweetheart mortgage. Part of me really wants to get a 15-year mortgage, and part of me\u0026rsquo;s afraid of having a bigger payment. ::sigh::\nIt looks like they don\u0026rsquo;t write loans for Scott County, but for anyone of my readers in Fayette, Woodford, etc.: Guardians Savings Bank is offering 4.75% to 5% fixed 30 year paper with $250 closing costs!. With that sort of a deal, ROI on refi\u0026rsquo;ing my loan would be oh\u0026hellip;3 months :-) I bet those guys are gonna get a deluge this next week.\nI\u0026rsquo;m going to put my comp down now and attempt to relax. No idea why this last week of the year is my buy-a-car, refi-a-loan, change-401k-investments fever week. But, it is. This was the week I decided to sell the MINI and buy an e30, 3 years ago.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/on-finding-it-impossible-to-relax.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t know if this is common or not, but when I have prolonged time off work, I find it nearly impossible to relax. I always feel like I should be doing something or working towards something, even if it\u0026rsquo;s at home.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTake right now, for instance. Whitney and I are granting one another some alone time today. Joey\u0026rsquo;s in Louisville until tomorrow night, and Maria\u0026rsquo;s enjoying her post-Christmas toys. She\u0026rsquo;s taking the morning shift watching Maria, and I\u0026rsquo;m taking the afternoon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Finding it Impossible to relax..."},{"content":" Don’t get me wrong, lawyers serve an important function, but like e. coli in the body politic, too many will kill you.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/quote-of-the-day-on-lawyers/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDon’t get me wrong, lawyers serve an important function, but like e. coli in the body politic, too many will kill you.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e","title":"Quote of the Day: On Lawyers"},{"content":"How do you know you\u0026rsquo;re a wuss? When 5\u0026quot; of snow shuts down the state for a week.\nLinky\nI particularly like:\nArea Roads: In light of the continuing snowfall and icy road conditions, most local roads are snow-covered and slippery and will remain that way until March. For information on current road conditions, please look out the window.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/whimsy-from-the-great-white-north/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHow do you know you\u0026rsquo;re a wuss? When 5\u0026quot; of snow shuts down the state for a week.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2008/12/22/9244583.aspx\"\u003eLinky\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI particularly like:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eArea Roads\u003c/strong\u003e: In light of the continuing snowfall and icy road conditions, most local roads are snow-covered and slippery and will remain that way until March. For information on current road conditions, please look out the window.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e","title":"Whimsy from the Great White North"},{"content":"rofl Whitney - Dec 2, 2008\nrofl\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/whimsy-from-the-great-white-north-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"rofl\"\u003erofl\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003erofl\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Whimsy from the Great White North (Comments)"},{"content":"What follows is a little tinfoil-hat, I admit\u0026hellip;\nOkay, so the other night, I had a dream about working at the NSA or some other government agency where \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re smarter than you can imagine\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; No doubt, this came from two things:\nI just read Dan Brown\u0026rsquo;s turdly book Digital Fortress\nI had a really great discussion about my industry with my #1 consultant\u0026ndash;my wife. Whitney observed that programmers are paid an obscene amount of money, and that I should expect a downward trend. Pointedly, I said at the time\u0026ndash;well yeah, I didn\u0026rsquo;t exactly graduate from M I T\nSo, the other night, I dreamed I was in a large lab staffed with uber-smart computer scientists: Cryptographers, cryptanalysts, etc. These guys DID graduate from MIT. And Oxford. Sometimes both. It was my first day on the job, and it was your typical \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m late for class and forgot my homework\u0026rdquo; scenario\u0026ndash;I felt stupid and I thought everyone else there didn\u0026rsquo;t like me. People in the lab kept asking questions about stuff like, \u0026ldquo;Where\u0026rsquo;s your new house?\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;How was your interview?\u0026rdquo;. I realized I knew none of the answers to these basic questions. It was as if I\u0026rsquo;d fallen out of the sky into the most advanced quantum-computing, maximum security clearance lab in the world.\nMy dream self decided it was one of two things: 1) I was dead. 2) This was a dream.\nYeah, it was a dream.\n* * *\nSo, my thought\u0026ndash;suppose someone could beam a \u0026ldquo;job interview\u0026rdquo; directly into your dreams. Put you in the seat of a 787, driving a F1 car, or in the middle of a surgery. Essentially, using your own brain as a life simulator\u0026ndash;nothing would have consequences, but you could record how someone REALLY would react in that situation. You can\u0026rsquo;t hide in a dream; your subconscious hopes, fears, and hangups are right there.\nThink about it: You\u0026rsquo;re a secret agency. You need the best of the best, but you need to interview them with 100% accuracy and in complete secrecy, and you can\u0026rsquo;t kill the 99.999% of people who aren\u0026rsquo;t up to snuff. Ideally you don\u0026rsquo;t even want people to apply or realize they\u0026rsquo;ve applied. How would you do it?\nSimple: Dreams.\nYou broadcast dreams to huge chunks of the population, and record the results. Each dream has a \u0026ldquo;worm\u0026rdquo; or something similar to erase itself after it completes. Even if someone awakens during the dream, we\u0026rsquo;ve ALL had random dreams that we discredit and forget immediately. Such is the ephemeral nature of dreams\u0026ndash;making them perfect for that purpose.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s probably the plot of 100\u0026rsquo;s of sci-fi stories already, but wouldn\u0026rsquo;t that be neat (and horrifying) in real life?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/sci-fi-recruitment-via-dreams/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat follows is a little tinfoil-hat, I admit\u0026hellip;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d122/NothinClever/TinFoilHat_puton.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, so the other night, I had a dream about working at the NSA or some other government agency where \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re smarter than you can imagine\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; No doubt, this came from two things:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI just read Dan Brown\u0026rsquo;s turdly book \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Fortress\"\u003eDigital Fortress\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a really great discussion about my industry with my #1 consultant\u0026ndash;my wife. Whitney observed that programmers are paid an obscene amount of money, and that I should expect a downward trend. Pointedly, I said at the time\u0026ndash;well yeah, I didn\u0026rsquo;t exactly graduate from \u003ca href=\"http://web.mit.edu/\"\u003eM I T\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sci-Fi: Recruitment via Dreams"},{"content":"Linky\nNever forget to say goodbye.\nBeautiful stuff.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/great-love-story-from-a-local-fellow.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://strother.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/hold-on-to-true-love-whenever-youre-lucky-enough-to-find-it/\"\u003eLinky\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNever forget to say goodbye.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBeautiful stuff.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Great love story from a local fellow..."},{"content":"Very nice - thanks for linking that. Jeff Roberts - Dec 5, 2008\nVery nice - thanks for linking that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/great-love-story-from-a-local-fellow...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"very-nice---thanks-for-linking-that\"\u003eVery nice - thanks for linking that.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVery nice - thanks for linking that.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Great love story from a local fellow... (Comments)"},{"content":"Ah December, the time to give, receive, and splurge on a really neat wireless plan.\nFor the last 3 years, in true Dave Ramsey fashion, Whitney and I have been prepaid Virgin Mobile users. I\u0026rsquo;d say subscribers, but there\u0026rsquo;s no subscription\u0026ndash;you pay-as-you-go, and pay only for the calls and text messages (\u0026ldquo;TXTs\u0026rdquo;) you use.\nOn the whole, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t a bad system. The phones were chintzy and low-tech, but they worked reliably for voice and text. Between the two of us, we were averaging $42 / month. Thing was, Whitney wouldn\u0026rsquo;t carry her phone\u0026ndash;she didn\u0026rsquo;t like it, and wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have it around for emergencies.\nWhat she wanted was one of these puppies:\nYep. An iPhone 3G\u0026ndash;the neatest thing since sliced bread.\nThing was, we didn\u0026rsquo;t want a contract\u0026ndash;felt too much like debt to us.\nLet me summarize what happened this weekend:\nMe, Saturday morning: \u0026ldquo;Hey, why don\u0026rsquo;t we get some new phones?\u0026rdquo;\nWhitney: WOOHOO!!!\nAnd then\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;running around to 25 different wireless places, trying out different phones, deciding she wants a smartphone of some sort but hates AT\u0026amp;T, trying out verizon and finding that we don\u0026rsquo;t like the phones or the service, despairing, going back to Lexington on Sunday, deciding AT\u0026amp;T was the best deal, seeing a rainbow (cue the music), despairing, regrouping, cursing the rainbow, and then\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;Whitney got an iPhone. It\u0026rsquo;s an 8 gigabyte model. It\u0026rsquo;s awesome.\nMyself, I got a free phone out of the deal, a Samsung A737. Nice phone for what I want a phone for.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/joining-the-21st-century/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh December, the time to give, receive, and splurge on a really neat wireless plan.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor the last 3 years, in true \u003ca href=\"http://www.daveramsey.com/\"\u003eDave Ramsey\u003c/a\u003e fashion, Whitney and I have been prepaid \u003ca href=\"http://www.virginmobileusa.com/\"\u003eVirgin Mobile\u003c/a\u003e users. I\u0026rsquo;d say subscribers, but there\u0026rsquo;s no subscription\u0026ndash;you pay-as-you-go, and pay only for the calls and text messages (\u0026ldquo;TXTs\u0026rdquo;) you use.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the whole, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t a bad system. The phones were chintzy and low-tech, but they worked reliably for voice and text. Between the two of us, we were averaging $42 / month. Thing was, Whitney wouldn\u0026rsquo;t carry her phone\u0026ndash;she didn\u0026rsquo;t like it, and wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have it around for emergencies.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Joining the 21st century"},{"content":"yeah we\u0026rsquo;ve totally fallen off the Dave wagon\u0026hellip;.bu\u0026hellip; Whitney - Dec 2, 2008\nyeah we\u0026rsquo;ve totally fallen off the Dave wagon\u0026hellip;.but I have a cool new phone! lol. I REALLY like Harold\u0026rsquo;s orange phone. If mine came in orange I would SO be there! His has actual keys and they are backlit which is awesome! The ONLY thing I really hate about the iphone is how I have to, to quote CR, \u0026ldquo;keep eyes glued to the screen\u0026rdquo; as it\u0026rsquo;s all a touch screen - including the keyboard. I prefer the QWERTY boards on the blackberry curve and samsung blackjack\u0026hellip;..and wish the iPhone took video like the blackjack. but other than that it is INCREDIBLY cool.\nMe: So\u0026hellip;.why did you choose orange? It\u0026rsquo;s actually more of a burnt unber\u0026hellip;..\nHarold: To match the manual Fit I\u0026rsquo;m going to get one day.\nLOL RIGHT!\nAlready got it picked out: HarryC - Dec 2, 2008\nPfft.\nAlready got it picked out:\npic\nAlso, I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t say we\u0026rsquo;ve fallen off the Dave bandwagon, I just had to get real with something: You not having/not wanting a phone was an issue for me.\nPlus the coverage area on Sprint/Virgin Mobile in Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s just terrible, especially going towards Mom \u0026amp; Dad\u0026rsquo;s house.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/joining-the-21st-century-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"yeah-weve-totally-fallen-off-the-dave-wagonbu\"\u003eyeah we\u0026rsquo;ve totally fallen off the Dave wagon\u0026hellip;.bu\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eyeah we\u0026rsquo;ve totally fallen off the Dave wagon\u0026hellip;.but I have a cool new phone! lol. I REALLY like Harold\u0026rsquo;s orange phone. If mine came in orange I would SO be there! His has actual keys and they are backlit which is awesome! The ONLY thing I really hate about the iphone is how I have to, to quote CR, \u0026ldquo;keep eyes glued to the screen\u0026rdquo; as it\u0026rsquo;s all a touch screen - including the keyboard. I prefer the QWERTY boards on the blackberry curve and samsung blackjack\u0026hellip;..and wish the iPhone took video like the blackjack. but other than that it is INCREDIBLY cool.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Joining the 21st century (Comments)"},{"content":"(Yes, they whipped Belfrey. Again. On the Road. Muhahaha)\nStory about my uncle and his three sons\nOnce again, the Breathitt County Bobcats find themselves in the championship game, this time with All-State running back Channing Fugate.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t think they have any shot of winning, since they\u0026rsquo;re essentially one-dimensional (GIVE CHANNING THE BALL!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/go-bobcats/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e(Yes, they whipped Belfrey. Again. On the Road. Muhahaha)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/232/story/624188.html\"\u003eStory about my uncle and his three sons\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOnce again, the Breathitt County Bobcats find themselves in the championship game, this time with All-State running back Channing Fugate.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t think they have any shot of winning, since they\u0026rsquo;re essentially one-dimensional (GIVE CHANNING THE BALL!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"GO BOBCATS!!!"},{"content":"Pretty cool! Jeff Roberts - Dec 5, 2008\nPretty cool!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/go-bobcats-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"pretty-cool\"\u003ePretty cool!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePretty cool!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"GO BOBCATS!!! (Comments)"},{"content":"Linky\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/meme-transformed-corporate-logos/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.businesspundit.com/after-the-crisis-a-parody-of-15-corporate-logos/\"\u003eLinky\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/crisis-logos/ferrari.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Meme: Transformed corporate logos"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve kinda \u0026ldquo;lost that bloggin\u0026rsquo; feelin\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; myself. I \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Dec 3, 2008\nI\u0026rsquo;ve kinda \u0026ldquo;lost that bloggin\u0026rsquo; feelin\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; myself. I think mine used to be more \u0026ldquo;Look at the hole I dug!!!\u0026rdquo; and thanks to drought and being busy at everything BUT the yard, I\u0026rsquo;m not sure I could find the back 4 acres right now.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/quickies...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"ive-kinda-lost-that-bloggin-feelin-myself-i-\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve kinda \u0026ldquo;lost that bloggin\u0026rsquo; feelin\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; myself. I \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 3, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve kinda \u0026ldquo;lost that bloggin\u0026rsquo; feelin\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; myself. I think mine used to be more \u0026ldquo;Look at the hole I dug!!!\u0026rdquo; and thanks to drought and being busy at everything BUT the yard, I\u0026rsquo;m not sure I could find the back 4 acres right now.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Quickies... (Comments)"},{"content":"WOW!\nWhitney and I attended the Georgetown College\u0026rsquo;s production of Cimarosa\u0026rsquo;s The Secret Marriage last night, and I was blown away.\nUnderstand, this is a college of ~1500 persons. The curriculum\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Opera\u0026rdquo; class hasn\u0026rsquo;t been taught in recent memory. The college has no orchestra, only a concert band.\nSo here, amid the rolling bluegrass, they staged a full, 2-Act Italian opera.\nWas it perfect? Of course not\u0026hellip;all performers could sing, but only two stood out operatically: The rich-voiced Count, and the delicate soprano playing Carolina. I could\u0026rsquo;ve listened to Carolina sing all night long\u0026ndash;her arias delighted, and her acting was properly melodramatic.\nAnd it was FUNNY, with comedy in each scene.\nThe only downside is they\u0026rsquo;re only holding two performances, the final being tonight at 7pm in the Georgetown College Hill Chapel. Seating is General Admission, with tickets at $15. Even if you don\u0026rsquo;t like Opera, GO! English subtitles provided, above the stage.\nEvent at LexGo.com\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/review-the-secret-marriage-at-georgetown-college/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWOW!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney and I attended the Georgetown College\u0026rsquo;s production of Cimarosa\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Matrimonio_Segreto\"\u003eThe Secret Marriage\u003c/a\u003e last night, and I was blown away.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnderstand, this is a college of ~1500 persons. The curriculum\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Opera\u0026rdquo; class hasn\u0026rsquo;t been taught in recent memory. The college has no orchestra, only a concert band.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo here, amid the rolling bluegrass, they staged a full, 2-Act Italian opera.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWas it perfect? Of course not\u0026hellip;all performers could sing, but only two stood out operatically: The rich-voiced Count, and the delicate soprano playing Carolina. I could\u0026rsquo;ve listened to Carolina sing all night long\u0026ndash;her arias delighted, and her acting was properly melodramatic.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: \"The Secret Marriage\" at Georgetown College"},{"content":"linky\nGiven the budget numbers, the United States has already chosen a path of far bigger government. The trap has been set. It\u0026rsquo;s unlikely America can escape without a VAT.\n- Replace income tax with a national sales tax? I\u0026rsquo;m all for it.\n- AUGMENT the multi-tiered \u0026ldquo;simple\u0026rdquo; income tax with a VAT? HUH?!!!\nIf this passes, turn out the lights\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;re a socialist nation.\n* * *\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/12/death-knell/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/01/news/economy/tully_vat.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008120207\"\u003elinky\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGiven the budget numbers, the United States has already chosen a path of far bigger government. The trap has been set. It\u0026rsquo;s unlikely America can escape without a VAT.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Replace income tax with a national sales tax? I\u0026rsquo;m all for it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- AUGMENT the multi-tiered \u0026ldquo;simple\u0026rdquo; income tax with a VAT? HUH?!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf this passes, turn out the lights\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;re a socialist nation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Death knell?"},{"content":"\nNew England Vacation Album\nYeah, lots of pics of hotels and airplanes, I know\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/finally-new-england-photos/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://picasaweb.google.com/miniharryc1978/NewEnglandVacationAlbum#\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/_mtJHUTc0OdE/SS4Gg_Wm7SE/AAAAAAAAAkk/NorsFW99plk/s160-c/NewEnglandVacationAlbum.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://picasaweb.google.com/miniharryc1978/NewEnglandVacationAlbum#\"\u003eNew England Vacation Album\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, lots of pics of hotels and airplanes, I know\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"(FINALLY) New England Photos"},{"content":"Quick hits on a few things:\n* Quote of the Day: \u0026ldquo;We have two speeds of development: Fast, and Scalded Dog. Which is appropriate here\u0026rdquo; (no, that was NOT LXK ;-) )\n* It\u0026rsquo;s a fabulous day outside, if you\u0026rsquo;re a duck. And, it\u0026rsquo;s supposed to snow tonight. What month is this, again?\n* Thanksgiving: Looks like we\u0026rsquo;re doing the Combs/Brentzel shuffle again this year. Thursday at the Combs family. Friday at the Brentzel clan.\nLooks to be a quiet week\u0026ndash;lots of folks out, fewer meetings and distractions.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/random-qotd-weather-t-giving/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eQuick hits on a few things:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Quote of the Day: \u0026ldquo;We have two speeds of development: Fast, and Scalded Dog. Which is appropriate here\u0026rdquo; (no, that was NOT LXK ;-) )\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* It\u0026rsquo;s a fabulous day outside, if you\u0026rsquo;re a duck. And, it\u0026rsquo;s supposed to snow tonight. What month is this, again?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Thanksgiving: Looks like we\u0026rsquo;re doing the Combs/Brentzel shuffle again this year. Thursday at the Combs family. Friday at the Brentzel clan.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Random: QOTD, weather, T-Giving"},{"content":"Did you say distraction? Here I am! Was kin\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Nov 1, 2008\nDid you say distraction? Here I am!\nWas kinda jazzed that everyone\u0026rsquo;s coming to us for Thanksgiving this year until I realized that meant a couple of nights of housecleaning!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/random-qotd-weather-t-giving-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"did-you-say-distraction-here-i-am\"\u003eDid you say distraction? Here I am!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWas kin\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDid you say distraction? Here I am!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWas kinda jazzed that everyone\u0026rsquo;s coming to us for Thanksgiving this year until I realized that meant a couple of nights of housecleaning!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Random: QOTD, weather, T-Giving (Comments)"},{"content":"Haven\u0026rsquo;t snoped this yet, but this seems a bit troubling.\nI just wanted to give everyone a heads up in case you tend to give gift cards around the holidays. Stores that are planning to close after Christmas are still selling the cards through the holidays even though they will be worthless as of January 1. There is no law preventing them from doing this. On the contrary, it is actually referred to as \u0026ldquo;Bankruptcy Planning.\u0026rdquo; below is a partial list of stores you should be cautious about.\nCircuit City (filed chapter 11)\nAnn Taylor - 117 stores closing nationwide\nLane Bryant, Fashion Bug, and Catherine\u0026rsquo;s - 150 stores closing nationwide\nEddie Bauer to clothes 27 stores + after January\nCache will close all stores\nTalbots closing down specialty stores\nJ. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbots)\nPacific Sunwear (also owned by Talbots)\nGAP closing 85 stores nationwide\nFootlocker closing 140 stores + after January\nWikes Furniture closing all stores\nLevits closing all remaining stores\nBombay closing all remaining stores\nZales closing 187 stores nationwide\nWhitehall closing all stores\nPiercing Pagoda closing all stores\nDisney closing 98 stores + in January\nHome Depot closing 15 stores Macy\u0026rsquo;s closing 9 stores after January\nLinens and Things closing all stores nationwide\nMovie Galley closing all stores\nPep Boys closing 33 stores\nSprint/Nextel closing 133 stores\nJC Penny closing an undisclosed number of stores after January\nEthan Allen closing 12 stores\nWilson Leather closing all stores\nSharper Image closing all remaining stores\nKB Toys closing 356 stores nationwide\nLoews closing an undisclosed number of stores\nDillards closing an undisclosed number of stores\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/now-this-is-a-bit-scary.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHaven\u0026rsquo;t \u003ca href=\"http://snopes.com\"\u003esnoped\u003c/a\u003e this yet, but this seems a bit troubling.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI just wanted to give everyone a heads up in case you tend to give gift cards around the holidays. Stores that are planning to close after Christmas are still selling the cards through the holidays even though they will be worthless as of January 1. There is no law preventing them from doing this. On the contrary, it is actually referred to as \u0026ldquo;Bankruptcy  Planning.\u0026rdquo; below is a partial list of stores you should be cautious about.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Now, this is a bit scary..."},{"content":"yeah no that\u0026rsquo;s true. it\u0026rsquo;s been all over the news \u0026hellip; Whitney - Nov 5, 2008\nyeah no that\u0026rsquo;s true. it\u0026rsquo;s been all over the news this morning.\nThey gave it a \u0026ldquo;Partly true\u0026rdquo;, but it does make you think. The cards might still be honored, but will the store near the person you gifted still be open after Christmas?\n[The \u0026ldquo;word verification\u0026rdquo; for this one is \u0026ldquo;abode\u0026rdquo;, which is kinda odd since you just got back from the Adobe thing]\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/now-this-is-a-bit-scary...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"yeah-no-thats-true-its-been-all-over-the-news-\"\u003eyeah no that\u0026rsquo;s true. it\u0026rsquo;s been all over the news \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eyeah no that\u0026rsquo;s true. it\u0026rsquo;s been all over the news this morning.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey gave it a \u0026ldquo;Partly true\u0026rdquo;, but it does make you think. The cards might still be honored, but will the store near the person you gifted still be open after Christmas?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Now, this is a bit scary... (Comments)"},{"content":"\nAdobe Max 2008\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/pics-from-max-2008/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://picasaweb.google.com/miniharryc1978/AdobeMax2008#\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/_mtJHUTc0OdE/SSYDtind0rE/AAAAAAAAAaw/djdQ2c5iOAs/s160-c/AdobeMax2008.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://picasaweb.google.com/miniharryc1978/AdobeMax2008#\"\u003eAdobe Max 2008\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pics from MAX 2008"},{"content":"Well, my abbreviated trip (Sunday-\u0026gt;Wednesday instead of Saturday-\u0026gt;Thursday) comes to an end today. Some highlights:\n- I saw a guy in a kilt \u0026amp; cod-piece yesterday. Yes, he looked alot like Henry VIII, jowls and all.\n- Had a nice dinner with Mark at Sam\u0026rsquo;s Seafood Grille. Pretty good, overall.\n- The breeze shifted to a sea-breeze yesterday, and the temps plummeted. Imagine it being 72 and warm in the morning and 50, damp, and chilly by the end of the day. Lots of folks in shorts \u0026amp; t-shirts weren\u0026rsquo;t happy.\nNot looking forward to that 7 hours on a plane\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/adobe-max-its-a-wrap/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, my abbreviated trip (Sunday-\u0026gt;Wednesday instead of Saturday-\u0026gt;Thursday) comes to an end today. Some highlights:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- I saw a guy in a kilt \u0026amp; cod-piece yesterday. Yes, he looked alot like Henry VIII, jowls and all.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Had a nice dinner with Mark at Sam\u0026rsquo;s Seafood Grille. Pretty good, overall.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- The breeze shifted to a sea-breeze yesterday, and the temps plummeted. Imagine it being 72 and warm in the morning and 50, damp, and chilly by the end of the day. Lots of folks in shorts \u0026amp; t-shirts weren\u0026rsquo;t happy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Adobe Max: It's a wrap"},{"content":"Notes writeup:\n-\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026ndash;\n\u0026ldquo;Top Performing Mobile Applications\u0026rdquo;\nPanel:\n- Allesandro Pace\n- Darren Osadchuck\n- Dale Rankin -\u0026gt; Moket\n- Scott Janousek\nAlessandro (BORING)\nKeep UI simple Keep memory below 70% Use name/value pairs in lieu of XML where possible XMLSocket where possible Daren (very low-key and monotone but obviously competent):\nOptimize loops Prefer the deprecated function calls ( in lieu of Math.* ) functions Remap your keypad Record Keystrokes on CS4 using Device Central\u0026rsquo;s device set Scott (seemed nervous):\nDemote on-device testing\u0026ndash;Nokia RDA or www.deviceanywhere.com Device Profiling \u0026ndash; use FPSMonitor or ASProf Component Work with data informats that make sense\u0026ndash;loadVars, SWX, Buy my book (pfft!) Dale Narnkie (natural speaker/entrepreneur):\nSummary: Here\u0026rsquo;s how to monetize and be successful.\n\u0026ldquo;Developer/Designer Deep Dive\u0026rdquo;\nSummary: \u0026ldquo;Developers and Designers are different, but share many of these 8 skills.\u0026rdquo; Success involves understanding how each member of the team adds value.\n8 Areas:\n- software architecture\n- scripting and coding\n- Data organization \u0026amp; modelling\n- Structuring content\n- Motion \u0026amp; audio\n- interaction Design\n- Layout Design\n- Visual Design\nNet: Designers often write code out of necessity. Developers often do design tasks out of necessity. Some disciplines straddle the fence.\nFlash Catalyst\u0026ndash;allows designers to not write code\nCase studies presented:\n- Cross-media interactive content\n- Flex app using \u0026ldquo;Gumbo\u0026rdquo;\n- Ajax Web app\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/max-session-notes-day-1/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNotes writeup:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026ndash;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Top Performing Mobile Applications\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePanel:\u003cbr\u003e\n- Allesandro Pace\u003cbr\u003e\n- Darren Osadchuck\u003cbr\u003e\n- Dale Rankin -\u0026gt; Moket\u003cbr\u003e\n- Scott Janousek\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlessandro (BORING)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKeep UI simple\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKeep memory below 70%\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUse name/value pairs in lieu of XML where possible\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eXMLSocket where possible\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDaren (very low-key and monotone but obviously competent):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOptimize loops\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePrefer the deprecated function calls ( in lieu of Math.* ) functions\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRemap your keypad\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRecord Keystrokes on CS4 using Device Central\u0026rsquo;s device set\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eScott (seemed nervous):\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Max Session Notes, Day 1"},{"content":"Turns out, it\u0026rsquo;s The Tenderloin\nSavory, and only a few blocks from here.\nI particularly liked the stuff about it being resistant to gentrification\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/found-out-what-tl-is/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTurns out, it\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenderloin,_San_Francisco,_California\"\u003eThe Tenderloin\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSavory, and only a few blocks from here.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI particularly liked the stuff about it being resistant to gentrification\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Found out what 'TL' is"},{"content":"8:47am \u0026ndash; Moscone center, West\nWell, public WiFi seems to be a pipedream. I sit here on the 3rd floor\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s wall-to-wall people, seems like a mix of folks\u0026ndash;guys in french blue business shirts, Bohemian guys with messenger bags, and lots of fat guys with ponytails.\nMale to female ratio: 5:1. Better than I expected, but we\u0026rsquo;ll see how things turn out in my sessions.\nSomehow my Adobe Login got hosed, and I can\u0026rsquo;t log-in to my account on Adobe.com to change it (again, no WiFi out here)\nI feel vaguely sore and overful\u0026ndash;scarfed roughly 2000 calories during the continental breakfast.\nAgain, the \u0026ldquo;don\u0026rsquo;t know a soul\u0026rdquo; factor is bizarre. Maybe that\u0026rsquo;ll get better once I get into some sessions this afternoon.\nI\u0026rsquo;m listening to this guy beside me (whose voice reminds me of Paul Upton) go on about SF (San Francisco), talking about how it\u0026rsquo;s past the \u0026ldquo;TL\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;I have no frickin\u0026rsquo; idea what \u0026ldquo;TL\u0026rdquo; is\u0026hellip;perhaps it\u0026rsquo;s some line past which you don\u0026rsquo;t want to go? My unknown skater-boi friend beside me said that he used to live here in 1999, and that things are so much cleaner than when he lived here before. Apparently, the place was rife with porn-shops and general dirtyness. \u0026ldquo;Now the porn shops are \u0026lsquo;Gap\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;Banana Republic\u0026rsquo;.\u0026rdquo;\nKeynote\u0026rsquo;s supposed to begin here in about 1/2 hour.\nI feel ill\u0026hellip;stomach\u0026rsquo;s just not agreeing with me.\n-\u0026ndash; 9:18 \u0026mdash;\nHOLY CRAP\u0026hellip;.let\u0026rsquo;s talk 50 yard wide, 3-story presetnation screens!\nPeople very excited in here\u0026hellip;3-d virtual world on display, with adobe icons flying around.\nCEO\u0026rsquo;s onstage\u0026hellip;\nThermo is now \u0026ldquo;Flash Catalyst\u0026rdquo;\nNext release of Gumbo is available\n\u0026ldquo;Groundbreaking new applications you\u0026rsquo;re developing\u0026rdquo;\nBuy (Red) save lives\u0026hellip;\u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Fight against AIDS\n- music discovery service-\u0026gt; ( Red ) Wire\n- Delivered to your screen via Adobe Air\n- Social Media component -\u0026gt; 5 people @ $5 / month == 1 persons life saved\nCTO \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Resident magician \u0026ldquo;Harry Potter\u0026rdquo; Kevin Lynch\n- does have his Harry Potter glasses\nTopic: 3 Techtonic shifts\n1. Client + Cloud computing\n2. Social Computing\n3\n(Talking REALLY fast!)\nFlash Player 10 updates\n- 3D Effects \u0026amp; Drawing API\n- Print-Quality TExt\n- Pixel Bender Filters\nDemo: Hobnox mixer\n- Realtime processing and mixing of audio\n- Connect audio to scrypting\n- dynamic waveform analysis in Flash Player\n- Used 3D effects at runtime, not preprocessing\nNew text engine in flash player\n- draw text\n- supports right to left text (full world-wide)\nPhotoshop.com \u0026ndash; share and edit images in place\n- life effects to images wile\n- circlesplash\n-\n64-bit linux release available for flashplayer 10\nnow 80% of web video is in flash\nCTO of Disney\u0026rsquo;s interactive media group\u0026hellip;Bud Albers\nDisney technology goes all the way back to Snow White\u0026hellip;\nSupports all of company \u0026ndash; ESPN, ABC, and Disney\n- H.264\nClub penguin\n- rich immersive environment\n- multi-lingual with\n860,000 views of the Jonas Brother\u0026rsquo;s movie (40% increase in channel)\n\u0026ldquo;Suite Life on Deck\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; next episode online before next month\nOne of top 3 players on web\nMLB.com -\u0026gt; delivering online broadcasts of all major-league games. Starts opening day 2009\n- All Big 4 sports use Adobe Flash\nAIR -\u0026gt; run applications on your local system.\n- Air 1.5 is released today. Embeds inside Flash Player 10\n- Squirrelfish in HTML (accel JavaScript applicatrions)\n- Supports encrypted DB\u0026rsquo;s -\u0026gt; SQLLite\nVP of R\u0026amp;D NYT \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; Michael Zimbalist\n- next generation news reader applications\n- no matter what size the display or what platform\n- Int\u0026rsquo;l Herald Tribune\n- Desktop application for today\u0026rsquo;s paper\n- Polls NYT\u0026rsquo;s website if you\u0026rsquo;re online\n- Resize window -\u0026gt; works on any screen size or dimension\n- lays out dynamically with wrapping articles or text\n- dynamic hyphenation/pagination\n- intuitive navigation between articles\n(Irony alert -\u0026gt; Article on Faltering Economy onscreen)\nIncludes crossword puzzle\nInteresting \u0026ndash; Air on Aigo: Mobile Internet device\n- Linux Operating system\n- rather prefunctory for mobile devices\nCalifornia Legacy Trails: Remarkable womn in California\n- Content is available to teachers to create curricula for students\n- Teach students\n- Anne Lunis -\u0026gt; Adobe Corporate Responsibility\n- Maria Shriver, First Lady of California\n- vertical segment at Adobe.\n- Idea came from the Freedom Trail\n- \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s more to california than just hollywood!\nSalesforce.com\u0026rsquo;s integration\n- Exposes lots of services\n- \u0026ldquo;Amazing potential to cloud internet platform + Adobe client side apps\u0026rdquo;\n- Session\u0026ndash;Wednesday @ 3:30\n(Yay\u0026hellip;I finally found some Wifi!)\nII. Social Computing\nCocomo \u0026ndash; Nigel Peg(?)\n- integrating existing flex apps\n- Acesis -\u0026gt; Medical Peer reviews\n- Dr. Phong(?)\n(This guy is VERY nervous and stuttering)\n- Webcam feed integrated\n- share cursors, VOIP, co-navigation\n- NOT screen-sharing\n- Adobe provides collaboration infrastructure.\nCocomo \u0026ndash; client SDK\n- runs atop AIR\n- a few days \u0026amp; 30 lines of code (!!!)\n- hosted infrastructure that adobe manages\n- Users, Audio/Video Files\n- Real time Data Messwaging\n- Real-time file sharing\n- Client library with full source included\n- Cocomo platform service is free public beta.\n- realtime collaboration\nAdobe Wave: Notification from social software into unified interface\n- Asynchronous messaging\n- Wave working in the background for notifications\n- Seems like the same issues we had for\nContent on OpenScreen project\n2 problems: Web Browsing and Standalone Applications\n- AIR allows you to install applications across screens\n- (Amazing how this guy doesn\u0026rsquo;t want to say iPhone\u0026hellip;just saying \u0026ldquo;higher end phones\u0026rdquo;)\nShow \u0026ldquo;Hot from the oven\u0026rdquo; devices:\n- Phones with FlashPlayer 10\n- Nokia N85 \u0026ndash;\u0026gt; \u0026ldquo;It Just works\u0026rdquo;\n- Windows Mobile/Opera browser\n- Download from Last.fm\n- Youtube -\u0026gt; Opera browser,\n- Flash on the iPhone (not yet!)\n- G1 phone from T-mobile\n- Star Dudes\nAndy Reuben \u0026ndash; Google senior director of platforms\n- Inventor of Android\n- \u0026ldquo;Handheld is about as powerful as PC\u0026rsquo;s were 5 years ago\u0026rdquo;\n- Better internet experience in Android drives FlashPlayer 10\n- Google team working with Adobe to get flashplayer going\nStandalone applications:\n- FlashLite -\u0026gt; Nokia w/FlashLite\n- must launch flashlite itself\n- good experience once you launch the content is good\n- launching the content sucks, frankly.\n- FlashLite distributable player\n- package application\n- Distribute the app\n- install flashlite onto phone over the air\n- must have a supported OS\n- demo failed\u0026hellip;\n- Establishes an icon at top-level menu\n- THOUGHT: isn\u0026rsquo;t this a hacker\u0026rsquo;s dream!!!?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/adobe-max-2008-keynote-blogging/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e8:47am \u0026ndash; Moscone center, West\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, public WiFi seems to be a pipedream. I sit here on the 3rd floor\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s wall-to-wall people, seems like a mix of folks\u0026ndash;guys in french blue business shirts, Bohemian guys with messenger bags, and lots of fat guys with ponytails.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMale to female ratio: 5:1. Better than I expected, but we\u0026rsquo;ll see how things turn out in my sessions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomehow my Adobe Login got hosed, and I can\u0026rsquo;t log-in to my account on Adobe.com to change it (again, no WiFi out here)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Adobe Max 2008: Keynote blogging"},{"content":"WTF? Thought: Me have logistic/organizatio\u0026hellip; Whitney - Nov 2, 2008\nWTF? Thought:\nMe have logistic/organizational charts in head\nall times\noverlapping\nflowing\nhaiku much\nCharlotte have nonsensical\nbullet\npoint\nammunition\nDad Christmas\nAdobe house\nAdobe MAX = whacked house in\nskeletal Maria California\nsunny\nPEETS\nSnow here, ice\ngo boom boom floor\nMaria\nword verification\npitcher\nCHARLOTTE GO HOME!\nWow, your summary hurts my head. I\u0026rsquo;m definitely too old to survive one of those!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/adobe-max-2008-keynote-blogging-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"wtf-thought\"\u003eWTF? Thought:\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe have logistic/organizatio\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWTF? Thought:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe have logistic/organizational charts in head\u003cbr\u003e\nall times\u003cbr\u003e\noverlapping\u003cbr\u003e\nflowing\u003cbr\u003e\nhaiku much\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCharlotte have nonsensical\u003cbr\u003e\nbullet\u003cbr\u003e\npoint\u003cbr\u003e\nammunition\u003cbr\u003e\nDad Christmas\u003cbr\u003e\nAdobe house\u003cbr\u003e\nAdobe MAX = whacked house in\u003cbr\u003e\nskeletal Maria California\u003cbr\u003e\nsunny\u003cbr\u003e\nPEETS\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSnow here, ice\u003cbr\u003e\ngo boom boom floor\u003cbr\u003e\nMaria\u003cbr\u003e\nword verification\u003cbr\u003e\npitcher\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCHARLOTTE GO HOME!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWow, your summary hurts my head. I\u0026rsquo;m definitely too old to survive one of those!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Adobe Max 2008: Keynote blogging (Comments)"},{"content":"Ah, Bond is back!\nWhitney and I watched this at the Stoneybrook Cinemas de Lux (in assigned seats no less!) last night. Some thoughts:\n* I now have epilepsy from watching 27 cuts per seconds during each action scene\n* Like the other good Bond, Daniel Craig is going bald.\n* The \u0026ldquo;Bond Girl\u0026rdquo; is awesome.\n* The homage to Goldfinger (dead girl, prone on the bed)\n* Judi Dench reprises as M, and she\u0026rsquo;s fabulous.\nIf you watched \u0026ldquo;Casino Royale\u0026rdquo; and wondered at its lack of falling action, wonder no more\u0026hellip;the whole of \u0026ldquo;Quantum of Solace\u0026rdquo; is falling action. Bond is out for revenge, seeking to uncover the organization Le Chiffre was financing.\nHe doesn\u0026rsquo;t *quite* do it, but then again, if Dr. No hadn\u0026rsquo;t been so helpful, Connery and crew would\u0026rsquo;ve sat on S.P.E.C.T.R.E. for a few films. At least in this installment, Bond uncovers a few more bigs inside \u0026ldquo;Quantum\u0026rdquo; (whatever that is\u0026hellip;).\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a good film, action-packed, and full of Bond-isms. However, it\u0026rsquo;s not the masterpiece that Royale was.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/review-quantum-of-solace/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0830515/\"\u003eBond is back\u003c/a\u003e!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney and I watched this at the Stoneybrook Cinemas de Lux (in assigned seats no less!) last night. Some thoughts:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* I now have epilepsy from watching 27 cuts per seconds during each action scene\u003cbr\u003e\n* Like the \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000125/\"\u003eother good Bond\u003c/a\u003e, Daniel Craig is going bald.\u003cbr\u003e\n* The \u0026ldquo;Bond Girl\u0026rdquo; is \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1385871/\"\u003eawesome\u003c/a\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\n* The homage to Goldfinger (dead girl, prone on the bed)\u003cbr\u003e\n* Judi Dench reprises as M, and she\u0026rsquo;s fabulous.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Quantum of Solace"},{"content":"9:15 am\nNervous. I\u0026rsquo;m nervous\u0026hellip;I get chatty when I\u0026rsquo;m nervous, but I don\u0026rsquo;t have anyone to talk to. I\u0026rsquo;m in seat 46A, which is the last window seat, port side of the plane. At the moment, I don\u0026rsquo;t have anyone to talk with.\nThe 767 I\u0026rsquo;m on is NICE. Seems very much like the one I flew on to Zurich, Switzerland 3 years ago. Minus the smelly Eurotrash, of course.\n* * *\nNever seen so many laptops in a terminal before. These are Adobe MAX folks, all herding out to \u0026lsquo;Frisco.\nGuy from an ad agency closed-down his whole shop for a week\u0026hellip;funny though, a sycophant guy w/o a job (he\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;freelance\u0026rdquo;) sat down in the terminal and chatted him up. The guy wouldn\u0026rsquo;t take the hint to leave, and was still yammering away as I boarded.\nSo, for now, no one in the seat beside me\n9:40\n\u0026ldquo;we have a mismatch on how much cargo weight we have, but don\u0026rsquo;t worry, this is a Good Plane we\u0026rsquo;re on. We\u0026rsquo;ve requested about 2000lbs more fuel..that\u0026rsquo;ll take some time to load.\u0026rdquo;\nThere\u0026rsquo;s something unsettling about being off by a TON OF FUEL! Yikes\u0026hellip;\n9:50\nWell, the delay was just enough, I\u0026rsquo;ve got a seat-mate. Friendly and freckled, looks to be in her late 30\u0026rsquo;s. Network Security analyst from Standford University\u0026hellip;commutes every 6 weeks back from the east coast.\n15,000 feet over Missouri\n\u0026ldquo;Hook\u0026rdquo; almost makes me cry. I miss my family already..that scene where Robin Williams flashes-back to seeing his son born. I *always* see Maria.\nWell, stink\u0026hellip;by the time they got back to me, there was no food left\u0026hellip;not so much as a fruit tray. Oh well, I\u0026rsquo;ll just munch on these salty snacks.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/adobe-max-trip-out-on-the-767-300/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e9:15 am\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nNervous. I\u0026rsquo;m nervous\u0026hellip;I get chatty when I\u0026rsquo;m nervous, but I don\u0026rsquo;t have anyone to talk to. I\u0026rsquo;m in seat 46A, which is the last window seat, port side of the plane. At the moment, I don\u0026rsquo;t have anyone to talk with.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 767 I\u0026rsquo;m on is NICE. Seems very much like the one I flew on to Zurich, Switzerland 3 years ago. Minus the smelly Eurotrash, of course.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Adobe Max: Trip out on the 767-300"},{"content":"Off to Adobe Max 2008, I guess. Left Whitney asleep (or, groggy, at least) at the Airport Courtyard by Mariott. Flight from Louisville was cramped and cold on an MD-88 that sounded like a cuisinart from takeoff to landing. Glad Whitney wasn\u0026rsquo;t there\u0026hellip;wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite so bad as the Embraer we suffered on from Philly to SDF, but bad enough.\nThe Transcontinental leg has me on a767, seat 46A. I can\u0026rsquo;t seem to get free WiFi at either airport; guess those innocent, available days are long gone\u0026hellip;perhaps at Frisco.\nCan\u0026rsquo;t say I was looking forward to VPN\u0026rsquo;ing into work, anyway. That can wait until Frisco.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been very keyed-up about this trip, mostly in the negative\u0026ndash;I feel out of place. This is a conference for designers and managers, not hardcore coders. That\u0026rsquo;s the other thing\u0026hellip;sitting here, I\u0026rsquo;m NOT A HARDCORE FLASH/ActionScript coder. I\u0026rsquo;m an expatriated Java Network Server-side coder, who did some time in Win32-land. For the last 3 months, I\u0026rsquo;ve been herding kittens in the Corporate World of development\u0026ndash;meetings, interruptions, and rewriting proposals day-to-day. Programming in powerpoint, they call it.\nRead a chilling article in Esquire on the way down about finance, how the high-flying banking world my rewind all the way to 1978\u0026ndash;small banks making piddly loans to companies that can PROBABLY PAY THEM BACK. Meanwhile, the economy\u0026rsquo;s gonna contract, and we proud many who exist many steps from the customer may simply evaporate. Supply chains will shorten. Corporate fat will trim (provided, you\u0026rsquo;re not a C-level or one of his chosen sycophants).\nThe economy will be different\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/adobe-max-the-trip-out--report-from-atl/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOff to Adobe Max 2008, I guess. Left Whitney asleep (or, groggy, at least) at the Airport Courtyard by Mariott. Flight from Louisville was cramped and cold on an MD-88 that sounded like a cuisinart from takeoff to landing. Glad Whitney wasn\u0026rsquo;t there\u0026hellip;wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite so bad as the Embraer we suffered on from Philly to SDF, but bad enough.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Transcontinental leg has me on a767, seat 46A. I can\u0026rsquo;t seem to get free WiFi at either airport; guess those innocent, available days are long gone\u0026hellip;perhaps at Frisco.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Adobe Max: The trip out--report from ATL"},{"content":"TV Cancellations thrill me. Stinker shows go circling the drain, and we all get to cheer.\nFirst big one to go: My Own Worst Enemy. Terrible show, poorly executed\u0026ndash;just painful to watch, really.\nSad thing is, most things on network TV these days aren\u0026rsquo;t that much better. Grey\u0026rsquo;s Anatomy jumped the shark years ago, as has every single reality show.\nOverall, TV\u0026rsquo;s just ceasing to exist for me\u0026ndash;I like House, though its formulaic nature and current shark sighting (House and Cuddy?! Hello Moonlighting!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/fun-times...show-cancellations/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTV Cancellations thrill me. Stinker shows go circling the drain, and we all get to cheer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst big one to go: \u003ca href=\"http://tvseriesfinale.com/articles/my-own-worst-enemy-nbc-cancels-christian-slater-tv-show/\"\u003eMy Own Worst Enemy\u003c/a\u003e. Terrible show, poorly executed\u0026ndash;just painful to watch, really.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSad thing is, most things on network TV these days \u003cem\u003earen\u0026rsquo;t that much better\u003c/em\u003e. Grey\u0026rsquo;s Anatomy jumped the shark years ago, as has every single reality show.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOverall, TV\u0026rsquo;s just ceasing to exist for me\u0026ndash;I like \u003cem\u003eHouse\u003c/em\u003e, though its formulaic nature and current shark sighting (House and Cuddy?! Hello \u003ca href=\"http://www.jumptheshark.com/topic/Moonlighting/Moonlighting-General-Comments/1342\"\u003eMoonlighting\u003c/a\u003e!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fun times...show cancellations"},{"content":"TV? I think I got a vaccination for that in school\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Nov 4, 2008\nTV? I think I got a vaccination for that in school.\nRarely turn the thing on anymore.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/fun-times...show-cancellations-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"tv-i-think-i-got-a-vaccination-for-that-in-school\"\u003eTV? I think I got a vaccination for that in school\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 4, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTV? I think I got a vaccination for that in school.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRarely turn the thing on anymore.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Fun times...show cancellations (Comments)"},{"content":"linky\nBanks helping out borrowers\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;dogs and cats living together. Mass Hysteria!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/armistice-day-and-citi-cries-uncle/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5in76THl-3F_ZT-PtvVhg-kukK2_gD94CN3UG0\"\u003elinky\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBanks helping out borrowers\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;dogs and cats living together. Mass Hysteria!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg312/tommjacobsen/Ghostbusters-.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Armistice Day, and Citi cries UNCLE!"},{"content":"I can\u0026rsquo;t quite articulate the point, but I was thin\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Nov 2, 2008\nI can\u0026rsquo;t quite articulate the point, but I was thinking this morning that all the bailing out is analogous to preventing even the small fires in the forest.\nWithout some sort of \u0026ldquo;controlled burn\u0026rdquo; on these bad loans, it feels like we\u0026rsquo;re leaving dead timber around to make the next crisis even more severe.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/armistice-day-and-citi-cries-uncle-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-cant-quite-articulate-the-point-but-i-was-thin\"\u003eI can\u0026rsquo;t quite articulate the point, but I was thin\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI can\u0026rsquo;t quite articulate the point, but I was thinking this morning that all the bailing out is analogous to preventing even the small fires in the forest.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWithout some sort of \u0026ldquo;controlled burn\u0026rdquo; on these bad loans, it feels like we\u0026rsquo;re leaving dead timber around to make the next crisis even more severe.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Armistice Day, and Citi cries UNCLE! (Comments)"},{"content":":-) NANO!!!!\nEvery time I hear Paradise City, I\u0026rsquo;m apexing a curve in my old SE-R, Goodyears howling, somewhere just south of 6800 rpm in 2nd gear.\nThe moonroof\u0026rsquo;s back, it\u0026rsquo;s 85 degrees outside as the sun sets in the West, and I\u0026rsquo;m headed to Louisville to see Whitney. Speed limit be damned, that car loved to MOOVE.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/loving-the-new-ipod/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e:-) NANO!!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ipodtape.com/ipods/ipod_nano_3rd_generation.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEvery time I hear \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_City\"\u003eParadise City\u003c/a\u003e, I\u0026rsquo;m apexing a curve in my old SE-R, Goodyears howling, somewhere just south of 6800 rpm in 2nd gear.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe moonroof\u0026rsquo;s back, it\u0026rsquo;s 85 degrees outside as the sun sets in the West, and I\u0026rsquo;m headed to Louisville to see Whitney. Speed limit be damned, that car loved to MOOVE.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"LOVING the new iPod"},{"content":"link\nCerberus should acknowledge the financial reality and either file a Chapter 11 case for Chrysler or have a federal receiver appointed so that the value of the Chrysler assets can be maximized in an orderly sale procedure.\nObligatory snarky comment: \u0026ldquo;Where\u0026rsquo;s the *reality* in finance, buddy?!\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/going-viral-a-cogent-look-at-chrysler/gm-merger/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/editorial-why-the-gmcerberuschrysler-bailout-is-bad-for-taxpayers-and-doomed-to-fail-without-the-benefits-of-a-chapter-11-filing-for-both-chrysler-and-gm/\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCerberus should acknowledge the financial reality and either file a Chapter 11 case for Chrysler or have a federal receiver appointed so that the value of the Chrysler assets can be maximized in an orderly sale procedure.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eObligatory snarky comment: \u0026ldquo;Where\u0026rsquo;s the *reality* in finance, buddy?!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Going viral: A Cogent Look at Chrysler/GM Merger"},{"content":"I drove home last night and plopped on the couch around sunset. I mumbled something to Whitney about not wanting to go to church, so she grabbed the kids and went. Then I went to bed around 6:00.\nI got up around 6:15 this morning. I\u0026rsquo;m still exhausted and this cold just won\u0026rsquo;t leave me alone.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/sleep-is-a-good-thing.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI drove home last night and plopped on the couch around sunset. I mumbled something to Whitney about not wanting to go to church, so she grabbed the kids and went. Then I went to bed around 6:00.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI got up around 6:15 this morning. I\u0026rsquo;m still exhausted and this cold just won\u0026rsquo;t leave me alone.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sleep is a good thing..."},{"content":"Wanted to snapshot this so I remember it when Maria\u0026rsquo;s 30, has kids of her own, and they keep her up all night.\nSo, Whitney and I watched Mr. Holland\u0026rsquo;s Opus, then tuned-in the election coverage at 10:20 pm to get some returns (at the time Obama only had 200+ of the 270 needed). Maria was a bit fussy, but fell back to sleep around the same time.\nThen, the fun began.\nBy 11:30, she was up, and Whitney went in to console her. I fell back into a cold-meds-induced stupor until she came back to bed at 12:45.\nAgainst wise counsel, I went in myself to console Re-Re. She seemed to respond well, and I rocked her to quiescence, and put her back to sleep. Whitney was not happy: \u0026ldquo;Okay, YOU get to get up with her the 6 more times she gets up tonight.\u0026rdquo;\nPfft, I thought. I\u0026rsquo;ve got this covered\u0026hellip;she\u0026rsquo;ll sleep through the night now because I\u0026rsquo;m AWESOME SUPER DADDY!\nYeah\u0026hellip;\u0026lsquo;bout that\u0026hellip;\nSo, that was 1. By 1:10 she was back up, screaming. I finally came around to Whitney\u0026rsquo;s side of things\u0026ndash;NOTHING was gonna console this girl.\nLong story short (too late), I got about 2 hours of sleep last night. By the end of it, Maria finally soothed herself back to sleep.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/memoir-21-months-and-loving-it/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWanted to snapshot this so I remember it when Maria\u0026rsquo;s 30, has kids of her own, and they keep her up all night.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, Whitney and I watched \u003cem\u003eMr. Holland\u0026rsquo;s Opus\u003c/em\u003e, then tuned-in the election coverage at 10:20 pm to get some returns (at the time Obama only had 200+ of the 270 needed). Maria was a bit fussy, but fell back to sleep around the same time.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen, the fun began.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Memoir: 21 Months and loving it"},{"content":"Two decent things came out of last night:\n1. McConnell\u0026rsquo;s still our Senator. Yay, Kentucky!\n2. There\u0026rsquo;s not a Democrat supermajority in the Senate. At least there\u0026rsquo;s a *little* checks-and-balances remaining :-)\n* * *\nCongrats to John McCain on a solid campaign.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/repocalypse-the-morning-after/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwo decent things came out of last night:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. McConnell\u0026rsquo;s still our Senator. Yay, Kentucky!\u003cbr\u003e\n2. There\u0026rsquo;s not a Democrat supermajority in the Senate. At least there\u0026rsquo;s a *little* checks-and-balances remaining :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCongrats to John McCain on a solid campaign.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Repocalypse, the Morning After"},{"content":"And I figure if things go well, so be it. But if \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Nov 3, 2008\nAnd I figure if things go well, so be it. But if we\u0026rsquo;re worse off in 4 years it\u0026rsquo;s all on the Dems.\nMeanwhile, shame on us if we don\u0026rsquo;t find a coherent voice in the next 2 and 4 years.\nAnd although I have concerns about the endgame, if they get us out of Iraq, that will be a non-issue for 2012.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/repocalypse-the-morning-after-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"and-i-figure-if-things-go-well-so-be-it-but-if-\"\u003eAnd I figure if things go well, so be it. But if \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 3, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I figure if things go well, so be it. But if we\u0026rsquo;re worse off in 4 years it\u0026rsquo;s all on the Dems.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeanwhile, shame on us if we don\u0026rsquo;t find a coherent voice in the next 2 and 4 years.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd although I have concerns about the endgame, if they get us out of Iraq, that will be a non-issue for 2012.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Repocalypse, the Morning After (Comments)"},{"content":"Well, today\u0026rsquo;s the day. Either way it goes, we make history\u0026ndash;the first African-American president, or the first female vice-president.\nWhitney got up and voted a little after 6, and faced a long line at our polling station. I went a little after 7; while there were lots of folks, I was done in 10 minutes. Everyone was chatty and \u0026ldquo;up\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;we know this is a big deal today.\nI guess that ever-present barrage of advertising (particularly in the vitriolic McConnell/Lunsford Senate race) is good for something!\nPredictions:\n* Mitch is toast. The $700 Billion bailout killed him. History will show it to be the correct move, but Kentuckians disapprove of Republicans who make tough calls. Ironically, it\u0026rsquo;s probably the move *I* respect him for the most.\n* Landslide victory for Obama, close to the 1984 Reagan landslide.\n* Absent his benefactor McConnell, David Williams, president of the KY state senate, is deposed in a palace coup come January.\n* The second coming of the Carter Administration\u0026ndash;high taxes, high unemployment, and contracting American power on the world stage. Only this time, there\u0026rsquo;s no manufacturing sector to resuscitate. It\u0026rsquo;s now in China, and it\u0026rsquo;s not coming back.\n* Obama will prove to be more Andrew Johnson than Jack Kennedy. He\u0026rsquo;ll find himself at the mercy of an unbalanced congress, blessed (or cursed) with a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, bent on reshaping the landscape of America.\nThe intellectual elite may rejoice at the above, but as a citizen and a patriot, I can\u0026rsquo;t. I voted for McCain, unabashedly so. His choice of Palin as a running mate was poor. He ran a poor campaign after the convention\u0026ndash;refusing to be himself, not listening to his advisors. Still yet, he\u0026rsquo;s the guy I wish had won in 2000, and I support him still. Not that it\u0026rsquo;ll matter, probably.\nI guess we\u0026rsquo;ll know tomorrow what this new landscape (or moonscape!) looks like.\nRegardless, I urge any and all of my fellow citizens to go out and vote!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/11/vote/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, today\u0026rsquo;s the day. Either way it goes, we make history\u0026ndash;the first African-American president, or the first female vice-president.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney got up and voted a little after 6, and faced a long line at our polling station. I went a little after 7; while there were lots of folks, I was done in 10 minutes. Everyone was chatty and \u0026ldquo;up\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;we know this is a big deal today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI guess that ever-present barrage of advertising (particularly in the vitriolic McConnell/Lunsford Senate race) is good for something!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"VOTE!!!"},{"content":"As of today, down 30% YTD.\n:: sigh ::\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/10/401k-watch/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs of today, down 30% YTD.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:: sigh ::\u003c/p\u003e","title":"401(k) watch"},{"content":"40.6 ::gulp::\n(stop looking) Jeff Roberts - Oct 1, 2008\n40.6\n::gulp::\n(stop looking)\nOh - I heard a stat (Dave Ramsey?) that after crashes like this one the market usually surges by about 30% the very next year.\nman, I sure hope so!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/10/401k-watch-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"406\"\u003e40.6\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e::gulp::\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(stop looking)\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e40.6\u003cbr\u003e\n::gulp::\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(stop looking)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh - I heard a stat (Dave Ramsey?) that after crashes like this one the market usually surges by about 30% the very next year.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eman, I sure hope so!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"401(k) watch (Comments)"},{"content":"Article\nIf you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/10/great-open-letter-by-orson-scott-card/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/081017light.html\"\u003eArticle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e","title":"Great open letter by Orson Scott Card"},{"content":"So, here I sit, amid a meeting with 14 people, trying to achieve a consensus on a topic with two sides\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;and no one here can make this decision. And no one will. What remains is for Daddy to berate the misbehaving children back into line.\nAtop all that, there\u0026rsquo;s 14 people talking OVER one another, emotionally.\n::sigh::\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/10/meeting-chaos--10000-foot-view/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, here I sit, amid a meeting with 14 people, trying to achieve a consensus on a topic with two sides\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;and no one here can make this decision. And no one will. What remains is for Daddy to berate the misbehaving children back into line.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAtop all that, there\u0026rsquo;s 14 people talking OVER one another, emotionally.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e::sigh::\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Meeting Chaos -- 10,000 foot view"},{"content":"Quid Pro Quo\nOn the surface, it looks so innocent. \u0026ldquo;Something for something.\u0026rdquo; Equality. Fairness. \u0026ldquo;I got my share.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;S/He owes me that.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s my due.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;I know my rights.\u0026rdquo;\nYes, friend: You can know your rights and your due right back into your cave, where no one will lament your passing into eternity. If every action you take is ticking off a chit on your list, it means nothing. If you love someone only enough to do up to your responsibility, you love them not at all. Love may not keep a record of wrongs, but it ought not keep a record of \u0026ldquo;rights,\u0026rdquo; either.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve learned that lesson over the past month\u0026ndash;doing out of obligation, fear, or resentment is no love at all. Doing for others out of genuine consideration is a feeling of peace, contentment, and simple joy. Grasp that, and never let it go. Love, laugh, and serve.\nThat really has its own reward, if you can overcome pride and fear and just do it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/10/quickie-quid-pro-quo-is-dumb/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quid_pro_quo\"\u003eQuid Pro Quo\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the surface, it looks so innocent. \u0026ldquo;Something for something.\u0026rdquo; Equality. Fairness. \u0026ldquo;I got my share.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;S/He owes me that.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s my due.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;I know my rights.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, friend: You can know your rights and your due right back into your cave, where no one will lament your passing into eternity. If every action you take is ticking off a chit on your list, it means nothing. If you love someone only enough to do up to your responsibility, you love them not at all. Love may not keep a record of wrongs, but it ought not keep a record of \u0026ldquo;rights,\u0026rdquo; either.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quickie: \"Quid pro quo\" is dumb"},{"content":"No, for those of you scoring at home, this isn\u0026rsquo;t about me moving out of the bedroom; this is about Whitney and I moving our bedroom upstairs.\nSince I moved into the house in June of 2005, my bedroom\u0026rsquo;s been in the suite, on the Northeast corner of the 1st floor. Yes\u0026hellip;the dreaded (or desired!) first-floor master. Atop our story-and-a-half house are 3 bedrooms: One for Joey, the nursery for Maria, and what had previously been the playroom/guest bedroom.\nSo, this weekend, Whitney and I switched the playroom downstairs and moved all our bedroom furniture upstairs. Whitney is a MACHINE, people\u0026ndash;we had the room painted in very little time, and she did the trim herself. It took us the better part of two days, but we have a much saner arrangement\u0026ndash;sleeping quarters upstairs, living quarters downstairs. We\u0026rsquo;re much closer to the kids, and we can sleep during the spring and early fall with the windows open upstairs and the fans on (allergies permitting).\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not all roses so far\u0026ndash;Whitney and I are used to complete darkness behind a closed bedroom door. Because of airflow upstairs, we have to keep the doors open, and that lets light in, but we\u0026rsquo;re working on that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/10/weekend--moving-bedrooms/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNo, for those of you scoring at home, this isn\u0026rsquo;t about me moving out of the bedroom; this is about Whitney and I moving our bedroom upstairs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince I moved into the house in June of 2005, my bedroom\u0026rsquo;s been in the suite, on the Northeast corner of the 1st floor. Yes\u0026hellip;the dreaded (or desired!) first-floor master. Atop our story-and-a-half house are 3 bedrooms: One for Joey, the nursery for Maria, and what had previously been the playroom/guest bedroom.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weekend--moving bedrooms"},{"content":"IMDB Link\nMy father-in-law surprised Whitney and I last night by offering to watch the kids while we went to the 6:30 showing of Fireproof in Lexington. Fireproof is another Christian-centered offering from Sherwood pictures, the same folks who made Facing the Giants.\nIn this film, Kirk Cameron stars as Caleb Holt, a fireman in Albany, Georgia with a darling house, a very attractive young wife, and aspirations of buying a boat. He seems to have the perfect life until you peel back the surface\u0026ndash;underneath it all, he and his wife are virtual strangers, with enough resentment and hurt feelings to split apart Minneapolis and St. Paul. He\u0026rsquo;s hurt (yet unsurprised) when she starts talking of a divorce.\nCaleb is a model of self-sufficiency (and self-righteousness). As the film opens, we see his team of fireman carry a car with two trapped, screaming teeny-boppers off railroad tracks, avoiding an oncoming freight train. While his Christian best friend is shaken by the experience, thankful to be alive, Caleb shakes it off. This fellow has icewater in his veins. He can\u0026rsquo;t deal with his wife\u0026rsquo;s faults, so he\u0026rsquo;s ready to write her off.\nThe next day, Caleb receives a \u0026ldquo;challenge\u0026rdquo; from his father\u0026ndash;40 days of CPR for his relationship with his wife called \u0026ldquo;The Love Dare\u0026rdquo;. Each day, he\u0026rsquo;s to perform some action or service for Catherine, his wife\u0026ndash;thoughtful gifts, flowers, words of esteem and love.\nInitially, she rebuffs him. \u0026ldquo;This isn\u0026rsquo;t you, Caleb,\u0026rdquo; she says. In absence of Caleb\u0026rsquo;s relationship, Catherine\u0026rsquo;s developed an ad-hoc support system of gossipy, worldly nurses at the hospital where she\u0026rsquo;s working public relations. As the film unfolds, we also see a philandering doctor attracted to her and her obvious need for compassion and companionship. Eventually, Catherine convinces herself the good doctor is a much better man than Caleb and leaves divorce papers on the table for him. (That kinda crap happens all the time, sadly.)\nWhat follows is just\u0026hellip;awesome. I won\u0026rsquo;t give any more away other than to say this is a movie any married couple (or couple considering marriage) should watch. It will make you weep for the mistakes you\u0026rsquo;ve made, and rejoice at the person God put you with. Cameron\u0026rsquo;s performance as Caleb is powerful\u0026ndash;we feel the icy distance in his heart at the beginning of the film, and as that ice melts, we see a \u0026ldquo;strong\u0026rdquo; man understand what humility, genuine emotion, and openness can do for his life.\nAlso, the film is FUNNY. The cast of screwballs at the station provides welcome relief from each dramatic scene, providing that \u0026ldquo;up\u0026rdquo; moment we need as an audience to endure the next dramatic turn. In particular, the fat guy dancing to his own reflection is just\u0026hellip;priceless!\n* * *\nJust to balance this out. . .this is no Hollywood cinematic masterpiece. The central cast of characters play their parts well, but some of the extras sound like regular folks they picked-up off the street. The production values are straightforward\u0026ndash;no CGI, no fancy set or sound-stage work. They shot _Fireproof_in real houses, outdoors, and in a firehouse, but at all times the camera work was professional, and the framing and composition was excellent. In particular the side-lit scenes beside the cross outdoors were beautiful, and could belong in any Hollywood extravaganza.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/10/review-fireproof/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1129423/\"\u003eIMDB Link\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy father-in-law surprised Whitney and I last night by offering to watch the kids while we went to the 6:30 showing of \u003cem\u003eFireproof\u003c/em\u003e in Lexington. Fireproof is another Christian-centered offering from Sherwood pictures, the same folks who made \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805526/\"\u003eFacing the Giants\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this film, Kirk Cameron stars as Caleb Holt, a fireman in Albany, Georgia with a darling house, a very attractive young wife, and aspirations of buying a boat. He seems to have the perfect life until you peel back the surface\u0026ndash;underneath it all, he and his wife are virtual strangers, with enough resentment and hurt feelings to split apart Minneapolis and St. Paul. He\u0026rsquo;s hurt (yet unsurprised) when she starts talking of a divorce.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Fireproof"},{"content":"article\nZero fell into the same moat 15 years ago and stayed there for nine days.\nYep.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/10/some-days-you-just-feel-like-this.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/523/story/554845.html\"\u003earticle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eZero fell into the same moat 15 years ago and stayed there for nine days.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some days, you just feel like this..."},{"content":"The Beamer that Vicki never got to drive is no more, sent on to its new owner Grady from Indianapolis.\nOverall, it was a tremendous selling experience, with a detailed ad via craigslist (for free) and the buyer contacting me via email asking intelligent questions throughout the following week.\nThis has been on my heart for some time now; glad I finally manned-up and did it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/10/requiem-now-two-cars-at-home/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Beamer that Vicki never got to drive is no more, sent on to its new owner Grady from Indianapolis.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOverall, it was a tremendous selling experience, with a detailed ad via \u003ca href=\"http://lexington.craigslist.org/\"\u003ecraigslist\u003c/a\u003e (for free) and the buyer contacting me via email asking intelligent questions throughout the following week.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis has been on my heart for some time now; glad I finally manned-up and did it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Requiem: Now two cars at home"},{"content":"Duuuuuuuuuuuude! Jeff Roberts - Oct 3, 2008\nDuuuuuuuuuuuude!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/10/requiem-now-two-cars-at-home-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"duuuuuuuuuuuude\"\u003eDuuuuuuuuuuuude!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 3, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDuuuuuuuuuuuude!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Requiem: Now two cars at home (Comments)"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve got a guy driving in from Indianapolis this afternoon; perhaps this is the BMW\u0026rsquo;s last day with me.\nPart of me\u0026rsquo;s not taking this so well\u0026hellip;I got up nauseated and I was very cranky, right down to being very mean to Joey at the breakfast table. Which caused Whitney to get really mad at me (rightly so). I apologized to him on the way to school for it, but still\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m just OFF today.\nExhausted, dull, punch-drunk really. . .I\u0026rsquo;m trying to snap out of it and heal all the crap I caused this morning, but so far nothing.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/10/maybe-selling-the-bmw-today.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve got a guy driving in from Indianapolis this afternoon; perhaps this is the BMW\u0026rsquo;s last day with me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart of me\u0026rsquo;s not taking this so well\u0026hellip;I got up nauseated and I was very cranky, right down to being very mean to Joey at the breakfast table. Which caused Whitney to get really mad at me (rightly so). I apologized to him on the way to school for it, but still\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m just OFF today.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maybe selling the BMW today..."},{"content":"While musing on the inevitable decay of our debt-ridden society, Chuck and I happened upon an hypothesis today: Entrepreneurs aren\u0026rsquo;t first-born children.\nThink about it\u0026hellip;first-born kids in families are dedicated, responsible, typically over-parented. They live quite well within rules. They\u0026rsquo;re not interested in rebellion or \u0026ldquo;changing the game\u0026rdquo;. Instability scares them.\nYes, those are broad generalizations based upon no hard data. But, if you\u0026rsquo;ll let me assume these as true, the consequence is:\nFirst-borns like stability and rules so much that they\u0026rsquo;re happy to remain in a mediocre (yet stable) job while other opportunities are out there, especially those that involve \u0026ldquo;being your own boss\u0026rdquo;. Kids that were scheduled, coached, and parented their entire waking childhood have NO IDEA how to operate in a vacuum.\n(Note, I\u0026rsquo;m not saying I do, either. I\u0026rsquo;m an only child. That means I have a first-born\u0026rsquo;s need for stability and boundaries crossed the last-born\u0026rsquo;s immaturity and desire for instant gratification.)\nAnyway, that led me to take a leap: Maybe our societal ills come from smaller median family size. If you\u0026rsquo;ve got a nation of only-children or families with 2 kids, maybe you\u0026rsquo;re missing that \u0026ldquo;large family\u0026rdquo; leavening of personality. I\u0026rsquo;m talking about those spunky middle kids who had to operate like independent contractors from age 2 onwards.\nI dunno\u0026hellip;it was just a thought. Sociology fascinates me, though I question how one can grab any sort of concrete conclusions out of it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/armchair-sociology/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhile musing on the inevitable decay of our debt-ridden society, Chuck and I happened upon an hypothesis today: Entrepreneurs aren\u0026rsquo;t first-born children.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThink about it\u0026hellip;first-born kids in families are dedicated, responsible, typically over-parented. They live quite well within rules. They\u0026rsquo;re not interested in rebellion or \u0026ldquo;changing the game\u0026rdquo;. Instability scares them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, those are broad generalizations based upon no hard data. But, if you\u0026rsquo;ll let me assume these as true, the consequence is:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Armchair Sociology"},{"content":"Fits Sandra and I anyway. Kate must have more of t\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Sep 2, 2008\nFits Sandra and I anyway. Kate must have more of the last-born-ness of the only child, as she\u0026rsquo;s more like Sandra.\nI like it. I\u0026rsquo;m a huge fan of order-of-birth explanations and probably try to apply them way more than is appropriate - so, again, love it. Maybe you have seen something like this about the effects of China\u0026rsquo;s imposed only child family structure. Of course, halfway through they assure that order-of-birth stereotypes are shaky, but we know better!\nPsychology Today\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/armchair-sociology-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"fits-sandra-and-i-anyway-kate-must-have-more-of-t\"\u003eFits Sandra and I anyway. Kate must have more of t\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFits Sandra and I anyway. Kate must have more of the last-born-ness of the only child, as she\u0026rsquo;s more like Sandra.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI like it. I\u0026rsquo;m a huge fan of order-of-birth explanations and probably try to apply them way more than is appropriate - so, again, love it. Maybe you have seen something like this about the effects of China\u0026rsquo;s imposed only child family structure. Of course, halfway through they assure that order-of-birth stereotypes are shaky, but we know better!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Armchair Sociology (Comments)"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;.or \u0026ldquo;This is what Susan\u0026rsquo;s Been Saying since High school\u0026rdquo;\nNice personal interest piece in the Herald-Leader about what an economic depression might be like.\nPoint taken\u0026ndash;in our relativistic society, if people get down on their luck, they\u0026rsquo;re not going to just sit and starve to death. They\u0026rsquo;re going to start stealing and causing anarchy to survive.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the joy of living in a \u0026ldquo;globalized\u0026rdquo; economy\u0026ndash;global points of failure. We don\u0026rsquo;t MAKE ANYTHING in this country anymore. Ugh.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/depressing-article-on-the-depression/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;.or \u0026ldquo;This is what Susan\u0026rsquo;s Been Saying since High school\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNice \u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/181/story/539181.html\"\u003epersonal interest\u003c/a\u003e piece in the Herald-Leader about what an economic depression might be like.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePoint taken\u0026ndash;in our relativistic society, if people get down on their luck, they\u0026rsquo;re not going to just sit and starve to death. They\u0026rsquo;re going to start stealing and causing anarchy to survive.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s the joy of living in a \u0026ldquo;globalized\u0026rdquo; economy\u0026ndash;global points of failure. We don\u0026rsquo;t MAKE ANYTHING in this country anymore. Ugh.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Depressing article on the Depression"},{"content":"Yeah, there I sit on 6 acres and I can barely grow\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Sep 1, 2008\nYeah, there I sit on 6 acres and I can barely grow grass :-)\nWe would probably hunker down at Grandmother\u0026rsquo;s. Old school know-how, plenty of acreage, and armed to the teeth. :-)\nYeah, in hindsight, this MIGHT NOT have been the best time to piss-off my parents, though their house isn\u0026rsquo;t what I\u0026rsquo;d call defensible.\nThough, the old Combs homestead (complete with its own bridge and creek to cross) might be okay for awhile.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/depressing-article-on-the-depression-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"yeah-there-i-sit-on-6-acres-and-i-can-barely-grow\"\u003eYeah, there I sit on 6 acres and I can barely grow\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, there I sit on 6 acres and I can barely grow grass :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe would probably hunker down at Grandmother\u0026rsquo;s. Old school know-how, plenty of acreage, and armed to the teeth. :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, in hindsight, this MIGHT NOT have been the best time to piss-off my parents, though their house isn\u0026rsquo;t what I\u0026rsquo;d call defensible.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Depressing article on the Depression (Comments)"},{"content":"To paraphrase a wise imaginary character:\nLast night\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Grey\u0026rsquo;s Anatomy\u0026rdquo; was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever! Rest assured I was on the internet within minutes voicing my disgust throughout the world.\nYeah, yeah\u0026hellip;Comic Book Guy FTW.\n* * *\nWell, that was special. Two hours of shoddy camera work, confusing storylines and bad acting later, I yearn for season two and three. As this episode opens, we find our favorite band of 237 interns gathered around Miranda Bailey, awaiting their new rankings as a teaching hospital. Apparently, their ratings have fallen significantly since their glory days\u0026hellip;\n..hmm\u0026hellip;just like Grey\u0026rsquo;s Anatomy: Once proud ratings leader, now in decline\u0026hellip;\nSo the remainder of the episode is about recapturing former glory, staunching the slide into mediocrity.\nLike most GA episodes that are \u0026gt; 1 hour, this turd was boring, overlong, and uneven. Certain scenes were brilliant. Yet, whole subplots dragged on.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/review-greys-anatomy-dream-a-little-dream/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTo paraphrase a wise imaginary character:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast night\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Grey\u0026rsquo;s Anatomy\u0026rdquo; was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever! Rest assured I was on the internet within minutes voicing my disgust throughout the world.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.classictvquotes.com/images/gallery/comic-book-guy-photo_148x250.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, yeah\u0026hellip;Comic Book Guy FTW.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, \u003cem\u003ethat\u003c/em\u003e was special. Two hours of shoddy camera work, confusing storylines and bad acting later, I yearn for season two and three. As this episode opens, we find our favorite band of 237 interns gathered around Miranda Bailey, awaiting their new rankings as a teaching hospital. Apparently, their ratings have fallen significantly since their glory days\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Grey's Anatomy \"Dream a Little Dream\""},{"content":"GO SARCAMS!!\n(sic)\nI believe she meant \u0026ldquo;sarcasm\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/quote-of-the-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGO SARCAMS!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(\u003cem\u003esic\u003c/em\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI believe she meant \u0026ldquo;sarcasm\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote of the day"},{"content":"Taking a leap out there today.\nListing for the BMW\nI don\u0026rsquo;t need to carry 3 cars through the winter, particularly since I have my eye on getting a 5-series come Spring.\nPray for me guys\u0026hellip;this is really hard for me, but it\u0026rsquo;s what needs to happen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/my-babys-up-for-sale.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTaking a leap out there today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://lexington.craigslist.org/cto/851797785.html\"\u003eListing for the BMW\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t need to carry 3 cars through the winter, particularly since I have my eye on getting a 5-series come Spring.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePray for me guys\u0026hellip;this is really hard for me, but it\u0026rsquo;s what needs to happen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My baby's up for sale..."},{"content":"Jeff\u0026rsquo;s Post\nSeven-hundred billion dollars.\nSeven hundred thousand million. (edit: math \u0026gt; me)\nGive or take, that\u0026rsquo;s $2333 for every man, woman, and child in America.\n* * *\nPer my understanding, absent this package, we\u0026rsquo;d be heading for breadlines, soup kitchens, and anarchy. Viewed through that lens, it\u0026rsquo;s a bargain at any price. However, it sets a dangerous precedent for the silent majority who go to work and actually pay their mortgage they signed-up for.\nResponsibility? We\u0026rsquo;ve now moved irresponsibility from a societal disease to a national mandate. The government will save me; I\u0026rsquo;m too big to fail.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/amen-brother..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://jjetsam3.blogspot.com/2008/09/bailout.html\"\u003eJeff\u0026rsquo;s Post\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeven-hundred billion dollars.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeven hundred thousand million. (\u003cem\u003eedit\u003c/em\u003e: math \u0026gt; me)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGive or take, that\u0026rsquo;s $2333 for every man, woman, and child in America.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePer my understanding, absent this package, we\u0026rsquo;d be heading for breadlines, soup kitchens, and anarchy. Viewed through that lens, it\u0026rsquo;s a bargain at any price. However, it sets a dangerous precedent for the silent majority who go to work and actually pay their mortgage they signed-up for.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Amen, brother...."},{"content":"Seven HUNDRED thousand million. Jeff Roberts - Sep 1, 2008\nSeven HUNDRED thousand million.\nYeah well not that I\u0026rsquo;ve got a fight here but SERIOUSLY!! I mean I get where they\u0026rsquo;re coming from but\u0026hellip;..what if we just reimburse the government in cash\u0026hellip;..can we get a foreclosed home in a vacation state that doesnt get hit by hurricanes or mudslides? Can we get a foreclosure in cherry blossom or lake forest? maybe something with a full finished basement and no radon\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/amen-brother....-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"seven-hundred-thousand-million\"\u003eSeven HUNDRED thousand million.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeven HUNDRED thousand million.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah well not that I\u0026rsquo;ve got a fight here but SERIOUSLY!! I mean I get where they\u0026rsquo;re coming from but\u0026hellip;..what if we just reimburse the government in cash\u0026hellip;..can we get a foreclosed home in a vacation state that doesnt get hit by hurricanes or mudslides? Can we get a foreclosure in cherry blossom or lake forest? maybe something with a full finished basement and no radon\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Amen, brother.... (Comments)"},{"content":"Q: How do you know you\u0026rsquo;re nuts?\nA: When your insurance broker drags his feet getting a quote for you on motorcycle insurance, hoping you\u0026rsquo;ll come to your senses.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/funny-after-the-fact.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eQ: How do you know you\u0026rsquo;re nuts?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA: When your insurance broker drags his feet getting a quote for you on motorcycle insurance, hoping you\u0026rsquo;ll come to your senses.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Funny after-the-fact..."},{"content":"Beneath the walnut trees\nI sit amid the grass.\nI stare aloft, and gape\nAt those confined in glass.\nThe hum refused to cease.\nThe din goes on each morn.\nOh whom shall break away?\nThat bairn might now be born.\nTo find a place of peace,\nReprieve from cage and mark.\nDiscover life\u0026rsquo;s true course!\nIgnite her Holy spark.\nMaria, art thou mine?\nI know thy path is wide.\nGod, grant me skill to give\nYou compass deep inside.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/to-maria-a-fathers-prayer/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBeneath the walnut trees\u003cbr\u003e\nI sit amid the grass.\u003cbr\u003e\nI stare aloft, and gape\u003cbr\u003e\nAt those confined in glass.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe hum refused to cease.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe din goes on each morn.\u003cbr\u003e\nOh whom shall break away?\u003cbr\u003e\nThat bairn might now be born.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo find a place of peace,\u003cbr\u003e\nReprieve from cage and mark.\u003cbr\u003e\nDiscover life\u0026rsquo;s true course!\u003cbr\u003e\nIgnite her Holy spark.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaria, art thou mine?\u003cbr\u003e\nI know thy path is wide.\u003cbr\u003e\nGod, grant me skill to give\u003cbr\u003e\nYou compass deep inside.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"To Maria: A Father's Prayer"},{"content":"How can you predict a massive market decline?\nA: It will occur 1 day after I rebalance my 401(k).\nOuch.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/how-to-predict-a-massive-market-decline.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHow can you predict a massive \u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/15/news/companies/lehman_brothers/index.htm?postversion=2008091509\"\u003emarket decline\u003c/a\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA: It will occur 1 day after I rebalance my 401(k).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOuch.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to predict a massive market decline..."},{"content":"How does one miss an impending market decline the \u0026hellip; Whitney - Sep 1, 2008\nHow does one miss an impending market decline the size of texas? Neglect to look UP. Ike. Big sucker screaming HERE I COME MERRILL LYNCH!!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/how-to-predict-a-massive-market-decline...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"how-does-one-miss-an-impending-market-decline-the-\"\u003eHow does one miss an impending market decline the \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow does one miss an impending market decline the size of texas? Neglect to look UP. Ike. Big sucker screaming HERE I COME MERRILL LYNCH!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"How to predict a massive market decline... (Comments)"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;or \u0026ldquo;Whitney gets car fever\u0026rdquo;\nSo Saturday, before Ike started tearing through our area, our intrepid family went a-Cincinatti\u0026rsquo;ing. Yep, swimming pools, movie stars, and the best MINI dealership in the world.\nI hadn\u0026rsquo;t been to Cincy MINI since last August, when a mishap with my radiator drain plug had me driving 120 miles roundtrip for a $2 part. Whitney hadn\u0026rsquo;t been there since spring of 05, when we had the Pup in for its last dealer service.\nTurns-out, Whitney missed the place. Before my first test drive, she proclaimed that Maria, Joey, and herself were remaining in the Odyssey.\n\u0026ldquo;Okay, I\u0026rsquo;ll be back,\u0026rdquo; I replied. I dragged the family this far. Might as well get on with it, as the British would say.\nThe dealership hasn\u0026rsquo;t changed at all\u0026hellip;same friendly folks (though new faces), same user-friendly attitude towards test drives: \u0026ldquo;Which one do you want to start with,\u0026rdquo; Motoring Advisor Emily asked.\n\u0026ldquo;Oh, something with a 5-speed\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You mean, a manual? Oh, they\u0026rsquo;re all six-speeds now\u0026rdquo;\nAh, so they are:\nExcellent\u0026hellip;\nDropping into the Base Cooper was like putting on an old shoe from high school: So intensely familiar, and yet you feel changes. The shoe hasn\u0026rsquo;t changed\u0026ndash;YOU have changed. Everything fell to hand immediately, and immediately I noticed superior touches in the new R56 MINIs:\nThey finally added a telescope to the steering column.\nThe they redid the center console so it doesn\u0026rsquo;t dig into your right calf\nThe new Getrag 6-speed is a revelation, as is the clutch. Really, the snick-sick motion and light clutch felt like driving a motorcycle more than a car. Rifle-bolt mechanical and precise. That 6th gear finally makes long highway slogs possible, too.\nIt finally feels like a real car. The R53 (previous gen) always felt a little raw and alive, with an ultra-firm ride that punished on the highway. Even with the run-flat tires, this car was supple on I-71.\nEven yet, the R56 was no panacea. It\u0026rsquo;s still a MINI: The squared-off roof still had me peering up at stoplights. The 118 hp in the Cooper\u0026rsquo;s still just adequate, especially on that manic merge on the freeway. However, the new transmission and clutch make it a pleasure to wring out every bit of that 1600cc\u0026rsquo;s.\nSo, test drives complete, I returned to find Whitney, Joey, and Maria chatting up the sales girl and Whitney having a gleam in her eye: \u0026ldquo;Hey, so\u0026hellip;have you driven the clubman?\u0026rdquo;\nI fanned my hands in front of her face and said, \u0026ldquo;So\u0026hellip;who are you and what have you done with my wife?\u0026rdquo;\nSo\u0026hellip;yeah\u0026hellip;my darling wants to get back into the MINI clan. BADLY.\n* * *\nSome dislikes of the new R56\u0026rsquo;s:\nThe new MFSW. It\u0026rsquo;s three-spokes (good), but looks awful and has 8 non-sensical buttons for radio, on-board computer, and cruise control. However, it\u0026rsquo;s a paragon of sense compared to\u0026hellip;\nThe center stack of radio, climate, and ??? controls. Stylish? Sure! Useable? Egads, no. I finally figured-out the climate control, but the radio controls were an impenetrable mess. I finally relented and just started using the steering wheel controls to cycle among the 6 presets on the radio. I\u0026rsquo;m sure it\u0026rsquo;d make sense after a few thousand miles\u0026hellip;\nStill don\u0026rsquo;t like the new nose. The R53\u0026rsquo;s with the integrated headlights in the bonnet was perfect. I understand the European pedestrian crash standards bear on the design, but UGH!\nThe biggie is, I didn\u0026rsquo;t particularly like the \u0026lsquo;S\u0026rsquo; too much. Yes, it has much more power, but it has gobs of torque steer when you cane it and the wheels aren\u0026rsquo;t perfectly straight. This is (essentially) the same complaint I had about the R53 when it came out\u0026ndash;the Cooper felt sorted, the \u0026lsquo;S\u0026rsquo; felt like an overdone brute. Fast forward 6 years (has it really been? wow), and the new chassis is much sweeter and both engines have been upgraded.\nBasically, I think the Beamer has just spoiled me with its rear-wheel drive. Putting that much power in such a light car through the front wheels just feels\u0026hellip;wrong\u0026hellip;to me now. In either case the BMW, MINI, and PSA engineers should take a bow\u0026hellip;these engines are gems. The only thing I noticed was a tendency for the non-turbo car to hang onto revs. I assume that\u0026rsquo;s the same emissions-control nonsense you get with all modern electronic-throttle cars.\n:sigh:\nI forgot how incredibly agile and tossable these cars really were. My BMW just can\u0026rsquo;t feel that agile\u0026hellip;I could slam the suspension and put on meaty swaybars, but that carved-from-an-ingot chassis of the MINI would still spank it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/what-happens-when-you-get-what-you-want.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;or \u0026ldquo;Whitney gets car fever\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.motorauthority.com/wp-content/uploads/Mini/Spy/Clubman/mini_clubman_main_1.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo Saturday, before \u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/181/story/523789.html\"\u003eIke started tearing through our area\u003c/a\u003e, our intrepid family went a-Cincinatti\u0026rsquo;ing. Yep, swimming pools, movie stars, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.cincinnatimini.com/\"\u003ethe best MINI dealership in the world\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI hadn\u0026rsquo;t been to Cincy MINI since last August, when a mishap with my radiator drain plug had me driving 120 miles roundtrip for a $2 part. Whitney hadn\u0026rsquo;t been there since spring of 05, when we had the Pup in for its last dealer service.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What happens when you get what you want..."},{"content":" \u0026hellip;A well-managed organization in a \u0026ldquo;dull\u0026rdquo; organization. The \u0026ldquo;dramatic\u0026rdquo; things in such an organization are basic decisions that make the future, rather than heroics in mopping-up yesterday.\nDrucker, Peter. The Effective Executive, p. 42\nI couldn\u0026rsquo;t agree more.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/quote-of-the-day/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;A well-managed organization in a \u0026ldquo;dull\u0026rdquo; organization. The \u0026ldquo;dramatic\u0026rdquo; things in such an organization are basic decisions that make the future, rather than heroics in mopping-up yesterday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDrucker, Peter. \u003cem\u003eThe Effective Executive\u003c/em\u003e, p. 42\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI couldn\u0026rsquo;t agree more.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote of the Day"},{"content":"Now this is a movie.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s 1968; hipster counter-culture is ablaze in Europe. Somewhere, Austin Powers is out there in his Shag-u-ar telling the birds, \u0026ldquo;Oh Behave.\u0026rdquo; And, as our story opens, Charlie Croker (Michael Caine), the world\u0026rsquo;s best thief, has just been let of of prison\u0026hellip;.\nActually, as our story opens, a Lamborghini Miura is tearing up the Alps out of Turin on its way to Switzerland, driving up roads that look 2 feet wide at something like 120 mph. I got car-sick just watching it.\n* * *\nAs I told Whitney last night, this film was beautiful, intelligent, and exciting. It provided a perfect snapshot of the times, much as Grand Prix did for the Formula 1 circuits at the time. And, it\u0026rsquo;s just FUN. Seeing those guys block-up the streets of Turin, Italy then escape in Mini Coopers\u0026hellip;awesome.\nI really liked the modern version, but really, for scope, beauty, and intelligence, the original 1969 work is the masterpiece. Grab the special edition DVD, and enjoy it!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/movie-night...the-real-italian-job/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064505/\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e is a movie.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s 1968; hipster counter-culture is ablaze in Europe. Somewhere, Austin Powers is out there in his Shag-u-ar telling the birds, \u0026ldquo;Oh Behave.\u0026rdquo; And, as our story opens, Charlie Croker (Michael Caine), the world\u0026rsquo;s best thief, has just been let of of prison\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eActually, as our story opens, a Lamborghini Miura is tearing up the Alps out of Turin on its way to Switzerland, driving up roads that look 2 feet wide at something like 120 mph. I got car-sick just watching it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Movie Night...the REAL Italian Job"},{"content":"From here: Stevey\u0026rsquo;s Blog Rants\nJust took a typing test 106 wpm, 99% accuracy.\nw000t!!!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/take-that-yegge/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom here: \u003ca href=\"http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirtiest-little-secret.html\"\u003eStevey\u0026rsquo;s Blog Rants\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust took a typing test 106 wpm, 99% accuracy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ew000t!!!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Take that, Yegge!!"},{"content":"On the bright side, after nearly 7 months and 8.5 gallons of stain, I finally completed staining the last section of our fence yesterday, while waiting for the tow truck to arrive and cart off Beamer.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/well-on-the-bright-side.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn the bright side, after nearly 7 months and 8.5 gallons of stain, I finally completed staining the last section of our fence yesterday, while waiting for the tow truck to arrive and cart off Beamer.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Well, on the bright side..."},{"content":" Come on down to the Combs household, folks, where you can witness (very) amateur mechanic Harold working on the old iron, attempting an amazing feat\u0026ndash;an OIL CHANGE. That\u0026rsquo;s right\u0026hellip;for the first few minutes, we\u0026rsquo;ll warm-up with the draining of the oil. Then we get to the feature presentation\u0026ndash;the Two hour slog of\u0026hellip;TRYING TO REMOVE THE OIL FILTER HE OVERTIGHTENED IN March!. You\u0026rsquo;ll gasp as you see him try the end-cap socket, followed by the Strapwrench. You\u0026rsquo;ll cry as you see him pound a screwdriver through the filter six separate times praying he\u0026rsquo;ll get it to loosen. You\u0026rsquo;ll sigh in relief as he the filter finally comes of, and swim in nausea to witness its mangled carcase.\nFor the first 200 ticket-holders, we have the special behind the scenes extra after the feature where you can witness Harold snap his oil drain plug in two trying to tighten it. The final act includes a call to Triple-A for the ignominious tow to Paul\u0026rsquo;s Foreign Auto, the engine having voided its remaining sludgy oil all over the western side of his driveway.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll laugh. You\u0026rsquo;ll cry. You\u0026rsquo;ll laugh some more. Come on down!\nNot mine\u0026hellip;but it looked pretty darn similar after I got done\nSometimes, I think Beamer can hear me thinking of getting a new car, and it decides to be pissy like this on purpose. Other times, I just consider that it\u0026rsquo;s a 20 year old car and I\u0026rsquo;m a ham-fisted, amateur mechanic with much to learn.\nEDIT:\nPaul\u0026rsquo;s Foreign Auto backed out the remainder of the drain plug, put in a new one, and filled \u0026rsquo;er up with 20w50. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/sunday-sunday-sunday/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCome on down to the Combs household, folks, where you can witness (very) amateur mechanic Harold working on the old iron, attempting an amazing feat\u0026ndash;an OIL CHANGE. That\u0026rsquo;s right\u0026hellip;for the first few minutes, we\u0026rsquo;ll warm-up with the draining of the oil. Then we get to the feature presentation\u0026ndash;the Two hour slog of\u0026hellip;TRYING TO REMOVE THE OIL FILTER HE OVERTIGHTENED IN March!. You\u0026rsquo;ll gasp as you see him try the end-cap socket, followed by the Strapwrench. You\u0026rsquo;ll cry as you see him pound a screwdriver through the filter six separate times praying he\u0026rsquo;ll get it to loosen. You\u0026rsquo;ll sigh in relief as he the filter finally comes of, and swim in nausea to witness its mangled carcase.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY"},{"content":"well i worked in a ship for a while and it really \u0026hellip; Gas4Free - Sep 1, 2008\nwell i worked in a ship for a while and it really pisses me off when sumthing like that happens. Even in the ship there were some guys who were really good at overtightening things.. but this ones kinda funny an overtightened filter. A pipe wrench might have helped.\nYeah, maybe. Thing is, though, the filter is under the exhaust manifold and it\u0026rsquo;s really hard to get anything around it that\u0026rsquo;s bigger than a regular oil filter wrench or strap-wrench.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/sunday-sunday-sunday-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"well-i-worked-in-a-ship-for-a-while-and-it-really-\"\u003ewell i worked in a ship for a while and it really \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10734265175732699832\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eGas4Free\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ewell i worked in a ship for a while and it really pisses me off when sumthing like that happens. Even in the ship there were some guys who were really good at overtightening things.. but this ones kinda funny an overtightened filter. A pipe wrench might have helped.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY (Comments)"},{"content":"Quite a busy weekend\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m expecting to crash sometime today around 10am, actually.\nHigh \u0026amp; Lowlights:\nFriday, Whitney tore a ligament in her right arm. Best quote from that belongs to her doctor: \u0026ldquo;I can either tell you you\u0026rsquo;ve got a torn ligament, or I can take X-Rays and tell you you\u0026rsquo;ve got a torn ligament.\u0026rdquo; So, she\u0026rsquo;s on restricted duty for a couple of weeks.\nPraise report: Mom\u0026rsquo;s CT scan came back clean\u0026hellip;the doctor said she was doing fine and had no indications of cancer almost a year after her surgery. Woohoo!!\nSaturday, I took Maria up to Louisville to spend the night with Cathy. On the way back, I noticed that Bessie had lots of wheel shake at 75mph. After a quick trip to the new NTB location in Georgetown, they diagnosed two unbalanced front tires.\nSaturday evening, while the rest of Kentucky was at the Norfolk State thrashing, Bella and I went to Portofino\u0026rsquo;s, Serge\u0026rsquo;s favorite place to eat in Lexington. I enjoyed the whitefish risotto, and she tucked into the Filet Mignon. It was a wonderful dinner, and a great beginning to our date.\nAfter our dinner, we scooted to Hamburg to watch The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. I LOVED this movie\u0026hellip;really, I love the whole Mummy franchise\u0026ndash;CGI extravaganzas that don\u0026rsquo;t take themselves too seriously. You root for the good guys, you cheer when the bad guys die. In particular, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh were great, and Maria Bello was brilliant as the new Evelyn, replacing Rachel Weisz.\nSunday was difficult. One of our congregation had an attack of some sort in the middle of service, and we halted the sermon to administer aid and send for the ambulance. Whitney and I went our separate ways after the service, she going to a baby shower then up to Louisville to go shopping. I went to the mall to pick-up one of her other purchases, then back to the house to tackle my todo list. Thereafter is its own blog entry unto itself.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/quickies-the-weekend-that-was.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eQuite a busy weekend\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m expecting to crash sometime today around 10am, actually.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHigh \u0026amp; Lowlights:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFriday, Whitney tore a ligament in her right arm. Best quote from that belongs to her doctor: \u0026ldquo;I can either tell you you\u0026rsquo;ve got a torn ligament, or I can take X-Rays and tell you you\u0026rsquo;ve got a torn ligament.\u0026rdquo; So, she\u0026rsquo;s on restricted duty for a couple of weeks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePraise report: Mom\u0026rsquo;s CT scan came back clean\u0026hellip;the doctor said she was doing fine and had no indications of cancer almost a year after her surgery. Woohoo!!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quickies: The weekend that was..."},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;You need a hobby\u0026hellip;that you can WALK to.\u0026rdquo;\nYep.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/and-charlie-said.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You need a hobby\u0026hellip;that you can WALK to.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"And Charlie said..."},{"content":"Is that a bus factor statement? Don\u0026rsquo;t ride or auto\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Sep 2, 2008\nIs that a bus factor statement? Don\u0026rsquo;t ride or auto-x or you could get hurt and we lose all your know-how?\nHmm, I may not have that much know-how but I guess the odds of ME being hit by a bus are pretty good. Church bus that is.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/and-charlie-said...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"is-that-a-bus-factor-statement-dont-ride-or-auto\"\u003eIs that a bus factor statement? Don\u0026rsquo;t ride or auto\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIs that a bus factor statement? Don\u0026rsquo;t ride or auto-x or you could get hurt and we lose all your know-how?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHmm, I may not have that much know-how but I guess the odds of ME being hit by a bus are pretty good. Church bus that is.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"And Charlie said... (Comments)"},{"content":"These days, my weeks look like this:\nMonday: No meetings\u0026hellip;WHEE!!!\nTuesdays: One meeting at 3pm. Impending sense of doom for Wednesday approaches.\nWednesdays: Meetings all day. Meetings to discuss the outcome of other meetings.\nThursdays: Meetings to discuss the outcome of those other meetings from Wednesday. Find project-killing roadblock. Sit and ponder roadblock. Send email to vendor asking why roadblock exists in the first place.\nFriday: Managers nowhere to be found. PM takes half-day. WHEE!!!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/anatomy-of-my-week/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThese days, my weeks look like this:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMonday\u003c/em\u003e: No meetings\u0026hellip;WHEE!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eTuesdays\u003c/em\u003e: One meeting at 3pm. Impending sense of doom for Wednesday approaches.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWednesdays\u003c/em\u003e: Meetings all day. Meetings to discuss the outcome of other meetings.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThursdays\u003c/em\u003e: Meetings to discuss the outcome of those other meetings from Wednesday. Find project-killing roadblock. Sit and ponder roadblock. Send email to vendor asking why roadblock exists in the first place.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFriday\u003c/em\u003e: Managers nowhere to be found. PM takes half-day. WHEE!!!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anatomy of my week"},{"content":"Hoo boy, September is off to a great start.\nMiserable, utterly miserable.\nThe \u0026ldquo;Net-net\u0026rdquo; (that execrable phrase our PM\u0026rsquo;s and managers use at work):\nWhen I\u0026rsquo;m tired, hungry, and fed-up, I need to SHUT THE FUCK UP (STFU).\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t do that. I didn\u0026rsquo;t do that TIMES 10. I \u0026ldquo;tore my ass\u0026rdquo; (lovely phrase my Mom taught me) 3 times for no good reason. I didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep well. I relaxed nary a moment, twisted up in knots for 15 separate reasons.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/labor-day-from-hell/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHoo boy, September is off to a great start.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMiserable, utterly miserable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;Net-net\u0026rdquo; (that execrable phrase our PM\u0026rsquo;s and managers use at work):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen I\u0026rsquo;m tired, hungry, and fed-up, I need to SHUT THE FUCK UP (STFU).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://patdollard.com/wp-content/uploads/stfu.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://patdollard.com/wp-content/uploads/stfu.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn\u0026rsquo;t do that. I didn\u0026rsquo;t do that TIMES 10. I \u0026ldquo;tore my ass\u0026rdquo; (lovely phrase my Mom taught me) 3 times for no good reason. I didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep well. I relaxed nary a moment, twisted up in knots for 15 separate reasons.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Labor Day from Hell"},{"content":"Once there was a microwave\nWho served his family well.\nThree long years he toiled\nForgotten, giving, serving\nHe showed some cracks along the way;\nThey patched him best they could.\nBut then one day, he broke.\nThey knew that he was done.\nTo fix it? Five hundred.\nTo buy anew? The same.\nThe decision was made right then:\nIt was time for him to go.\nNow unplugged, now unlatched,\nDaddy lowered him to the floor.\nHow grimy, greasy the underside!\nHow dusty the parts behind!\nRemoved now from his rightful place,\nCarted to the outside,\nThe greasy, dusty hulk\nAwaited his destiny, silent.\nThe family gazed at the vulgar hole\nwhere once he\u0026rsquo;d been:\n\u0026ldquo;Meh, we always have a stove?\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/09/to-a-microwave/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOnce there was a microwave\u003cbr\u003e\nWho served his family well.\u003cbr\u003e\nThree long years he toiled\u003cbr\u003e\nForgotten, giving, serving\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe showed some cracks along the way;\u003cbr\u003e\nThey patched him best they could.\u003cbr\u003e\nBut then one day, he broke.\u003cbr\u003e\nThey knew that he was done.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo fix it? Five hundred.\u003cbr\u003e\nTo buy anew? The same.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe decision was made right then:\u003cbr\u003e\nIt was time for him to go.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow unplugged, now unlatched,\u003cbr\u003e\nDaddy lowered him to the floor.\u003cbr\u003e\nHow grimy, greasy the underside!\u003cbr\u003e\nHow dusty the parts behind!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"To A Microwave"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;going into Williams-Sonoma expecting there to be free food, just like Saturday afternoon at Sam\u0026rsquo;s Club.\nAlas, it was not to be.\nWe did get out of the mall with a brisk walk, some family time, and $4 under budget. w00t!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/quickie-frugal-is.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;going into \u003ca href=\"http://www.williams-sonoma.com/\"\u003eWilliams-Sonoma\u003c/a\u003e expecting there to be free food, just like Saturday afternoon at \u003ca href=\"http://www.samsclub.com\"\u003eSam\u0026rsquo;s Club\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlas, it was not to be.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did get out of the mall with a brisk walk, some family time, and $4 under budget. w00t!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quickie: \"Frugal\" is..."},{"content":"Actually they did have samples - a greek salad com\u0026hellip; Whitney - Aug 1, 2008\nActually they did have samples - a greek salad composed of coloured peppers, vinaigrette, and goat cheees. Unfortunately I\u0026rsquo;m allergic to two of those three things and you were rubbing the maximum mini by found on road dead by that point so I didn\u0026rsquo;t bother pointing it out. S\u0026rsquo;ok. usually they have nut bread when we walk so I wasn\u0026rsquo;t expecting much anyway.\nForgot all about that\u0026hellip;yeah, the Ford Flex outside did catch my attention :-)\nNothing like an overwrought station wagon with mediocre gas mileage that bastardizes styling cues from other vehicles (most notably, the Mini Clubman)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/quickie-frugal-is...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"actually-they-did-have-samples---a-greek-salad-com\"\u003eActually they did have samples - a greek salad com\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eActually they did have samples - a greek salad composed of coloured peppers, vinaigrette, and goat cheees. Unfortunately I\u0026rsquo;m allergic to two of those three things and you were rubbing the maximum mini by found on road dead by that point so I didn\u0026rsquo;t bother pointing it out. S\u0026rsquo;ok. usually they have nut bread when we walk so I wasn\u0026rsquo;t expecting much anyway.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quickie: \"Frugal\" is... (Comments)"},{"content":"Among Joey, Maria, Whitney, and myself, we must have every allergy going. Nuts, milk, pet dander, pollen, mold, cigarette smoke, dust. If it\u0026rsquo;s a biggie, we have it.\nAnd we live in the allergy capital of the world. Arizona keeps looking like a good second option.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/quickie-one-family-under-allergies-with-sniffles-and-kleenex-for-all/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAmong Joey, Maria, Whitney, and myself, we must have every allergy going. Nuts, milk, pet dander, pollen, mold, cigarette smoke, dust. If it\u0026rsquo;s a biggie, we have it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we live in the allergy capital of the world. Arizona keeps looking like a good second option.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quickie: One Family, under Allergies, with sniffles and Kleenex for All"},{"content":"Something caught my eye on TechCrunch the other day: Jott\nJott is a free voice-to-text transcription service. You sign-up, confirm your email address, then pair it to your cell phone. After that, you can dial the Jott Number (1-866-JOTT-321) then dictate an up to 15 second note. It then emails that note to you (well, a link to it in the free version). You can also schedule that note to be forwarded via SMS as a reminder to you.\nVery slick little service. I had a couple of ideas for blogs yesterday while Bella, Maria, and I were shopping and I just hit my Jott speed-dial, said \u0026ldquo;Jott Notes\u0026rdquo; and then dictated the topic reminder. Simple and very useful.\nThey\u0026rsquo;re just out of Beta\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;d look for these guys to get acquired by one of the big dogs (Google?) any second now. The technology and user experience is that good.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/trying-out-jott/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSomething caught my eye on \u003ca href=\"http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/21/jott-leaves-beta-continues-to-do-one-thing-awesome/\"\u003eTechCrunch\u003c/a\u003e the other day: \u003ca href=\"http://jott.com/\"\u003eJott\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJott is a free voice-to-text transcription service. You sign-up, confirm your email address, then pair it to your cell phone. After that, you can dial the Jott Number (1-866-JOTT-321) then dictate an up to 15 second note. It then emails that note to you (well, a link to it in the free version). You can also schedule that note to be forwarded via SMS as a reminder to you.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trying out 'Jott'"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Geeze\u0026hellip;I can barely walk.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/quote-of-the-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Geeze\u0026hellip;I can barely walk.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote of the day"},{"content":"You might be a baptist and just not know it :-) D\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Aug 0, 2008\nYou might be a baptist and just not know it :-) Did this involve a casserole?\nROFL!!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/quote-of-the-day-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"you-might-be-a-baptist-and-just-not-know-it---d\"\u003eYou might be a baptist and just not know it :-) D\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 0, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou might be a baptist and just not know it :-) Did this involve a casserole?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eROFL!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Quote of the day (Comments)"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t\u0026rdquo; is the hardest phrase for me to deal with.\n\u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t\u0026rdquo; is much easier; it\u0026rsquo;s someone else telling me what\u0026rsquo;s not possible or not allowed. You heart it from infancy onwards. You become accustomed to its boundaries and its structure.\n\u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t,\u0026rdquo; though, is the phrase of capitulation, self-limitation, and self-doubt. It is at once the hallmark of maturity and wisdom and the harbinger of mediocrity and decline.\nI can\u0026rsquo;t; I\u0026rsquo;m broke\nI can\u0026rsquo;t; it\u0026rsquo;s wrong\nI can\u0026rsquo;t; it\u0026rsquo;s too far\nI can\u0026rsquo;t; my knees won\u0026rsquo;t take it\nI can\u0026rsquo;t; it\u0026rsquo;s too dangerous\nI can\u0026rsquo;t; it\u0026rsquo;s too risky\nI can\u0026rsquo;t; I\u0026rsquo;m afraid\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a mishmash of both wisdom and mediocrity in those phrases.\n* * *\nPhew\u0026hellip;on a brighter note, I find the more I move \u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t\u0026rdquo; from \u0026ldquo;someone told me I can\u0026rsquo;t\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;I told myself I can\u0026rsquo;t\u0026rdquo;, the better I deal with it. The latter is self-control, and that\u0026rsquo;s a fruit of maturity. The former is artificial, and is a fruit of immaturity\u0026ndash;someone else having to set your boundaries for you.\nMy meditations with God lately have involved the concept of readiness and capability. So long as I\u0026rsquo;m functioning as an automaton, dumbly obeying rules, fulfilling others\u0026rsquo; expectations, I\u0026rsquo;m useless and ill-prepared. Put another way, imagine putting a mean-ass Troll inside a pen with a 20 foot electrified fence with razorwire at the top.\nReasonably safe? Sure, if you\u0026rsquo;re outside the cage\u0026hellip;that doesn\u0026rsquo;t work so well with your wife and kids, though. They get hurt, just for ignoring the \u0026ldquo;DANGER KEEP OUT\u0026rdquo; sign and trying to love you and know you.\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;m working with an outside consultant on transforming that troll inside into something a tad more\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;human.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/i-cant....be-a-troll-anymore/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t\u0026rdquo; is the hardest phrase for me to deal with.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You can\u0026rsquo;t\u0026rdquo; is much easier; it\u0026rsquo;s someone else telling me what\u0026rsquo;s not possible or not allowed. You heart it from infancy onwards. You become accustomed to its boundaries and its structure.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t,\u0026rdquo; though, is the phrase of capitulation, self-limitation, and self-doubt. It is at once the hallmark of maturity and wisdom and the harbinger of mediocrity and decline.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I Can't....be a Troll anymore"},{"content":"Watched the morbid, buddy-comedy The Bucket List last night. I enjoyed it\u0026hellip;literally one of those \u0026ldquo;I laughed, I cried\u0026rdquo; kinda films, but for weird reasons. There are some genuinely good one-liners in the film, particularly the running gag about \u0026ldquo;The world\u0026rsquo;s most expensive coffee. Worth watching, but not if you\u0026rsquo;re in a bad mood. This movie is DEPRESSING.\nI was sad much of the time I watched this film, for lots of personal reasons. My family\u0026rsquo;s on intimate terms with cancer. I hate hospitals. I haven\u0026rsquo;t travelled and seen as much as I\u0026rsquo;d like in my life. I\u0026rsquo;ve got alot of broken relationships and estranged friends in my past. The memory of Maria\u0026rsquo;s dramatic birth via C-Section is still with me, so any scene where a couple says \u0026ldquo;goodbye\u0026rdquo; and operating room doors close is tough for me to watch.\nYeah, I\u0026rsquo;m a softie. Sue me.\nI\u0026rsquo;d love to take a pass at my own bucket list:\nHold my first grandchild and know s/he is a blessing from God.\nEnable someone disadvantaged to go to college and watch them excel\nTurn some laps on the Nuburgring\nSee Paris, Florence, Venice, Rome, and Athens.\nWatch the sunset from Golden Gate park in San Francisco.\nRide (or heck, fly!) an aerobatic plane.\nWalk across a state.\nGo Fishing and actually enjoy it\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/bucket-list/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWatched the morbid, buddy-comedy \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0825232/\"\u003eThe Bucket List\u003c/a\u003e last night. I enjoyed it\u0026hellip;literally one of those \u0026ldquo;I laughed, I cried\u0026rdquo; kinda films, but for weird reasons. There are some genuinely good one-liners in the film, particularly the running gag about \u0026ldquo;The world\u0026rsquo;s most expensive coffee. Worth watching, but not if you\u0026rsquo;re in a bad mood. This movie is DEPRESSING.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sad much of the time I watched this film, for lots of personal reasons. My family\u0026rsquo;s on intimate terms with cancer. I hate hospitals. I haven\u0026rsquo;t travelled and seen as much as I\u0026rsquo;d like in my life. I\u0026rsquo;ve got alot of broken relationships and estranged friends in my past. The memory of Maria\u0026rsquo;s dramatic birth via C-Section is still with me, so any scene where a couple says \u0026ldquo;goodbye\u0026rdquo; and operating room doors close is tough for me to watch.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bucket List"},{"content":"Welcome back to school! Time to start the process of turning impressionable youngsters into marketing machines. Thankfully, we don\u0026rsquo;t participate in that as I COMPLETELY disagree with it.\nBut wait! This year marks a first. The legislature slashed the budget for public schools so THIS year even tho Joey\u0026rsquo;s attending a public school, there are classroom fees, art fees, etc that have to be paid.\nEnter Pampered Chef. Everybody LOVES pampered chef (tho I\u0026rsquo;m personally sick of it - mostly because I lust after it badly and can\u0026rsquo;t afford most of it). However, if you happen to have disposable income:\nJoey is selling Pampered Chef. 20% of what he sells goes directly to cover HIS PERSONAL fees and classroom costs. So\u0026hellip;.if you can help us out, please see us directly before Labor Day. You can pay by check, cash, or credit card when you place the order and then we will deliver it to you once it\u0026rsquo;s received from the school (approximately the middle of September). However, if you don\u0026rsquo;t see us, LUCKY you! You can order directly through the website at http://www.pamperedchev.biz/leighreed and enter WESTERN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL as the host. Your order will be shipped directly to your home.\nAlso, as an aside, they are selling raffle tickets for $5/tic for a $150 Pampered Chef shopping spree. Please let us know if you are interested in one of those also.\nPlease help us out if you can! The less we have to put toward school fees the better! And if anyone out there wants to give me a fully funded Pampered Chef spending account, I\u0026rsquo;ll take it if you pay the gift taxes! LOL Thanks!\nSincerely,\nWhitney\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/guest-editorial--enter-pampered-chef/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWelcome back to school! Time to start the process of turning impressionable youngsters into marketing machines. Thankfully, we don\u0026rsquo;t participate in that as I COMPLETELY disagree with it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut wait! This year marks a first. The legislature slashed the budget for public schools so THIS year even tho Joey\u0026rsquo;s attending a public school, there are classroom fees, art fees, etc that have to be paid.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEnter Pampered Chef. Everybody LOVES pampered chef (tho I\u0026rsquo;m personally sick of it - mostly because I lust after it badly and can\u0026rsquo;t afford most of it). However, if you happen to have disposable income:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Guest Editorial -- Enter Pampered Chef"},{"content":"Disposable Income\u0026hellip;I bet Pampered Chef sells a ni\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Aug 5, 2008\nDisposable Income\u0026hellip;I bet Pampered Chef sells a nice container to store that in.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/guest-editorial--enter-pampered-chev-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"disposable-incomei-bet-pampered-chef-sells-a-ni\"\u003eDisposable Income\u0026hellip;I bet Pampered Chef sells a ni\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDisposable Income\u0026hellip;I bet Pampered Chef sells a nice container to store that in.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Guest Editorial -- Enter Pampered Chev (Comments)"},{"content":"First things first, let me say\u0026ndash;my wife\u0026rsquo;s Skyline Chili recipie is DELICIOUS.\n* * *\nI got Jeff to come with me to the event (\u0026ldquo;I need an adult. I NEED AN ADULT!!\u0026rdquo;) to \u0026hellip;ahem\u0026hellip;keep me grounded. Plus I figured he\u0026rsquo;d enjoy it.\nSo we headed down there, and I got right into a 135i convertible, including iDrive. We tooled around Lexington on the prescribed course for a half-hour, then returned.\nHighs:\nWhat an engine. That twin-turbo 300hp beauty\u0026hellip;wow\u0026hellip;liquid power from 1500rpm all the way to redline\nThe cockpit has that snug feeling of an E30, right down to the instrument panel.\nInitial turn-in is astounding. I believe my E30 has perfect steering, but when this little beast is given steering input, it changes directions RIGHT NOW. No weight transfer. No suspension loading of any kind\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s like the car knew where you were thinking of going and had predetermined the fastest way to get there.\nLows:\nToo much crap: iDrive, automatic transmission, Sirius radio, display screen. Blech. Give me a 128i coupe with a manual transmission, and simple radio, and that wonderful chassis strapped to it. That\u0026rsquo;s the real car right there. Or, better yet, slap that turbo motor in same and sell it to the Club Racers. (I think BMW\u0026rsquo;s doing just that, with the forthcoming \u0026rsquo;tii\u0026rsquo; version)\nConvertible. Meh.\nPricey. The Euro/$$ echange rate isn\u0026rsquo;t going to make that any better.\nBasically, the car\u0026rsquo;s like a RWD MINI Cooper, with loads more horsepower. No WAY I\u0026rsquo;d pay for a new one, but a gently used 128i MT w/a sport package? Sweet, sweet car, that.\nGetting back in my E30 wasn\u0026rsquo;t nearly the let down it was last year. Sure, the 1-series is a fabulous car, but so is my trusty E30, valvetrain noise and all.\n* * *\nAlso, I stayed on course, within the speed limit, and at a yaw angle of +/- 2 degrees at all times. No cops in sight, and no one screaming at me over cell phone.\nAltogether, this years\u0026rsquo; event seemed more organized and \u0026ldquo;put together\u0026rdquo; than last year\u0026rsquo;s. My compliments to all involved.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/not-so-jazzed--135i-convertible/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFirst things first, let me say\u0026ndash;my wife\u0026rsquo;s Skyline Chili recipie is DELICIOUS.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI got Jeff to come with me to the event (\u0026ldquo;I need an adult. I NEED AN ADULT!!\u0026rdquo;) to \u0026hellip;ahem\u0026hellip;keep me grounded. Plus I figured he\u0026rsquo;d enjoy it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we headed down there, and I got right into a 135i convertible, including iDrive. We tooled around Lexington on the prescribed course for a half-hour, then returned.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Not so Jazzed--135i Convertible"},{"content":"And I did enjoy it. But you\u0026rsquo;re too kind - we were \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Aug 5, 2008\nAnd I did enjoy it. But you\u0026rsquo;re too kind - we were briefly off course when I had you make a left instead of a right down by the airport.\nCool car, but after seeing the stickers over there, it\u0026rsquo;s great to climb back into (or onto) the paid-for vehicle.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/not-so-jazzed--135i-convertible-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"and-i-did-enjoy-it-but-youre-too-kind---we-were-\"\u003eAnd I did enjoy it. But you\u0026rsquo;re too kind - we were \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I did enjoy it. But you\u0026rsquo;re too kind - we were briefly off course when I had you make a left instead of a right down by the airport.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCool car, but after seeing the stickers over there, it\u0026rsquo;s great to climb back into (or onto) the paid-for vehicle.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Not so Jazzed--135i Convertible (Comments)"},{"content":"Anyone who\u0026rsquo;s known me for more than a week knows I\u0026rsquo;m a Dave Ramsey fan. In 2001, I discovered Dave\u0026rsquo;s book Financial Peace in the bargain bin of a remaindered-book store and bought it for $4. (Appropriate, given Dave says \u0026ldquo;Never pay retail\u0026rdquo;!)\nAt the time, I had an awesome job right out of college and no student loan debt. I had a 2 year note on my yuppie-mobile Volkswagen (but hey, I *deserved* that car, right?) I did pretty much anything I wanted, anytime, by simply swiping a credit card. However, I kept wondering where all my money went. I didn\u0026rsquo;t have a budget, and I had nary a wisp of a financial plan. Money just flowed like water into, then out of, my hands.\nDave set me straight. I got on a budget, still had plenty of money to play with, but I started saving. I paid off the VW, then bought my next car with cash.\n* * *\nFast forward 7 years. I see some of the darker, more difficult sides of the Dave Ramsey plan, and I\u0026rsquo;d like to talk about them. These aren\u0026rsquo;t criticisms, they\u0026rsquo;re just issues you might encounter that you need to understand. This is not a \u0026ldquo;quick fix\u0026rdquo; program. Like a proper diet, it\u0026rsquo;s a change in lifestyle, and your old lifestyle may come calling at inopportune times. The big thing is, if you go through any of these, understand you\u0026rsquo;re not alone and you\u0026rsquo;re not abnormal. You can\u0026rsquo;t be rah-rah/woo-hoo all the time. It\u0026rsquo;s work, and it\u0026rsquo;s a journey:\nYou will be ridiculed. Wanted to get this one out of the way right off the bat. Gird your loins\u0026ndash;you\u0026rsquo;re going to be attacked. People will happily agree on religion, abortion, and Rap music before they\u0026rsquo;ll agree about money. Money is touchy. Whey you start brown-bagging your lunch or you sell that hot car (GTO) that the bank owned 90% of, the remarks will begin. \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s the point of life if you won\u0026rsquo;t enjoy it?\u0026rdquo; is a good one. \u0026ldquo;I use debt as a tool. I buy things with OPM\u0026ndash;Other People\u0026rsquo;s Money!\u0026rdquo; is another. Not a big deal\u0026hellip;just prepare for it, and don\u0026rsquo;t feel bad.\nYou will get tired of it. Dave calls it \u0026ldquo;gazelle intensity\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;running away from debt like a gazelle running from a lion trying to devour it. Thing is, a gazelle isn\u0026rsquo;t running a marathon. Financial peace is a marathon, not a sprint!! Just like a diet, it\u0026rsquo;s easy to begin, and hard to follow. After months and months of accounting for every dollar, you\u0026rsquo;d give anything for a vacation, a shopping spree, or a neat toy. Impulse-buying becomes your secret pleasure. A Candy Bar at K-Mart, a couple of \u0026ldquo;extra\u0026rdquo; things at the autoparts store your don\u0026rsquo;t really need. This is just like a diet\u0026ndash;you lose control bit-by-bit. I recommend having someone keeping you accountable (a spouse is perfect), and being honest with yourself. If you can save $50 extra a month, or you need to splurge $50 per month to staunch your impulse-buy gremlin, choose the latter.\nYou will feel like it never ends. This nearly got me about a month ago. I stared at the debt we have on our van and it began driving me crazy. Literally, obsessively crazy. It felt like a mountain I\u0026rsquo;d never climb. This is where it\u0026rsquo;s good to gain some perspective. We\u0026rsquo;ve paid-off 1/3rd of the balance in 10 months\u0026ndash;not too shabby! Also, when you\u0026rsquo;re feeling like this, express these feelings to your accountability partner, especially if its your spouse. Chances are, they\u0026rsquo;re seeing a different obstacle, and it\u0026rsquo;s just as daunting.\nYou\u0026rsquo;re not going back. Forget your old self; he\u0026rsquo;s history. This is what I never got until this week: Part of what was holding me back was a desire to get back to that footloose \u0026amp; fancy-free mentality I had before I was married. That desire was causing my impatience and impulse buying\u0026ndash;I just wasn\u0026rsquo;t satisfied. A key piece for me was realizing once this van debt is \u0026ldquo;over\u0026rdquo;, and then I do have a 6-month emergency fund, and I am putting 15% in my 401(k), and I am fully-funding my 3 kids\u0026rsquo; college funds\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m still not going back to who I was. The journey and changes one must undergo in that crucible change you indelibly. Own that, accept it, and move on.\nIn summary, like Christianity, some people expect Financial Peace to be easy and perfect. It\u0026rsquo;s just the opposite, in both cases. When that happens, understand you\u0026rsquo;re not a failure. You aren\u0026rsquo;t missing something; instead, you\u0026rsquo;re experiencing the same struggles we all do. As the old hymn goes:\nLife is easy when you\u0026rsquo;re up on the mountain\nAnd you\u0026rsquo;ve got peace of mind like you\u0026rsquo;ve never known.\nBut then things change and you\u0026rsquo;re down in the valley.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t lose faith for you\u0026rsquo;re never alone.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/dave-ramsey-down-in-the-valley/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnyone who\u0026rsquo;s known me for more than a week knows I\u0026rsquo;m a \u003ca href=\"http://www.daveramsey.com/\"\u003eDave Ramsey\u003c/a\u003e fan. In 2001, I discovered Dave\u0026rsquo;s book \u003cem\u003eFinancial Peace\u003c/em\u003e in the bargain bin of a remaindered-book store and bought it for $4. (Appropriate, given Dave says \u0026ldquo;Never pay retail\u0026rdquo;!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt the time, I had an awesome job right out of college and no student loan debt. I had a 2 year note on my yuppie-mobile Volkswagen (but hey, I *deserved* that car, right?) I did pretty much anything I wanted, anytime, by simply swiping a credit card. However, I kept wondering where all my money went. I didn\u0026rsquo;t have a budget, and I had nary a wisp of a financial plan. Money just flowed like water into, then out of, my hands.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dave Ramsey: Down in the Valley"},{"content":"Well, today\u0026rsquo;s the day. At 11am, I have an appointment to drive a BMW 135i in the Susan Komen Drive for the Cure at Don Jacobs BMW.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s hope for my sake it doesn\u0026rsquo;t turn out like last year\nI\u0026rsquo;ve never even *sat* in a 1-series, but it\u0026rsquo;s supposedly the reincarnation of the E30\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;though, no E30 came from the factory with a twin-turbo 300hp engine. Tee-hee.\n* * *\nIn other news, Maria decided that 4:30 was the proper time to get up this morning, and refused to go back to sleep. Whitney took her from 4:30-\u0026gt;5:30 and I got her from then on. Nothing quite like your daughter smiling at you, looking out the door and going, \u0026ldquo;Slide?\u0026rdquo; when it\u0026rsquo;s 5:45 am.\nThought: Beach vacations with Re-Re are going to be FUN. \u0026ldquo;MommyDaddyItsAlmostDawn\u0026hellip;canwegodowntothebeach\u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo;lookfershells? Huh?! Canwecanwecanwe? huh?! How \u0026lsquo;bout now?!\u0026rdquo;\n:-) Oh well, I\u0026rsquo;m a morning person, too.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/jazzed/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, today\u0026rsquo;s the day. At 11am, I have an appointment to drive a BMW 135i in the Susan Komen Drive for the Cure at Don Jacobs BMW.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s hope for my sake it \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/driving-for-the-cure...-or-how-i-got-blacklisted.../\" title=\"driving for cure\"\u003edoesn\u0026rsquo;t turn out like last year\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve never even *sat* in a 1-series, but it\u0026rsquo;s supposedly the reincarnation of the E30\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;though, no E30 came from the factory with a twin-turbo 300hp engine. Tee-hee.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jazzed"},{"content":"Wow, hope you can control yourself in the bimmer ;\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Aug 5, 2008\nWow, hope you can control yourself in the bimmer ;-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/jazzed-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"wow-hope-you-can-control-yourself-in-the-bimmer-\"\u003eWow, hope you can control yourself in the bimmer ;\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWow, hope you can control yourself in the bimmer ;-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Jazzed (Comments)"},{"content":"I sit beside Toner Creek on a bench, regarding building 082, or as I call it, The Crystal Palace. It\u0026rsquo;s chilly (!) in the shade today. A light Northerly breeze combined with a persistent cold front\u0026ndash;we had a record low of 53 degrees this morning.\nLunch today is a banana and some ABC-123\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip;yep I\u0026rsquo;m on the Dave Ramsey diet again.\nDecided last night to plow some more money into the E30. As Whitney said, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s something you love. Enjoy it!\u0026rdquo; So, I\u0026rsquo;ve planned:\nA new set of Powerflex Control Arms\nSome offset Control Arm Bushings (CABs)\nA set of Team Dynamics Pro Race 15x7 wheels: Some sticky performance rubber of some sort\u0026hellip;haven\u0026rsquo;t decided.\nA new set of springs \u0026amp; shocks all round\nWhitney reports the Beamer\u0026rsquo;s running very rich at startup\u0026hellip;need to look over the diagnostics in the Bentley manual again. I\u0026rsquo;ve had a niggling suspicion the coolant temp sensor\u0026rsquo;s not telling the ECU the engine\u0026rsquo;s warm.\nMaria\u0026rsquo;s 18 months and 1 day old today, and she\u0026rsquo;s a joy\u0026ndash;precocious, talkative, stubborn, and full of laughter. I hope I can provide her with all the opportunities in the world.\nSome things hurt, and probably will go on hurting for a long time. There\u0026rsquo;s no help for that. My new commitment is dealing with that melancholy feeling rather than ignoring it. Actually dealing with stuff?? HOW DO YOU PEOPLE LIVE LIKE THIS?! :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/lunch-hour/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI sit beside Toner Creek on a bench, regarding building 082, or as I call it, The Crystal Palace. It\u0026rsquo;s chilly (!) in the shade today. A light Northerly breeze combined with a persistent cold front\u0026ndash;we had a record low of 53 degrees this morning.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLunch today is a banana and some ABC-123\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip;yep I\u0026rsquo;m on the Dave Ramsey diet again.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDecided last night to plow some more money into the \u003ca href=\"http://bimmerwhoas.blogspot.com/\"\u003eE30\u003c/a\u003e. As Whitney said, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s something you love. Enjoy it!\u0026rdquo; So, I\u0026rsquo;ve planned:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lunch Hour"},{"content":"Today, Whitney and I await reports from Joey\u0026rsquo;s new school and his new teacher. He\u0026rsquo;s moving into the 2nd grade at his new school, and we\u0026rsquo;re hoping this is a new beginning. Joe didn\u0026rsquo;t have a banner 1st grade year\u0026ndash;by Christmas break, he\u0026rsquo;d been branded a troublemaker by his teacher, and by Spring Break, he was living up to that moniker. He seemed bored, unengaged, and lethargic.\nIn other words, it sounded just like me when I was in 1st grade. My teacher, Mrs. Moore was a stern woman with a round face, a rounder body, and a beat-the-drum teaching style. We sat for 2 hours straight everyday learning phonics. Mrs. Moore had this peculiar style of using a white and red piece of chalk in the same hand. I can still see her writing on the (green) board, showing us how the \u0026rsquo;e\u0026rsquo; on the ends of words like \u0026lsquo;pale\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;sale\u0026rsquo; made the vowel a long sound.\nSo yeah, 1st grade was painful. I didn\u0026rsquo;t get into trouble like Joey; I practiced nonviolent resistence\u0026ndash;I faked sick like my life depended on it, like I had an allergy to school. I figured out that if I could moan \u0026amp; groan enough, my mom would take me down the road and leave me with my Uncle Donnie, who worked nights and had cable TV. Can you say USA Cartoon Express? Yep. Donnie was a very cool guy.\nAh, but I digress. Time marched on; I survived 1st grade and the ensuing summer, and landed in 2nd grade at LBJ Elementary. I went into second grade in \u0026lsquo;Fa\u0026rsquo; complex (the school had 4-classrooms in 1 big room called \u0026lsquo;complexes\u0026rsquo;\u0026ndash;all the rage in 1966 when it was designed). The complexes were named after the notes in that song Vicki hates:\nDo\nRe\nMi\nFa\nSo\nLa\nTi\nInterestingly, my complex had 2nd and 3rd grade students, and I would stay there for 2 years, moving across the slidy-drawer thing into Mrs. Dora Holbrook\u0026rsquo;s class the next year. Ah, but this year, this annus mirabilis! The birds sang, the angels danced, and I had Miss (yep, unmarried!) Deaton. She was young, exciting, loved to teach, and she wore it on her face every day. From the hot days of August, through the chills of November, ending in the bursting of May\u0026ndash;she wasn\u0026rsquo;t a teacher, she was the teacher. She saw me for what I was\u0026ndash;a pretty smart kid who was as lazy as they came. She wouldn\u0026rsquo;t stand for it.\nMiss Deaton set me straight. She made me love learning and never doubt my potential. Forget absenteeism\u0026ndash;I wanted to be EARLY. I hated snow-days. I never got sick. I wanted to crack open those MacMillan reading books with the gaudy red colors and smack Lauren Griffith when she got an answer in before I did. Miss Deaton would ask us to talk about things outside the curriculum we\u0026rsquo;d learned\u0026ndash;horseback riding, ATVs, politics, art. I remember having read a thing about Raleigh\u0026rsquo;s lost colony on Roanoke, Virginia, and we just talked about it in class the next day. She tolerated the egotists and wallflowers among us equally, but brooked no disrespect, even for Terry who kept messing his drawers.\nIt was a special class, and a special time. Dad bought the farm and we became de factor farmers. We contemplated moving me from the Breathitt County Schools to my new \u0026lsquo;home\u0026rsquo; county, Lee. Fatefully, that never happened, and I\u0026rsquo;d spend the rest of my primary and secondary career a Bobcat, who lived a long-distance call away from all my friends.\nSo, I hope Joe has a similar metamorphosis in his new situation, and we can all look back on this as a turning point.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/reflections-second-grade/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday, Whitney and I await reports from Joey\u0026rsquo;s new school and his new teacher. He\u0026rsquo;s moving into the 2nd grade at his new school, and we\u0026rsquo;re hoping this is a new beginning. Joe didn\u0026rsquo;t have a banner 1st grade year\u0026ndash;by Christmas break, he\u0026rsquo;d been branded a troublemaker by his teacher, and by Spring Break, he was living up to that moniker. He seemed bored, unengaged, and lethargic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn other words, it sounded just like me when I was in 1st grade. My teacher, Mrs. Moore was a stern woman with a round face, a rounder body, and a beat-the-drum teaching style. We sat for 2 hours straight everyday learning phonics. Mrs. Moore had this peculiar style of using a white and red piece of chalk in the same hand. I can still see her writing on the (green) board, showing us how the \u0026rsquo;e\u0026rsquo; on the ends of words like \u0026lsquo;pale\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;sale\u0026rsquo; made the vowel a long sound.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reflections: Second Grade"},{"content":"Very nicely done! Jeff Roberts - Aug 5, 2008\nVery nicely done!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/reflections-second-grade-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"very-nicely-done\"\u003eVery nicely done!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVery nicely done!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Reflections: Second Grade (Comments)"},{"content":"10:45 am: Remark that things look like vaporware, and that functionality and scope has been cut enough that HALF THE ROOM questions the usefulness of the thing we\u0026rsquo;re discussing.\nBut hey, so long as we\u0026rsquo;re on time and under budget, right?\nThank Heaven I only have 1 of these turdly meetings today.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/-joyous-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e10:45 am: Remark that things look like vaporware, and that functionality and scope has been cut enough that HALF THE ROOM questions the usefulness of the thing we\u0026rsquo;re discussing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut hey, so long as we\u0026rsquo;re on time and under budget, right?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThank Heaven I only have 1 of these turdly meetings today.\u003c/p\u003e","title":":-) Joyous day"},{"content":"Mark: Hey if you guys need me to get rid of Harold, I can do it in 3 minutes flat. Just let me show up and start talking.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/quote-of-the-day--harold-repellant/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMark: Hey if you guys need me to get rid of Harold, I can do it in 3 minutes flat. Just let me show up and start talking.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote of the Day--Harold Repellant"},{"content":"That can\u0026rsquo;t be right - I wasn\u0026rsquo;t even at work today!\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Aug 1, 2008\nThat can\u0026rsquo;t be right - I wasn\u0026rsquo;t even at work today! :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/quote-of-the-day--harold-repellant-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"that-cant-be-right---i-wasnt-even-at-work-today\"\u003eThat can\u0026rsquo;t be right - I wasn\u0026rsquo;t even at work today!\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat can\u0026rsquo;t be right - I wasn\u0026rsquo;t even at work today! :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Quote of the Day--Harold Repellant (Comments)"},{"content":" [Life] is a tale\nTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,\nSignifying nothing.\n(Macbeth V:5)\nI\u0026rsquo;m not buying a motorcycle.\nThose of you who had \u0026ldquo;He Comes to His Senses\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Aug 4th\u0026rdquo; in the pool, congratulations.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/well-that-was-special..../","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[Life] is a tale\u003cbr\u003e\nTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,\u003cbr\u003e\nSignifying nothing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Macbeth V:5)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not buying a motorcycle.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose of you who had \u0026ldquo;He Comes to His Senses\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Aug 4th\u0026rdquo; in the pool, congratulations.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Well, that was special...."},{"content":"Dude! Jeff Roberts - Aug 1, 2008\nDude!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/well-that-was-special....-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"dude\"\u003eDude!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDude!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Well, that was special.... (Comments)"},{"content":"This is not a rant. This is simply a question:\nAside from Jeff, and my Mom \u0026amp; Dad, people hate the idea of me getting a motorcycle:\n\u0026ldquo;Do you know how stupid you\u0026rsquo;d look on a motorcycle. Poooooo-ser!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You don\u0026rsquo;t strike me as the motorcycle type.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You really ought to let this motorcycle thing slide.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;What does your WIFE think of all this?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Harold, I really think a man should do what he wants, but I really hope you don\u0026rsquo;t get a motorcycle. We like you an awful lot.\u0026rdquo;\nInsert sound of MIL biting her tongue\nWell, point of fact, my wife is a study in dichotomy: She loves to talk with me ABOUT motorcycles\u0026ndash;different styles, how the ride, pros/cons, etc. She just won\u0026rsquo;t consider me on one as a practical matter. Loves the idea; hates the thought.\nThen there\u0026rsquo;s the other group, encouraging me the same way you might encourage a snipe hunt: Simply for the trainwreck factor. They want to see me fail, spectacularly, preferably with video:\nSo, in summary, where\u0026rsquo;s my responsibility here? This isn\u0026rsquo;t adultery, idol worship, or financial ruin\u0026ndash;the Bible\u0026rsquo;s pretty silent on motorcycle ownership \u0026amp; operation. To a part of me, hearing flat \u0026lsquo;No\u0026rsquo; makes about as much sense as being forbidden to eat cornflakes.\nTo another part of me, I get it. It\u0026rsquo;s scary. It\u0026rsquo;s risky. Other people have a habit of squishing motorcyclists for sport. Worst case scenario is I end-up a drooling vegetable, another statistic on the \u0026ldquo;Why bikes are dangerous\u0026rdquo; bandwagon. No amount of life insurance is going to replace someone you love, especially if what caused their demise is preventable.\nI rationalize the above with the same sort of Eastern Kentucky fatalism I\u0026rsquo;ve always had: You\u0026rsquo;ll die when it\u0026rsquo;s your appointed time, be it slipping in the shower or meeting the wrong end of a tractor/trailer. Others reject that.\n::sigh:: I don\u0026rsquo;t know. I have a supreme responsibility to protect and care for my family, but I LIKE this shiny new thing I\u0026rsquo;ve learned to do.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/on-responsibility/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is not a rant. This is simply a question:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAside from \u003ca href=\"http://jjetsam3.blogspot.com/\"\u003eJeff\u003c/a\u003e, and my Mom \u0026amp; Dad, people hate the idea of me getting a motorcycle:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Do you know how \u003cem\u003estupid\u003c/em\u003e you\u0026rsquo;d look on a motorcycle. Poooooo-ser!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You don\u0026rsquo;t strike me as the motorcycle type.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You really ought to let this motorcycle thing slide.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;What does your WIFE think of all this?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Harold, I really think a man should do what he wants, but I really hope you don\u0026rsquo;t get a motorcycle. We like you an awful lot.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Responsibility"},{"content":"I was up at 7 at Dad\u0026rsquo;s house with one mission for the day\u0026ndash;Bike shopping. So, Joey, Dad, and I piled into his 2008 GMC truck and headed for Gateway Cycles in Mt. Sterling.\nAs I\u0026rsquo;d learned earlier in the week, Dealers just don\u0026rsquo;t give Test rides. Well, pish-tosh\u0026ndash;Gateway DOES. Worked with Robert and he set me up with three very interesting cycles that I tooled around the parking lot for the better part of an hour.\nFirst up was the Kawasaki Versys:\nThis bike was a real sweetheart\u0026ndash;lithe, responsive, fuel-injected, and balanced. It\u0026rsquo;s a 650, so there\u0026rsquo;s enough oomph there. Dad hated it after his test-ride, but I thought it was GREAT. Great to the tune of $7000. Yay.\nNext up was the 650 Ninja. Same engine, just wrapped in a true sportbike chassis and tuned for more high-up power:\nI liked it, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t like the sportbike positioning much, and Dad DEFINITELY didn\u0026rsquo;t care for it.\nThe Ninja 500 felt like I was riding a toy\u0026ndash;no torque down low and the bike was just physically much too small for my frame.\nThe Versys really had me, though.\nNext, we traversed to Richmond and went to the Yamaha dealer (I-75 Yamaha) and the Honda shop, but neither allowed test rides. The Honda shop had 2 Rebel 250\u0026rsquo;s that I\u0026rsquo;d have liked to ride, if for no other reason that to let Dad comment on how ridiculous I looked on it :-)\nAlas, no joy\u0026ndash;arrange financing, sign all the paperwork, and the test ride is the \u0026ldquo;acceptance\u0026rdquo; test. Yeah, no thanks. Why couldn\u0026rsquo;t these guys be more like Gateway Cycles?!\nSo, the icing on the day was coming back to Jackson and getting a prolonged test ride on my uncle\u0026rsquo;s Yamaha V-Star 650:\nAs my Dad said: \u0026ldquo;Now THIS is a bike.\u0026rdquo;\nYep. Aside from the mal-adjusted clutch (engaged in the last 1/4\u0026quot; of travel!), the bike was tons of fun, with plenty of power as I rolled onto the throttle. I did manage to find neutral more often than I\u0026rsquo;d like, and my left foot often mistook the forward footrest for the gear shifter.\nThe V-Star didn\u0026rsquo;t want to handle at low-speeds very well, but I chalked that up to there being ZERO friction zone in the clutch. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t ride the clutch, so I couldn\u0026rsquo;t use that big v-twin\u0026rsquo;s gyroscopic motion to balance the bike at slow speeds.\nOddly, at the end of the day, I felt disappointed. Seems like (per usual) I want something not in the traditional crotchrocket/cruiser dichotomy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/three-hundred-miles-3-dealers-1-awesome-tiring-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was up at 7 at Dad\u0026rsquo;s house with one mission for the day\u0026ndash;Bike shopping. So, Joey, Dad, and I piled into his 2008 GMC truck and headed for \u003ca href=\"http://www.gatewaycycles.com/\"\u003eGateway Cycles\u003c/a\u003e in Mt. Sterling.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs I\u0026rsquo;d learned earlier in the week, Dealers just don\u0026rsquo;t give Test rides. Well, pish-tosh\u0026ndash;Gateway DOES. Worked with Robert and he set me up with three very interesting cycles that I tooled around the parking lot for the better part of an hour.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Three hundred miles, 3 dealers, 1 awesome tiring day"},{"content":"GM Loses $15.5 Billion in 2Q\n\u0026hellip;or \u0026ldquo;What does it look like to lose about $2000 per second?\u0026rdquo;\nAlfred P. Sloan is rolling in his grave somewhere. GM has the financial equivalent of flesh-eating bacteria, cannibalizing its own funds to stay afloat, mortgaging its own brands and capital to operate.\nThe estimates I saw yesterday were in the $7 Billion to $9 Billion range. Wow.\nWe need some moniker besides \u0026ldquo;The Perfect Storm\u0026rdquo; for this automotive maelstrom\u0026hellip;this is more like that 200 ft Tsunami at the end of Deep Impact\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/08/gm-functionally-bankrupt/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/business/02gm.html?ref=business\"\u003eGM Loses $15.5 Billion in 2Q\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;or \u0026ldquo;What does it look like to lose about $2000 \u003cem\u003eper second\u003c/em\u003e?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Sloan\"\u003eAlfred P. Sloan\u003c/a\u003e is rolling in his grave somewhere. GM has the financial equivalent of flesh-eating bacteria, cannibalizing its own funds to stay afloat, mortgaging its own brands and capital to operate.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe estimates I saw yesterday were in the $7 Billion to $9 Billion range. Wow.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe need some moniker besides \u0026ldquo;The Perfect Storm\u0026rdquo; for this automotive maelstrom\u0026hellip;this is more like that 200 ft Tsunami at the end of \u003cem\u003eDeep Impact\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"GM: Functionally bankrupt?"},{"content":"Finally cowboy\u0026rsquo;d-up and headed to a dealership to sit on some bikes.\nWent with Joey to Bell\u0026rsquo;s Honda here in Georgetown, and it was a pretty decent experience.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t have salesmen climbing all over me or pressuring me. I did find out that they do NOT give test-rides until they\u0026rsquo;re sure you\u0026rsquo;re capable of buying the bike, and in fact that if you wreck the bike on the test-ride, you\u0026rsquo;ve bought it automatically.\nNice.\nSo, anyway, I finally got to see an Suzuki SV650-S (the one with the fairing on the front) and I definitely found it wasn\u0026rsquo;t for me: The handlebars were VERY forward and down, like a true \u0026ldquo;crotch rocket\u0026rdquo; sport-bike, and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t comfortable. By contrast the GSX650 to the left was like slipping on a glove: Comfortable and natural, right down to the way my thighs grasped the tank on both sides. NICE!\n* * *\nAnd now the ranty-part: It seems motorcycle dealerships are like a car dealership with only two models: a Lamborghini Gallardo and a Dodge Viper SRT-10. One type is a high-strung penis enhancing machine (the sportbikes, particularly the liter-plus bikes) and the other is a high-torque penis enhancing machine (the loud and proud cruisers). See a trend here? Where are the bikes for people who want reliable, fun transportation at a reasonable price?\nNot to be crass, but I\u0026rsquo;m not looking to get laid . I\u0026rsquo;m looking to get to work, save gas, and have fun doing it.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t blame the dealership\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re gonna stock what they can sell, and that looks like bruising cruiser bikes and 150hp+ organ-donation machines.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/cyclefever-08-finally-went-to-a-dealership/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFinally cowboy\u0026rsquo;d-up and headed to a dealership to sit on some bikes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWent with Joey to \u003ca href=\"http://www.bellshonda.com/\"\u003eBell\u0026rsquo;s Honda\u003c/a\u003e here in Georgetown, and it was a pretty decent experience.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn\u0026rsquo;t have salesmen climbing all over me or pressuring me. I did find out that they do NOT give test-rides until they\u0026rsquo;re sure you\u0026rsquo;re capable of buying the bike, and in fact that if you wreck the bike on the test-ride, you\u0026rsquo;ve bought it automatically.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cyclefever '08: Finally went to a dealership"},{"content":"I don\u0026rsquo;t know of a really good used bike place in t\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jul 4, 2008\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know of a really good used bike place in town, either. Huntsville, AL was better for that - there were several good sources.\nYeah, Jeff Kees pointed me at Recycles LLC in Danville. They seem to have a pretty good selection of old and new stuff.\nCool, let me know what you think if you get over there. Here\u0026rsquo;s an eBay listing\u0026hellip;just up in Cincy\u0026hellip;.\nhttp://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Motorcycles___1999-Suzuki-SV650-naked-red-low-miles-SV-650-great-cond_W0QQitemZ270259083830QQddnZMotorcyclesQQddiZ2283QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item270259083830\u0026amp;_trkparms=39%3A1%7C65%3A-1\u0026amp;_trksid=p4506.c0.m245.l1318\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/cyclefever-08-finally-went-to-a-dealership-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-dont-know-of-a-really-good-used-bike-place-in-t\"\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t know of a really good used bike place in t\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 4, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t know of a really good used bike place in town, either. Huntsville, AL was better for that - there were several good sources.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, Jeff Kees pointed me at Recycles LLC in Danville. They seem to have a pretty good selection of old and new stuff.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cyclefever '08: Finally went to a dealership (Comments)"},{"content":"Kawasaki Versys:\nSuzuki SV650:\nLike both of these because they\u0026rsquo;re \u0026lsquo;Naked\u0026rsquo; and seem like capable all-around bikes\u0026ndash;more comfortable than a sport bike, more sporty than a cruiser, can carry a passenger if desired.\nThey\u0026rsquo;re both pricey (relative to what I\u0026rsquo;d like to spend) and they\u0026rsquo;re \u0026gt; 600cc\u0026rsquo;s so that probably means higher insurance rates. Yay.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/some-handsome-bikes/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKawasaki Versys:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://thekneeslider.com/images/versys2.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuzuki SV650:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.bestbeginnermotorcycles.com/files/images/SV650K7.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLike both of these because they\u0026rsquo;re \u0026lsquo;Naked\u0026rsquo; and seem like capable all-around bikes\u0026ndash;more comfortable than a sport bike, more sporty than a cruiser, can carry a passenger if desired.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey\u0026rsquo;re both pricey (relative to what I\u0026rsquo;d like to spend) and they\u0026rsquo;re \u0026gt; 600cc\u0026rsquo;s so that probably means higher insurance rates. Yay.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some handsome bikes"},{"content":" Whitney - Jul 3, 2008\nThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re one sold car away from Disn\u0026hellip; HarryC - Jul 3, 2008\nMeh ;-)\nWe\u0026rsquo;re one sold car away from Disneyworld AND a used motorcycle for daddy.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s just a matter of manning-up and doing that rather painful (E30) or rather stupid (Camry) step.\nThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.\nOften enough.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/some-handsome-bikes-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4\u003e\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 3, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re one sold car away from Disn\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 3, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeh ;-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re one sold car away from Disneyworld AND a used motorcycle for daddy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s just a matter of manning-up and doing that rather painful (E30) or rather stupid (Camry) step.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some handsome bikes (Comments)"},{"content":"Heard a wonderful sermon from Warren French, our missionary-in-residence at Northside on Sunday. It was about how to deal with the relationship you have (or don\u0026rsquo;t have) with God\u0026ndash;this was a sermon aimed at \u0026ldquo;comfortable\u0026rdquo; Christians, who\u0026rsquo;ve let Satan come against them without realizing it.\nFull Disclosure: I believe in divine (and infernal) intervention\u0026ndash;that God and Satan are in a tug-of-war for people\u0026rsquo;s soul, and that it\u0026rsquo;s a battle that continues all one\u0026rsquo;s life. I understand little of the \u0026lsquo;why\u0026rsquo;; I just know what I\u0026rsquo;ve seen with my own eyes.\nAnywho, Warren preached on two small passages from Matthew, chapter 7. The first is 7:13-14\n\u0026ldquo;Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s easy to get lost, and hard to get to Heaven, even for \u0026ldquo;believers\u0026rdquo;. Scary stuff. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t get any easier down in verses 21-23:\n\u0026ldquo;Not everyone who says to me, \u0026lsquo;Lord, Lord,\u0026rsquo; will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, \u0026lsquo;Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?\u0026rsquo; Then I will tell them plainly, \u0026lsquo;I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!\u0026rsquo;\nYep. Pretty harsh, but Jesus is far from a meek guy: He was wholly man, yet wholly God, too. He hates sin; he hates hypocrites most of all.\nSo, what hope do we have, we comfortable masses who sit in our pews each Sunday? Warren offered three major points:\nPray. God wants a personal relationship with you. If you don\u0026rsquo;t pray, you\u0026rsquo;re a dead Christian. Paul tells us to pray without ceasing, to wrap ourselves in the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18). I\u0026rsquo;ve resisted Whitney\u0026rsquo;s admonitions about this for years. That leads me to\u0026hellip;\nRecognize your own pride. Pride is the root of most sin if you think about it, and it\u0026rsquo;s Satan\u0026rsquo;s tool in keeping us from confessing our transgressions and moving on. A guilty Christian is good to NO ONE, and the father of lies knows that. I\u0026rsquo;ve been there. I\u0026rsquo;ve LIVED THERE. I\u0026rsquo;m there no longer, by the grace of God. Start saying things in your prayer life (see? this builds on itself) like:\nLORD, this is too big for me.\nLORD, I know you\u0026rsquo;re bigger than this situation, and I have faith you\u0026rsquo;ll deliver me from it, through it, or by it. You are God.\nLORD, I don\u0026rsquo;t have all the answers.\nIn sum, get over yourself. God can\u0026rsquo;t use you until you lay it all out for Him.\nWalk with God: Warren had a great analogy for this\u0026ndash;some people walk with God 1 hour a week (in church). Some folks throw their God shoes on for Wednesday nights, too. Throughout the rest of the week, they\u0026rsquo;re wearing their \u0026ldquo;world\u0026rdquo; shoes. Walking with God means 24/7, shining that light. Literally, move (\u0026ldquo;walk\u0026rdquo;) with God, together. Does that mean a fake, happy, Ned Flanders-style life? Nope\u0026hellip;but Joyous, yes. Joy is the second of the fruits of the Spirit, the first being Love. If you have Love and Joy in your life, friend, you have fullness, no matter what.\nGod bless and keep you all. It was a wonderful sermon; just what I needed to hear to move out into the world again, with another layer (possibly, the first!) in my armor.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/sermon-response-killing-yourself/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHeard a wonderful sermon from Warren French, our missionary-in-residence at Northside on Sunday. It was about how to deal with the relationship you have (or don\u0026rsquo;t have) with God\u0026ndash;this was a sermon aimed at \u0026ldquo;comfortable\u0026rdquo; Christians, who\u0026rsquo;ve let Satan come against them without realizing it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFull Disclosure: I believe in divine (and infernal) intervention\u0026ndash;that God and Satan are in a tug-of-war for people\u0026rsquo;s soul, and that it\u0026rsquo;s a battle that continues all one\u0026rsquo;s life. I understand little of the \u0026lsquo;why\u0026rsquo;; I just know what I\u0026rsquo;ve seen with my own eyes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sermon response: \"Killing yourself\""},{"content":"Somewhere among the repetition, self-deprecation, and muscle-memory, I \u0026ldquo;got\u0026rdquo; slow speed handling yesterday. We started the day doing the dreaded \u0026ldquo;U-turn\u0026rdquo; excercise, where you have to take the bike into a box that\u0026rsquo;s 10 feet x 20 feet (roughly) and do a U-turn left AND a U turn right, exiting at the opposite corner. Maintaining momentum and engine RPM while remaining in the clutch friction zone was the key.\nOf course, on the bike, that cold academic paragraph requires a coordination of head, body, hands and feet that requires every part of your neuro-muscular system. In other words, \u0026ldquo;IT\u0026rsquo;S HARD\u0026rdquo;\nBut somewhere around the 3rd try, it became easier. I kept my head turned, and found the sweet spot on the clutch, and around 1/4 to 1/8th throttle. The bike stayed up and I was easily through the U-turns. I\u0026rsquo;m not saying I\u0026rsquo;d like to do that maneuver 20 times a day, but it\u0026rsquo;s a useful skill.\nThen we learned proper cornering technique for a 90- and 135-degree turn, both right and left. Here, my natural tendencies started coming out:\nBob: Say, you just need 12 to 17 miles per hour for this exercise. You don\u0026rsquo;t need to be going so fast.\nMe: But, it\u0026rsquo;s more fun that way.\nBob: You want fun? Come back for the experienced rider course and we\u0026rsquo;ll let you do that at 25mph on your own bike.\nSo yeah, I kept rolling-on a bit too much throttle until\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;we were practicing our quickstop exercise for the final exams (er\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;celebration of our skills\u0026rdquo;) and I somehow turned a 15mph exercise into a 30 mph exercise and promptly locked \u0026rsquo;em up through the braking zone. In front of everyone. Geeze, I felt stupid, and Bruce definitely let me hear about it!\nBut, thanks to that splash of cold water on my ego, the test went well. My scores (perfect is 0 points):\nU-turn: 0 points (w0000t)\nSwerve: 0 points\nQuickstop: 0 points (stopped 1 foot shorter than standard distance\u0026hellip;w000t)\nCornering: 5 points (trail-braked into the corner, like we do in autocross. That\u0026rsquo;s a big no-no in MSF basic rider course\u0026hellip;)\nSo, I just missed a perfect score. I was walking on sunshine, and still am today.\nNow, if I can just find a BIKE.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/msf-day-2-the-lighbulb/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSomewhere among the repetition, self-deprecation, and muscle-memory, I \u0026ldquo;got\u0026rdquo; slow speed handling yesterday. We started the day doing the dreaded \u0026ldquo;U-turn\u0026rdquo; excercise, where you have to take the bike into a box that\u0026rsquo;s 10 feet x 20 feet (roughly) and do a U-turn left AND a U turn right, exiting at the opposite corner. Maintaining momentum and engine RPM while remaining in the clutch friction zone was the key.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf course, on the bike, that cold academic paragraph requires a coordination of head, body, hands and feet that requires every part of your neuro-muscular system. In other words, \u0026ldquo;IT\u0026rsquo;S HARD\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MSF Day 2: The lighbulb"},{"content":"Home, home on the range\u0026hellip;\nWhere the Viragos and Nighthawks play.\nWhere seldom is heard\nA discouraging word.\nAnd you practice FINE-C all day.\nWell, not all day, just before and after EACH of the 9 exercises we went through in the 6 hours of July heat. I got a Honda Nighthawk 250cc, pretty much like this:\nBlack-on-black, with 5000 miles showing on the odo, and a darling sweetheart of a clutch. So, fact #1\u0026ndash;I look like a clown on a Nighthawk. I know because Whitney and Maria arrived at 6pm to spectate, and confirmed it.\nAnyway, so the course. Our group of 12 riders had a mix of 125cc and 250cc bikes, and we had a mix of people, from experienced riders (one guy showed-up on his GSX-R) down through, well, me.\nOur instructors are Bob (the ex-cop) and Bruce (the tubby guy who reminds me of my Uncle Arch). They\u0026rsquo;re great instructors, taking us through all the elements: How to get on a bike properly, startup, moving the bike, stopping, quick stops, slow-speed maneuvers, road-speed turns.\nLets get this out of the way\u0026ndash;Motorcycles are real sweetheart vehicles, provided you\u0026rsquo;re going over about 12 mph. Below that, they\u0026rsquo;re tempermental and bitchy, and they like to fall over. A large part of the course was how to maneuver at slow speeds, and so far I stink at it.\nTo illustrate: We did one session where we basically circled the parking lot on the perimeter at moderate speed in 2nd gear. The second phase of that was each straightaway became a 15mph slalom, one with gates 20 feet apart, the other with gates 30 feet apart. That was incredibly awesome\u0026ndash;I felt right at home, because that\u0026rsquo;s what we do on an autocross course. It felt natural and really got my spirits up.\nThen, I came tumbling back to reality\u0026ndash;the next exercise was the same setup, only performed at walking speed, now with offset gates. You couldn\u0026rsquo;t just wiggle your way through\u0026ndash;you had to crank this reluctant machine right and left. I struggled through it, managing to get it right maybe 1 or 2 times out of 5, enjoying myself not at all. During the debrief, they emphasized how this exercise is harder on smaller bikes, because they\u0026rsquo;re not too stable, especially with someone with my avoirdupois.\nThings perked up, but by the last of the 9 exercises, I just couldn\u0026rsquo;t focus and nearly dumped the bike on the Quickstop exercise. The same thing used to happen during autocross days\u0026ndash;too hot, too tired, too distracted.\nSo, key learnings:\n- Yeah, little bike probably isn\u0026rsquo;t gonna work for me. I felt folded-up like an accordion.\n- It seems very similar to flying a plane\u0026ndash;there\u0026rsquo;s a performance envelope to consider and a set of perishable skills to hone: Quickstops, slow-speed maneuvers, Slow/Look/Press/Roll for turns.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/msf-course-first-day-on-the-range/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHome, home on the range\u0026hellip;\u003cbr\u003e\nWhere the Viragos and Nighthawks play.\u003cbr\u003e\nWhere seldom is heard\u003cbr\u003e\nA discouraging word.\u003cbr\u003e\nAnd you practice FINE-C all day.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, not all day, just before and after EACH of the 9 exercises we went through in the 6 hours of July heat. I got a Honda Nighthawk 250cc, pretty much like this:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.motorcycle.com/specs/sites/mot/images/data/normal/2008_Honda_Nighthawk_250.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBlack-on-black, with 5000 miles showing on the odo, and a darling sweetheart of a clutch. So, fact #1\u0026ndash;I look like a clown on a Nighthawk. I know because Whitney and Maria arrived at 6pm to spectate, and confirmed it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MSF Course: First day on the range"},{"content":"You\u0026rsquo;re bringing back memories. Sadly those 2nd ge\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jul 0, 2008\nYou\u0026rsquo;re bringing back memories. Sadly those 2nd gear skills are necessary for the last few moments of the ride when you\u0026rsquo;re working your way through the parking lot, and that\u0026rsquo;s when you have to have some concentration left for people who are backing into you :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/msf-course-first-day-on-the-range-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"youre-bringing-back-memories-sadly-those-2nd-ge\"\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re bringing back memories. Sadly those 2nd ge\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 0, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re bringing back memories. Sadly those 2nd gear skills are necessary for the last few moments of the ride when you\u0026rsquo;re working your way through the parking lot, and that\u0026rsquo;s when you have to have some concentration left for people who are backing into you :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"MSF Course: First day on the range (Comments)"},{"content":"Well, this is the week.\nI\u0026rsquo;m taking my MSF training course this Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. I\u0026rsquo;m excited and a little scared\u0026ndash;my total experience on motorcycle is \u0026lt; 1 hour, and I\u0026rsquo;ve never operated a hand clutch or anything like that.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve read over the manual and tried to absorb what I can, learning many interesting things:\nSeventy percent of the braking on a motorcycle is done by the front wheel, but you should use both front and rear brakes all the time so you\u0026rsquo;re ready for a \u0026ldquo;maximum braking\u0026rdquo; situation.\nIf riding by yourself, you should ride left of the center in the lane to \u0026ldquo;protect\u0026rdquo; your lane. Essentially, you\u0026rsquo;re communicating to drivers around you that this is your lane, and they should respect that.\nIntersections are the work of Satan. Basically, on a bike you have to expect that no one sees you and that they\u0026rsquo;re going to disobey every traffic law, or else you end-up a bug-smear on the front of a Mack truck. Or, as my Dad puts it, \u0026ldquo;Ride defensively.\u0026rdquo;\nBeen resting on my laurels for so long, I hope I can learn something genuinely new.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/motorcycle-training-this-week.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, this is the week.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm186/mod812/motorcycle/GEDC0471.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm186/mod812/motorcycle/GEDC0471.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m taking my MSF training course this Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. I\u0026rsquo;m excited and a little scared\u0026ndash;my total experience on motorcycle is \u0026lt; 1 hour, and I\u0026rsquo;ve never operated a hand clutch or anything like that.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve read over the manual and tried to absorb what I can, learning many interesting things:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeventy percent of the braking on a motorcycle is done by the front wheel, but you should use both front and rear brakes all the time so you\u0026rsquo;re ready for a \u0026ldquo;maximum braking\u0026rdquo; situation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Motorcycle training this week..."},{"content":"Woohoo! I\u0026rsquo;m in driving-around-in-a-loaner limbo wh\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jul 1, 2008\nWoohoo! I\u0026rsquo;m in driving-around-in-a-loaner limbo while my car\u0026rsquo;s being serviced, but I guess that\u0026rsquo;s a good excuse not to ride on a hot day. Looks like the latter part of the week will be a bit cooler.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/motorcycle-training-this-week...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"woohoo-im-in-driving-around-in-a-loaner-limbo-wh\"\u003eWoohoo! I\u0026rsquo;m in driving-around-in-a-loaner limbo wh\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWoohoo! I\u0026rsquo;m in driving-around-in-a-loaner limbo while my car\u0026rsquo;s being serviced, but I guess that\u0026rsquo;s a good excuse not to ride on a hot day. Looks like the latter part of the week will be a bit cooler.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Motorcycle training this week... (Comments)"},{"content":"Ah, money. The thing to be talking about when the economy\u0026rsquo;s receding, the stock market lost 20% of its value, and inflation\u0026rsquo;s through the roof.\nMany find themselves in another sort of double-whammy: The taxable stock mutual fund. I was in one of these turds back when the tech bubble popped, and it taught me some tough lessons.\nFirst, I sunk thousands of dollars into an American Funds portfolio (yeah, I got sold a bunch of Class-B, back-load shares!). Then I watched that money tank over the next 3 years. Each year, come ~February I got a lovely 1099 form from Ye Olde Mutual Funde for capital gains distributions.\nSo, let\u0026rsquo;s review:\nThe funds had lost money. Despite my money being tied up and steadily decreasing, I was paying taxes on money I didn\u0026rsquo;t have. Now, if your portfolio is in a tax-deferred or tax-exempt wrapper like a 401(k), Roth IRA, or (God help you) Variable Life Insurance, you don\u0026rsquo;t get 1099\u0026rsquo;s and you don\u0026rsquo;t pay taxes that year. However, for those with individual mutual funds, a year like this is going to be killer. You see your \u0026lsquo;paper worth\u0026rsquo; evaporate and your taxes going up, simultaneously.\nEventually, I sold out of the funds completely when I bought my MINI in 2002, and I\u0026rsquo;ve not really had an inclination to look back. However, that battered-to-heck Ford Stock looks promising, considering Ford ain\u0026rsquo;t GM.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/bad-year-to-be-in-taxable-stock-mutual-funds.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, money. The thing to be talking about when the economy\u0026rsquo;s receding, the stock market lost 20% of its value, and inflation\u0026rsquo;s through the roof.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMany find themselves in another sort of double-whammy: The taxable stock mutual fund. I was in one of these turds back when the tech bubble popped, and it taught me some tough lessons.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, I sunk thousands of dollars into an American Funds portfolio (yeah, I got sold a bunch of Class-B, back-load shares!). Then I watched that money tank over the next 3 years. Each year, come ~February I got a lovely 1099 form from Ye Olde Mutual Funde for capital gains distributions.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bad year to be in taxable stock mutual funds..."},{"content":"Man, I had a good time last night. Yesterday as a whole, actually.\nI enjoyed some Hawaiian pizza and frosty beverages at Lexington\u0026rsquo;s Mellow Mushroom with Todd, Serge, Varma, Vinnie, Narron, Ildy, and Patrick.\nGood times, good times.\nThen I came home and Bella wanted to watch the Whedon masterpiece, Once More, With Feeling.\nHehe\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/wonderful-night-last-night.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMan, I had a good time last night. Yesterday as a whole, actually.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI enjoyed some Hawaiian pizza and frosty beverages at Lexington\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.mellowmushroom.com\"\u003eMellow Mushroom\u003c/a\u003e with Todd, Serge, Varma, Vinnie, Narron, Ildy, and Patrick.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGood times, good times.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen I came home and Bella wanted to watch the Whedon masterpiece, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_More,_with_Feeling_(Buffy_episode)\"\u003eOnce More, With Feeling\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHehe\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wonderful night last night..."},{"content":"How to glorify the self and acquire power\u0026hellip;\nThe 48 Laws of Power\nThough ugly, it\u0026rsquo;s good to read these in a Defence Against the Dark Arts fashion, just to know when they\u0026rsquo;re in use against you.\nI will absolutely agree with Law 39, having been on the wrong end of it so many times. I allow myself to get so worked-up and emotional, ceding control to my opposition.\nAs for the rest\u0026hellip;IMHO, most make me want to vomit, and they\u0026rsquo;re quite possibly a one way ticket to Hell. Practices such as these are lifehacks against the fabric of society\u0026ndash;using base human frailty to one\u0026rsquo;s advantage. Demagogues, Caesars, and Courtiers may practice them, but their power is only for a season. The true way is one of authenticity, truth, virtue, altruism, and love.\nThe fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Aside from self-control, I see none of those here.\nBut then, I\u0026rsquo;m a boy scout with no zest for glory at others\u0026rsquo; expense. Machiavelli would spit upon me. So be it. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/so-if-satan-wrote-the-sermon-on-the-mount..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHow to glorify the self and acquire power\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www2.tech.purdue.edu/cg/Courses/cgt411/covey/48_laws_of_power.htm\"\u003eThe 48 Laws of Power\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThough ugly, it\u0026rsquo;s good to read these in a \u003ca href=\"http://www.hp-lexicon.org/hogwarts/classes/dada.html\"\u003eDefence Against the Dark Arts\u003c/a\u003e fashion, just to know when they\u0026rsquo;re in use against you.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI will absolutely agree with Law 39, having been on the wrong end of it so many times. I allow myself to get so worked-up and emotional, ceding control to my opposition.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs for the rest\u0026hellip;IMHO, most make me want to vomit, and they\u0026rsquo;re quite possibly a one way ticket to Hell. Practices such as these are lifehacks against the fabric of society\u0026ndash;using base human frailty to one\u0026rsquo;s advantage. Demagogues, Caesars, and Courtiers may practice them, but their power is only for a season. The true way is one of authenticity, truth, virtue, altruism, and love.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"So, if Satan wrote the sermon on the mount...."},{"content":"Link\nThis would be awesome\u0026hellip;give me a chance to catch-up on my reading to and from work, while paying \u0026lt; 1/2 tank of fuel per month for a bus pass.\nThe tradeoff, of course, would be time: Probably 2 hours on a bus each day, compared to ~40 minutes now. Still\u0026hellip;interesting that this is being considered.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/w00000t---bus-from-gtown/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.georgetownnews.com/articles/2008/07/15/news/doc487c225278983013347724.txt\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis would be awesome\u0026hellip;give me a chance to catch-up on my reading to and from work, while paying \u0026lt; 1/2 tank of fuel per month for a bus pass.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe tradeoff, of course, would be time: Probably 2 hours on a bus each day, compared to ~40 minutes now. Still\u0026hellip;interesting that this is being considered.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"w00000t---Bus from G'town?"},{"content":"We have one on Sunday :-D Jeff Roberts - Jul 2, 2008\nWe have one on Sunday :-D\nYeah, I know, and I know I\u0026rsquo;m being\u0026hellip; HarryC - Jul 2, 2008\n:-P~\nYeah, I know, and I know I\u0026rsquo;m being ridiculous considering riding a bus for a 22-mile commute.\nI\u0026rsquo;d have to walk/bike/hitch a ride to the center of G\u0026rsquo;town, then hop on the bus down US25, likely, then get from the transit center back up to LXK. Then each evening, reverse the process.\nThing is, it\u0026rsquo;s not going to get *better* until we make some steps in that direction.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/w00000t---bus-from-gtown-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"we-have-one-on-sunday--d\"\u003eWe have one on Sunday :-D\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe have one on Sunday :-D\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, I know, and I know I\u0026rsquo;m being\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-P~\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, I know, and I know I\u0026rsquo;m being ridiculous considering riding a bus for a 22-mile commute.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d have to walk/bike/hitch a ride to the center of G\u0026rsquo;town, then hop on the bus down US25, likely, then get from the transit center back up to LXK. Then each evening, reverse the process.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"w00000t---Bus from G'town? (Comments)"},{"content":"Friday night, Whitney and I went on a date. Honest-to-goodness, dinner-and-a-movie evening together. We ate at Friday\u0026rsquo;s and went to see Hellboy II: The Golden Army. We even went to a theater that didn\u0026rsquo;t smell like urine this time!\nI loved the film. Loved it\u0026hellip;it was relentlessly funny, beautiful, and fun.\nAs the film opens, we watch a younger Hellboy watching Howdy Doodie with his father, who reads the overeager Hellboy a bedtime story about The Golden Army, a warrior race of 4900 indestructible Goblin-forged machines, commanded by the elf-king in his war against mankind. Though the Golden Army triumphs, the Pyrrhic victory fills the king with remorse: He has become the destroyer himself. To atone, he locks the Golden Army away and separates the crown that controls them into three pieces, one of which he gives to man.\nYes, yes, plenty of Lord Of the Rings references there. Done? Good.\nFast-forward to the present\u0026ndash;Hellboy and Liz are having problems because Liz is a ball of emotion. Well, she\u0026rsquo;s a ball of fire mostly, since that\u0026rsquo;s her gift/curse. They\u0026rsquo;re called to investigate a ghastly murder at an auction house, and the plot commences.\nTaken for what it is, Hellboy\u0026rsquo;s an enjoyable romp with larger-than-life demon who likes cats.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/review--hellboy-ii-the-golden-army/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFriday night, Whitney and I went on a date. Honest-to-goodness, dinner-and-a-movie evening together. We ate at Friday\u0026rsquo;s and went to see \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411477/\"\u003eHellboy II: The Golden Army\u003c/a\u003e. We even went to a theater that didn\u0026rsquo;t smell like urine this time!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI loved the film. Loved it\u0026hellip;it was relentlessly funny, beautiful, and fun.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs the film opens, we watch a younger Hellboy watching Howdy Doodie with his father, who reads the overeager Hellboy a bedtime story about The Golden Army, a warrior race of 4900 indestructible Goblin-forged machines, commanded by the elf-king in his war against mankind. Though the Golden Army triumphs, the Pyrrhic victory fills the king with remorse: He has become the destroyer himself. To atone, he locks the Golden Army away and separates the crown that controls them into three pieces, one of which he gives to man.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review--Hellboy II: The Golden Army"},{"content":":-) Well, we\u0026rsquo;ll see if like my foray into autocross (lifelong passion) or my obsession with SCUBA diving when I was 12 (yikes\u0026hellip;bad memories\u0026hellip;)\nI\u0026rsquo;ve signed up for the July 23rd, 26th, and 27th Motorcycle Safety Foundation course through Balance Dynamics. If I pass everything, I can go get my motorcycle license using their endorsement w/o taking the state test. :-)\nAt least this way, if I ride Stu\u0026rsquo;s scooter, I won\u0026rsquo;t get arrested. Should be fun, and maybe a nice new hobby.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/taking-the-plunge/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e:-) Well, we\u0026rsquo;ll see if like my foray into autocross (lifelong passion) or my obsession with SCUBA diving when I was 12 (yikes\u0026hellip;bad memories\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve signed up for the July 23rd, 26th, and 27th Motorcycle Safety Foundation course through \u003ca href=\"http://bdmtc.com/\"\u003eBalance Dynamics\u003c/a\u003e. If I pass everything, I can go get my motorcycle license using their endorsement w/o taking the state test. :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt least this way, if I ride Stu\u0026rsquo;s scooter, I won\u0026rsquo;t get arrested. Should be fun, and maybe a nice new hobby.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Taking the plunge"},{"content":"Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine\nRichard Feynman was an intellectual giant that prided himself on solving problems, getting at the heart of things, and making everyone smarter. He was right up there with the giants\u0026ndash;Von Neumann, Einstein, Oppenheimer\u0026ndash;but he never lost the common touch.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/tremendous-article-that-started-my-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.longnow.org/views/essays/articles/ArtFeynman.php\"\u003eRichard Feynman and The Connection Machine\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRichard Feynman was an intellectual giant that prided himself on solving problems, getting at the heart of things, and making everyone smarter. He was right up there with the giants\u0026ndash;Von Neumann, Einstein, Oppenheimer\u0026ndash;but he never lost the common touch.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tremendous article that started my day"},{"content":"Feel like I got hit by a truck\u0026hellip;no amount of coffee is rousing a single brain cell.\nI\u0026rsquo;m an interesting paradox (or collection of paradoxes): I hate stuff, yet I like stuff. I hate stuff in that it\u0026rsquo;s all just so much future yardsale junk\u0026ndash;the shiny gadget of today quickly becomes the Sony Walkman cassette player marked at $0.50 in somebody\u0026rsquo;s yard.\nAnd yet\u0026hellip;there\u0026rsquo;s usually some shiny new something that catches my eye that I want. Something I can\u0026rsquo;t have, or don\u0026rsquo;t really need, or that\u0026rsquo;s somehow lower on the priority list than everything else. And I talk myself out of it.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s the paradox: Me sitting contentedly in a room devoid of clutter, thinking \u0026ldquo;Wow, I wish I had more STUFF.\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;ll wake up tomorrow and change my mind, I realize\u0026ndash;but right now all I can think of is: Home ownership is utter crap. You\u0026rsquo;re strapped-down to your quarter acre of GET-OFF-MY-LAWN heaven, paying a mortgage, insurance, repairs, and incidental things like \u0026ldquo;wow, we need new curtains\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;ooh, I wish I could paint the walls.\u0026rdquo; You\u0026rsquo;re smashed together with 200 of your nearest, dearest psychopaths in the same socio-economic bracket. You CAN\u0026rsquo;T just pack up and leave when you\u0026rsquo;d like\u0026ndash;there\u0026rsquo;s a reason the root word of mortgage is \u0026ldquo;death\u0026rdquo;.\nYeah, I miss Joey. Can ya tell? :-)\nYeah, I\u0026rsquo;m tired of Kentucky, in general. Love it, hate it\u0026hellip;lived here my whole life. Too many sad reruns of the same lacking economic opportunity, inept nepotistic local governments, and declining secondary and post-secondary education. Plus, with our terrific allergy situation, 3/4 of my immediate family has to stay inside 6 months out of the year when anyone in a quarter-mile radius mows his lawn. As Shane would say: Wheeeeeee!\nYeah, I\u0026rsquo;ve run out capacity dealing with corporate BS to the tune of 5 meetings per day.\nContentment just ain\u0026rsquo;t me. Not today\u0026hellip;don\u0026rsquo;t know why.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/ugh...did-i-get-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-bed/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFeel like I got hit by a truck\u0026hellip;no amount of coffee is rousing a single brain cell.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m an interesting paradox (or collection of paradoxes): I hate stuff, yet I like stuff. I hate stuff in that it\u0026rsquo;s all just so much future yardsale junk\u0026ndash;the shiny gadget of today quickly becomes the Sony Walkman cassette player marked at $0.50 in somebody\u0026rsquo;s yard.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd yet\u0026hellip;there\u0026rsquo;s usually some shiny new something that catches my eye that I want. Something I can\u0026rsquo;t have, or don\u0026rsquo;t really need, or that\u0026rsquo;s somehow lower on the priority list than everything else. And I talk myself out of it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ugh...did I get up on the wrong side of the bed?"},{"content":"I read stuff like this and I have to admit it: Ford is in much better shape than any of the other domestics.\nLook at it:\nThey\u0026rsquo;re not the Ivory Tower. GM is, for better or worse, still the face of American automotive industry. They take the flak. They killed the electric car. They build Hummers. Ford is an also-ran\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re not haulling Mulally in front of Senate panels. They\u0026rsquo;re hauling-up GM CEO Rick Wagoner. Ford benefits from GM taking all this flack because it can quietly consolidate and grow without too much focus.\nThey don\u0026rsquo;t have too many brands. Not relative to GM, anyway. They sold Jaguar and Land Rover, and they\u0026rsquo;re shopping Volvo. This Alan guy knows how to run a company! Focus on the core product and on the company to produce and market it.\nThey got the same UAW restructuring deal as GM. This is the only reason for hope. Without this deal, their legacy costs would strangle them even if everything else was rosy.\nThey\u0026rsquo;re not Chrysler. That thing got a Hemi? \u0026lsquo;Nuff said.\nThey\u0026rsquo;re being smart with Mazda. The Fusion is a success because of the Mazda6, and the global platform of the Focus/Mazda3 is a winner in all segments.\nFord Motor Credit isn\u0026rsquo;t a screwed-up as GMAC.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/car-cataclysm/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI read stuff like \u003ca href=\"http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/general-motors-death-watch-185-plan-9-from-outer-space/\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e and I have to admit it: Ford is in much better shape than any of the other domestics.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.muscularmustangs.com/database/fordlogo2003.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLook at it:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey\u0026rsquo;re not the Ivory Tower. GM is, for better or worse, \u003cem\u003estill\u003c/em\u003e the face of American automotive industry. They take the flak. They killed the electric car. They build Hummers. Ford is an also-ran\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re not haulling Mulally in front of Senate panels. They\u0026rsquo;re hauling-up GM CEO Rick Wagoner. Ford benefits from GM taking all this flack because it can quietly consolidate and grow without too much focus.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Car cataclysm"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;or, What Theatre People Do in their Spare Time.\nSimple curriculum dies:\nThursday night: Worked until 8:30 on spec due that day. Didn\u0026rsquo;t finish it. Grudgingly resolved to come into work on 4th of July.\nFriday: Up before dawn, work until 11am on spec. Finish version 0.2 and email. Return home, resolving to take daughter to Jackson for family fun. Recongize I\u0026rsquo;m exhausted and will probably crash into tree on return trip. Decide not to go. Take wife and daughter on excursion around Lexington, ending up at Fayette Mall around 6pm when torrential downpour hits. Walk through mall even though all mall stores closed, except JC Penny\u0026rsquo;s and Dillards. Chase wife through baby clothes section on 3rd floor of Dillards (\u0026ldquo;But these are so CUTE!\u0026rdquo;). Watch Romeo Must Die, have chortling good time watching Jet Li parroting English phrases like, \u0026lsquo;Right on!\u0026rsquo;\nSaturday: Awaken wife with snoring at 2am. Wife has insomnia. Suggest she get out of bed to address her insomnia. Royally piss-off wife, who promptly tells me, \u0026lsquo;You\u0026rsquo;re going to get Joey at 7am!\u0026rsquo;. Awaken at 6am, drive to Shelbyville and retrieve Joe-meister. Drive family BACK to Shelbyville at 11am for Highland Renaissance Faire. Bake in sun with fat, smelly, costumed people (and in-laws, who aren\u0026rsquo;t fat, smelly or costumed) until 4. Drive to Louisville. Ride Silverwing. Silverwing good. Learn Maria has good impression of a Velociraptor screech if she has a wet diaper.\nSunday: Eschew points-event autocross in favor of family time. Eschew family time after church to mow grass and do chores. Thus, I eschewed autocross to mow grass, QED. Attempt to diagnose and fix broken garage door opener switch. Take nap. Consider selling BMW to buy motorcycle that gets 50+mpg. Collapse in heap at 11pm.\n* * *\nThe Renaissance Faire would\u0026rsquo;ve been more fun w/o a baby. It was in some woods and a clearing, and the stroller just wasn\u0026rsquo;t happening\u0026ndash;too bumpy and muddy. It was very expensive, and every participatory thing cost extra. The highlight for me was the Mud Show, with Smelly Pitts and Slappy Backfat, a slapstic Vaudeville extravaganza of mud, off-color jokes (\u0026hellip;must\u0026hellip;not\u0026hellip;say\u0026hellip;\u0026lsquo;Dirty Jokes\u0026rsquo;\u0026hellip;.), and audience participation. Think a Gallagher show, with mud instead of exploding watermelons.\nMy biggest thing was, I just couldn\u0026rsquo;t get into it. . .I kept thinking: \u0026ldquo;This is what happens to theatre folk from high school who have to get a job at Denny\u0026rsquo;s. They throw on a boustier and start strutting round like Lady Pamela on summer days.\u0026rdquo; Probably more my attitude than anything else\u0026ndash;it was $12 per adult, and $6 for children.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/how-i-spent-my-4th-of-july.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;or, \u003cem\u003eWhat Theatre People Do in their Spare Time\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSimple \u003cem\u003ecurriculum dies\u003c/em\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThursday night\u003c/em\u003e: Worked until 8:30 on spec due that day. Didn\u0026rsquo;t finish it. Grudgingly resolved to come into work on 4th of July.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFriday\u003c/em\u003e: Up before dawn, work until 11am on spec. Finish version 0.2 and email. Return home, resolving to take daughter to Jackson for family fun. Recongize I\u0026rsquo;m exhausted and will probably crash into tree on return trip. Decide not to go. Take wife and daughter on excursion around Lexington, ending up at Fayette Mall around 6pm when torrential downpour hits. Walk through mall even though all mall stores closed, except JC Penny\u0026rsquo;s and Dillards. Chase wife through baby clothes section on 3rd floor of Dillards (\u0026ldquo;But these are so CUTE!\u0026rdquo;). Watch \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165929/\"\u003eRomeo Must Die\u003c/a\u003e, have chortling good time watching Jet Li parroting English phrases like, \u0026lsquo;Right on!\u0026rsquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How I spent my 4th of July..."},{"content":"Insomnia consists of the inability to fall asleep \u0026hellip; Whitney - Jul 1, 2008\nInsomnia consists of the inability to fall asleep NOT being consistently awakened by your husband snoring, jumping up and down, rolling on top of and smothering you, and hitting you in the back. Which is why I was pissed when I nudged you and asked you to roll over bc you were snoring and you told me to GET UP AND READ A BOOK bc that helps you when you can\u0026rsquo;t sleep and then followed me upstairs after I\u0026rsquo;d halfway fallen asleep and yelled at me. Yeah. I\u0026rsquo;d say most of America would be pissed.\nIndeed. Not my best moments in \u0026hellip; HarryC - Jul 1, 2008\n@Whitney:\nIndeed. Not my best moments in any way/shape/form, especially the following upstairs and yelling.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/how-i-spent-my-4th-of-july...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"insomnia-consists-of-the-inability-to-fall-asleep-\"\u003eInsomnia consists of the inability to fall asleep \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInsomnia consists of the inability to fall asleep NOT being consistently awakened by your husband snoring, jumping up and down, rolling on top of and smothering you, and hitting you in the back. Which is why I was pissed when I nudged you and asked you to roll over bc you were snoring and you told me to GET UP AND READ A BOOK bc that helps you when you can\u0026rsquo;t sleep and then followed me upstairs after I\u0026rsquo;d halfway fallen asleep and yelled at me. Yeah. I\u0026rsquo;d say most of America would be pissed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How I spent my 4th of July... (Comments)"},{"content":"Nothing like some hard numbers to support one\u0026rsquo;s anecdotal observations.\nMore motorcycle licenses, yup. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/ah-ha-im-not-insane.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNothing like some \u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/254/story/454201.html\"\u003ehard numbers\u003c/a\u003e to support one\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/zeitgeist-engineers-cars-amid-rising-energy-prices/\" title=\"zeitgeist\"\u003eanecdotal observations\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMore motorcycle licenses, yup. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ah HA!  I'm not insane..."},{"content":" Honey, you\u0026rsquo;re not a monogamous shiny gadget guy; you\u0026rsquo;re a promiscuous shiny gadget guy. You\u0026rsquo;d buy it. You\u0026rsquo;d use it. And then you\u0026rsquo;d be done.\nSegue: I got to ride Stu\u0026rsquo;s Silverwing for a good half-hour. I LOVED IT. Wow, the wind, the smells, the feeling of oneness with the road. I enjoyed it much more than the last time\u0026ndash;felt much more comfortable maneuvering the bike.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/gadget-freak-table-for-one.../","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHoney, you\u0026rsquo;re not a monogamous shiny gadget guy; you\u0026rsquo;re a promiscuous shiny gadget guy. You\u0026rsquo;d buy it. You\u0026rsquo;d use it. And then you\u0026rsquo;d be done.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSegue: I got to ride Stu\u0026rsquo;s Silverwing for a good half-hour. I LOVED IT. Wow, the wind, the smells, the feeling of oneness with the road. I enjoyed it much more than the last time\u0026ndash;felt much more comfortable maneuvering the bike.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gadget freak, table for one..."},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been noticing some changes here in the Ivory Tower/Crystal Palace parking lots\u0026ndash;there are fewer cars, more newer small cars, and more motorcycles.\nThough of course the sample size is small and narrow (buncha engineers!), it seems clear that people\u0026rsquo;s habits are changing where they can, from what they drive to even if they drive.\nSome examples:\nMore people carpool, meaning fewer cars total in the lot\nThe new cars I\u0026rsquo;ve noticed in the lot are the new econo-class\u0026ndash;Yaris, Fit, Scion, etc.\nMotorcycles and scooters have exploded. (Granted, it\u0026rsquo;s Summer!). I\u0026rsquo;m seeing double or quadruple the number of 2-wheelers daily.\nFrom the human-powered front, cycling\u0026rsquo;s on the upswing for those who live near the site. Again, this is weather-dependent, but I\u0026rsquo;m seeing cycles in every nook and cranny in the engineering buildings.\nPublic transit. Lextran ridership is at record levels, and looking at bus unloading by Bulding 005 the other day, it looked like a clown-car\u0026ndash;the thing basically deflated because of all the folks piling out of it. If I lived in Lexington, I\u0026rsquo;d definitely be taking a long, hard look at riding the bus.\nThe above are all sane (if painful) responses to commuting needs: Gas isn\u0026rsquo;t getting any cheaper, and we need to shift our habits to accomodate. Granted, there are downsides: Bikes and motorcycles don\u0026rsquo;t work too well in bad weather. Carpools are inflexible\u0026ndash;no running errands during lunch or making your own hours. Bus routes are inefficient, turning a 20 minute drive home into an hour or more.\nI look for LXK to explore more work-from-home or remote-office initiatives as well\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;re not going to a 4-day work-week, that\u0026rsquo;s for sure!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/zeitgeist-engineers-cars-amid-rising-energy-prices/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been noticing some changes here in the Ivory Tower/Crystal Palace parking lots\u0026ndash;there are fewer cars, more newer small cars, and more motorcycles.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThough of course the sample size is small and narrow (buncha engineers!), it seems clear that people\u0026rsquo;s habits are changing where they can, from what they drive to even \u003cem\u003eif\u003c/em\u003e they drive.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome examples:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMore people carpool, meaning fewer cars total in the lot\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe new cars I\u0026rsquo;ve noticed in the lot are the new econo-class\u0026ndash;Yaris, Fit, Scion, etc.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Zeitgeist:  Engineers' cars amid rising energy prices"},{"content":"ROFL!!! hmmmmm\u0026hellip;..usually you detest p\u0026hellip; Whitney - Jul 2, 2008\nROFL!!!\nhmmmmm\u0026hellip;..usually you detest people who make you look bad in public\u0026hellip;..\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/07/quote-of-the-day-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"rofl\"\u003eROFL!!!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ehmmmmm\u0026hellip;..usually you detest p\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eROFL!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ehmmmmm\u0026hellip;..usually you detest people who make you look bad in public\u0026hellip;..\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Quote of the Day (Comments)"},{"content":"Those guys at Edmunds have done it again\u0026ndash;made it stupid easy to see how stupid you are:\nTry this out: Gas Mileage Savings Calculator.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s essentially the same thing I did on my own with a Google Docs spreadsheet. The numbers aren\u0026rsquo;t pretty. ROI is 8-10 years moving up from my 25mpg Camry to something like a MINI or a TDI VW.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/fun-fuel-sipper-calculator/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThose guys at Edmunds have done it again\u0026ndash;made it stupid easy to see how stupid you are:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTry this out: \u003ca href=\"http://www.edmunds.com/calculators/gas-guzzler.html\"\u003eGas Mileage Savings Calculator\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s essentially the same thing I did on my own with a Google Docs spreadsheet. The numbers aren\u0026rsquo;t pretty. ROI is 8-10 years moving up from my 25mpg Camry to something like a MINI or a TDI VW.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fun \"Fuel Sipper\" calculator"},{"content":"The calculation I keep trying to make is how high \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jun 1, 2008\nThe calculation I keep trying to make is how high gas has to go before I switch from my 550cc motorcycle to Sandra\u0026rsquo;s dweeby 185 :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/fun-fuel-sipper-calculator-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"the-calculation-i-keep-trying-to-make-is-how-high-\"\u003eThe calculation I keep trying to make is how high \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe calculation I keep trying to make is how high gas has to go before I switch from my 550cc motorcycle to Sandra\u0026rsquo;s dweeby 185 :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Fun \"Fuel Sipper\" calculator (Comments)"},{"content":"- \u0026ldquo;So, don\u0026rsquo;t you think that\u0026rsquo;s a requirement for being a software developer: Being detail-oriented?\u0026rdquo;\n- \u0026ldquo;Perhaps I\u0026rsquo;m a bad software developer, then.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/quote-of-the-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e- \u0026ldquo;So, don\u0026rsquo;t you think that\u0026rsquo;s a \u003cem\u003erequirement\u003c/em\u003e for being a software developer: Being detail-oriented?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- \u0026ldquo;Perhaps I\u0026rsquo;m a bad software developer, then.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote of the Day"},{"content":"Well, I\u0026rsquo;m back.\nWhitney has several excellent Posts on our vacation.\nI enjoyed it, but I got overtired and fed-up with the whole thing. Sleeping-in doesn\u0026rsquo;t agree with me. Not working (that is, being aimless) doesn\u0026rsquo;t agree with me.\nHad some time away from computers and blogging, as well, and that\u0026rsquo;s got me thinking. I\u0026rsquo;m thinking that my blogging these days is full of crap. What I really think and feel and perceive about this world is frankly unfit for the light of day (any day), much less consumption by people I care about.\nAt the heart of it, I\u0026rsquo;m a mean, selfish person, a sinner in true Romans 3:23 fashion. I exhibit schadenfreude so much it kills my soul sometimes. That\u0026rsquo;s the joy (and pain) of the internet\u0026hellip;removing all consequence for being a pure asshole. Social norms and mores don\u0026rsquo;t exist here, because *we* don\u0026rsquo;t exist\u0026hellip;our thoughts and ideas do, and persist somewhere in Google\u0026rsquo;s vast BigTable copy of the Internet. Though we change, we can look back and see how we were 2, 3, 5, 10 years ago and ask \u0026ldquo;Who was that person?\u0026rdquo;\nAnd finally, my point\u0026ndash;why my blog has become crap: With my last few years of posts, I can\u0026rsquo;t dig into the inner recesses of my mind. They\u0026rsquo;re not there. The joy, the pain, the REALITY of what I was thinking. Not there. Not even close. What remains is digested, filtered, UNREAL.\n* * *\nThis is much more \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; for me:\nI was in church yesterday, and I stopped singing.\nNot for a bar, not for a song, but for the WHOLE SERVICE. From 1 stanza into the opening number, I didn\u0026rsquo;t sing again until the recessional hymn. I did something I hadn\u0026rsquo;t done in years\u0026ndash;I listened. I listened to my fellow Christians sing and I heard unexpected things: The man who didn\u0026rsquo;t want to be there, but who came because his drug him out on Sunday morning. The woman who sang off-key but didn\u0026rsquo;t care. The old ladies whose deathly pallor didn\u0026rsquo;t dim their song. I heard harmony, dissonance, and confusion as the worship leader transposed a word.\nI heard people. The pulpit cites worship as a singular experience, between the worshiper and God, but it\u0026rsquo;s also a corporate experience\u0026ndash;a sum of humanity together praising God. Just listening to that filled my heart yesterday and gave me strength, and when I opened-up for the recessional I rejoined a better man for it. I embraced my wife and sang as the Holy Spirit washed through the crowd, giving me goosebumps.\nThat was an awesome moment, and was truly my High for the day.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/back.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, I\u0026rsquo;m back.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney has several \u003ca href=\"http://monkeysontheside.blogspot.com/2008/06/swingset.html\"\u003eexcellent\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://monkeysontheside.blogspot.com/2008/06/cincinnati-zoo.html\"\u003ePosts\u003c/a\u003e on our vacation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI enjoyed it, but I got overtired and fed-up with the whole thing. Sleeping-in doesn\u0026rsquo;t agree with me. Not working (that is, being aimless) doesn\u0026rsquo;t agree with me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHad some time away from computers and blogging, as well, and that\u0026rsquo;s got me thinking. I\u0026rsquo;m thinking that my blogging these days is full of crap. What I really think and feel and perceive about this world is frankly unfit for the light of day (any day), much less consumption by people I care about.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back..."},{"content":" Sometimes, when I find someone insufferable, my wife does, too. Algorithm IS a latin word, but it\u0026rsquo;s a bastardized version of the original Arabic.\nWood stain is like chickenpox for horizontal or vertical surfaces.\nI really like sushi. As in, if I had the money, I\u0026rsquo;d eat it every day for lunch.\nI can tan, much like a rump roast can cook: Eventually.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/some-random-insights-from-the-past-few-days.../","summary":"\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSometimes, when I find someone insufferable, my wife does, too. Algorithm IS a latin word, but it\u0026rsquo;s a bastardized version of the original Arabic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWood stain is like chickenpox for horizontal or vertical surfaces.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI really like sushi. As in, if I had the money, I\u0026rsquo;d eat it every day for lunch.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI can tan, much like a rump roast can cook: Eventually.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e","title":"Some random insights from the past few days..."},{"content":"Sushi, eh? I like tuna and salmon, so is it anythi\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jun 4, 2008\nSushi, eh? I like tuna and salmon, so is it anything at all like that?\nYes and no\u0026hellip;there are flavo\u0026hellip; HarryC - Jun 4, 2008\n@Jeff Roberts:\nYes and no\u0026hellip;there are flavors and textures in the sushi that simply aren\u0026rsquo;t there once the fish is cooked.\nGood sushi is very fresh and doesn\u0026rsquo;t taste \u0026ldquo;fishy\u0026rdquo; at all, and it\u0026rsquo;s tremendous with a dip of soy sauce and wasabi.\nEvery time I\u0026rsquo;d eat a bite, Joey and I would grin and say \u0026lsquo;waaaaSABI\u0026rsquo;.\nWasabi is good.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/some-random-insights-from-the-past-few-days...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"sushi-eh-i-like-tuna-and-salmon-so-is-it-anythi\"\u003eSushi, eh? I like tuna and salmon, so is it anythi\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 4, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSushi, eh? I like tuna and salmon, so is it anything at all like that?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes and no\u0026hellip;there are flavo\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 4, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e@Jeff Roberts:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes and no\u0026hellip;there are flavors and textures in the sushi that simply aren\u0026rsquo;t there once the fish is cooked.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some random insights from the past few days... (Comments)"},{"content":"So, I read somewhere once (citation be damned!) that people with active, physical jobs should enjoy relaxing vacations, and that people with sedentary jobs should try for more active, involved holidays.\nHoo boy. Sign me up for some bricklaying.\nSo, in the short few days since last Friday, this happened:\nFriday: We put together the kids\u0026rsquo; swing set: .\nAssembly time: 8 hours\nSunday, we did church and Father\u0026rsquo;s day, including a trip to Malone\u0026rsquo;s restaurant for a sampling of excellent sushi from the Aqua Sushi bar. Man, it was awesome!\nMonday we stained the fence. At the start of the day, we were using stone tools\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;brushes and 3\u0026quot; rollers and by the end of the day (9 hrs later) we found ourselves using a hand-pump sprayer. Even still, we only got most of the exterior of the fence done, minus two sections\nTuesday, Whitney decided to go whole hog and buy a Wagner electric sprayer. Yep, welcome to the space age. After that we headed to the Georgetown Water Park for 3 hours. So, we finished the last two sections of the exterior of the fence and it looks awesome. I\u0026rsquo;d love to show you\u0026hellip;except\u0026hellip;\nWednesday, I got the great idea to go on a canoe trip on the Elkhorn. I happened to have our digital camera in the bag we took on the canoe. Canoes have a way of getting waterlogged\u0026hellip;\nSo, yeah\u0026hellip;I don\u0026rsquo;t know straight up at the moment. I can\u0026rsquo;t feel my arms after paddling 6 miles (Joey wasn\u0026rsquo;t much help!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/on-relaxing-vacations/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I read somewhere once (citation be damned!) that people with active, physical jobs should enjoy relaxing vacations, and that people with sedentary jobs should try for more active, involved holidays.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHoo boy. Sign me up for some bricklaying.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, in the short few days since last Friday, this happened:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFriday\u003c/em\u003e: We put together the kids\u0026rsquo; swing set: \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31aJZdTFbmL._SS500_.jpg\"\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAssembly time: 8 hours\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSunday, we did church and Father\u0026rsquo;s day, including a trip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.malonesrestaurant.com/\"\u003eMalone\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e restaurant for a sampling of excellent sushi from the Aqua Sushi bar. Man, it was awesome!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"Relaxing\" Vacations"},{"content":"Suddenly I\u0026rsquo;m feeling vicariously productive and fu\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jun 3, 2008\nSuddenly I\u0026rsquo;m feeling vicariously productive and fulfilled!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/on-relaxing-vacations-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"suddenly-im-feeling-vicariously-productive-and-fu\"\u003eSuddenly I\u0026rsquo;m feeling vicariously productive and fu\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 3, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuddenly I\u0026rsquo;m feeling vicariously productive and fulfilled!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"On \"Relaxing\" Vacations (Comments)"},{"content":"Wow.\nImagine Vince Vaughn, minus 30 pounds, plus lots of hair, still unable to act. Then imagine a vapid plot, based around hollow, vapid Hollywood people.\nAt that point, you\u0026rsquo;ll have Swingers, a picture of the walking id that is maleness in America in the 1970\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;I mean, the 1990\u0026rsquo;s in Hollywood.\nFrom reading the trivia on imdb, it looks like Writer/Director/Star/Gaffer/Wardrobe-Mistress Favreau based the plot on his own life when coming out to L.A.\nDespite everything going against it (Vince Vaughn hamming every scene), Favreau almost saes the day. He portrays a guy awash in his own (imagined) misery amid his friend\u0026rsquo;s Nihilistic debauchery. Scenes aren\u0026rsquo;t so much strung together in a plot as they are loose, jerky vignettes barely associated\u0026ndash;In other words, just like real life. Some scenes are just random, painful, and prolonged. As a viewer, you wish they\u0026rsquo;d just end. Favreau\u0026rsquo;s character, Mike, wishes the same thing.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s only when he meets his redemption (Heather Graham, playing the Deus Ex Machina) that Mike moves out from his self-imposed funk and transcends shallow existence to find something real.\n* * *\nAt its heart, this is a 20 minute film stretched to 90+ minutes of painful, profane nothingness. The final scenes after Mike\u0026rsquo;s epiphany shine, but getting there is just too boring and empty. There\u0026rsquo;s a few good moments, and many quotable quotes (\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re so money\u0026rdquo; is the best), but I\u0026rsquo;d say AVOID!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/review-swingers-movie/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWow.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eImagine \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000681/\"\u003eVince Vaughn\u003c/a\u003e, minus 30 pounds, plus lots of hair, still unable to act. Then imagine a vapid plot, based around hollow, vapid Hollywood people.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt that point, you\u0026rsquo;ll have \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117802/\"\u003eSwingers\u003c/a\u003e, a picture of the walking \u003cem\u003eid\u003c/em\u003e that is maleness in America in the 1970\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;I mean, the 1990\u0026rsquo;s in Hollywood.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom reading the trivia on imdb, it looks like Writer/Director/Star/Gaffer/Wardrobe-Mistress Favreau based the plot on his own life when coming out to L.A.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Swingers (Movie)"},{"content":"What an awesome, awesome weekend it was! Productive, surprising, exhausting, with both family time and some time to myself.\nFriday night Whitney and I watched Juno the indie hit from last year that made Ellen Page an ingenue phenomenon. A nuanced film, it has the same deep characters and self-deprecating humor as Little Miss Sunshine. We both liked it.\nSaturday was busy, as most Saturdays before Autocross are for me. But man, was I motivated\u0026ndash;up at 6:30, TODO list in hand, ticking-off chores. It freaked-out Bella just a tad: \u0026ldquo;I get freaked out when you\u0026rsquo;re\u0026hellip;organized.\u0026rdquo; We were the snack-bringers at the final Coach-pitch game of the regular season at 4, but we decided to head into Lexington to buy Bella some new running shoes and head to Sams.\nWe never made it to Sam\u0026rsquo;s Club. But, that\u0026rsquo;s a good thing.\nSo, we went to John\u0026rsquo;s Run/Walk Shop in Chevy Chase to get her fitted. Love that place\u0026ndash;nice, knowledgeable sales people and fair prices. She picked some new Asics shoes, and Maria and I trotted around the home storefronts. Maria particularly liked the potato-chip chairs on the sidewalk of an adjacent shop.\nThen the real fun began. I suggested having lunch at Joe Bologna\u0026rsquo;s, and Whitney jumped at it, and I casually said, \u0026ldquo;Why don\u0026rsquo;t we check-out the bike shop that\u0026rsquo;s beside it?\u0026rdquo;\nHehe.\nNot motorcycles\u0026hellip;bicycles. Whitney mentioned something about looking at automatic bikes on the Today show, and I figured if anyone would have \u0026rsquo;em, Pedal Power would.\nLunch was great, and then we crossed Mill St to pedal power. We spent 45 minutes there, and Whitney got to ride a Cannondale F6:\nShe liked it quite a bit, and when we got home, I got some gumption and dusted off that old Schwinn Cruiser she yard sale\u0026rsquo;d last year. Whatta ya know? 65 psi in the tires and some Ice Wax on the chain, and it rode just like new!\n* * *\nThe Reds/Rangers game turned out like most of the others\u0026ndash;the reds one, though in a tough 3-0 grind. Joey\u0026rsquo;s team is the regular season champs! I only wish here were here to see it\u0026hellip;\nI rode the Schwinn over to Harmony Christian church, where I heard a message on \u0026ldquo;The Gospel According to Chuck Norris\u0026rdquo; and a special number that was Christian Rap. Yes..Christian Rap music! Then I rode back to the house.\nTo finish out the night, we watched the next disc of Avatar from Netflix. Book III: Air is turning-out to be a tremendous season. Already deep, developed characters show new facets, and we got the first real scene with Fire Lord Ozai and Zuko. The Boiling Rock two-parter, in particular, was masterful.\n* * *\nAutocross Sunday was fantastic! We had 60 drivers at the event. Here are the results from my class\u0026ndash;I got a trophy after a tough battle with Laura in her C4 Corvette. We got 7 (!) runs on the course, and my times improved consistently, with my best at 40.119. Lots of tail-happy, ain\u0026rsquo;t-got-no-traction action.\nThe best part, though, was my worker assignment in the 1st heat: I got to be the starter, the guy who stages cars at the line, announces their #\u0026rsquo;s to the trailer, and tells them \u0026ldquo;GO\u0026rdquo;. My trainer for this new position was Jim Moore, the best of the best. For his day job, this guy is pilot-in-command of a UPS 747, and he\u0026rsquo;s Mr. No-nonsense. His mind works like a flight computer\u0026ndash;checklists, goals, tasks, scans. During my heat, I kept 1 car at the finish, 1 car through the turn-around, and 1 car starting, and if I did it right, I had 3 racecars in the same frame of reference. *Very* exciting and flowed well.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/awesome-weekend/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat an awesome, awesome weekend it was! Productive, surprising, exhausting, with both family time and some time to myself.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFriday night Whitney and I watched \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0467406/\"\u003eJuno\u003c/a\u003e the indie hit from last year that made Ellen Page an ingenue phenomenon. A nuanced film, it has the same deep characters and self-deprecating humor as \u003cem\u003eLittle Miss Sunshine\u003c/em\u003e. We both liked it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaturday was busy, as most Saturdays before Autocross are for me. But man, was I motivated\u0026ndash;up at 6:30, TODO list in hand, ticking-off chores. It freaked-out Bella just a tad: \u0026ldquo;I get freaked out when you\u0026rsquo;re\u0026hellip;\u003cem\u003eorganized\u003c/em\u003e.\u0026rdquo; We were the snack-bringers at the final Coach-pitch game of the regular season at 4, but we decided to head into Lexington to buy Bella some new running shoes and head to Sams.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AWESOME weekend!"},{"content":"Sounds like a full and fun weekend. I\u0026rsquo;m trying to\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jun 1, 2008\nSounds like a full and fun weekend. I\u0026rsquo;m trying to decide if my class will go feral if I leave it next weekend and go with Sandra to pick up Kate from camp.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/awesome-weekend-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"sounds-like-a-full-and-fun-weekend-im-trying-to\"\u003eSounds like a full and fun weekend. I\u0026rsquo;m trying to\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSounds like a full and fun weekend. I\u0026rsquo;m trying to decide if my class will go feral if I leave it next weekend and go with Sandra to pick up Kate from camp.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"AWESOME weekend! (Comments)"},{"content":"I had a thought today, a shining inkling of something spectacular, something different, something\u0026hellip;red.\nThat is a Porsche 356 spyder.\nYeah, the thought goes like this: I\u0026rsquo;m commuting in the automotive novacaine known as my 2000 Toyota Camry. It\u0026rsquo;s smooth, quiet, and reliable. On the weekends, I\u0026rsquo;d like to have something to drive and autox.\nI love my E30, but it\u0026rsquo;s far from a classic sportscar\u0026ndash;it has body roll and understeer like the sedan it actually is. So, does it make more sense to get something less compromised and more focused. (And, more classic?)\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the thing\u0026hellip;I have no idea. The economy\u0026rsquo;s going to hell, so somebody\u0026rsquo;s going to be unloading their toys soon (if not already\u0026hellip;) wonder what these puppies (or some other sort of Porsche or BMW) go for?\nYes, I know\u0026hellip;blasphemy.\nLike I said\u0026hellip;just a thought!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/inexpensive-sports-car-whither-thou/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI had a thought today, a shining inkling of something spectacular, something different, something\u0026hellip;red.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-pqr/Porsche-356-red-fa-lr.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-pqr/Porsche-356-red-fa-lr.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat is a Porsche 356 spyder.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, the thought goes like this: I\u0026rsquo;m commuting in the automotive novacaine known as my 2000 Toyota Camry. It\u0026rsquo;s smooth, quiet, and reliable. On the weekends, I\u0026rsquo;d like to have something to drive and autox.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI love my E30, but it\u0026rsquo;s far from a classic sportscar\u0026ndash;it has body roll and understeer like the sedan it actually is. So, does it make more sense to get something less compromised and more focused. (And, more classic?)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Inexpensive sports car, whither thou?"},{"content":"Saw an \u0026lsquo;87 Porsche 924S on craigslist available fo\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jun 5, 2008\nSaw an \u0026lsquo;87 Porsche 924S on craigslist available for trade\u0026hellip;\n:-)\n(Later that night, Jeff\u0026rsquo;s front door slams open and there stands Whitney, fuming\u0026hellip;)\nokay, and here\u0026rsquo;s a list of some things i want:\n`new running shoes\n`pants that fit\n`clothes that fit that arent a size Large\n`to lose weight instead of gain it when I spend two hours a day working out\n`not to be used as a human napkin\n`dyson\n`new washer/dryer\n`new dishwasher\n`new refrigerator\n`cabinets that arent taller than i am\n`new cabinets\n`tilework\n`in-wall double oven\n`gas cooktop\n`hardwood\n`new paint\n`wood blinds\n`solar panel\n`compost pile\n`locally sold Allen\u0026rsquo;s Naturally\n`Local Whole Foods or similar\n`no fireplace\n`basement\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/inexpensive-sports-car-whither-thou-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"saw-an-87-porsche-924s-on-craigslist-available-fo\"\u003eSaw an \u0026lsquo;87 Porsche 924S on craigslist available fo\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaw an \u0026lsquo;87 Porsche 924S on craigslist available for trade\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Later that night, Jeff\u0026rsquo;s front door slams open and there stands Whitney, fuming\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eokay, and here\u0026rsquo;s a list of some things i want:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e`new running shoes\u003cbr\u003e\n`pants that fit\u003cbr\u003e\n`clothes that fit that arent a size Large\u003cbr\u003e\n`to lose weight instead of gain it when I spend two hours a day working out\u003cbr\u003e\n`not to be used as a human napkin\u003cbr\u003e\n`dyson\u003cbr\u003e\n`new washer/dryer\u003cbr\u003e\n`new dishwasher\u003cbr\u003e\n`new refrigerator\u003cbr\u003e\n`cabinets that arent taller than i am\u003cbr\u003e\n`new cabinets\u003cbr\u003e\n`tilework\u003cbr\u003e\n`in-wall double oven\u003cbr\u003e\n`gas cooktop\u003cbr\u003e\n`hardwood\u003cbr\u003e\n`new paint\u003cbr\u003e\n`wood blinds\u003cbr\u003e\n`solar panel\u003cbr\u003e\n`compost pile\u003cbr\u003e\n`locally sold Allen\u0026rsquo;s Naturally\u003cbr\u003e\n`Local Whole Foods or similar\u003cbr\u003e\n`no fireplace\u003cbr\u003e\n`basement\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Inexpensive sports car, whither thou? (Comments)"},{"content":"So, Kung Fu Panda\nThis 92-minute computer-animated extravaganza has all the elements of a great kids-and-adults flick: Slick looks, top voice talent (Jack Black, Angie Jolie, Dustin Hoffman), a fat-kid-makes-good plot, and merchandise-friendly anthropomorphic animals for characters.\nThe plot centers around a vision of the sage in residence (a Galapagos tortoise, natch!) who has a vision that the big bad, Tai Lung will escape from his prison to once again ravage the Peaceful Valley. In response, he thinks it time to choose the Dragon Warrior, who will gain cosmic power to defeat evil\u0026ndash;and Tai Lung, the leopard on steroids.\nSo Tortoise boy has his apprentice sage Shifu hold a tournament to choose the dragon warrior. Enter fanboy Po (Jack Black), who manages to catapult himself in the middle of the tournament and be chosen Dragon Warrior.\nOnly, uh\u0026hellip;.Po doesn\u0026rsquo;t know Kung-Fu. He just knows how to eat.\nSo, from there we get the standard fish-out-of-water, martial-arts training tale. He gets discouraged. He becomes encouraged. He doubts himself. He stops doubting himself. Good triumphs. Lots of quotable quotes.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t get me wrong\u0026hellip;it was well-paced, extremely funny, and beautiful. It just lacked something\u0026hellip;if you imagine Shrek with JUST the wisecracking donkey and no depth, that\u0026rsquo;s this film. There\u0026rsquo;s a big attempt at the end for Po to find that depth (he must, to defeat Tai Lung), but it seems tacked on, almost as if he ate a power-up from some videogame\u0026hellip;\nI enjoyed it, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get past the Jack Black-ness of it all\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/review-kung-fu-panda/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441773/\"\u003eKung Fu Panda\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis 92-minute computer-animated extravaganza has all the elements of a great kids-and-adults flick: Slick looks, top voice talent (Jack Black, Angie Jolie, Dustin Hoffman), a fat-kid-makes-good plot, and merchandise-friendly anthropomorphic animals for characters.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe plot centers around a vision of the sage in residence (a Galapagos tortoise, natch!) who has a vision that the big bad, Tai Lung will escape from his prison to once again ravage the Peaceful Valley. In response, he thinks it time to choose the Dragon Warrior, who will gain cosmic power to defeat evil\u0026ndash;and Tai Lung, the leopard on steroids.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Kung-Fu Panda"},{"content":"You did not just review \u0026ldquo;Kung-Fu Panda\u0026rdquo;. Chuck Fouts - Jun 1, 2008\nYou did not just review \u0026ldquo;Kung-Fu Panda\u0026rdquo;.\nYep. Tomorrow, \u0026ldquo;The Rainbow Brite Movie\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/review-kung-fu-panda-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"you-did-not-just-review-kung-fu-panda\"\u003eYou did not just review \u0026ldquo;Kung-Fu Panda\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/17807245803341116147\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eChuck Fouts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou did not just review \u0026ldquo;Kung-Fu Panda\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep. Tomorrow, \u0026ldquo;The Rainbow Brite Movie\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Review: Kung-Fu Panda (Comments)"},{"content":"Every summer, my step-son Joey leaves us to go live with his Dad in Louisville. We get to see him alternate weekends, and we get 1 week of \u0026ldquo;vacation\u0026rdquo; during that time. To give him a send-off this year, we took a mini vacation down to my Mom \u0026amp; Dad\u0026rsquo;s Friday through Sunday.\nI had a very good time, though I did eat nonstop. Mom\u0026rsquo;s house is a little like Willy Wonka\u0026rsquo;s chocolate factory\u0026ndash;lots of omnipresent chocolate goodness. What\u0026rsquo;s not chocolate is sugary or sugar-free (Dad\u0026rsquo;s Type 2 diabetic).\nFriday, we arrived late in the afternoon and just hung-out. Joe and I got to ride up to Jackson with dad in his pulling truck, which was a \u0026ldquo;man-time\u0026rdquo; treat for us. Three generations :D\nSaturday was a fizzle, as we got up late and didn\u0026rsquo;t make it to the Red River Gorge to go hiking. Whitney came down with a bad case of allergies, so we amended our plans to hike in the 95 degree heat to going to watch a movie. We drove to Hazard (Yay, 80 mile roundtrip!) to see Kung Fu Panda, then drove back to find my mom and aunt caring for Maria, who seemed to love every minute of the attention.\nThen\u0026hellip;well\u0026hellip;things got bizarro for about 15 minutes.\nAs we arrived back at my mom\u0026rsquo;s place, Maria seeemed tired, so I put her down for a nap. Sometimes she goes right to sleep, other times she fusses. I held her for 5 minutes, sang to her, and she seemed quiescent, so I laid her down in the paypen and she started to fuss. I backed out of the room into the Twilight Zone.\nI entered the living room to into an atmosphere that felt like a freezer, to find my wife and my aunt having a conversation. Well, not so much. Basically, my aunt was baiting my wife to discuss parenting techniques, and as Whitney continued, my aunt was getting madder by the moment. At some point I just asked, \u0026ldquo;What the freak is going on here?\u0026rdquo; (background: Maria Crying)\nEventually, I told Whitney to stop, that L wasn\u0026rsquo;t really listening. That seemed to cause some dam to burst within my aunt.\nL: \u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s your own FLESH AND BLOOD you\u0026rsquo;re treating like that. YOU were never treated like that\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; and so on.\n\u0026hellip;which promptly caused some sort of a dam to burst inside me. Somewhere, somehow, L hit every button I had, simultaneously\u0026ndash;personal honor, family honor, pride, shock, past transgressions, former-life repressed memories. I was done. I was on my feet, screaming right back at her, no-holds-barred. Ridiculously, the argument moved to the door to Maria\u0026rsquo;s room, where two grown people who\u0026rsquo;d probably take a bullet for each another postured in each other\u0026rsquo;s grill.\nYeah, I seem to be the idiot with no sense to leave well enough alone.\nIt ended up with L storming out and me struggling to understand what I\u0026rsquo;d done, who I\u0026rsquo;d been at that moment. Whitney said she\u0026rsquo;d never seen me that filled with rage (and that\u0026rsquo;s saying something, considering\u0026hellip;)\nAnd then, it was over\u0026hellip;and somehow, through the screaming, cursing, and stomping, Maria fell asleep. And slept like a baby for 2 hours.\n* * *\nSunday, we came back and said goodbye to Joe, and I worked as a crew leader at the Northside VBS. I don\u0026rsquo;t like it so far\u0026hellip;we have a rambunctious group, and I had to handle all 6 by myself last night. Whitney will be with me tonight, so that should be better.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/weekend-placido-und-fugue-in-h-major./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEvery summer, my step-son Joey leaves us to go live with his Dad in Louisville. We get to see him alternate weekends, and we get 1 week of \u0026ldquo;vacation\u0026rdquo; during that time. To give him a send-off this year, we took a mini vacation down to my Mom \u0026amp; Dad\u0026rsquo;s Friday through Sunday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a very good time, though I did eat nonstop. Mom\u0026rsquo;s house is a little like Willy Wonka\u0026rsquo;s chocolate factory\u0026ndash;lots of omnipresent chocolate goodness. What\u0026rsquo;s not chocolate is sugary or sugar-free (Dad\u0026rsquo;s Type 2 diabetic).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weekend: Placido und Fugue in H-Major."},{"content":"- \u0026ldquo;Your situation reminds me of that Spaceballs line, \u0026lsquo;\u0026hellip;evil will always triumph because good is dumb.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;\n- \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;ll work yourself to death by being a nice guy\u0026rdquo;\n(Upon being told there was a purpose in life)\n- \u0026ldquo;Yes, there is: Helping people, and this has nothing to do with that.\u0026rdquo;\n- \u0026ldquo;Did you forget your Teflon suit in that last meeting?\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nI wonder: Am I equipped to handle this amount of B.S.?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/memorable-quotes-from-yesterday.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e- \u0026ldquo;Your situation reminds me of that \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094012/quotes\"\u003eSpaceballs\u003c/a\u003e line, \u0026lsquo;\u0026hellip;evil will always triumph because good is dumb.\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;ll work yourself to death by being a nice guy\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(\u003cem\u003eUpon being told there was a purpose in life\u003c/em\u003e)\u003cbr\u003e\n- \u0026ldquo;Yes, there is: Helping people, and this has nothing to do with that.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- \u0026ldquo;Did you forget your Teflon suit in that last meeting?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI wonder: Am I equipped to handle this amount of B.S.?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Memorable quotes from yesterday..."},{"content":"I like #3, that\u0026rsquo;s classic. Has a bit of an Airpla\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jun 3, 2008\nI like #3, that\u0026rsquo;s classic. Has a bit of an Airplane-ish \u0026ldquo;but that\u0026rsquo;s not important right now\u0026rdquo; flavor.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/memorable-quotes-from-yesterday...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-like-3-thats-classic-has-a-bit-of-an-airpla\"\u003eI like #3, that\u0026rsquo;s classic. Has a bit of an Airpla\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 3, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI like #3, that\u0026rsquo;s classic. Has a bit of an Airplane-ish \u0026ldquo;but that\u0026rsquo;s not important right now\u0026rdquo; flavor.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Memorable quotes from yesterday... (Comments)"},{"content":"The weekend was a blur\u0026ndash;running Joey up to Louisville, taking Maria down to Mom \u0026amp; Dad\u0026rsquo;s Saturday, and lunching with the church at the Cane Ridge Shrine Sunday afternoon. The weather powers-that-be missed the forecast\u0026ndash;each day was beautiful in Georgetown.\nToday, I\u0026rsquo;ve too many meetings, and much too much to do\u0026hellip;yep, must be back in 082.\n* * *\nCoolest part of the weekend? Working on a New Holland Hay Baler with my Dad. Just like old times\u0026hellip;grease everywhere, gears, chains, clutches. I\u0026rsquo;m just a tad more mechanically capable than I used to be. That was my Father\u0026rsquo;s Day present\u0026hellip;hanging out with my Dad.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/06/quickies/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe weekend was a blur\u0026ndash;running Joey up to Louisville, taking Maria down to Mom \u0026amp; Dad\u0026rsquo;s Saturday, and lunching with the church at the Cane Ridge Shrine Sunday afternoon. The weather powers-that-be missed the forecast\u0026ndash;each day was beautiful in Georgetown.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, I\u0026rsquo;ve too many meetings, and much too much to do\u0026hellip;yep, must be back in 082.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCoolest part of the weekend? Working on a New Holland Hay Baler with my Dad. Just like old times\u0026hellip;grease everywhere, gears, chains, clutches. I\u0026rsquo;m just a tad more mechanically capable than I used to be. That was my Father\u0026rsquo;s Day present\u0026hellip;hanging out with my Dad.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quickies"},{"content":"Well, after 10 months, I\u0026rsquo;m right back on the same floor in the same building I was in for 6 years. I\u0026rsquo;m sharing a 12\u0026rsquo;x12\u0026rsquo; office with a boisterous guy, Patrick, and have a terrific view out the window onto \u0026ldquo;downtown\u0026rdquo; Lexington (such as it is).\nThis building also shares a parking lot with Del\u0026rsquo;s building, so we don\u0026rsquo;t have to drive to pick one another up. Good all around, though I\u0026rsquo;m now much farther away from the other guys on the printer I need to be working with.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/new-office...new-assignment...whew.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, after 10 months, I\u0026rsquo;m right back on the same floor in the same building I was in for 6 years. I\u0026rsquo;m sharing a 12\u0026rsquo;x12\u0026rsquo; office with a boisterous guy, Patrick, and have a terrific view out the window onto \u0026ldquo;downtown\u0026rdquo; Lexington (such as it is).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis building also shares a parking lot with Del\u0026rsquo;s building, so we don\u0026rsquo;t have to drive to pick one another up. Good all around, though I\u0026rsquo;m now much farther away from the other guys on the printer I need to be working with.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New office...new assignment...whew..."},{"content":"Welcome back. Now we\u0026rsquo;ll see if I get sent to the \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 5, 2008\nWelcome back. Now we\u0026rsquo;ll see if I get sent to the 4th floor or what.\nmuhahaha\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/new-office...new-assignment...whew...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"welcome-back-now-well-see-if-i-get-sent-to-the-\"\u003eWelcome back. Now we\u0026rsquo;ll see if I get sent to the \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWelcome back. Now we\u0026rsquo;ll see if I get sent to the 4th floor or what.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003emuhahaha\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"New office...new assignment...whew... (Comments)"},{"content":"So, last Fall, I drug my beautiful wife to my 10 year high-school reunion to her great amusement, disgust, indifference, and consternation. This past Memorial Day, it was my turn.\nTen year reunions are pretty egotistical things, everyone showing-up in their best (rented) sports-car, displaying the hot wife/husband they caught, and boasting about the great job they\u0026rsquo;re using to climb that ladder of success. Old flames are to be properly derided like a decade-old divorce proceeding. Old social pecking-order is to be re-established, if only for one shining moment of decoration and falsity.\nOh, and one\u0026rsquo;s kid is supposed to run around like a maniac and split her lip wide open. Wait that was just us. Quote of the day:\nMe: \u0026ldquo;Wow, that was a total trainwreck. Seemed like everyone was having a blast except for us.\u0026rdquo;\nBella: \u0026ldquo;Yep, welcome to my LIFE throughout high school.\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nSo yeah, in true type-A fashion, this mighty crew of 20 persons had not only planned an outside event, BUT ALSO had an indoor location in case of rain. Natch, it rained, just enough to push the festivities indoors to a Church of Christ gymnasium/fellowship hall.\nAside: There\u0026rsquo;s something about a sign that says, \u0026ldquo;No drinking, no smoking, and no profanity\u0026rdquo; that made me think, \u0026ldquo;Well, shit.\u0026rdquo; This was that kind of place.\nWhitney\u0026rsquo;s class was 20 people. No, not her 3rd period English class, her ENTIRE CLASS. Her entire high school matriculation would fit inside one graduating class at BHS. There was room for 2 cliques: Preps and Dopeheads. Okay, three\u0026ndash;Preps, Dopeheads, and Whitney, apparently. Unlike my reunion, in which some folks had changed considerably, Whitney reported that most of these folks carried forward with the same personalities and quirks, ten years hence.\nSomewhat depressing, no?\nOn the whole, the group seemed well-adjusted, conversational, and\u0026hellip;rather disinterested in one another. People who wanted to keep in contact had, so there wasn\u0026rsquo;t that shebang \u0026ldquo;wow, that\u0026rsquo;s YOU?!\u0026rdquo; moment. Childless couples stayed together, and the parents in the group chased about their multiple kids. Personally, I took it as my mission to keep the toddlers out of the snowblower. That\u0026rsquo;s just not a good place for toddlers to be.\nOf course, I tried speaking to an actual adult for 3 seconds; Maria decided that was the moment to face-plant into the concrete floor, leaving her nose uninjured but pushing her two incisors right through her upper lip. Honestly, I think she was more okay with it than us\u0026hellip;in 30 minutes she was back playing, sucking her thumb, eating and drinking. Still, she got a fat lip for her trouble, and we got to recount (and add to) the litany of our accident-prone little dreadnought, Re-Re.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;m glad Whitney went, and glad she relaxed and shared with the few people she remained friends with. It\u0026rsquo;s good to see someone in context. She remains in my eyes a singular soul, a rare gem that I found and grow to appreciate more each day, a challenge to match me in every way.\nDid I enjoy it? Not really. Long day, and really difficult trying to corral Maria every 10 seconds. Probably the coolest part was getting to use Stu\u0026rsquo;s Navigon GPS to get us to podunk Indiana. Niiiiice!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/payback-whitneys-10-year-reunion/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, last Fall, I drug my beautiful wife to \u003ca href=\"http://monkeysontheside.blogspot.com/2007/09/harolds-tenth-high-school-reunion.html\"\u003emy 10 year high-school reunion\u003c/a\u003e to her great amusement, disgust, indifference, and consternation. This past Memorial Day, it was my turn.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTen year reunions are pretty egotistical things, everyone showing-up in their best (rented) sports-car, displaying the hot wife/husband they caught, and boasting about the great job they\u0026rsquo;re using to climb that ladder of success. Old flames are to be properly derided like a decade-old divorce proceeding. Old social pecking-order is to be re-established, if only for one shining moment of decoration and falsity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Payback:  Whitney's 10-year reunion"},{"content":"Ah, yes. They\u0026rsquo;re talking about a 25-year reunion t\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 3, 2008\nAh, yes. They\u0026rsquo;re talking about a 25-year reunion this year, and one friend is trying to arrange an alternative reunion\u0026hellip;I just. Don\u0026rsquo;t. Care. Anymore.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/payback-whitneys-10-year-reunion-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"ah-yes-theyre-talking-about-a-25-year-reunion-t\"\u003eAh, yes. They\u0026rsquo;re talking about a 25-year reunion t\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 3, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAh, yes. They\u0026rsquo;re talking about a 25-year reunion this year, and one friend is trying to arrange an alternative reunion\u0026hellip;I just. Don\u0026rsquo;t. Care. Anymore.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Payback:  Whitney's 10-year reunion (Comments)"},{"content":"or \u0026ldquo;Man, do I need a swaybar\u0026rdquo;\nSix runs on a ~70 second course where you hit 60mph before a 10mph right-hand hairpin. YEEEEEEHAW.\nIt was a good day, except: I came in second, I forgot to pack lunch, and I forgot to pack sunscreen. I\u0026rsquo;ve a nice beet-red thing going on on my arms, legs, and face.\nI think a front swaybar (at minimum) is in my future, if not a full STX-compliant wheel \u0026amp; tire package. I\u0026rsquo;m a tad tired of playing on (and destroying) my all-seasons.\nDO WANT:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/there-i-was-at-the-top-of-second-gear..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eor \u0026ldquo;Man, do I need a swaybar\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.rpmphoto.net/store/05-25-08.ckrscca/78/slides/RPM_3376.JPG\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.rpmphoto.net/store/05-25-08.ckrscca/78/slides/RPM_3376.JPG\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSix runs on a ~70 second course where you hit 60mph before a 10mph right-hand hairpin. YEEEEEEHAW.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a good day, except: I came in second, I forgot to pack lunch, and I forgot to pack sunscreen. I\u0026rsquo;ve a nice beet-red thing going on on my arms, legs, and face.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think a front swaybar (at minimum) is in my future, if not a full STX-compliant wheel \u0026amp; tire package. I\u0026rsquo;m a tad tired of playing on (and destroying) my all-seasons.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"There I was, at the top of second gear...."},{"content":"Let\u0026rsquo;s get this out of the way first: This is an unnecessary movie made solely to bilk folks out of their hard-earned money. It stars an over-the-hill actor (Harrison Ford) and features a contrived plot line with holes like Swiss Cheese.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s also great fun, laugh-out-loud funny in places, well-paced, and genuinely exciting. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t take itself too seriously, since the whole thing feels like National Treasure 2 and 1/2, right down to the treasure map and the hokey history references.\nIn this installment, we find \u0026ldquo;Doctor Jones\u0026rdquo;, 20 years after his Last Crusade, happily teaching in his tweed jacket after running afoul of the KGB\u0026ndash;specifically the mentat Thufir\u0026hellip;whoops wrong movie\u0026hellip;noted psychic Irina Spalko, played by a sword-wielding Cate Blanchett. A greaser straight out of Brando\u0026rsquo;s Wild Bunch turns-up delivering the suddenly jobless Indiana a treasure map written in a dead pre-Columbian tongue (which, naturally, he and he alone can decipher).\nFast forward to Nazca Peru, and things get all Art Bell on us\u0026ndash;things with eerie magnetism, lines visible only from space\u0026hellip;you see where this is going.\nI liked it in spite of myself. Not the gushy, send-me-flowers-in-the-morning love I had for Iron Man, but a worthy spectacle.\nThat it happened to be our free quarterly outing from the powers-that-be wasn\u0026rsquo;t bad, either.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/review-indiana-jones-and-the-kingdom-of-the-crystal-skull/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s get this out of the way first: This is an unnecessary movie made solely to bilk folks out of their hard-earned money. It stars an over-the-hill actor (Harrison Ford) and features a contrived plot line with holes like Swiss Cheese.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s also great fun, laugh-out-loud funny in places, well-paced, and genuinely exciting. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t take itself too seriously, since the whole thing feels like \u003cem\u003eNational Treasure\u003c/em\u003e 2 and 1/2, right down to the treasure map and the hokey history references.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"},{"content":"We had a share-session on Polyglot programming the other day, after Mark returned from SDWest 2008.\nTonight, I had an evil thought:\nHalf of these languages are ones most in the audience have neither seen nor played with\u0026ndash;what if you added some \u0026ldquo;trick\u0026rdquo; language names to the slides to see how full of crap your audience was. It\u0026rsquo;s a play on the same allegory from \u0026ldquo;The Emperor\u0026rsquo;s New Clothes\u0026rdquo;:\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;yes, and so your application logic should be components written in a systems language like java [sic], with the higher-level being in a dynamic language like JavaScript, Ruby, or Dimebag.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Dimebag?\n\u0026ldquo;Yes, you\u0026rsquo;ve surely heard of it! It\u0026rsquo;s a language represented using flickr images manipulated using 4D Holographic gloves that parallelize any algorithm using only 2 lines of code. And it compiles down to machine independent machine code.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;Oh yeah, I\u0026rsquo;ve heard of that. Just testing you.\u0026rdquo;\nManager: \u0026ldquo;Say, could we rewrite the dashboard in Dimebag? Sounds very interesting.\u0026rdquo;\nI\u0026rsquo;m all for knowing several languages with different target domains, but one jarring thing about my time spent in Win32 land: The developers typically know C and C++, and that\u0026rsquo;s it. And that\u0026rsquo;s all they NEED to know, since they\u0026rsquo;re conentrating on the problem at hand, not the newest way to rewrite quicksort in fewer lines. (Yes, yes\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m a languages fanboi, sue me!)\nThere\u0026rsquo;s much to be said for people who concentrate on solving the problem first, then focus on how to solve it in the best, fastest, most maintainable way.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/evil-plolyglot-programmer-ploy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe had a share-session on \u003ca href=\"http://memeagora.blogspot.com/2006/12/polyglot-programming.html\"\u003ePolyglot programming\u003c/a\u003e the other day, after Mark returned from SDWest 2008.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTonight, I had an evil thought:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHalf of these languages are ones most in the audience have neither seen nor played with\u0026ndash;what if you added some \u0026ldquo;trick\u0026rdquo; language names to the slides to see how full of crap your audience was. It\u0026rsquo;s a play on the same allegory from \u0026ldquo;The Emperor\u0026rsquo;s New Clothes\u0026rdquo;:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;yes, and so your application logic should be components written in a systems language like java [\u003cem\u003esic\u003c/em\u003e], with the higher-level being in a dynamic language like JavaScript, Ruby, or Dimebag.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Evil Plolyglot programmer ploy"},{"content":"Too funny. I helped a few with CS101 homework, to \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 2, 2008\nToo funny. I helped a few with CS101 homework, to no avail. But then, what did I expect for counting open and close braces in their Pascal that wouldn\u0026rsquo;t compile?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/ah-memories...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"too-funny-i-helped-a-few-with-cs101-homework-to-\"\u003eToo funny. I helped a few with CS101 homework, to \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToo funny. I helped a few with CS101 homework, to no avail. But then, what did I expect for counting open and close braces in their Pascal that wouldn\u0026rsquo;t compile?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Ah, memories... (Comments)"},{"content":"Pretty awesome (if mundane) weekend:\nSaturday, we went to Sam\u0026rsquo;s Club and filled two carts in supplies for our new Chest Freezer (thank you, Tax Rebate!) Then, I mowed \u0026amp; trimmed the yard while doing an oil change on the Odyssey. Pretty quiet, stress-free day.\nSunday was just\u0026hellip;perfect. Church was great\u0026ndash;our pastor preached a message on how unbiblical debt is (unless for urgent necessities), complete with a \u0026ldquo;come forward and shred your credit card\u0026rdquo; alter call. (only 1 person did). Then, Maria and I cruised down (at 55mph!) to Mom \u0026amp; Dad\u0026rsquo;s in the Camry.\nGot to drive Dad\u0026rsquo;s new GMC 1/2 ton. It\u0026rsquo;s a bruitish truck, very powerful, but very, VERY stiff. I think I liked the old GM trucks better\u0026hellip;they didn\u0026rsquo;t feel so massive. It\u0026rsquo;s got a 3.73 rear axle (same ratio as my BMW) and it feels very touchy out on the highway. Also, they seem to narrow the windscreen, so you feel like you\u0026rsquo;re driving a tank. OY.\nMom\u0026rsquo;s going in for her first post-treatment check-up on June 6th. She\u0026rsquo;s not worried, but you know me. :-)\nThe drive down there and back was tremendous\u0026hellip;beautiful weather, good songs on the radio, Maria was happy\u0026hellip;good times.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/monday-rambles/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePretty awesome (if mundane) weekend:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaturday, we went to Sam\u0026rsquo;s Club and filled two carts in supplies for our new Chest Freezer (thank you, Tax Rebate!) Then, I mowed \u0026amp; trimmed the yard while doing an oil change on the Odyssey. Pretty quiet, stress-free day.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSunday was just\u0026hellip;perfect. Church was great\u0026ndash;our pastor preached a message on how unbiblical debt is (unless for urgent necessities), complete with a \u0026ldquo;come forward and shred your credit card\u0026rdquo; alter call. (only 1 person did). Then, Maria and I cruised down (at 55mph!) to Mom \u0026amp; Dad\u0026rsquo;s in the Camry.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Monday Rambles"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s all just smoke and mirrors?\nUltimately, any program running in 99% of the computers out there today is running the old fetch-execute cycle on a Von Neuman architecture: A processor fetches the next instruction, executes it, stores the result, and goes to the next instruction.\nAtop that, we\u0026rsquo;ve layered: Subroutines, Modules, Functional Programming, Structured Programming, Object-Orientation (Objects, Inheritance, Polymorphism, Composition/Aggregation), Closures, Atoms, Processes, Multithreading, Semaphores, etc.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re desperately trying to make the digital computer be more than the sum of its parts, just as a living human brain is somehow more than a collection of neurons and synapses. We *desperately* want abstractions\u0026hellip;need them, in fact.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the whole point of the progression from bare binary programming, through assembly, to high-level languages, etc.\u0026ndash;abstraction. The speed and capacity of computers grows. The speed and capacity of the minds of programmers does not. We fall victim to the same limitations as any other human\u0026ndash;can only hold so much info in our heads at one time. These abstractions let us think of the programs in coarser form. Instead of considering the instructions, \u0026ldquo;Take an array, choose a pivot value, partition it into \u0026ldquo;less than pivot\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;more than pivot\u0026rdquo;, then recursively sort those two segments the same way,\u0026rdquo; I can think of the algorithm quicksort.\n* * *\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a tension there, though\u0026hellip;ultimately, abstractions leak. They\u0026rsquo;re lossy. When you abstract or model something, you\u0026rsquo;re glossing-over some detail about how the underlying system functions, and praying that detail doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter.\nSometimes, it matters.\nSo, sometimes, I wonder if the abstractions are just smoke and mirrors that\u0026rsquo;ll bite us someday. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/programming-ever-wonder-if.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s all just smoke and mirrors?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUltimately, any program running in 99% of the computers out there today is running the old fetch-execute cycle on a Von Neuman architecture: A processor fetches the next instruction, executes it, stores the result, and goes to the next instruction.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAtop that, we\u0026rsquo;ve layered: Subroutines, Modules, Functional Programming, Structured Programming, Object-Orientation (Objects, Inheritance, Polymorphism, Composition/Aggregation), Closures, Atoms, Processes, Multithreading, Semaphores, etc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re desperately trying to make the digital computer be more than the sum of its parts, just as a living human brain is somehow more than a collection of neurons and synapses. We *desperately* want abstractions\u0026hellip;need them, in fact.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Programming: Ever wonder if...?"},{"content":"the word \u0026ldquo;lossy\u0026rdquo; in scrabble? Whitney - May 5, 2008\nthe word \u0026ldquo;lossy\u0026rdquo; in scrabble?\nNo, it\u0026rsquo;s the antonym of a(nother) jarg\u0026hellip; HarryC - May 5, 2008\nLOL!\nNo, it\u0026rsquo;s the antonym of a(nother) jargon word\u0026ndash;lossless, which comes to us from the world of compression.\n\u0026ldquo;Lossless\u0026rdquo; compression (like the Huffman coding algorithm in WinZip/Gzip) remove reduntant sections to make data smaller, but they can decompress back to a bit-by-bit replica of the original.\n\u0026ldquo;Lossy\u0026rdquo; is\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;not that. JPEG is lossy, because it loses information as it compresses. MPEG-3 (MP3\u0026rsquo;s) does the same thing.\nLossless is perfect for machine use, and lossy works great for human consumption. People\u0026rsquo;s minds \u0026ldquo;fill in the gaps\u0026rdquo; as they perceive the information, be it visual, auditory, or txtual. ;-)\nYeah, it worries me how many people you come across who don\u0026rsquo;t know any low-level stuff at all, like pointers or binary or that ascii 7 and ctrl-g and tab are somehow related :-)\nI had to modify some assembler in some startup routines to work around a compiler bug when I worked at the previous company and there was really no one around to give me any pointers. Held my breath for a few releases\u0026hellip; :-)\nAnd it\u0026rsquo;s not just computers. If there were suddenly no supermarkets, how many would starve? I could catch some fish and make a fire, but have never done the hunting thing, let alone field-dressed a deer, etc.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/programming-ever-wonder-if...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"the-word-lossy-in-scrabble\"\u003ethe word \u0026ldquo;lossy\u0026rdquo; in scrabble?\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ethe word \u0026ldquo;lossy\u0026rdquo; in scrabble?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo, it\u0026rsquo;s the antonym of a(nother) jarg\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLOL!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo, it\u0026rsquo;s the antonym of a(nother) jargon word\u0026ndash;lossless, which comes to us from the world of compression.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Lossless\u0026rdquo; compression (like the Huffman coding algorithm in WinZip/Gzip) remove reduntant sections to make data smaller, but they can decompress back to a bit-by-bit replica of the original.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Programming: Ever wonder if...? (Comments)"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;so, they\u0026rsquo;ve put together an \u0026ldquo;Innovation\u0026rdquo; lab over here, populated with all sorts of cool gadgets, gizmos, and decorations, everything from a Magic 8-Ball to the latest iMac and Nintendo Wii. There\u0026rsquo;s remote-controlled this, electronic that, and lots of \u0026ldquo;so, what\u0026rsquo;s THAT good for?\u0026rdquo;\nOne thing I was really salivating over showed-up the other day:\nYep, it\u0026rsquo;s a Kindle Amazon\u0026rsquo;s eBook reader.\nVERY neat.\nIt uses an \u0026rsquo;electronic paper\u0026rsquo; display\u0026hellip;instead of being the normal LCD screen on, say, an iPhone, it\u0026rsquo;s a contrasty, easy to read display that looks like a super-duper Etch-a-Sketch. It looks like, well, a printed page. After a few minutes, the device disappears, and it\u0026rsquo;s just like you\u0026rsquo;re reading a book. Controls exist for flipping forwards and backwards through the book. Even the form-factor is pleasant and intuitive\u0026ndash;like a big paperback or a small hardcover.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s pricey at $399, but that includes integration over Sprint\u0026rsquo;s wireless network and access to the Amazon store where you can buy books as you\u0026rsquo;d like.\nI must admit, when it came out, I thought \u0026ldquo;meh\u0026rdquo;, but this thing is really neat and might do for books what the iPod did for CD\u0026rsquo;s.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/the-other-day-while-in-the-lab.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;so, they\u0026rsquo;ve put together an \u0026ldquo;Innovation\u0026rdquo; lab over here, populated with all sorts of cool gadgets, gizmos, and decorations, everything from a Magic 8-Ball to the latest iMac and Nintendo Wii. There\u0026rsquo;s remote-controlled this, electronic that, and lots of \u0026ldquo;so, what\u0026rsquo;s THAT good for?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne thing I was really salivating over showed-up the other day:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/kindle.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep, it\u0026rsquo;s a \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-com-kindle/dp/B000FI73MA\"\u003eKindle\u003c/a\u003e Amazon\u0026rsquo;s eBook reader.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVERY neat.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt uses an \u0026rsquo;electronic paper\u0026rsquo; display\u0026hellip;instead of being the normal LCD screen on, say, an iPhone, it\u0026rsquo;s a contrasty, easy to read display that looks like a super-duper Etch-a-Sketch. It looks like, well, a printed page. After a few minutes, the device disappears, and it\u0026rsquo;s just like you\u0026rsquo;re reading a book. Controls exist for flipping forwards and backwards through the book. Even the form-factor is pleasant and intuitive\u0026ndash;like a big paperback or a small hardcover.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The other day while in the lab..."},{"content":"Ooooh, have been wanting to get my hands on one of\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 4, 2008\nOoooh, have been wanting to get my hands on one of those\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/the-other-day-while-in-the-lab...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"ooooh-have-been-wanting-to-get-my-hands-on-one-of\"\u003eOoooh, have been wanting to get my hands on one of\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 4, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOoooh, have been wanting to get my hands on one of those\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"The other day while in the lab... (Comments)"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;so, in 2001, I started working on our top-notch java app, avoiding working on Drivers \u0026amp; Printing, and a surefire job in Inkjet Firmware.\nFast forward:\n2007: Working on the Printing stuff.\n2008: Working embedded with the Inkjet Firmware.\nStill waiting for the guys in this meeting tomorrow to go, \u0026ldquo;Say, aren\u0026rsquo;t you that fat kid with glasses and the bad haircut?\u0026rdquo; :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/the-great-irony.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;so, in 2001, I started working on our top-notch java app, avoiding working on Drivers \u0026amp; Printing, and a surefire job in Inkjet Firmware.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFast forward:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e2007\u003c/strong\u003e: Working on the Printing stuff.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e2008\u003c/strong\u003e: Working embedded with the Inkjet Firmware.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill waiting for the guys in this meeting tomorrow to go, \u0026ldquo;Say, aren\u0026rsquo;t you that fat kid with glasses and the bad haircut?\u0026rdquo; :D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The great irony..."},{"content":"Well, at least you\u0026rsquo;ve still got the bad haircut\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip; Whitney - May 3, 2008\nWell, at least you\u0026rsquo;ve still got the bad haircut\u0026hellip;. Still haven\u0026rsquo;t gotten my tip from last month\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Stylist Appreciation Day\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;.\n:-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/the-great-irony...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"well-at-least-youve-still-got-the-bad-haircut\"\u003eWell, at least you\u0026rsquo;ve still got the bad haircut\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 3, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, at least you\u0026rsquo;ve still got the bad haircut\u0026hellip;. Still haven\u0026rsquo;t gotten my tip from last month\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Stylist Appreciation Day\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"The great irony... (Comments)"},{"content":"* After talking to Jeff, looks like there\u0026rsquo;s a Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) class just across the street from me. Don\u0026rsquo;t know if it\u0026rsquo;s something I\u0026rsquo;d like to do or not, but seems like a good way to learn. Bit pricey, though. Though, as my in-laws commented the other day, it\u0026rsquo;s not so good to announce you\u0026rsquo;re riding a 600cc motorcycle in a residential neighborhood w/o a license (or even a learner\u0026rsquo;s permit). Have been researching, and sounds like most 250cc entry-touring bikes get like 66 mpg and don\u0026rsquo;t have a problem cruising down the interstate. (Put the phone down, Mom\u0026hellip;)\n* * *\nYes, it\u0026rsquo;s spring, and I\u0026rsquo;ve got car fever once again. Something about Craigslist\u0026rsquo;s RSS feed capability is just\u0026hellip;evil\u0026hellip;\nIn that vein, I\u0026rsquo;m thinking requirements for a new commuter ride. Some are general, some are OCD-level specific.\n- Fun to drive\n- Manual Transmission\n- Backseat suitable for for small humans\n- Reasonable cargo capacity with said humans aboard.\n- 30+ mpg hwy (the more the better, basically)\n- Good highway gearing. I don\u0026rsquo;t mind downshifting on hills, but I hate buzzing along at 3500rpm at 70\n- Fits me AND my wife. (6'2\u0026quot; and 4'10\u0026quot; makes this difficult. Adjustable seats and tilt steering minimum, telescoping wheel and adjustable pedals preferred)\n- 4 doors preferred.\n- Hatchback/wagon preferred.\n- Timing CHAIN, not belt.\n- overall reliability\n- NO FRAMELESS WINDOWS\n- Doesn\u0026rsquo;t leak.\n- Can serve as backup family hauler when needed.\nBasically, the above doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist. Class-wise, you\u0026rsquo;re looking at the subcompact through midsize classes, but though each has contenders, each has compromises:\nSubcompact\n-MINI or MINI Clubman: Frameless windows, too small, $$$, not stellar reliability.\n-Saturn Astra: Geared too short. Coarse powertrain. No fun-to-drive factor.\n-Honda Fit: Timing belt, short gearing. Supposedly, has a huge fun-to-drive factor and sips gas. Roomy inside, good cargo capacity.\n-Hyundai Accent SE: Tiny, 2-door only. Mileage not THAT great.\nCompact\n-Chevy HHR/HHR SS: Real contender here. Availalbe in MT. No idea on fit and fun-to-drive. I hear the rear/outer visibility is horrid.\n-Hyundai Elantra: Softly sprung. Elantra touring 5-door might be taughter (like Jeff\u0026rsquo;s Elantra GT Saablet)\n- Mazda 3 hatch: Supposedly, the gold standard for the class. Haven\u0026rsquo;t driven one.\n-VW Jetta TDI Sportswagen: New Engine for 2009, not out yet, prior crappy experience with VW. HOWEVER, the promise of a Manual transmission TDI Wagon makes me salivate\u0026hellip;mmm\u0026hellip;.60mpg and room.\nMidsize\nCamry/Accord/Altima: Blech. I still lust after the Altima; no idea on fun-to-drive factor.\nMalibu: I REALLY like this car. Real presence on the road. Roomy, efficient. No M/T option, no 6-speed Automatic with the 4cylinder unless you get the LTZ package ($$$).\nTaken as a whole, I like *small* cars\u0026ndash;zippy, maneuverable, efficient. I like comfort more each day, though\u0026ndash;Driving Joey to Louisville in my roaring BMW at 75mph was painful 2 weeks ago. I\u0026rsquo;d like to get a feel for the HHR, Cobalt, Fit, and Jetta TDI. Hopefully, I\u0026rsquo;ll just drive \u0026rsquo;em and plop back into my E30 and go, \u0026ldquo;Baby, why did I ever doubt you?!\u0026rdquo; (Just like with the Astra)\n(This entry voted most likely to make my wife think I\u0026rsquo;m INSANE.)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/random-and-rfp-commuter-car-2010/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e* After talking to Jeff, looks like there\u0026rsquo;s a Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) class \u003ca href=\"http://www.bdmtc.com/\"\u003ejust across the street from me\u003c/a\u003e. Don\u0026rsquo;t know if it\u0026rsquo;s something I\u0026rsquo;d like to do or not, but seems like a good way to learn. Bit pricey, though. Though, as my in-laws commented the other day, it\u0026rsquo;s not so good to announce you\u0026rsquo;re riding a 600cc motorcycle in a residential neighborhood w/o a license (or even a learner\u0026rsquo;s permit). Have been researching, and sounds like most 250cc entry-touring bikes get like 66 mpg and don\u0026rsquo;t have a problem cruising down the interstate. (Put the phone down, Mom\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Random and RFP: Commuter car 2010"},{"content":"Article\nFinding themselves strapped for cash and unable to use their home as an ATM, Americans are increasingly turning to credit cards to cover gas, groceries and other living expenses.\nHuh? \u0026ldquo;Using their home as an ATM\u0026rdquo;..why do you want to do that?\nFor many people, racking up credit card debt is not a choice they want to make, experts say. Not too long ago, they could have tapped into the equity in their homes through loans or lines of credit or refinancing. But this debt, which usually carries lower interest rates, is no longer as widely available with the collapse of the housing market.\nOr\u0026hellip;umm\u0026hellip;they could live within their means?. Geeze, personal finance is not rocket science: This is how much money I (or we) make. These are our expenses, listed from most to least important. Subtract one from another. If they don\u0026rsquo;t balance, cut expenses if you can. Try to live on substantially less than you make, and stop caring what Buffy down at the gym thinks of your old car, K-Mart clothes, and non-designer \u0026lsquo;Do.\nTruly, we deserve every bit of this mess we\u0026rsquo;re in. Average $29,000 in Credit Card debt. Twenty-nine THOUSAND dollars in compound-interest, hound you \u0026rsquo;til you die debt? No wonder our parents and grandparents (who lived through the Great Depression) can only shake their heads.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s reality, folks: Gas WILL be $5 to $7 to $10 per gallon in the next 5 years. A good lot of us are going to be changing jobs. Cut up the Credit Cards NOW and start living on 80% of your income (less if you can manage). Yes, it\u0026rsquo;ll be painful, but so is adulthood.\n\u0026ldquo;You mock my pain!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Life IS pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/wtf-surviving-on-credit-cards/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/09/news/economy/creditcards/index.htm?postversion=2008050905\"\u003eArticle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFinding themselves strapped for cash and unable to use their home as an ATM, Americans are increasingly turning to credit cards to cover gas, groceries and other living expenses.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHuh? \u0026ldquo;Using their home as an ATM\u0026rdquo;..why do you want to do that?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor many people, racking up credit card debt is not a choice they want to make, experts say. Not too long ago, they could have tapped into the equity in their homes through loans or lines of credit or refinancing. But this debt, which usually carries lower interest rates, is no longer as widely available with the collapse of the housing market.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"WTF: Surviving on Credit Cards?"},{"content":"Amen, brother! Heck, we\u0026rsquo;ve been blessed to have en\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 5, 2008\nAmen, brother! Heck, we\u0026rsquo;ve been blessed to have enough coming in to pay the builds but there are times when those unexpected expenses come in [like $4 gas :-)]\nand we declare a moratorium on eating out, eat up whatever is in the pantry at the house, don\u0026rsquo;t buy anthing that\u0026rsquo;s not crucial, etc. We keep cars a looong time.\nI think one of the key things I learned from my first year on my own was that \u0026ldquo;miscellaneous\u0026rdquo; needs to be a big chunk of that budget. And budgeting on a monthly basis so that you have those extra paychecks every so often to take up some slack.\nAnd how many of these people are tithing? \u0026ldquo;House as an ATM\u0026rdquo;? How about the windows of heaven.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/wtf-surviving-on-credit-cards-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"amen-brother-heck-weve-been-blessed-to-have-en\"\u003eAmen, brother! Heck, we\u0026rsquo;ve been blessed to have en\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmen, brother! Heck, we\u0026rsquo;ve been blessed to have enough coming in to pay the builds but there are times when those unexpected expenses come in [like $4 gas :-)]\u003cbr\u003e\nand we declare a moratorium on eating out, eat up whatever is in the pantry at the house, don\u0026rsquo;t buy anthing that\u0026rsquo;s not crucial, etc. We keep cars a looong time.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"WTF: Surviving on Credit Cards? (Comments)"},{"content":"\nYep, me holding Maria (Mom: Put the phone down\u0026hellip;They only sat her on there with me for the picture!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/whos-that-chicken-leg-guy-on-the-scooter/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mtJHUTc0OdE/SB9CqDkMFPI/AAAAAAAAATo/dWR3p2Gnv4Q/s1600-h/352364747208_0_BG.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mtJHUTc0OdE/SB9CqDkMFPI/AAAAAAAAATo/dWR3p2Gnv4Q/s400/352364747208_0_BG.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep, me holding Maria (Mom: Put the phone down\u0026hellip;They only sat her on there with me for the picture!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who's that chicken-leg guy on the scooter?"},{"content":"I have a very similar picture of me and Kate. Tak\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 2, 2008\nI have a very similar picture of me and Kate. Taken in front of my Mom, and similarly explained to Sandra\u0026rsquo;s mom :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/whos-that-chicken-leg-guy-on-the-scooter-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-have-a-very-similar-picture-of-me-and-kate-tak\"\u003eI have a very similar picture of me and Kate. Tak\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have a very similar picture of me and Kate. Taken in front of my Mom, and similarly explained to Sandra\u0026rsquo;s mom :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Who's that chicken-leg guy on the scooter? (Comments)"},{"content":"\nW-O-W. WOW. WOOHOO!\nThis was an absolutely fun move. Great (not overwhelming) SFX, tight editing, and excellent performances from Downey, Paltrow, and Jeff Bridges.\nThis movie made me appreciate:\nHow dull the Superman movies are\nHow overwrought the X-Men franchise is\nHow truly BAD DareDevil and Electra were\nHow much of a genius the Batman series was (Burton\u0026rsquo;s two and \u0026ldquo;Batman Begins\u0026rdquo;, only!)\nLook, I\u0026rsquo;m no comic-book geek (I know, I know, surprise!). I had no preconceptions going into Ironman but it\u0026rsquo;s a frickin\u0026rsquo; feast\u0026ndash;action everywhere, neat \u0026ldquo;gee whiz\u0026rdquo; gadgetry delights, and the quips and one-liners from the top-level actors remain punchy throughout. Robert Downey, Jr., is a revelation\u0026ndash;Smart, self-deprecating, and yet utterly human. Gwyneth Paltrow plays the demure wallflower, Pepper Potts, and the stunner proves her acting chops by making us believe she IS unsure of herself.\nI am buying this movie when it comes out on DVD, and slotting it between Grand Prix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It\u0026rsquo;s not Citizen Kane, but it\u0026rsquo;s everything a superhero movie ought to be.\nAnd\u0026hellip;the cars in the film (sponsored by Audi, obviously) aren\u0026rsquo;t so bad, either!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/review-ironman/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.canmag.com/images/front/ironman/ironmanposter2-small.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eW-O-W. WOW. WOOHOO!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis was an absolutely fun move. Great (not overwhelming) SFX, tight editing, and excellent performances from Downey, Paltrow, and Jeff Bridges.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis movie made me appreciate:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow dull the Superman movies are\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow overwrought the X-Men franchise is\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow truly BAD DareDevil and Electra were\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow much of a genius the Batman series was (Burton\u0026rsquo;s two and \u0026ldquo;Batman Begins\u0026rdquo;, only!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLook, I\u0026rsquo;m no comic-book geek (I know, I know, surprise!). I had no preconceptions going into \u003cem\u003eIronman\u003c/em\u003e but it\u0026rsquo;s a frickin\u0026rsquo; feast\u0026ndash;action everywhere, neat \u0026ldquo;gee whiz\u0026rdquo; gadgetry delights, and the quips and one-liners from the top-level actors remain punchy throughout. Robert Downey, Jr., is a revelation\u0026ndash;Smart, self-deprecating, and yet utterly human. Gwyneth Paltrow plays the demure wallflower, Pepper Potts, and the stunner proves her acting chops by making us believe she IS unsure of herself.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Ironman"},{"content":"First there was Car and Driver, the irreverant magazine full of gearheads who told the truth. But, that was before the internet era. Then, there was a little-known beacon of truth, Bob Bowden\u0026rsquo;s The Car Place (now defunct), where a guy told even more truth.\nThen came the grand poobah, Peter DeLorenzo\u0026rsquo;s AutoExtemist, from an insider who ranted and raved about how uncompetitive and doomed Detroit was. Selling Chevy\u0026rsquo;s is nothing like selling Tide detergent. And it was very good.\nThen came another beacon of excellence, a muckraking blogger who runs The Truth About Cars (TTAC). Daily (sometimes hourly!) commentary on the news from the industry, with the same tone and ferocity as AutoExtremist.\nNow, it looks like they\u0026rsquo;ve joined forces. Excellent!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/w00t--autoextremist-on-ttac/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFirst there was \u003cem\u003eCar and Driver\u003c/em\u003e, the irreverant magazine full of gearheads who told the truth. But, that was before the internet era. Then, there was a little-known beacon of truth, Bob Bowden\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.jdlasica.com/articles/OJR-consumer.html#a\"\u003eThe Car Place\u003c/a\u003e (now defunct), where a guy told even \u003cem\u003emore\u003c/em\u003e truth.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen came the grand poobah, Peter DeLorenzo\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.autoextremist.com\"\u003eAutoExtemist\u003c/a\u003e, from an insider who ranted and raved about how uncompetitive and doomed Detroit was. Selling Chevy\u0026rsquo;s is nothing like selling Tide detergent. And it was \u003cem\u003every\u003c/em\u003e good.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"w00t -- AutoExtremist on TTAC"},{"content":"Nevermind. Peter DeLorenzo got his panties in a w\u0026hellip; HarryC - May 1, 2008\nNevermind. Peter DeLorenzo got his panties in a wad over TTAC\u0026rsquo;s announcement and proclaimed the deal dead.\nWhatever, Pete.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/w00t--autoextremist-on-ttac-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"nevermind-peter-delorenzo-got-his-panties-in-a-w\"\u003eNevermind. Peter DeLorenzo got his panties in a w\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNevermind. Peter DeLorenzo got his panties in a wad over TTAC\u0026rsquo;s announcement and proclaimed the deal dead.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhatever, Pete.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"w00t -- AutoExtremist on TTAC (Comments)"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s been a few years since I tried out a new version of my favorite Linux Distribution (ubuntu), so I downloaded the 64-bit ISO and put it on my 3GHz AMD64 Dell box here at work.\nThe short version? It\u0026rsquo;s sick. Good sick. SIIIIICK, yo!\nIn prior lives (back when I ran Redhat 6 on my 866Mhz PIII in college), I was a KDE fan, so I grabbed Kubuntu (KDE + Ubuntu, get it?) instead of the Gnome-based Ubuntu this time. It\u0026rsquo;s flashy and fast, and includes the new KDE 4 GUI. Nice *enough*, I suppose. Having programmed in Qt once upon a time, I have lots of respect for the GUI paradigm that Qt \u0026amp; KDE enforces.\nVisually, the KDE desktop isn\u0026rsquo;t as nice as Windows XP or Vista, and it\u0026rsquo;s leagues short of Mac OS X. Font rendering stinks. It\u0026rsquo;s just plain hard-to-read compared to TrueType and ClearType. The softness of Aqua or Mac OS is missing. This is just the sort of boring, nebulous, hard-to-define stuff that nerds hate, hence it\u0026rsquo;s probably never getting better. Nerd-o-rific is what we\u0026rsquo;ve got.\nStill, there\u0026rsquo;s a tremendous amount to like. The apt-get system (and its GUI facade, KDE\u0026rsquo;s Adept package manager) continues to impress with its \u0026ldquo;It just works\u0026rdquo; ease and comprehensiveness. Installing the apache webserver was as simple as typing \u0026lsquo;sudo apt-get install apache2\u0026rsquo;. All dependencies came down with the package, and it started right up. There\u0026rsquo;s a whole universe (and multiverse) of packages at your fingertips. Apt-get is really packaging done right, IMHO.\nSo, why am I sick? Well, we bought a stylish iMac last year, getting a fast computer with a rock-stable OS that\u0026rsquo;s incompatible with Windows apps. We could\u0026rsquo;ve bought an inexpensive clone, put Kubuntu on it and had a rock-stable OS that\u0026rsquo;s incompatible with windows apps (though with Wine, maybe some would\u0026rsquo;ve run, anyway). Most of our \u0026lsquo;killer\u0026rsquo; apps are web-based now (Gmail, Google Docs, Blogger, Ebay, etc.) and those run in Firefox + Kubuntu just as well (better?) than on our Mac.\nSo, in the end, is Kubuntu a serious competitor for Windows or Mac OS? *If* you\u0026rsquo;re an geek or enthusiast, sure. If you prefer your cars and computers to be appliances, certainly not\u0026ndash;still too much to care about, starting with the choice of KDE or GNOME. I realize that\u0026rsquo;s a Holy War topic with the *nix community, but it bears repeating: MOST PEOPLE DO NOT CARE. The community must accede to one or the other before Desktop Linux has any chance, IMHO. Beyond that, rough edges remain\u0026ndash;if something goes wrong you\u0026rsquo;d better be willing to fire-up the terminal and edit some files manually to recover. That\u0026rsquo;s the UNIX way\u0026ndash;no registry (Thank God!), just files, for better or worse.\nTalking with my old team yesterday, it sounds like Chuck\u0026rsquo;s convinced them all to install Ubuntu (if only in VMWare) to give it a shot. Given our current expense/capital situation, seems like a better ROI than either windows or Mac OS!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/review-kubuntu-8.04-hardy-heron/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been a few years since I tried out a new version of my favorite Linux Distribution (ubuntu), so I downloaded the 64-bit ISO and put it on my 3GHz AMD64 Dell box here at work.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://kubuntu.org/images/kubuntu-header.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe short version? It\u0026rsquo;s sick. Good sick. SIIIIICK, yo!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn prior lives (back when I ran Redhat 6 on my 866Mhz PIII in college), I was a KDE fan, so I grabbed Kubuntu (KDE + Ubuntu, get it?) instead of the Gnome-based Ubuntu this time. It\u0026rsquo;s flashy and fast, and includes the new KDE 4 GUI. Nice *enough*, I suppose. Having programmed in \u003ca href=\"http://trolltech.com/products/qt\"\u003eQt\u003c/a\u003e once upon a time, I have lots of respect for the GUI paradigm that Qt \u0026amp; KDE enforces.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)"},{"content":"Nice review! I may just try KDE sometime, but unti\u0026hellip; Ryan - May 5, 2008\nNice review! I may just try KDE sometime, but until then, GNOME\u0026rsquo;s just fine.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/05/review-kubuntu-8.04-hardy-heron-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"nice-review-i-may-just-try-kde-sometime-but-unti\"\u003eNice review! I may just try KDE sometime, but unti\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/14430421020298840077\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eRyan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNice review! I may just try KDE sometime, but until then, GNOME\u0026rsquo;s just fine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Review: Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) (Comments)"},{"content":"\nWon\u0026rsquo;t someone PLEASE think of the children?!\nThe hue and cry surrounding Miley Cyrus\u0026rsquo;s recent photos in Vanity Fair disgusts me. NOT the photos themselves. Certainly not the photographer, Annie Leibovitz, whose work stands on its own.\nWe should be ashamed.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re a country addicted to drugs, gossip, and pornography. We\u0026rsquo;re so in debt, we\u0026rsquo;re destitute, yet we spend like there\u0026rsquo;s no tomorrow. We care little except for how other people PERCEIVE us. Substance matters not.\nGiven that, the Helen Lovejoy-esque reaction to this photograph is disgusting. More skin is on display on your average beach outfit than this girl showed in this (to my eye) tasteful photograph.\nGiven the Disney spin-machine and handlers involved, I have no idea if Cyrus fits her squeaky-clean image. But for goodness\u0026rsquo; sake, put the torches and pitchforks down, people!! What\u0026rsquo;s there to apologize for here? This country that devoured infamous Rolling Stone spread from Britney Spears 10 years ago uproars over this?\nYou cry, \u0026ldquo;But, she\u0026rsquo;s influencing my daughter!\u0026rdquo; Yes, she is. So are you, as her parent. So are her friends. So is what she does on facebook, and chat, and the internet.\nOn the whole, I just don\u0026rsquo;t get it\u0026hellip;is the girl so overexposed (no pun intended!) that we MUST vomit her away like an over-rich meal?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/rant-miley-cyrus/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://image.comicvine.com:8000/item/9000/8941/106343-helen-lovejoy_150.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWon\u0026rsquo;t someone PLEASE think of the children?!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe hue and cry surrounding Miley Cyrus\u0026rsquo;s recent photos in Vanity Fair disgusts me. NOT the photos themselves. Certainly not the photographer, Annie Leibovitz, whose work stands on its own.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe should be ashamed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re a country addicted to drugs, gossip, and pornography. We\u0026rsquo;re so in debt, we\u0026rsquo;re destitute, yet we spend like there\u0026rsquo;s no tomorrow. We care little except for how other people PERCEIVE us. Substance matters not.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rant: Miley Cyrus"},{"content":"Being shocked by this is about like watching Reven\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Apr 3, 2008\nBeing shocked by this is about like watching Revenge of the Sith over and over and being surprised each time Anakin turns to the dark side.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/rant-miley-cyrus-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"being-shocked-by-this-is-about-like-watching-reven\"\u003eBeing shocked by this is about like watching Reven\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 3, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBeing shocked by this is about like watching Revenge of the Sith over and over and being surprised each time Anakin turns to the dark side.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Rant: Miley Cyrus (Comments)"},{"content":"* From the \u0026ldquo;not worth reviewing\u0026rdquo; file: Beowulf was awful. How do you take a blood-soaked elegiac epic and turn it into, essentially, The Devil and Tom Walker. Plus, the CGI was good, but not quite there.\n* A cold snap has hit, with frosty mornings and cool, windy days.\n* I\u0026rsquo;ve *got* to stop staying up late to watch bad movies on DVD. A netflix queue reordering is\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;in order.\n* Everyone\u0026rsquo;s doing well. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s recovered from her stomach virus last week. Maria\u0026rsquo;s managed to no maim herself lately, and seems ready to break-out running any day now (with injuries to follow, no doubt). Joey\u0026rsquo;s school year is winding down, and he\u0026rsquo;s enjoying baseball on his very good coach-pitch team, the Reds. (\u0026ldquo;Communism was a red herring\u0026rdquo;)\n* Finally sorted-out Joey\u0026rsquo;s latest seizure-inducing Wii game Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity At its heart, it\u0026rsquo;s a racing game, and I LOVE racing games. Still, it\u0026rsquo;s annoying as heck, and very short. We played through the ENTIRE GAME\u0026rsquo;s plot in 1 afternoon last week. Seems to be the hallmark of several Wii games we\u0026rsquo;ve tried (Avatar: Burning Earth, etc.)\u0026ndash;\u0026gt;beautiful, great play control, not too deep. I remember losing months of my life to the original Final Fantasy and years of my life to Grand Turismo. Wii games aren\u0026rsquo;t like that, though Super Mario Galaxy was close.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/wednesday-randomness/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e* From the \u0026ldquo;not worth reviewing\u0026rdquo; file: \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0442933/\"\u003eBeowulf\u003c/a\u003e was awful. How do you take a blood-soaked elegiac epic and turn it into, essentially, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_and_Tom_Walker\"\u003eThe Devil and Tom Walker\u003c/a\u003e. Plus, the CGI was good, but not \u003cem\u003equite\u003c/em\u003e there.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* A cold snap has hit, with frosty mornings and cool, windy days.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* I\u0026rsquo;ve *got* to stop staying up late to watch bad movies on DVD. A netflix queue reordering is\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;in order.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Everyone\u0026rsquo;s doing well. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s recovered from her stomach virus last week. Maria\u0026rsquo;s managed to no maim herself lately, and seems ready to break-out running any day now (with injuries to follow, no doubt). Joey\u0026rsquo;s school year is winding down, and he\u0026rsquo;s enjoying baseball on his very good coach-pitch team, the Reds. (\u0026ldquo;Communism was a red herring\u0026rdquo;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wednesday Randomness"},{"content":"![](http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/images/movie/small/Elizabeth_golden_age_02(200.gif)\nLink\nIn lieu of going skating with Joey and Whitney yesterday, I put Maria down for a nap and watched Cate Blanchett reprise her role as Good Queen Bess in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. As the story opens, it\u0026rsquo;s 1585, and Elizabeth has been on the throne 27 years. Still, intrigues surround her throne, as the Catholic Spain seeks to remove \u0026ldquo;the bastard whore\u0026rdquo; from the throne and put Mary Stuart (\u0026ldquo;Queen of Scots\u0026rdquo;) in her place, or so it seems.\nFor all it\u0026rsquo;s star power (Blanchett, Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh, Geoffrey Rush as Sir Francis Walsingham, and so on), this film is static and distant. It\u0026rsquo;s The Lion in Winter without the irony. Where the first Elizabeth was a gripping tale of a girl becoming queen, in this episode, we see the queen fully realized, and the action revolving around her. Sure, there\u0026rsquo;s plenty of pithy dialog, great costumes, and history galore, but the central human story isn\u0026rsquo;t there. This is the story of a country (personified in Elizabeth herself) ascending to world domination. That\u0026rsquo;s an outstanding premise for a PBS or A\u0026amp;E documentary, not a feature-length film.\nWhere the first movie transcends, this sequel left me cold.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/review-elizabeth-the-golden-age/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e![](\u003ca href=\"http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/images/movie/small/Elizabeth_golden_age_02(200.gif)\"\u003ehttp://www.soundtrackcollector.com/images/movie/small/Elizabeth_golden_age_02(200.gif)\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414055/\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn lieu of going skating with Joey and Whitney yesterday, I put Maria down for a nap and watched Cate Blanchett reprise her role as Good Queen Bess in \u003cem\u003eElizabeth: The Golden Age\u003c/em\u003e. As the story opens, it\u0026rsquo;s 1585, and Elizabeth has been on the throne 27 years. Still, intrigues surround her throne, as the Catholic Spain seeks to remove \u0026ldquo;the bastard whore\u0026rdquo; from the throne and put Mary Stuart (\u0026ldquo;Queen of Scots\u0026rdquo;) in her place, or so it seems.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Elizabeth: The Golden Age"},{"content":"I liked the movie\u0026hellip;lol. Susan - Apr 2, 2008\nI liked the movie\u0026hellip;lol.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/review-elizabeth-the-golden-age-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-liked-the-movielol\"\u003eI liked the movie\u0026hellip;lol.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/14266500429112482921\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eSusan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI liked the movie\u0026hellip;lol.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Review: Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Comments)"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s a market out there for old, efficient cars. And somebody is going to figure-out how to fill it.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s face it, cars used to be more efficient: The Honda CRX HF from 1990 was rated at 50mpg, and was a simple, dead-reliable transportation appliance. Cars also used to be less expensive and less complicated.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the secret\u0026ndash;new cars can\u0026rsquo;t be made like cars from 20 years ago. Regulations won\u0026rsquo;t allow it. Today, you must have airbags, side impact beams, stability control, etc.\nFor years, the enthusiast market has been finding these gems (like my E30) and holding on to them for a half-million miles or so. The vast majority of folks aren\u0026rsquo;t enthusiasts; they just need.cheaper, reliable, more efficient cars. Seems like somebody could fill that need.\nI see several tiers to this:\n- At the dealership level, you could pay top-dollar for good used examples, scouring the online resources available targeting efficient vehicles\u0026ndash;Older Civics, Volkswagen TDIs, MB Diesels, etc. Then, make efficiency your marketing tool. Specialize in servicing these jewels, too, because there\u0026rsquo;s lots of money in parts \u0026amp; service.\n- The next tier up is a reconditioning shop\u0026hellip;many cars have solid bodies (particularly from the South, or California), but need an engine overhaul or replacement. Most of their engines are still in production. Bring the car up to 8/10 or 9/10 condition with a new engine and transmission, and sell it for $6k to $7k. If I could walk in somewhere and buy a CRX HF with a brand new engine for $6k, I\u0026rsquo;d be there tomorrow, title to the Camry in hand.\nWhat you\u0026rsquo;re playing here is the lag in the market. Eventually the engineers will refocus on efficiency and start producing new models that get 40+mpg again. At that point, you\u0026rsquo;d be out of business. But for a narrow time, you could pull off-the-shelf stuff and have a brisk business getting people out of their SUV\u0026rsquo;s and into more efficient cars.\nMy suspicion is, used-car lots are making a killing on these efficient vehicles already.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/harebrained-idea-of-the-day-preloved-efficiency-dealerships/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a market out there for old, efficient cars. And \u003cem\u003esomebody\u003c/em\u003e is going to figure-out how to fill it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s face it, cars used to be more efficient: The Honda CRX HF from 1990 was rated at 50mpg, and was a simple, dead-reliable transportation appliance. Cars also used to be less expensive and less complicated.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the secret\u0026ndash;new cars \u003cem\u003ecan\u0026rsquo;t\u003c/em\u003e be made like cars from 20 years ago. Regulations won\u0026rsquo;t allow it. Today, you must have airbags, side impact beams, stability control, etc.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Harebrained idea of the day: \"Preloved\" efficiency dealerships"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s something awesome about going to a real city, staying in a great old hotel and eating at a darn good restaurant\nBella really outdid herself this weekend\u0026hellip;first class stuff all the way from the room and its appointments, through the champagne and fruit tray. I particularly enjoyed the Art Deco throughout the great old building, which served as a model for the Empire State Building (same architectural firm).\nThrough it all, I enjoyed my darling\u0026rsquo;s company\u0026hellip;that was the best part.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/tremendous-weekend.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s something awesome about going to a \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati,_Ohio\"\u003ereal city\u003c/a\u003e, staying in a \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carew_Tower\"\u003egreat old hotel\u003c/a\u003e and eating at a \u003ca href=\"http://www.opentable.com/rest_profile.aspx?rid=12982\"\u003edarn good restaurant\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBella really outdid herself this weekend\u0026hellip;first class stuff all the way from the room and its appointments, through the champagne and fruit tray. I particularly enjoyed the Art Deco throughout the great old building, which served as a model for the Empire State Building (same architectural firm).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThrough it all, I enjoyed my darling\u0026rsquo;s company\u0026hellip;that was the best part.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tremendous Weekend..."},{"content":"21 was great, if you like ill-paced movies with recycled plotlines.\nAfter enjoying other such pictures about genius kids (Real Genius) and breaking the bank at Las Vegas casinos (Ocean\u0026rsquo;s 11), I hoped for a tight, enjoyable romp, with a good \u0026ldquo;nerd + hot chick\u0026rdquo; love story and lots of nerd-rific references\u0026ndash;sort of like War Games in Vegas.\nYeah, not so much.\nThe elevator pitch is dynamite: MIT students act as a team to count cards at Vegas blackjack tables, facing opposition from the latest technology (biometric scanners) and old-school Vegas security men, as well as internal turmoil. Somewhere between there and adapting the bestselling fact-cum-fiction book Bringing Down the House, this movie becomes a mess of recycled ideas and predictability. By the end, I was rooting for security guards to nab the lot of them. They\u0026rsquo;re just annoying people we\u0026rsquo;re given no reason to care about.\nSome highlights:\nClassroom discussion of The Monty Hall problem\nScene-stealing nerd-rific stuff from the main character\u0026rsquo;s pals, protoypical bookworm, never-had-a-date geeks.\nA few laugh-out-loud moments\u0026hellip;\nLawrence Fishburne. Tremendous! I was rooting for this guy from the first scene he appeared in, and he didn\u0026rsquo;t disappoint\u0026ndash;strong, mysterious, deep. He was the only real character in the movie to me.\nThe cinematography is excellent. They capture the stark, overexposed, morning-after blaze of Vegas sunlight perfectly. It makes you want to shrivel behind dark curtains until the sun goes down again\u0026hellip;exactly what it was like when I was there.\nSome lowlights:\nThe editor should be ashamed. This is a 90 minute movie that ran 123 minutes. The lovestory feels forced and Kate Bosworth is her usual unattractive self.\nKevin Spacey. He seems to play the same creepy guy\u0026hellip;though I would\u0026rsquo;ve loved it had he ended one of his unemotive rants with, \u0026ldquo;Now I\u0026rsquo;ve got to get back to K\u0026rsquo;Pax\u0026rdquo;.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m sure we can carry-off this pointless crowd-shot if we just crank the techno music to 11, flash strobe some lights, and show strippers with their clothes still on.\u0026rdquo; Yeah, that\u0026rsquo;s 20 minutes of this movie, and it\u0026rsquo;s 19 minutes too much.\nI know it\u0026rsquo;s an adapted screenplay, but geeze!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/review-21/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478087/\"\u003e21\u003c/a\u003e was great, if you like ill-paced movies with recycled plotlines.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter enjoying other such pictures about genius kids (\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/\"\u003eReal Genius\u003c/a\u003e) and breaking the bank at Las Vegas casinos (\u003ca href=\"http://imdb.com/title/tt0240772/\"\u003eOcean\u0026rsquo;s 11\u003c/a\u003e), I hoped for a tight, enjoyable romp, with a good \u0026ldquo;nerd + hot chick\u0026rdquo; love story and lots of nerd-rific references\u0026ndash;sort of like \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/\"\u003eWar Games\u003c/a\u003e in Vegas.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, not so much.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe elevator pitch is dynamite: MIT students act as a team to count cards at Vegas blackjack tables, facing opposition from the latest technology (biometric scanners) and old-school Vegas security men, as well as internal turmoil. Somewhere between there and adapting the bestselling fact-cum-fiction book \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bringing_Down_the_House_%28book%29\"\u003eBringing Down the House\u003c/a\u003e, this movie becomes a mess of recycled ideas and predictability. By the end, I was rooting for security guards to nab the lot of them. They\u0026rsquo;re just annoying people we\u0026rsquo;re given no reason to care about.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: 21"},{"content":"My wife just turned her permanent age: 29. That\u0026rsquo;s a good number. It think she\u0026rsquo;ll stay there awhile.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a big year for her, and it\u0026rsquo;s been gratifying to be her husband and watch her grow. This year she saw Maria through infancy, and planned + executed our first family vacation. She dealt with her first summer without Joey, and Maria\u0026rsquo;s burn and recovery. She dealt all the issues I had this past year\u0026ndash;changing jobs, frustrations, dependency, Mom\u0026rsquo;s cancer. I was horrid through most of that. She supported me, and kicked my butt when necessary.\nShe survived becoming the prototypical Soccer Mom (complete with minivan), and her frustrations with \u0026ldquo;Womankind\u0026rdquo;. Somewhere in all that, she found empathy and understanding, and began to process her anger and frustration. This year, we found an honesty and a vulnerability together that\u0026rsquo;s made all the difference.\nShe is a tremendous friend, moral compass, cook, organizer, travel agent, and the love of my life.\nHappy Birthday, my darling.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/birthday-wishes/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy wife just turned her permanent age: 29. That\u0026rsquo;s a good number. It think she\u0026rsquo;ll stay there awhile.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been a big year for her, and it\u0026rsquo;s been gratifying to be her husband and watch her grow. This year she saw Maria through infancy, and planned + executed our first family vacation. She dealt with her first summer without Joey, and Maria\u0026rsquo;s burn and recovery. She dealt all the issues I had this past year\u0026ndash;changing jobs, frustrations, dependency, Mom\u0026rsquo;s cancer. I was horrid through most of that. She supported me, and kicked my butt when necessary.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Birthday wishes"},{"content":"This is kinda \u0026ldquo;duh\u0026rdquo; stuff, but here goes: What does all professional software have in common? What attributes do all non-trivial programs share?\nWhen you\u0026rsquo;re in school and you write assignment programs, often, they\u0026rsquo;re command-line, single-execution processes. These toy programs exist as drivers for some concept you\u0026rsquo;re trying to grasp\u0026ndash;string operations, numercal calculations, or Object-Oriented programming. An example might be: \u0026ldquo;Read a file that contains a maze and print out the steps to find the exit as coordinates.\u0026rdquo;\nThat\u0026rsquo;s not real world, however. What makes a real-world application?\nI came up with 6 Characteristic areas :\nType/Mode\nAlgorithms/Business Logic\nCommunications\nLogging/Debugging\nPersistence/Migration\nMetadata\nType\nWhat kind of app is it? Some examples would be: Command-line, GUI, Service/Daemon, Web App. For instance, Gmail is a web app used for reading mail online. Grep is a command-line app for filtering textual input against a pattern. Whatever your app is, it\u0026rsquo;s one or more of these types.\nAlgorithms/Business Logic\nThis is what your app does\u0026ndash;the problem that it solves. Be it as simple as 10 print \u0026quot;Hello World\u0026quot; or as complex as excel or mathematica, your app has business logic inside it.\nCommunications\nYour app is running on a computer somewhere, but without communicating with the outside world, it\u0026rsquo;s useless. Logic is blind, deaf, and dumb, and must have some data upon which to operate. This can be anything from reading from STDIN and writing to STDOUT, through files on disks, Sockets, Communication Ports, or a GUI.\n* * *\nOkay, okay, *every* app (even our maze example) fulfills these first three. It\u0026rsquo;s the next three that get interesting.\nLogging/Debugging\nIn real world apps, we need some way to know what the app\u0026rsquo;s doing as it\u0026rsquo;s running, and we need a way to tunnel deeper and deeper into its innards as needed. They don\u0026rsquo;t make MRI\u0026rsquo;s for software (yet), so we need to weave logging into our apps somehow. This can take several forms: Log files with varying severity levels, debug consoles or dashboards, or even runtimes that let us change \u0026amp; modify application logic at runtime. One thing I\u0026rsquo;ve noticed\u0026ndash;systems without logging don\u0026rsquo;t survive long. You can\u0026rsquo;t get into the field and hook-up your debugger; you need enough information in a logfile to locallize and reproduce the bug.\nAn accessory to the above is automated crash reporting\u0026ndash;sending the corefile, dump, and/or logfile back to the home office whenever you fail.\nPersistence/Migration\nOftentimes, you want to save information between runs of your program, or visits to your site. If you could buy an infinite amount of RAM and ensure your computer never powered-down, you could save it in data structures in memory. Sadly, this won\u0026rsquo;t work. So, we need some form of external persistence\u0026ndash;files, the Windows Registry, a database, or one of those newfangled \u0026ldquo;clouds\u0026rdquo; like Amazon\u0026rsquo;s EC2.\nThis persistence stuff is non-trivial, and whole sub-industries spring-up (no pun intended!) to service it. Holy wars emerge. One solution is slow and easy, another is fast and cumbersome. That\u0026rsquo;s just for the current version.\nIt gets really nasty if you have a particular class of app\u0026ndash;the client-hosted app with persistence. In this case, when you change from v1 to v2 of your app, you must MIGRATE the data from its previous form to the new version\u0026rsquo;s tangled web of hacked up relations\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;schema\u0026rdquo;. People will go to extreme lengths to avoid migrating data, even writing whole new, incompatible apps just so they needn\u0026rsquo;t worry about it.\nMetadata\nGood metadata management is the mark of professional software. Sure, you can hard-code things like strings, timeout values, and input validation regex\u0026rsquo;s into your code, but WHY do that? Every programming environment has good to great support for storing these metadata values in some easily-accessible external format\u0026ndash;an INI file, .rc file, Windows Registry, Java .properties, YAML file, or (gulp) Spring XML. All hew-down the same tree\u0026ndash;factoring-out stuff that doesn\u0026rsquo;t belong in source code.\n* * *\nMy big beef with the above are apps that confuse Persistence and Metadata. Yes, if you oversimplify both involve storing values across instances/invocations on some external medium. But I have two guideliness I like to follow:\nDon\u0026rsquo;t use a metadata medium as a database. Specifically, the Windows Registry. Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s convenient, but don\u0026rsquo;t be lazy.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t use a general-purpose storage medium for your metadata. Specifically, a database. Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s convenient, but don\u0026rsquo;t be lazy.\nI know plenty of successful apps that abuse the above (I\u0026rsquo;ve worked on two!), but on a greenfield app, I\u0026rsquo;d keep the metadata in an read-often/write-rarely medium, like the Registy or a YAML file, and the persistent data is a read/write optimized, easy-to-migrate medium like a RDBMS.\nLike I said, alot of \u0026lsquo;Duh\u0026rsquo; stuff for those of us in the industry, but planning for each of these in a new app (particularly logging/debug) is worth the effort.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/anatomy-of-software-applications/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is kinda \u0026ldquo;duh\u0026rdquo; stuff, but here goes: What does all professional software have in common? What attributes do all non-trivial programs share?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen you\u0026rsquo;re in school and you write assignment programs, often, they\u0026rsquo;re command-line, single-execution processes. These toy programs exist as drivers for some concept you\u0026rsquo;re trying to grasp\u0026ndash;string operations, numercal calculations, or Object-Oriented programming. An example might be: \u0026ldquo;Read a file that contains a maze and print out the steps to find the exit as coordinates.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anatomy of Software Applications"},{"content":"empty printer boxes to get for bart and bridgette\u0026hellip;. Whitney - Apr 2, 2008\nempty printer boxes to get for bart and bridgette\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;\nI vote for VI++, except that sounds like a hopped-up text editor.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/randomness...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"empty-printer-boxes-to-get-for-bart-and-bridgette\"\u003eempty printer boxes to get for bart and bridgette\u0026hellip;.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eempty printer boxes to get for bart and bridgette\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI vote for VI++, except that sounds like a hopped-up text editor.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Randomness... (Comments)"},{"content":"How is it that I\u0026rsquo;ve lived 29 years (21 of those a gearhead) and not seen Vanishing Point?\nThis film is hard to pin down. It\u0026rsquo;s like:\nEasy Rider, in a car\nSmokey and the Bandit, but no midget and it\u0026rsquo;s not funny\nCannonball run\u0026hellip;no Dom DeLouise, and it\u0026rsquo;s not funny.\nApocalypse now/Heart of Darkness but no jungle\nHomer\u0026rsquo;s Odyssey but no boat\nMore precisely, this film has the same overall theme as \u0026ldquo;Cool Hand Luke\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;an ordinary man comes back from war (in the case, Vietnam), knocks around awhile and gets into trouble, and pays the price. As the audience, we\u0026rsquo;re supposed to identify with the main character, and see how \u0026ldquo;the man\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;the squares\u0026rdquo; are hell-bent on destroying the utopian hippie vision of freedom and love.\nOur \u0026ldquo;Luke\u0026rdquo; here is named Kowalski, a speed-freak (in both senses) decorated Vietnam vet who gets kicked out of the police force in the late 60\u0026rsquo;s for ratting on his lecherous partner. After that, he kicks around racing motorcycles and cars, finally ending up as a driver for a car-delivery service. As our story begins, Kowalski shows up on Friday at 11pm in Denver, picks up a 1970 4-speed Dodge Challenger 440 and heads over to his regular hookup to buy some Amphetamines (Speed, \u0026ldquo;Ups\u0026rdquo;) so that he can return nonstop to California. He bets his dealer the price of the drugs, if he can make it to San Francisco (~1200) miles by 3pm Saturdayfree.\nthis mad dash across the wild, free West, is the framework for the story. We meet hippies, carjacking Queens, a snake handling prospector, and a random naked woman on a motorcycle, and Tiresius himself\u0026ndash;a blind black DJ names Super Soul. Throughout, Kowalski evades the combined police forces of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California\u0026hellip;until he doesn\u0026rsquo;t. The end is famous, but I won\u0026rsquo;t spoil it for you if you haven\u0026rsquo;t seen it.\nLike Easy Rider or Cool Hand Luke, this film is of a different time\u0026ndash;Vietnam and the 60\u0026rsquo;s left the country with a vast hangover, and that \u0026ldquo;the man\u0026rdquo; had won. Nixon was in the White House, we were still in Vietnam, and the vast promise of the open road left a question. Now What?\nTaken on its own merits, this film is unwatchable at times: Boring, protracted empty landscapes lead to scenes and characters that add nothing. The intermezzo in the desert puzzles. . .it\u0026rsquo;s like Apocalypse Now, in the desert with a car, and makes about as much sense. Other times, there\u0026rsquo;s gripping action, fear, and uncertainly. Uneven, rather like life itself:-)\nYet\u0026hellip;there\u0026rsquo;s transcendency here, amid the bad edits and worse acting. Vanishing Point is catharsis. Americans faced the same bleak outlook in the 1970\u0026rsquo;s that Kowalski did in microcosm\u0026ndash;behind lay a rocky past, and before them lay uncertain (or blocked) futures. What action should they take? What inspiration (or caution) would others take from that action?\nThis is a cult movie for good reason: People should never forget the crossroads of a generation, a quandry this movie captures in one doomed man\u0026rsquo;s inscrutable gaze.\n* * *\nOh, and I could listen to that 440\u0026rsquo;s blaaaaaaaat exhaust all day long.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/review-vanishing-point-1971/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHow is it that I\u0026rsquo;ve lived 29 years (21 of those a gearhead) and not seen \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067927/\"\u003eVanishing Point\u003c/a\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.jdmfilmreviews.com/images/vanishing-point-dvd1.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis film is hard to pin down. It\u0026rsquo;s like:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEasy Rider, in a car\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSmokey and the Bandit, but no midget and it\u0026rsquo;s not funny\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCannonball run\u0026hellip;no Dom DeLouise, and it\u0026rsquo;s not funny.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eApocalypse now/Heart of Darkness but no jungle\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHomer\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eOdyssey\u003c/em\u003e but no boat\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMore precisely, this film has the same overall theme as \u0026ldquo;Cool Hand Luke\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;an ordinary man comes back from war (in the case, Vietnam), knocks around awhile and gets into trouble, and pays the price. As the audience, we\u0026rsquo;re supposed to identify with the main character, and see how \u0026ldquo;the man\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;the squares\u0026rdquo; are hell-bent on destroying the utopian hippie vision of freedom and love.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Vanishing Point (1971)"},{"content":"You win your first event in 2 years\nIn the cold, in the rain, the Beamer was awesome. I set the tires at 35psi front and 40psi rear, and let \u0026rsquo;er tailslide around the 4 on-course sweepers.\nThis was CKR\u0026rsquo;s first points event of the year, and it was an inspired and safe course design, using the small dump-truck training pad to the utmost. Braindump of me out there:\n_\nFirst gear, rev to 4k\u0026hellip;sidestep the clutch. Okay, wheelhop, wheelhop\u0026hellip;HOOK! Pick-up your slalom cone, now BANG second. Both hands on the wheel. Floor it into the braking zone for the first left hand sweeper. Brake, okay now crank your neck left to pick-up the second cone on the slalom. WOOOO\u0026hellip;feel that rear come around.\nSlalom. Smooth right, smooth left, GAAAAAS!!! Brake\u0026hellip;feel the ABS. Crank your neck all the way right to pick-up the exit. Feel the front end bite, now feed on the power\u0026hellip;.WOOOOOO\u0026hellip;feel that rear coming again, hang it, hang it\u0026hellip;floorboard that gas baby, YEAH!\n\u0026lsquo;K\u0026hellip;brake, lefthand sweeper, offset chicane on exit. Come on, baby, don\u0026rsquo;t lose your front end, crank out the steering and GAAAAAAS. Tap the brakes coming out, now set-up for the tight right into the timing lights. Go through lights with a 20 degree left slip angle.\n_\nThat took 41 seconds and change. In the rain.\nYEAH!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/autocross-its-a-good-day-when.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.gunshowracing.com/ckrscca/2008/0413/20080413_fin_.htm#TIRE\"\u003eYou win your first event in 2 years\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the cold, in the rain, the Beamer was awesome. I set the tires at 35psi front and 40psi rear, and let \u0026rsquo;er tailslide around the 4 on-course sweepers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis was \u003ca href=\"http://www.ckrscca.org\"\u003eCKR\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s first points event of the year, and it was an inspired and safe course design, using the small dump-truck training pad to the utmost. Braindump of me out there:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e_\u003cbr\u003e\nFirst gear, rev to 4k\u0026hellip;sidestep the clutch. Okay, wheelhop, wheelhop\u0026hellip;HOOK! Pick-up your slalom cone, now BANG second. Both hands on the wheel. Floor it into the braking zone for the first left hand sweeper. Brake, okay now crank your neck left to pick-up the second cone on the slalom. WOOOO\u0026hellip;feel that rear come around.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Autocross:  It's a good day when..."},{"content":"Wow, I understood like 25% of that, but the happy \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Apr 1, 2008\nWow, I understood like 25% of that, but the happy happy joy joy I got :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/autocross-its-a-good-day-when...comment-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"wow-i-understood-like-25-of-that-but-the-happy-\"\u003eWow, I understood like 25% of that, but the happy \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWow, I understood like 25% of that, but the happy happy joy joy I got :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Autocross:  It's a good day when...(Comment) (Comments)"},{"content":"Mmmmm\u0026hellip;\n15x7. Correct offset (+25mm). Correct hubcentric diameter (57.1 mm)\nShine-y.\nWhite car w/black rims\u0026hellip;SHINE-Y!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/in-lust.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMmmmm\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e15x7. Correct offset (+25mm). Correct hubcentric diameter (57.1 mm)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://store.nexternal.com/bimmerworl/images/Pro%20Race%201%20Black_m.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShine-y.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhite car w/black rims\u0026hellip;SHINE-Y!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"In lust..."},{"content":"R-r-r! Jeff Roberts - Apr 5, 2008\nR-r-r!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/in-lust...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"r-r-r\"\u003eR-r-r!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eR-r-r!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"In lust... (Comments)"},{"content":"\nProfessor Djikstra\u0026ndash;Mister Syncronization!\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;ve been doing some heavy work with multithreading on windows lately, and I must say I\u0026rsquo;m impressed. Win32 went whole-hog for the multithreaded model, and has great Kernel support for some very useful primitives:\nIf you want to work within your process exclusively, you have Critical Sections, which give are ways to ensure only one thread is executing in a code block at any one time. Nice, but nothing too exciting.\nIt gets more interesting when you start discussing the Kernel Objects: Mutexes, Semaphores, and Events. As these are Kernel objects, you can use them for synchronization between processes. Coming from the java world, this isn\u0026rsquo;t something I\u0026rsquo;m used to\u0026ndash;Java has built-in support for threading, but up to Java 5, had only Monitors and synchronized blocks. After that, we got Mutexes, Atomic* classes, Semaphores, etc, but still constrained to only one process/Virtual Machine.\nA plain-old Kernel Event is a darn useful thing: Spin off some work to a worker thread (or, in my case Overlapped/Async I/O) and wait for the I/O to complete or your timeout to fire. If the I/O\u0026rsquo;s already come back before you enter the WaitForSingleObject or WaitForMultipleObjects, then no problem\u0026ndash;you automatically don\u0026rsquo;t wait. In Windows terms,the Kernel object is \u0026lsquo;Signaled\u0026rsquo;, so no wait is necessary.\nThis nicely overcomes the problem in Java where you MUST check before invoking Object.wait() or else you\u0026rsquo;ll block\u0026ndash;possibly forever, even if your child operation/process/IO is done.\nSemaphores and Mutexes work much the same way\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re cross-process, and have two logical states: Signalled and non-signalled. Faster than Java, anyway!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/synchronization-windows-style-overview/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/EWDwww.jpg\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eProfessor Djikstra\u0026ndash;Mister Syncronization!\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;ve been doing some heavy work with multithreading on windows lately, and I must say I\u0026rsquo;m impressed. Win32 went whole-hog for the multithreaded model, and has great Kernel support for some \u003ca href=\"http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms810428.aspx\"\u003every useful primitives\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you want to work within your process exclusively, you have \u003ca href=\"http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682530.aspx\"\u003eCritical Sections\u003c/a\u003e, which give are ways to ensure only one thread is executing in a code block at any one time. Nice, but nothing too exciting.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Synchronization, Windows style (overview)"},{"content":"Brrrrrrrrring\n\u0026ldquo;This is Harold\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Hey, Honey! Listen, where would you and Joey like to sit at the Legends Opening Day Game tonight?\u0026rdquo;\nBlink. Blink.\n\u0026ldquo;WHaaa\u0026hellip;?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m getting you guys tickets to the game. Where would you like sit?\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nYes, I have the best wife in the world. Don\u0026rsquo;t know how she knew, but it was great.\nThe team this year is so-so. Well, so-so\u0026hellip;so far. The starting pitcher made it into the 5th inning, but the middle relief guy (Koons) got tagged early and often, including a classic \u0026ldquo;throw it to first but brain some guy in the stands\u0026rdquo; error that lead to a score 1 play later. Fielding was uneven, with two more errors leading to scores or extra bases.\nThe atmosphere was great: Around 7000 attended, and extra touches abounded, like free hot dogs for kids, Big L parachuting in to start the game, and plenty of contests.\nJoey enjoyed it much more this year than last. Having actually played baseball, he was attentive through ~6 innings. I\u0026rsquo;d throw out scenarios to him, and he picked-up on them well, \u0026ldquo;So, now if this guy walks and the bases are loaded, then the next guy hits a home run, that\u0026rsquo;s a Grand Slam, Harold!\u0026rdquo;\nPerhaps the best part was sitting in row 2 of section 202, with two old-salt Legends fans seated in row 1, about 5 seats apart. Guy on Left knew the inside scoop on everything, and his commentary alone was worth the price of admission\u0026ndash;he knew the backstories, the grounds crew, ushers, etc. Guy on Right was the classic Heckler\u0026ndash;knew how to needle the ump and opposing batsmen without getting mean. GoR knew where the line was between \u0026ldquo;involved\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;annoying as hell\u0026rdquo;, and stayed just inside it. Joey and I got a huge kick of of them both.\nA 15 minute fireworks show capped the evening. Lovely, lovely stuff\u0026hellip;wouldn\u0026rsquo;t mind having season tickets, except I\u0026rsquo;d go bankrupt buying peanuts and a beer at every game ($3.75 + 5.75), plus parking.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/lexington-legends-opening-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBrrrrrrrrring\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;This is Harold\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Hey, Honey! Listen, where would you and Joey like to sit at the Legends Opening Day Game tonight?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBlink. Blink.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;WHaaa\u0026hellip;?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m getting you guys tickets to the game. Where would you like sit?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, I have the best wife in the world. Don\u0026rsquo;t know how she knew, but it was great.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe team this year is so-so. Well, so-so\u0026hellip;so far. The starting pitcher made it into the 5th inning, but the middle relief guy (Koons) got tagged early and often, including a classic \u0026ldquo;throw it to first but brain some guy in the stands\u0026rdquo; error that lead to a score 1 play later. Fielding was uneven, with two more errors leading to scores or extra bases.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lexington Legends Opening Day"},{"content":"Watched Clint Eastwood\u0026rsquo;s Flags of our Fathers, and don\u0026rsquo;t quite know what to make of it. Told as a series of flashbacks about the American assault on Iwo Jima, the film follows the novelist son of one of the flagraisers on Mt. Surabaci from this famous picture taken in 1945.\nThe film is a fine piece of work, and the acting in it is tremendous\u0026ndash;Ryan Phillippe shines\u0026ndash;but I didn\u0026rsquo;t like it at first. It\u0026rsquo;s not the deep immersion of Saving Private Ryan. Where Ryan was a gritty, sweeping story about a platoon amid the massive invasion of Normandy, Flags feels very small, almost claustrophobic. We\u0026rsquo;re rarely in fire-fights; mostly, we see the fearful anticipation or the horrific aftermath. A few days after watching it, I realized: The hardest part of surviving WWII was living with what you\u0026rsquo;d seen and done.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s why this film is so powerful\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s a study in PTSD. It shows us how our country elevates, lauds, and then discards its heroes. Half the men in that photograph never made it off Iwo Jima alive. The other half did their best to forget what happened to them. Ira Hayes drank himself to death, and \u0026ldquo;Doc\u0026rdquo; never spoke of the war to his children.\nOverall, it\u0026rsquo;s an easier film than Saving Private, Ryan, but its subtlety and art still hit home: War is humanity at its worst, and it wounds long after the last bullet strikes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/mini-review-flags-of-our-fathers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWatched Clint Eastwood\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418689/\"\u003eFlags of our Fathers\u003c/a\u003e, and don\u0026rsquo;t quite know what to make of it. Told as a series of flashbacks about the American assault on Iwo Jima, the film follows the novelist son of one of the flagraisers on Mt. Surabaci from \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_Iwo_Jima\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e famous picture taken in 1945.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe film is a fine piece of work, and the acting in it is tremendous\u0026ndash;Ryan Phillippe shines\u0026ndash;but I didn\u0026rsquo;t like it at first. It\u0026rsquo;s not the deep immersion of \u003cem\u003eSaving Private Ryan\u003c/em\u003e. Where Ryan was a gritty, sweeping story about a platoon amid the massive invasion of Normandy, \u003cem\u003eFlags\u003c/em\u003e feels very small, almost claustrophobic. We\u0026rsquo;re rarely in fire-fights; mostly, we see the fearful anticipation or the horrific aftermath. A few days after watching it, I realized: The hardest part of surviving WWII was living with what you\u0026rsquo;d seen and done.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mini-review: Flags of our Fathers"},{"content":"Lots of randomness from an awesome weekend:\nSaturday was the Georgetown College Academic Team (GCAT) tournament at my Alma Mater. I served as scorer in the Division I room, alongside my old pal Joe Guillory and the delightful freshman, R. (Did I see R. making eyes at Joe? Perhaps!) Georgetown\u0026rsquo;s dominance and capability stunned me\u0026ndash;this was a team of depth and quiet competence, obviously playing a level above their competition. They\u0026rsquo;re going to Nationals (College Bowl?) and I expect they\u0026rsquo;ll do well.\nSaturday night was the first date I\u0026rsquo;ve had with my wife since we got married. The whole thing was a bit of a debacle\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;ve not dated in so long I\u0026rsquo;ve lost the knack of suggesting we do something together, planning said something, and executing on that plan. Yeah, that\u0026rsquo;s right\u0026ndash;I left most of the planning to the last minute. Still, we got to leave Maria with some church friends, go to Bella Notte in Lex, and have a wonderful dinner. After that, we went to Lowe\u0026rsquo;s and daydreamed on what we\u0026rsquo;d like to do for the house. It was good to just be with my wife, even if it wasn\u0026rsquo;t anything elaborate. [Promise I\u0026rsquo;ll do better next time, Honey! You available on May 3rd?]\nSunday was just\u0026hellip;perfect. Well, if I\u0026rsquo;d done the brake job on the Camry right, it would\u0026rsquo;ve been perfect. As it was, when I took the Camry for a drive to bed-in the new pads \u0026amp; rotors, the pedal went to the floor and there were barely any brakes. Yep\u0026ndash;air somewhere in the lines. Looks like in our zeal to flush the system on Thursday, I let the master cylinder reservoir empty while bleeding the right rear drum. Hydraulic systems REALLY don\u0026rsquo;t like air in \u0026rsquo;em. :-) But, after bleeding the brakes again, the car stops like a champ\u0026ndash;linear, no pulsation, and it stops RIGHT NOW.\nI was pretty blitzed mucking around all afternoon, so we hung-out with Maria in the back yard for a few hours, which was great. She really seems to be taking to the outdoors, and Whitney snapped some great pics of her in her pedal car. She also took some tentative slides down her playhouse and only face-planted once.\nI\u0026rsquo;m really looking forward to my first autocross next weekend\u0026ndash;my SCCA membership card arrived on Friday! Getting a bit nervous, and I still need to prep the beamer for it. Needs a wash and oil change (and, maybe some prayers!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/on-asbestos-gcat-dates-and-pasta.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLots of randomness from an awesome weekend:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaturday was the Georgetown College Academic Team (GCAT) tournament at my Alma Mater. I served as scorer in the Division I room, alongside my old pal Joe Guillory and the delightful freshman, R. (Did I see R. making eyes at Joe? Perhaps!) Georgetown\u0026rsquo;s dominance and capability stunned me\u0026ndash;this was a team of depth and quiet competence, obviously playing a level above their competition. They\u0026rsquo;re going to Nationals (College Bowl?) and I expect they\u0026rsquo;ll do well.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Asbestos, GCAT, Dates, and Pasta..."},{"content":"a.k.a. Nothing like brake fluid that\u0026rsquo;s so old it\u0026rsquo;s green\u0026hellip;.\nInstalled the new Brembo rotors and Akebono ceramic pads from the Tire Rack yesterday on our 2000 Camry, and for once I did it right.\n- I jacked the car up one night.\n- I disassembled everything another night\n- I did the install, brake bleed, tire rotation, and power steering belt adjustment yesterday.\nNice having zero pressure to get the Daily Driver back on the road before morning. I took my time, read through the Haynes procedure 3 or 4 times, and did each piece meticulously. I regreased the pins the caliper slides on, and made sure I put plenty of Moly-Lube on everything as it went back together.\nThe rotors themselves look awesome. I didn\u0026rsquo;t realize how thin and grooved the OEM rotors were until I compared them to the Brembos.\nOnly thing remaining is the bed-in procedure. We\u0026rsquo;re in the middle of a monsoon, so it was no-go last night. Should have a break tomorrow evening where I can get the pads and rotors to meet, exchange phone numbers, and get to know one another Biblically.\n:-) Dirty, satisfying job, when you\u0026rsquo;ve got the time to do it properly.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/carmry-spring-spruce-up/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ea.k.a. \u003cem\u003eNothing like brake fluid that\u0026rsquo;s so old it\u0026rsquo;s green\u0026hellip;.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInstalled the new Brembo rotors and Akebono ceramic pads from the Tire Rack yesterday on our 2000 Camry, and for once I did it right.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- I jacked the car up one night.\u003cbr\u003e\n- I disassembled everything another night\u003cbr\u003e\n- I did the install, brake bleed, tire rotation, and power steering belt adjustment yesterday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNice having zero pressure to get the Daily Driver back on the road before morning. I took my time, read through the Haynes procedure 3 or 4 times, and did each piece meticulously. I regreased the pins the caliper slides on, and made sure I put plenty of Moly-Lube on everything as it went back together.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Carmry spring spruce up"},{"content":"Well, we got the final diagnosis of Maria\u0026rsquo;s 9 days of diarrhea today: Rotavirus. She\u0026rsquo;s been one sick girl, admitted to the ER twice for fluids.\nShe seems to be over the worst of it; no diarrhea today, she\u0026rsquo;s just really sleepy and wanting fluids but not much solid.\nTook the day off work so I could do a few jobs around the house and finish the brake job on the Camry. Got a sweet set of Brembo rotors and Ceramic pads, and things are going famously so far\u0026ndash;everything disassembled without any WD40 or torch application :D\nSupposed to get 2 straight days of rain here in KY, so it\u0026rsquo;s a good time to do some spring cleaning.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/diagnosis-rotavirus/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, we got the final diagnosis of Maria\u0026rsquo;s 9 days of diarrhea today: \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotavirus\"\u003eRotavirus\u003c/a\u003e. She\u0026rsquo;s been one sick girl, admitted to the ER twice for fluids.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe seems to be over the worst of it; no diarrhea today, she\u0026rsquo;s just really sleepy and wanting fluids but not much solid.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTook the day off work so I could do a few jobs around the house and finish the brake job on the Camry. Got a sweet set of Brembo rotors and Ceramic pads, and things are going famously so far\u0026ndash;everything disassembled without any WD40 or torch application :D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Diagnosis: Rotavirus"},{"content":"Nasty stuff Jeff Roberts - Apr 5, 2008\nNasty stuff\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/diagnosis-rotavirus-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"nasty-stuff\"\u003eNasty stuff\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNasty stuff\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Diagnosis: Rotavirus (Comments)"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m cross-wired.\nI intuitively perceive what must happen in a situation, yet I delude myself into carrying-on as if I didn\u0026rsquo;t know.\nI\u0026rsquo;m optimistic about people (despite all advice), yet am unsurprised when the worst comes out in them.\nThe only thing I can reconcile about it is the two sides of my personality, one of which is recent. I grew up a pessimist; selfish, I kept account of people\u0026rsquo;s sins. On the average, people seemed pretty crappy\u0026ndash;ruled by their emotions, rationalizing bad choices, hurting others for their own gain. What\u0026rsquo;s there to be optimistic about? Society was one big, entropic system that\u0026rsquo;d eventually devolve into chaos.\nBut then I got saved. And I learned about Christianity, and its message of hope, redemption, and grace. \u0026ldquo;Grace\u0026rdquo; is something (by definition) undeserved, and it breaks the cycle of hurt, violence, and oppression. So, I turned-in my \u0026ldquo;BS\u0026rdquo; meter and just wanted to help people.\n:-) So, that\u0026rsquo;s the conflict within me. And, man, it hurts sometimes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/me/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m cross-wired.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI intuitively perceive what \u003cem\u003emust\u003c/em\u003e happen in a situation, yet I delude myself into carrying-on as if I didn\u0026rsquo;t know.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m optimistic about people (despite all advice), yet am unsurprised when the worst comes out in them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe only thing I can reconcile about it is the two sides of my personality, one of which is recent. I grew up a pessimist; selfish, I kept account of people\u0026rsquo;s sins. On the average, people seemed pretty crappy\u0026ndash;ruled by their emotions, rationalizing bad choices, hurting others for their own gain. What\u0026rsquo;s there to be optimistic about? Society was one big, entropic system that\u0026rsquo;d eventually devolve into chaos.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Me"},{"content":"GMail custom time\nHehe\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/april-fools--google-style./","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://mail.google.com/mail/help/customtime/index.html\"\u003eGMail custom time\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHehe\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"April Fools' -- Google style."},{"content":"Link to their research blog\n1-800-GOOG-411\nJust tried it and it\u0026rsquo;s pretty slick, and free. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/04/googles-now-doing-411/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2008/03/deploying-goog411.html\"\u003eLink to their research blog\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1-800-GOOG-411\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust tried it and it\u0026rsquo;s pretty slick, and free. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Google's now doing '411'"},{"content":"Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s over-the-top. Yes, it has plot holes you could drive a pumpkin carriage through. Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s not IMPORTANT CINEMA.\nSo what?\nThis is a fun romp through fairy tale land (and into modern-day New York), complete with a wayward princess, overblown prince, and evil stepmother/witch. It\u0026rsquo;s a mashup of every cliche from the Golden Age of Dinsey, right down to the poison apples. The premise is\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;complicated: Giselle is about to have her happily-ever-after in Fairy Tale Land (Andalasia), but the Prince\u0026rsquo;s evil mother casts her down a well, delivering her to Times Square in New York.\nOur hapless ingenue stumbles about and manages to run into Robert, a divorce attorney and his 6-year-old daughter, Morgan. Over the next 24 hours, many other characters from Andalasia follow, from Prince Edward, to the bungling Nathaniel, and finally the Queen herself (Susan Sarandon, chewing the scenery like she\u0026rsquo;s having a good time).\nI should really hate this film. It\u0026rsquo;s a formulaic fish-out-of-water tale, where the main character learns something about herself. Think \u0026ldquo;The Pagemaster\u0026rdquo;, in reverse. And there\u0026rsquo;s singing. Lots of singing.\nStill, two things enchanted me: First, Amy Adams was perfect. Vulnerable, sweet, and emotive, she carries every scene, and carries-off some impossible dialog:\nGiselle: Now if only I can find a place to rest my head for the night.\nRobert Philip: What kind of place?\nGiselle: I don\u0026rsquo;t know. Maybe a nearby meadow or a hollow tree.\nRobert Philip: A hollow tree?\nGiselle: Or a house full of dwarves. I hear they\u0026rsquo;re very hospitable.\nAny other actress couldn\u0026rsquo;t resist being ironic or streewise (think smirking Drew Barrymore in \u0026ldquo;Ever After\u0026rdquo;). Adams is wholly in the part.\nAlso, the central question transfixed me: What\u0026rsquo;s the nature of love? How does one discover and express a depth of emotion like True Love? I liked this particular film\u0026rsquo;s answer to that age-old question: Sing it from the rafters!\nGood date film, and great to see with kids, too.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/03/review-enchanted/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYes, it\u0026rsquo;s over-the-top. Yes, it has plot holes you could drive a pumpkin carriage through. Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s not IMPORTANT CINEMA.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo what?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.movieposterdb.com/posters/07_11/2007/461770/l_461770_70723502.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a fun romp through fairy tale land (and into modern-day New York), complete with a wayward princess, overblown prince, and evil stepmother/witch. It\u0026rsquo;s a mashup of every cliche from the Golden Age of Dinsey, right down to the poison apples. The premise is\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;complicated: Giselle is about to have her happily-ever-after in Fairy Tale Land (Andalasia), but the Prince\u0026rsquo;s evil mother casts her down a well, delivering her to Times Square in New York.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Enchanted"},{"content":"Article\nThose of us who have been prudent, lived within our means, and didn\u0026rsquo;t overborrow are paying a huge price for this. Income on our Treasury bills, money market funds, and CDs has dropped sharply, thanks to the Fed\u0026rsquo;s rate cuts, and our wealth has eroded relative to foreign currencies and commodities\nSloan\u0026rsquo;s article (or commentary, take your pick) is clear, concise, and scary as hell. My intiuition tells me there\u0026rsquo;s another Bear Stearns out there, and that the Fed can\u0026rsquo;t bail out everyone\u0026ndash;trillions upon trillions of dollars of \u0026ldquo;bad money\u0026rdquo;. Hoo boy.\nAs a personal aside, count me as one of those who wish some people would feel the mess they got themselves into. These proverbial Grasshoppers annoy me. People making $50k with $500k houses and $100k in CC debt are about to be bailed-out, and now we see the macroeconomic counterpart. As Sloan says, it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Private profits, socialized losses.\u0026rdquo; Your tax dollars at work.\nGranted, if you have another crash like in 1929, it develops into massive socialized loss anyway. Millions destitute. People hungry. I don\u0026rsquo;t think the average American is prepared to absorb a 50% reduction in standard-of-living quite like we were in 1929.\nAt the end of it, it\u0026rsquo;s a tiger-by-the-tail scenario. Certain entities in America\u0026ndash;Finance, General Motors, Boeing\u0026ndash;cannot be allowed to fail. Even if they do fail, and often. When the invisible hand is chained like that, it tends to slap you some other way.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/03/startling-article-on-wall-streets-chaos/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/28/news/economy/disaster_sloan.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008033106\"\u003eArticle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose of us who have been prudent, lived within our means, and didn\u0026rsquo;t overborrow are paying a huge price for this. Income on our Treasury bills, money market funds, and CDs has dropped sharply, thanks to the Fed\u0026rsquo;s rate cuts, and our wealth has eroded relative to foreign currencies and commodities\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSloan\u0026rsquo;s article (or commentary, take your pick) is clear, concise, and scary as hell. My intiuition tells me there\u0026rsquo;s another Bear Stearns out there, and that the Fed can\u0026rsquo;t bail out everyone\u0026ndash;trillions upon trillions of dollars of \u0026ldquo;bad money\u0026rdquo;. Hoo boy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Startling article on Wall Street's Chaos"},{"content":"Jeff\u0026rsquo;s back.\nUpdate your RSS Readers accordingly.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/03/hes-baaaaa-aaaack/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://jjetsam3.blogspot.com/\"\u003eJeff\u0026rsquo;s back\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUpdate your RSS Readers accordingly.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"He's BAAAAA-AAAACK!!"},{"content":"In October, my Mom had nearly inoperable Liver Cancer throughout her torso\u0026ndash;liver, right lung, and diaphragm.\nAs of Friday, March 7th, after radical resection surgery and 2 months of treatment, her PET scan showed she was fine.\nTo the prayer warriors from Ashland to Louisville, for the thousands who heard mom\u0026rsquo;s story on WLJC TV from Beattyville, and to those who sent encouragement through this blog, email, and in person, my thanks.\nThe best moment for me was when Maria stayed with Mom for 5 straight days and nights, getting to know one of the most awesome women out there\u0026ndash;Grandma Dottie. Mom\u0026rsquo;s drive, love, and life shall go on for another season, at least. And she\u0026rsquo;s ready to undertake those challenges, for however long God wishes she remain on this earth. Through it all, she\u0026rsquo;s ready to meet Him whenever, but promised me she\u0026rsquo;d enjoy things until then.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t think you can ask more from life than that.\nGod bless and keep you all.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/03/mom-update--good-news/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn October, my Mom had \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/cant-find-the-words/\" title=\"cant find words\"\u003enearly inoperable Liver Cancer\u003c/a\u003e throughout her torso\u0026ndash;liver, right lung, and diaphragm.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs of Friday, March 7th, after radical resection surgery and 2 months of treatment, her PET scan showed she was fine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo the prayer warriors from Ashland to Louisville, for the thousands who heard mom\u0026rsquo;s story on WLJC TV from Beattyville, and to those who sent encouragement through this blog, email, and in person, my thanks.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mom update -- GOOD NEWS!!"},{"content":"That is great news I am happy for you all. Susan - Mar 2, 2008\nThat is great news I am happy for you all.\nAbsolutely fantastic. A brave, tough lady for sure.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/03/mom-update--good-news-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"that-is-great-news-i-am-happy-for-you-all\"\u003eThat is great news I am happy for you all.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/14266500429112482921\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eSusan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat is great news I am happy for you all.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAbsolutely fantastic. A brave, tough lady for sure.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Mom update -- GOOD NEWS!! (Comments)"},{"content":"Easter Pageant?!\nWhat is this, amateur hour? Who cares about some piddly church passion play? What\u0026rsquo;s next, \u0026ldquo;Best Little Christmas Pageant Ever\u0026rdquo;?\nHow\u0026rsquo;s this for Piddly: Two professional composers, a 9000 seat auditorium, 75,000 tickets over a month-long run, a 300 person chorous, two IMAX-size video screens.\nTraditionally, Southeast\u0026rsquo;s Easter Pageant has been the biggest theatrical production in Louisville. They took a year off to retool and rework it, comissioning a rework from the ground up. Whereas the previous iteration had been a \u0026ldquo;cast of thousands\u0026rdquo; broadway-style production, they wanted something\u0026hellip;different.\nHoo-boy, it was different.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s talk about \u0026ldquo;theatre\u0026rdquo; that is 1/2 movie, 1/2 live action. Apparently, they shot it at a quarry during last year\u0026rsquo;s drought, and it looks pretty good. Still, I didn\u0026rsquo;t like it\u0026hellip;distracting and interrupts the flow.\nLikes\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not the same program they\u0026rsquo;ve put on for years.\nShows the human side of Jesus (humor, forthrightness). It\u0026rsquo;s a much more Gospel of Mark picture than the uber-holy Gospel of John depiction.\nThe incorporation of Satan as a main character is great. You really see Gethsemane for the gut-wrenching, soul-searching decision point it must\u0026rsquo;ve been.\nConcentration on the passion itself. There\u0026rsquo;s no sweeping first act detailing the birth of Jesus. No wisemen on camels. Just like the Gospel of Mark, Jesus just appears to be baptized, calls his disciples, and gets to work on His ministry.\nI liked the (non-scriptural) film scene where young jesus reads the scrolls prophesying his own torture and death for our sins. Well-done!\nDislikes\nNot one memorable song.\nSometimes less is just\u0026hellip;less. They took a broadway-esque shown and turned it into art-house fare. Dark lighting, smaller venues. Most of the massive, 3-story set goes to waste, as do most of the extras.\nThe music was too experimental. Minor-keys, even what sounded like some atonal stuff. At its heart, this is a passion play, people, not some avante-guard opus going for an award among the thespian set.\nViolent, violent, VIOLENT. The passion is the story of the torture, death, and resurrection of Jesus. There\u0026rsquo;s no avoiding that\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s gruesome at best. Still, images of roman soldiers nailing Jesus to the Cross start the production, and they punctuate it. The audience is never allowed to escape it, and that\u0026rsquo;s too much for anyone under 10, I\u0026rsquo;d say. Whitney reported 5-6 year-olds weeping inconsolably in the bathrooms.\nThe director plays Jesus. Couldn\u0026rsquo;t find anyone better? High opinion of one\u0026rsquo;s self?\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t need the 20 MINUTE NON-SCRIPTURAL SCENE with the Samaritan woman at the well. Yes, she had 5 husbands and was living with another man. I can fill-in the blanks from there.\nOverall, the irony strikes me: They chose to frame the story around the tersest, unadorned Gospel account (Mark), but layered it with all the SFX and theatrical capers they could manage\u0026ndash;IMAX screens, SFX boat in the audience, rotating stage, etc.\nGuess the money had to go somewhere, right?\nYeah, probably won\u0026rsquo;t be going back. Doubt 75,000 people per year will, either. This production has jumped-the-shark.\nAll my own opinion, of course.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/03/review-the-southeast-christian-church-easter-pageant/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEaster Pageant?!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat is this, amateur hour? Who cares about some piddly church passion play? What\u0026rsquo;s next, \u0026ldquo;Best Little Christmas Pageant Ever\u0026rdquo;?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow\u0026rsquo;s this for Piddly: Two professional composers, a 9000 seat auditorium, 75,000 tickets over a month-long run, a 300 person chorous, two IMAX-size video screens.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTraditionally, Southeast\u0026rsquo;s Easter Pageant has been the biggest theatrical production in Louisville. They took a year off to retool and rework it, comissioning a rework from the ground up. Whereas the previous iteration had been a \u0026ldquo;cast of thousands\u0026rdquo; broadway-style production, they wanted something\u0026hellip;different.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: The Southeast Christian Church Easter Pageant"},{"content":"I second the review completely. This all punctuat\u0026hellip; Whitney - Mar 1, 2008\nI second the review completely. This all punctuated by a preacher who spent tens of thouseands of dollars to change the carpeting throughout the massive facility because he thought it\u0026rsquo;s mauve overcast was too feminine, eradicated the library completely to put in a starbucks, and banned the sunday school class communal coffee machines and bringing of donuts bc it would detract from the profits reaped by the coffee shop. Can we say Jesus angrily turning over tables and whipping the baristas for defiling his house? I get more angry every time I enter that building. We will not be returning, EVER probably.\nThis is a comment coming from a friend of the preacher and of the director. Southeast has always had one thing in mind, Jesus and His ministry. People in today\u0026rsquo;s society will automatically tune out anything that is not up to the quality standards of the world. Broadway spends loads of money to make it what it is, and Southeast spends load of money to make their production as good as Broadway but with the story of Jesus implemented inside. Shane (the director) took on the role of Jesus because he is also playing Jesus in the Easter Experience (City on a Hill Production\u0026rsquo;s newest release) and Dave (Southeast\u0026rsquo;s preacher) did not spend the money to re-do the inside of the church, the leadership of the church made a lot of those decisions. The coffee shop was added because people today flock to coffee shops..so why not put one in a church so people will flock to church? Please do not criticize my church and te way we do things\u0026hellip;because with 18,000 members we must be doing something right. And that something is telling Jesus\u0026rsquo; story at any and all expense\u0026hellip;\nHi. Well first, my blog, my rules\u0026hellip; HarryC - Mar 3, 2008\n@Brandon:\nHi. Well first, my blog, my rules. If my wife wants to comment, she may.\nDo I like Southeast, particularly? Nah. Do I like Dave Stone particularly? Nope. Kinda creeps me out, actually.\nIs any of that scriptural? No. Just personal preference. People may have preferences, and they may have criticisms, friend.\nTo wit, my wife and I didn\u0026rsquo;t like the production, Shane\u0026rsquo;s performance, or the staging.\nAnyway, yes, you have a big church. Feel better? Good.\nForgive my husband\u0026rsquo;s brusque response\u0026hellip; he does have a point however\u0026hellip;.and understand, I went there for 22 years, grew up there and loved it until the last 2 years\u0026hellip;.and I\u0026rsquo;ve been in the pageant so I know the work and time involved. In the ongoing conversation that is the pageant and SECC itself, while many have argued a point that SECC is all about Jesus, and always has been, no one has bothered to discuss Stone\u0026rsquo;s decisions in regard to the appearance and personality of the church. Mostly because they can\u0026rsquo;t really be defended biblically. Of course, that\u0026rsquo;s my opinion. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t mind hearing the scriptural side of putting a for=profit coffee shop in in place of the library\u0026hellip;..a coffee shop where I personally saw a hungry man ask for a donut and was told when he got a free donut at starbucks to come back and the barista would talk to him then. Btw, I got a free grande frappicino and lemon cake at starbucks recently when I mentioned I\u0026rsquo;d just had my tonsils out. The only reason I heard for the coffee shop was that people flock to them and that\u0026rsquo;s what the younger generation wants so that\u0026rsquo;s what the church is giving them. well the younger generation also wants a free pass on promiscuity and marxist ideals. Is SECC gonna give them that too?\nForgive the extremism as there really is no rancor there. I\u0026rsquo;m simply aghast at the church that I used to love that really did preach Christ when Bob was there suddenly losing sight of their call to financial stewardship to spend exorbitant amounts of money on a BUILDING to appease the minister\u0026rsquo;s personal proclivities. That is unbiblical. And imagine the number of people that could\u0026rsquo;ve been fed, housed, number of villages that could finally have clean water, or medicine or\u0026hellip;..the list of global need never ends. And Stone, with board approval I understand, spends tens of thousands or mil on new carpet and a new interior facelift because it\u0026rsquo;s too feminine. Even the most avid SECC fan has to admit there\u0026rsquo;s something wrong with that.\nUnderstand please I am not criticizing your church, though I have every right to do so. I am criticizing MY church. MY church that I love. MY church that I grew up in, became an adult in, lived my life in. MY church that I still defend when someone calls it \u0026ldquo;Six Flags Over Jesus.\u0026rdquo; MY church that still houses some extended family friends. But most of my friends, in all age categories, have left due to biblical concerns with Stone\u0026rsquo;s agenda and the direction that he\u0026rsquo;s taken SECC.\nRemember, just because the church is large isn\u0026rsquo;t verification that Christ is the head of SECC. It may simply mean there\u0026rsquo;s another Joel Osteen in place, or at least similar ideals.\nI can accept your thoughts on our church. And I can understand your concern on some decisions not being biblical. But as Christ\u0026rsquo;s church we are seeking the lost (and making church interesting to them) edifying the saved (by offering small groups and classes held in on campus living rooms and coffe shop) THese expenses are only tools. And tools shouldn\u0026rsquo;t make you leave a church. If straight up biblical preaching and world wide ministry is your thing then awesome\u0026hellip;go to the service and make sure your money is used for missions. But please don\u0026rsquo;t make your \u0026ldquo;belonging\u0026rdquo; to a church about the tools of the church. Because THAT is unbiblical. It was Southeast\u0026rsquo;s quality that hooked me on church and it was Southeast\u0026rsquo;s teaching and preching that hooked me on Jesus. It was Southeast\u0026rsquo;s elementary ministry that hooked me on ministry, and it was Dave Stone and Kyle Idleman along with countless others that have supported me through Bible College.\nI just don\u0026rsquo;t see a problem with it all to be honest.\nApparently, we didn\u0026rsquo;t see the same production, my friend!\nNot one memorable song?!? Did you not hear \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m Asking Now\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; which captures the anguish of Mary during the three days awaiting the resurrection?!? Were you listening when the woman at the well sang \u0026ldquo;Living Waters\u0026rdquo;? Did you miss the \u0026ldquo;Blood of the Lamb\u0026rdquo; song during the Last Supper? Apparently, since you did not find the songs memorable! I personally loved the music and bought the CD.\nViolent? Yes. If the Pageant, like the \u0026ldquo;Passion\u0026rdquo;, makes one uncomfortable in its depiction of the crucifiction, GOOD! We need to be reminded that Jesus\u0026rsquo; journey to the cross was no trip to the day spa! Which is what the Lenten season is all about, I always thought.\nOf course, opinions are like belly buttons \u0026ndash; everybody\u0026rsquo;s got one! (Although the usual anatomical reference is usually decidedly posterior and south!) Yours and Whitney\u0026rsquo;s, however, seem to be driven more by your apparent animosity towards the Church, it\u0026rsquo;s choice of decor and its leadership, rather than the production itself - which is, of course, your prerogative.\nI am not a member of the Southeast Christian Church, and travelled a fair distance to see the Easter Pageant in Louisville. I was skeptical going in, but edified coming out. I\u0026rsquo;ve heard it said that all the money they put into the production would be well spent if they could turn even one person to Jesus. Mission accomplished, SECC! I WILL be going back \u0026ndash; several times probably \u0026ndash; in the years to come, and I\u0026rsquo;ll be bringing others who need a reminder of what Jesus endured so that our sins may be forgiven.\nThis comment probably won\u0026rsquo;t make it to your Blog, because \u0026ndash; as you say \u0026ndash; your Blog, your rules. But I hope you will have the integrity to post an alternative view. I believe the hundreds of volunteers who made the production possible deserve better.\nI posted Brandon\u0026rsquo;s ad hominem; I\u0026hellip; HarryC - Mar 5, 2008\n@GC\nI posted Brandon\u0026rsquo;s ad hominem; I\u0026rsquo;ll certainly post your well-stated reply. If this turns into a flame-fest I\u0026rsquo;ll put a stop to it, but opposing views are (usually) welcome.\n* * *\nTo clarify: I have no axe to grind against SECC. I don\u0026rsquo;t like the place, but I don\u0026rsquo;t *dislike* the place, either. It is what it is\u0026ndash;a mega-church that\u0026rsquo;s 1 hour west of me. The two comments I regret from the review were about my sarcastic remark about the director and my comment about \u0026ldquo;the money had to go somewhere.\u0026rdquo; Those were cheap, immature shots.\nAside from that, it was an opinion of likes and dislikes. Lest we forget, I did like things about the play. If nothing else, it was an adventurous step in a different direction.\nLastly, much is made about how I\u0026rsquo;ve done a disservice to Christendom through this review, that the volunteers and performers deserve better. I saw a play and wrote what I thought of it. It was my honest opinion. You just did the same. Let\u0026rsquo;s leave it at that.\nWow, this thread is growing quickly! Before I got a chance to post a comment, Harold has posted again. I put up a somewhat related post on my blog. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t say much, and some of what it does say was just said by Harold, but I just thought I would share something that made me chuckle a bit.\nFYI\u0026hellip;commenting is closed on this. I\u0026rsquo;ll post no more submissions about it. After the last few comments I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten for moderation, trust me\u0026ndash;that\u0026rsquo;s good for everyone. I\u0026rsquo;m not going to perpetuate deep-seated antagonisms and provide a forum for it.\nI welcome others to post their own reviews on other sites, debate the spiritual merits of SECC, and/or state that I\u0026rsquo;m fat, smelly, and stupid. (I am two of those things)\nJust do it somewhere else. I\u0026rsquo;ve had enough Holy War for one (Passion) week.\nGod bless and keep you all, even my brothers and sisters in Christ whom I vexed so mightily.\nI am a member of SECC. Let me get the facts straight. The carpet was changed because the carpet was worn out, and they changed the color scheme to suit the building and personality of the membership. That\u0026rsquo;s it. The library was moved to a larger more accessible space on the second floor, when the NOT FOR PROFIT coffee shop was put in place. The money made in the coffee shop, goes into the church\u0026rsquo;s general fund which one third of goes into outreach activities in the city, country and across the globe to minister and reach those who are poor, homeless and hungry. The preaching is straight up from the Bible and I will defend any word preached from that pulpit till the day I die because its the Word of God. It might not be what people want to hear, but its the truth and sometimes the truth is uncomfortable.\n@mimzy\nSo, here we are nearly 3 years later. I posted your comment as it appears to correct factual errors in the comment stream.\n\u0026gt; Carpet was worn out. I can believe it; lots of feet in there every weekend. That\u0026rsquo;s great!\n\u0026gt; Library was moved to better location Makes sense. This link indicates there is indeed a Media Center off the second floor atrium of the Blankenbaker campus http://www.southeastchristian.org/Default.aspx?page=3471\n\u0026gt; NONPROFIT coffee shop. Couldn\u0026rsquo;t find substantiation for this in 10 minutes of googling around. I\u0026rsquo;ll take your word for it.\nSadly, in googling \u0026lsquo;southeast christian church coffee shop nonprofit\u0026rsquo;, this thread is the top hit.\nBest wishes for a Blessed 2011.\nI know it\u0026rsquo;s been a while since this posted, and I think some of the things are true. But not all of this. I didn\u0026rsquo;t like the director as Jesus either, not even this year. They brought it back to the old one, but i still didn\u0026rsquo;t like the Jesus that Shane played. I didn\u0026rsquo;t like how the old one was always videos, it took away from the point. It was too much going on, it was too, well, artsy fartsy. I liked it better as the old one. And this year it was. I love the Easter Pageant, but sometimes people have to experiment, and they did, they tried the new way, they didn\u0026rsquo;t like it, lost alot of money, brought it back to the old Easter Pageant for one year, and ended it completely. They ended it because they spent to much money on the new production and lost a lot, but tell me this, how can my church spend millions of dollars making new buildings, for crying out loud we have a flipping GYM!!! That\u0026rsquo;s unneccessary!! How come they can\u0026rsquo;t spend the money on something better, something that God actually appreciates, more then a bunch of people sweating like crazy on high tech equipment. Why couldn\u0026rsquo;t they spend all that money on keeping the Easter Pageant going? In a few years it would be back to the high expectations everyone expected it to be and they would be makeing money again. But not only that, when did this performance become about makeing money? It used to be completely about telling the story of Jesus, leading others to the light. Maybe it\u0026rsquo;s just me, maybe I don\u0026rsquo;t get it all the way, but I think the Easter PAGEANT should continue!\n@Kmurphy,\nBelieve it or not, my wife and I attended the last performance ever this year, and we enjoyed it immensely.\nI really liked the re-imagined play, including Jesus\u0026rsquo; performance (didn\u0026rsquo;t recognize the same guy/director was Jesus, and I\u0026rsquo;d like to think that wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have colored my opinion). I laughed and cried and was deeply moved, as I always am when someone presents the story of my Savior\u0026rsquo;s death for me and the rest of this lost world.\nWhat I read into your response is frustration at SECC\u0026rsquo;s stewardship practices. I\u0026rsquo;d encourage you to keep yourself informed and connected to your church leadership and prayerfully consider how you might help the situation. Oftentimes, we say to ourselves, \u0026ldquo;Somebody should do something!\u0026rdquo; Well, be that *somebody*.\nGod bless and keep you.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/03/review-the-southeast-christian-church-easter-pageant-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-second-the-review-completely-this-all-punctuat\"\u003eI second the review completely. This all punctuat\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI second the review completely. This all punctuated by a preacher who spent tens of thouseands of dollars to change the carpeting throughout the massive facility because he thought it\u0026rsquo;s mauve overcast was too feminine, eradicated the library completely to put in a starbucks, and banned the sunday school class communal coffee machines and bringing of donuts bc it would detract from the profits reaped by the coffee shop. Can we say Jesus angrily turning over tables and whipping the baristas for defiling his house? I get more angry every time I enter that building. We will not be returning, EVER probably.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: The Southeast Christian Church Easter Pageant (Comments)"},{"content":"So, Chinatown.\n\u0026ldquo;Forget it, Jake, it\u0026rsquo;s Chinatown.\u0026rdquo;\nIconic stuff. Nicholson back when was an awesome actor, not just paid to play himself (see \u0026ldquo;Witches of Eastwick\u0026rdquo;, et al.). Faye Dunnaway\u0026rsquo;s cheekbones. John Huston as the creepy dad.\nUmm\u0026hellip;I hated it.\nLined-up against L.A. Confidential, Chinatown is darker, more mysterious, but at the same time, distant. We learn about the characters bit-by-bit, but once we learn everything, we just want to forget them.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a twist at the end, and much goes unexplained\u0026ndash;perhaps it\u0026rsquo;s a snapshot of 1970\u0026rsquo;s America, when nothing seemed certain, disinformation was the norm, and hope seemed a distant memory. Then again, perhaps it\u0026rsquo;s just an overwrought tale that made me numb.\nI respect the filmmaking, performances, and cinematography. I\u0026rsquo;d just rather watch \u0026ldquo;The Godfather\u0026rdquo; 10 times than watch this again.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/03/review-chinatown/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071315/\"\u003eChinatown\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Forget it, Jake, it\u0026rsquo;s Chinatown.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIconic stuff. Nicholson back when was an awesome actor, not just paid to play himself (see \u0026ldquo;Witches of Eastwick\u0026rdquo;, et al.). Faye Dunnaway\u0026rsquo;s cheekbones. John Huston as the creepy dad.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUmm\u0026hellip;I hated it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLined-up against \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119488/\"\u003eL.A. Confidential\u003c/a\u003e, \u003cem\u003eChinatown\u003c/em\u003e is darker, more mysterious, but at the same time, distant. We learn about the characters bit-by-bit, but once we learn everything, we just want to forget them.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: \"Chinatown\""},{"content":"No, not that awful sitcom, I mean I\u0026rsquo;m carpooling.\nApparently, a 4-cylinder Camry has more uses than sucking the joy out of the driving experience. It\u0026rsquo;s also an efficient appliance for transporting up to 4 adults on the twice-daily jaunt to and from work.\nCurrently, we\u0026rsquo;re leaving ~6:45am and heading home around 4:30ish; Whitney\u0026rsquo;s now taken over drill sargeant duties for getting Joey to school.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/03/carpooling/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNo, not \u003ca href=\"http://imdb.com/title/tt0928410/\"\u003ethat awful sitcom\u003c/a\u003e, I mean \u003cem\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m\u003c/em\u003e carpooling.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eApparently, a 4-cylinder Camry has more uses than sucking the joy out of the driving experience. It\u0026rsquo;s also an efficient appliance for transporting up to 4 adults on the twice-daily jaunt to and from work.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCurrently, we\u0026rsquo;re leaving ~6:45am and heading home around 4:30ish; Whitney\u0026rsquo;s now taken over drill sargeant duties for getting Joey to school.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Carpooling"},{"content":"The Fence fairy showed up at my house this weekend:\nNew Fence\nWe\u0026rsquo;re pretty pumped about it, because it\u0026rsquo;ll let us send the inmates\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;children to the back yard. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/03/sunny-day...time-for-a-new-fence/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Fence fairy showed up at my house this weekend:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://picasaweb.google.com/miniharryc1978/NewFence\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://lh5.google.com/miniharryc1978/R8nfcKuEmdE/AAAAAAAAAOg/LTe5ZW3odk0/s160-c/NewFence.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://picasaweb.google.com/miniharryc1978/NewFence\"\u003eNew Fence\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re pretty pumped about it, because it\u0026rsquo;ll let us send the inmates\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;children to the back yard. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sunny day...time for a NEW FENCE!!!"},{"content":"That\u0026rsquo;s really nice! Jeff Roberts - Mar 6, 2008\nThat\u0026rsquo;s really nice!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/03/sunny-day...time-for-a-new-fence-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"thats-really-nice\"\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s really nice!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 6, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s really nice!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Sunny day...time for a NEW FENCE!!! (Comments)"},{"content":"So, I pretty much spent this afternoon watching all 33 extant webisodes of Quarterlife, a melodrama about 5-7 late-20somethings who aren\u0026rsquo;t really going anywhere with their lives, but who have plenty of spiffy dialog.\nThe central plot vehicle is Dylan, aspiring writer who\u0026rsquo;s turned to blogging (really video-blogging, but who\u0026rsquo;s counting) to express herself and her opinions, particularly on her friends\u0026rsquo; lives.\n(Aside: This is the central tension in blogging\u0026ndash;how honest do you want to be? What if someone reads what you wrote about them. That lead to the downfall\u0026ndash;and deletion\u0026ndash;of my \u0026ldquo;private\u0026rdquo; blog. Anyway, Dylan doesn\u0026rsquo;t pull any punches good for her.)\nThe rest of the cast follow anon\u0026ndash;Dylan\u0026rsquo;s daddy\u0026rsquo;s-girl bff Deborah, her trust-funded boytoy Danny, the starving artist vidographer Jeb, and Lisa the slut. Love triangles and Mobius Strips emerge. Relationships fall apart, reform, then fall apart again.\nHaving watched (essentially) the whole series at a sitting, there\u0026rsquo;s much to appreciate and much to lament. The acting is great, and the questions examined are relevant, especially to one in his or her twenties: How much should one compromise his beliefs? What is the nature of love? Of monogamy? How do you tell someone something is just\u0026hellip;wrong?\nOn the lamentable side, it seems to have already jumped the shark, in that the main character has found happiness with \u0026ldquo;her man\u0026rdquo;. The central conflict seems to have died with that \u0026ldquo;resolution\u0026rdquo;. Indeed, most of the plot points of the sympathetic characters seem resolved\u0026ndash;Deborah went off to New Orleans to break with her overprotective dad, Dylan\u0026rsquo;s happy with Eric, etc. The rest are just bit-players no one cares about.\nI suppose it shows the central issue with open-ended writing\u0026ndash;how do you make consistently good drama-centered story arcs without turning into a Soap Opera?(***cough*** ER ***cough***)\nThe simple answer is, I don\u0026rsquo;t know if it\u0026rsquo;s possible. Even the king (Joss Whedon) missed (Buffy, season 6\u0026hellip;.GAAH!)\nOn the lighter side\u0026ndash;things I learned while watching \u0026ldquo;Quarterlife\u0026rdquo;:\nAll women are anorexic.\nEveyone is broke, yet all have new-ish Mac Laptops and iPhones\nWe\u0026rsquo;re all killing the planet\nYou\u0026rsquo;re a sellout. If you have to ask why, you\u0026rsquo;re even MORE of a sellout\nOne can show up, unannounced and be fed, clothed, and housed by anyone\u0026rsquo;s friend from college. DID I MISS A MEETING?!!\nSeriously, the show verges on self-parody sometimes, like the scene where Dylan and Eric can\u0026rsquo;t get it on because they CAN\u0026rsquo;T SHUT UP LONG ENOUGH. It\u0026rsquo;s like the kids from Dawson\u0026rsquo;s creek (and their overwrought dialog), fast-forwarded 10 years. Eeek.\nBut, it all smells pretty authentic\u0026hellip;That angsty \u0026ldquo;Now What?\u0026rdquo; feeling of being out on one\u0026rsquo;s own, free but compromised, spoiled and unprepared, longing for things but seeing just HOW FRICKIN HARD it will be to achieve them.\nThe question I\u0026rsquo;m left with\u0026ndash;maybe my generation should just lighten up a little? Come on\u0026hellip;we only face Global Warming, international terrorism, a rotting economy, ballooning national debt, pollution, overpopulation, apathy, drugs, racial tension, rampant illegal immigration, moral relativism\u0026hellip;.\n:-) What\u0026rsquo;s not to like?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/review-quarterlife/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I pretty much spent this afternoon watching all 33 extant webisodes of \u003ca href=\"http://www.quarterlife.com\"\u003eQuarterlife\u003c/a\u003e, a melodrama about 5-7 late-20somethings who aren\u0026rsquo;t really going anywhere with their lives, but who have plenty of spiffy dialog.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe central plot vehicle is Dylan, aspiring writer who\u0026rsquo;s turned to blogging (really video-blogging, but who\u0026rsquo;s counting) to express herself and her opinions, particularly on her friends\u0026rsquo; lives.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Aside: This is the central tension in blogging\u0026ndash;how honest do you want to be? What if someone reads what you wrote about them. That lead to the downfall\u0026ndash;and deletion\u0026ndash;of my \u0026ldquo;private\u0026rdquo; blog. Anyway, Dylan doesn\u0026rsquo;t pull any punches good for her.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Quarterlife"},{"content":"Whitney\u0026rsquo;s surgery went just fine\u0026hellip;she was in and out into recover in ~20 minutes. She\u0026rsquo;s resting comfortably at home now.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/update-whitneys-tonsilectomy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhitney\u0026rsquo;s surgery went just fine\u0026hellip;she was in and out into recover in ~20 minutes. She\u0026rsquo;s resting comfortably at home now.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Update: Whitney's Tonsilectomy"},{"content":"Fantastic! Jeff Roberts - Feb 4, 2008\nFantastic!\nI am glad that Whitney is feeling better. One of my co-workers had the same surgery and it was rough on her. I will pray for a speedy recovery.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/update-whitneys-tonsilectomy-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"fantastic\"\u003eFantastic!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 4, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFantastic!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am glad that Whitney is feeling better. One of my co-workers had the same surgery and it was rough on her. I will pray for a speedy recovery.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Update: Whitney's Tonsilectomy (Comments)"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Nipples\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; Maria Combs, age 1 yr.\n(Yep, Whitney proclaimed that baby girl said that the other day.)\n* * *\nWhitney\u0026rsquo;s getting her tonsils out today at 11:30am. It\u0026rsquo;s an outpatient procedure, but she\u0026rsquo;s scared to death nonetheless.\nAnyway, I\u0026rsquo;m off work taking care of her today \u0026amp; tomorrow, and the kids are going to Louisville with Stu \u0026amp; Cathy.\nFor those so inclined, prayers are appreciated. I\u0026rsquo;m sure everything will go well, but you know our luck\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/off-work-for-a-couple-days--quote-of-the-day./","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Nipples\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; Maria Combs, age 1 yr.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Yep, Whitney proclaimed that baby girl said that the other day.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney\u0026rsquo;s getting her tonsils out today at 11:30am. It\u0026rsquo;s an outpatient procedure, but she\u0026rsquo;s scared to death nonetheless.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, I\u0026rsquo;m off work taking care of her today \u0026amp; tomorrow, and the kids are going to Louisville with Stu \u0026amp; Cathy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor those so inclined, prayers are appreciated. I\u0026rsquo;m sure everything will go well, but you know our luck\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Off work for a couple days + quote of the day."},{"content":"We\u0026rsquo;ll pray all goes well and it helps her health l\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Feb 4, 2008\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll pray all goes well and it helps her health long term.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll pray for maria\u0026rsquo;s mouth, tho with her father\u0026rsquo;s mouth (and aforementioned lullabies including \u0026ldquo;B double-E double-R U N beer run), there\u0026rsquo;s probably no hope. Thanks to Harold Joey thinks burping is hilarious. :-) Men. Watcha gonna do?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/off-work-for-a-couple-days--quote-of-the-day.-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"well-pray-all-goes-well-and-it-helps-her-health-l\"\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ll pray all goes well and it helps her health l\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 4, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ll pray all goes well and it helps her health long term.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ll pray for maria\u0026rsquo;s mouth, tho with her father\u0026rsquo;s mouth (and aforementioned lullabies including \u0026ldquo;B double-E double-R U N beer run), there\u0026rsquo;s probably no hope. Thanks to Harold Joey thinks burping is hilarious. :-) Men. Watcha gonna do?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Off work for a couple days + quote of the day. (Comments)"},{"content":"More info on that cool, euro Elantra Touring from the auto show:\nTouring Mini-site\nJust checking out the specs:\n- 24mm front \u0026amp; 21 mm rear swaybars\n- Factory B\u0026amp;M Short throw shifter\n- 140hp (yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s a Hyundai Beta engine\u0026hellip;)\n- Stiffer springs \u0026amp; dampers (EURO, BABY!!)\nMight have to go drive these when they hit the dealers\u0026hellip;sounds like a redux of the Protege5 (or the Plymouth Colt Vista for the 21st century)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/hyundai-elantra-touring-mini-site/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMore info on that cool, euro Elantra Touring from the auto show:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.elantratouring.com/\"\u003eTouring Mini-site\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust checking out the specs:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- 24mm front \u0026amp; 21 mm rear swaybars\u003cbr\u003e\n- Factory B\u0026amp;M Short throw shifter\u003cbr\u003e\n- 140hp (yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s a Hyundai Beta engine\u0026hellip;)\u003cbr\u003e\n- Stiffer springs \u0026amp; dampers (EURO, BABY!!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMight have to go drive these when they hit the dealers\u0026hellip;sounds like a redux of the Protege5 (or the Plymouth Colt Vista for the 21st century)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hyundai Elantra Touring mini-site"},{"content":"link\nAfter the committee meeting broke up, several expressed doubt that a compromise could be reached this session. Stumbo, for instance, said the horse industry may have asked for too much and doomed any casino proposal.\n\u0026ldquo;What you saw today was an industry that cut off its nose to spite its face,\u0026rdquo; Stumbo said. \u0026ldquo;I think the bill\u0026rsquo;s probably dead.\u0026rdquo;\nw0000000000000000000t!\nMaybe this isn\u0026rsquo;t a fait accompli, afterall!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/casinos-in-ky-dead/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://polwatchers.typepad.com/pol_watchers/2008/02/casino-amendmen.html\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter the committee meeting broke up, several expressed doubt that a compromise could be reached this session. Stumbo, for instance, said the horse industry may have asked for too much and doomed any casino proposal.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;What you saw today was an industry that cut off its nose to spite its face,\u0026rdquo; Stumbo said. \u0026ldquo;I think the bill\u0026rsquo;s probably dead.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ew0000000000000000000t!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaybe this isn\u0026rsquo;t a \u003cem\u003efait accompli\u003c/em\u003e, afterall!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Casinos in KY?  Dead?!"},{"content":"Made a pilgrimage to the Cincy Auto Show on Saturday:\nCincinnati Auto Show 2008\nImpressions, briefly:\nVERY impressed with the offerings from Hyundai. They seem to fill every niche (aside from Hybrid), and the interior materials and fit/finish are great, for a good price. Particularly loving the Elantra Touring, which is a proper hatchback version of the elantra. Eminently practical, getting 30mpg.\nThe rebirth of the car. Interest in Trucks \u0026amp; SUVs was nil\u0026hellip;the crowds were all around the cars and some crossovers. \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s the MPG?\u0026rdquo; seemed to be the question of the afternoon\nGM\u0026rsquo;s message is diffuse, and the model line doesn\u0026rsquo;t make sense. GM should axe pontiac, GMC, and Buick entirely, and fold those lines into Chevrolet and Cadillac. The Lucerne, in particular, would make a lovely FWD model, and the Lacrosse could disappear entirely.\nSUPREMELY unimpressed by ChryCo. Aside from the Minivans and Jeep, this company is toast. No one wants a Dodge Ram that gets 12 mpg, or any of their SUVs.\nMercedes has TOO MANY FRICKIN MODELS! When you make BMW look like a paragon of simplicity, you\u0026rsquo;re going after too many niche-within-a-niche segments. CLS? WTF?\nHonda and Toyota quietly keep trying to take over the world. And they keep SUCCEEDING\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/auto-show/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMade a pilgrimage to the Cincy Auto Show on Saturday:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://picasaweb.google.com/miniharryc1978/CincinnatiAutoShow2008\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://lh6.google.com/miniharryc1978/R8IMvO249IE/AAAAAAAAAMs/c05qp2bNTEs/s160-c/CincinnatiAutoShow2008.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://picasaweb.google.com/miniharryc1978/CincinnatiAutoShow2008\"\u003eCincinnati Auto Show 2008\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eImpressions, briefly:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVERY impressed with the offerings from Hyundai. They seem to fill every niche (aside from Hybrid), and the interior materials and fit/finish are great, for a good price. Particularly loving the Elantra Touring, which is a proper hatchback version of the elantra. Eminently practical, getting 30mpg.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe rebirth of the car. Interest in Trucks \u0026amp; SUVs was nil\u0026hellip;the crowds were all around the cars and some crossovers. \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s the MPG?\u0026rdquo; seemed to be the question of the afternoon\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AUTO SHOW!!!"},{"content":"Ah, when nerds make viral videos (SFW): Link\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/anti-xerox-hp-video/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, when nerds make viral videos (SFW): \u003ca href=\"http://hpbroadband.com/(S(gpet0n55oigfa5ueq2bv34rx))/program.aspx?key=TruthAboutSolidInk\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anti-Xerox HP video"},{"content":"Cute. Lags a bit near the end but worth hanging ou\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Feb 2, 2008\nCute. Lags a bit near the end but worth hanging out to see the last bit.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/anti-xerox-hp-video-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"cute-lags-a-bit-near-the-end-but-worth-hanging-ou\"\u003eCute. Lags a bit near the end but worth hanging ou\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCute. Lags a bit near the end but worth hanging out to see the last bit.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Anti-Xerox HP video (Comments)"},{"content":"\nMaria\u0026rsquo;s First Birthday\nCheck it out!! My gal\u0026rsquo;s One!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/marias-first-birthday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://picasaweb.google.com/miniharryc1978/MariaSFirstBirthday\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://lh3.google.com/miniharryc1978/R7jd_-248rE/AAAAAAAAAG4/GWwtHnrxmLY/s160-c/MariaSFirstBirthday.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://picasaweb.google.com/miniharryc1978/MariaSFirstBirthday\"\u003eMaria\u0026rsquo;s First Birthday\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCheck it out!! My gal\u0026rsquo;s One!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maria's First Birthday"},{"content":"Ah, yes, the wearing of the cake. Good times! Jeff Roberts - Feb 1, 2008\nAh, yes, the wearing of the cake. Good times!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/marias-first-birthday-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"ah-yes-the-wearing-of-the-cake-good-times\"\u003eAh, yes, the wearing of the cake. Good times!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAh, yes, the wearing of the cake. Good times!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Maria's First Birthday (Comments)"},{"content":"So, several days ago, I faced that yearly task\u0026ndash;picking out the perfect Valentine\u0026rsquo;s Day card for my wife.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve approached this different ways in the past: One year, I eschewed getting her anything, proclaiming V-Day as \u0026ldquo;the invented holiday that makes no sense\u0026rdquo;. Results were predictable, in hindsight. After that, I spent several years executing my usual card-search routine:\nEnter Store.\nWalk to card aisle\nFind appropriately topical card. (That is don\u0026rsquo;t buy \u0026ldquo;Granny you\u0026rsquo;re my valentine\u0026rdquo; if you dating Daisy Fuentes.)\nEnsure card is in English\nPurchase said card as quickly as possible\nLeave\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the way I\u0026rsquo;ve always bought cards. If you\u0026rsquo;re a man and you can\u0026rsquo;t buy a Birthday/Christmas/Valentines/etc. card in under 4 minutes, turn-in your man-club membership card on the way out.\nThis year was different. I actually went shopping for the card, and I had Maria with me, so we took our time and navigated through several cards before I found one I liked.\nYeah, I\u0026rsquo;m going soft. Daughters do that to you, I guess.\n* * *\nANYWAY, the \u0026ldquo;rant\u0026rdquo; part: So, in considering more than just 2 cards this year, I noticed a disturbing trend in the majority of the \u0026ldquo;To Wife From Husband\u0026rdquo; cards. Let me paraphrase several at once:\nI know I never tell you\u0026rsquo;re pretty, or that I appreciate you. I know I\u0026rsquo;m not there when you need me. I know the kids scream at you 24/7, and that you\u0026rsquo;re run ragged most of the time. I know I act like an overgrown 2-year-old\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m so lucky I have you. Happy Valentine\u0026rsquo;s Day.\nNow, I\u0026rsquo;m not a woman, but the above pissed me off. If it were one card, I could understand, but it seemed like the MAJORITY were like that. To find a card that actually expressed any semblance of my feelings toward my wife, I had to go outside the \u0026ldquo;To Wife\u0026rdquo; headings entirely.\nBasically, fellas, if you\u0026rsquo;re married, and you feel the need to give a card like the above to the MOTHER OF YOUR CHILDREN, take a step back, drop the card, take the day off work, and be nice to her. Do something for her. Love isn\u0026rsquo;t words on a card, it\u0026rsquo;s actions, daily thoughts, sacrifice, care, and devotion.\nTo overextend, most of the marriages in this country fail, but I think most of that is people not taking the time to do the little things that show every day, \u0026ldquo;I chose you. I choose you. I will ALWAYS choose you.\u0026rdquo;\nThat is love, the greatest gift God gave us. Today, find your wife, kiss her and let her know you love her.\nAnd yeah, get her the card, too. A decent, romatic one. :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/v-day-rant/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, several days ago, I faced that yearly task\u0026ndash;picking out the perfect Valentine\u0026rsquo;s Day card for my wife.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve approached this different ways in the past: One year, I eschewed getting her anything, proclaiming V-Day as \u0026ldquo;the invented holiday that makes no sense\u0026rdquo;. Results were predictable, in hindsight. After that, I spent several years executing my usual card-search routine:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEnter Store.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWalk to card aisle\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFind appropriately topical card. (That is don\u0026rsquo;t buy \u0026ldquo;Granny you\u0026rsquo;re my valentine\u0026rdquo; if you dating Daisy Fuentes.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"V-Day rant"},{"content":"It was a perfect one! I love you!! btw, he got m\u0026hellip; Whitney - Feb 4, 2008\nIt was a perfect one! I love you!! btw, he got me two dozen roses too ;) He\u0026rsquo;s so wonderful!!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/v-day-rant-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"it-was-a-perfect-one-i-love-you-btw-he-got-m\"\u003eIt was a perfect one! I love you!! btw, he got m\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 4, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a perfect one! I love you!! btw, he got me two dozen roses too ;) He\u0026rsquo;s so wonderful!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"V-Day rant (Comments)"},{"content":"One the face of it, you\u0026rsquo;ll find few movies more different than End of the Spear and Black Snake Moan: One is a tale of Missionary zeal, the other a gritty portrait of depravity and betrayal.\nThanks to an accident of Netflix and the sickness that descended upon our family, I got to watch both within a twelve hour span, and the messages of both harmonize \u0026ndash; Redemption is available to anyone.\nIn Spear will see a dramatization of the true story of Western missionaries who seek to contact and convert the killer Waodoni tribe of Amazonian Ecuador in the 1960\u0026rsquo;s. A group of 4 men contact the stone-age tribe, then land their plane and befriend several of the tribe, only to be slaughtered hours later. Later, the wives of the slain men enter the jungle to continue their husbands\u0026rsquo; efforts, leading to the conversion of the tribe and the end of their murderous, warlike ways\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;The End of the Spear\u0026rdquo;.\nThis was a hard movie to watch\u0026ndash;death is omnipresent, and we watch murder and infanticide unfold. Even the women get into the act, hacking enemies to death with machetes. Still, the overall point is genuine, and the performances by the native cast were gripping and believable.\nBlack Snake Moan was very hard to watch, despite (or, perhaps, because of) the amazing performances by Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci. This film follows Jackson\u0026rsquo;s Lazarus, divorced blues musician, as he finds, befriends, and redeems Ricci\u0026rsquo;s Rae, a sex-addict. Oddly, this isn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;Showgirls\u0026rdquo; or some other gratuitous vehicle for Ricci to show her assets to the world. Instead, what we see is a portrait of a world where sex is evil\u0026ndash;serving the same purpose as drugs to fill the emptiness that Rae feels in her life.\nBoth these films have characters overcoming the unavoidable facts of their existence\u0026ndash;in Spear it\u0026rsquo;s killing, in Moan it\u0026rsquo;s sexual predation and addiction. In both there are scenes of definite redemption, and I felt a strong bolstering of my own faith from both. Paraphrasing the speech Lazarus\u0026rsquo;s boyhood friend and minister makes to Rae:\nThere\u0026rsquo;s sinning in my heart, there\u0026rsquo;s evil in the world but when I got no one, I talk to God. I ask for strength, I ask for forgiveness, not peace at the end of my days when I got no more life to live or no more good to do\nThe realistic portrayal of how Christianity maps to an imperfect world was awesome. When no one else would find anything worthy in Rae, Lazarus did\u0026hellip;and through helping her find redemption, he found the music and purpose within himself.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/reviews-end-of-the-spear-and-black-snake-moan/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne the face of it, you\u0026rsquo;ll find few movies more different than \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399862/\"\u003eEnd of the Spear\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Snake_Moan_(film)\"\u003eBlack Snake Moan\u003c/a\u003e: One is a tale of Missionary zeal, the other a gritty portrait of depravity and betrayal.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThanks to an accident of Netflix and the sickness that descended upon our family, I got to watch both within a twelve hour span, and the messages of both harmonize \u0026ndash; Redemption is available to anyone.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reviews: \"End of the Spear\" and \"Black Snake Moan\""},{"content":"Link\nBrock Yates and some other ex-C\u0026amp;D guys have a new home, and so far, I like it:\n- More terse and coherent than autoextremist.com\n- Profane. Gotta love some locker-room profanity when talking about cars.\n- Not TOO profane.\n- Simple, easy visuals, good RSS feeds. Are you listening EDMUNDS!?\n- Did I mention terse? Edmunds.com, particularly Karl Brauer, treat the internet medium as a license to blather\u0026hellip;.forever\u0026hellip;\n- They review cars people might actually buy and give honest opinions based around the target audience of that car. Is a Ford Ranger awful? Compared to a Lexus, sure. As a small, effective work truck? It\u0026rsquo;s awesome, and these guys say so.\nCheck it out.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/recommended-blog-thetruthaboutcars/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBrock Yates and some other ex-C\u0026amp;D guys have a new home, and so far, I like it:\u003cbr\u003e\n- More terse and coherent than autoextremist.com\u003cbr\u003e\n- Profane. Gotta love some locker-room profanity when talking about cars.\u003cbr\u003e\n- Not TOO profane.\u003cbr\u003e\n- Simple, easy visuals, good RSS feeds. Are you listening EDMUNDS!?\u003cbr\u003e\n- Did I mention terse? Edmunds.com, particularly Karl Brauer, treat the internet medium as a license to blather\u0026hellip;.forever\u0026hellip;\u003cbr\u003e\n- They review cars people might actually buy and give honest opinions based around the target audience of that car. Is a Ford Ranger awful? Compared to a Lexus, sure. As a small, effective work truck? It\u0026rsquo;s awesome, and these guys say so.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Recommended Blog: \"TheTruthAboutCars\""},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been thinking alot about version control lately, because we\u0026rsquo;re undertaking a big move from Clear Case and it\u0026rsquo;s Unified Change Management (UCM) process to Subversion, which is the source-control equivalent of the Wild Wild West\u0026ndash;anything goes, wheee!!\nMeetings were held, proposals submitted, cost advantages debated, and finally the Big Muckety Muck cowboyed-up and made the call\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;re going to subversion and saving a gagillion dollars.\nAs with many such decisions, this was communicated to the worldwide distributed sites with the utmost care, forethought, and consideration. That\u0026rsquo;s right\u0026ndash;it was 13th out of 15 slides in a Powerpoint deck. Aforementioned plebians reacted with anything from curiosity to outright rebellion.\n\u0026hellip;but, I digress\u0026hellip;.\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;m in the unique position of having experience in both systems\u0026ndash;we rolled-out subversion in my old job and grew to love its power, flexibility, and simplicity. It worked, it was consistent, and it stayed the heck out of your way. If team \u0026lsquo;A\u0026rsquo; wanted a completely different workflow from team \u0026lsquo;B\u0026rsquo;, Subversion didn\u0026rsquo;t care\u0026ndash;it was happily managing your code repository.\nClearCase (CC), at least in its UCM incarnation, doesn\u0026rsquo;t work that way. Now 6 months in, I can appreciate where CC is coming from. This is a system designed not for self-managing teams, but for entire distributed organizations, founded on the assumption that propgrammers are idiots.\n(Having read The Dilbert Principle, I\u0026rsquo;m coming around to this point of view. We\u0026rsquo;re *all* idiots, and systems designed with that in mind have a good shot of succeeding in the marketplace. Democracy, MS Windows, and Automatic Transmissions all share that assumption. They\u0026rsquo;re doing okay. )\nAnyway, from a high-level, ClearCase UCM operates on the principle of Reverse integration: A Product is broken into modules, each module has its own line of development, and each team member has his own copy of that line of development. In ClearCase Terms, that line of development is known as the Integration Stream, and my clean copy is the development stream.\nClear as mud? It was to me, coming from a forward-integration subversion background. In forward integration, you check-in code to the main line of development. If you assume that programmers aren\u0026rsquo;t idiots, then this makes perfect sense\u0026ndash;put your code directly into the product, so the next time it builds your changes are there. Moreover, your changes are visible to everyone immediately upon check-in. That\u0026rsquo;s forward integration in a nutshell. Simple. Effective.\nAnd\u0026hellip;prone to this: Billy checks-in code right before leaving for the day and breaks the build. The Whole Build. Everyone who\u0026rsquo;s there until 2am can\u0026rsquo;t do any more work until they fix the build error. They get mad at Billy. Emails fly; IMs twitter. Billy\u0026rsquo;s team-lead Darold has to come in at 9pm to fix Billy\u0026rsquo;s mistake.\nThe above scenario is very common to anyone who\u0026rsquo;s run under continuous integration or forward integration. Indeed, my wife lived in fear of me calling at 5pm and saying, \u0026ldquo;The Build is broken.\u0026rdquo; If you\u0026rsquo;re a professional and living under forward integration, build failure means everyone stops work until it\u0026rsquo;s fixed.\nReverse integration takes a different view. Everyone\u0026rsquo;s imperfect\u0026ndash;some folks screw-up with regularity\u0026ndash;and you need to insulate the product from that with manual or automatic \u0026ldquo;gates\u0026rdquo; from changes getting into the product. So, you make people develop in branches, then they ask the system to integrate their change set into ONLY THEIR SUBMODULE, and if that works, the system moves it down the line, eventually integrating it into the product. (Lord willing, there\u0026rsquo;s some automated tests somewhere in that line ::sigh:: I miss Java and Dependency Injection.)\nMicrosoft uses massive Reverse Integration; it was a cornerstone of Vista development (no jokes, please\u0026hellip;). I think it\u0026rsquo;s an intriguing concept that scales very well, and separates concerns about compositing the Product from those who develop the features.\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;m beginning to see what it is about Subversion that\u0026rsquo;s making people nervous\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s not the semantics or the version control primitives\u0026ndash;those are pretty much the same\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s the missing UCM process. Hmm\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/meta-on-version-control-techniques/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been thinking alot about version control lately, because we\u0026rsquo;re undertaking a big move from \u003ca href=\"http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/clearcase/\"\u003eClear Case\u003c/a\u003e and it\u0026rsquo;s Unified Change Management (UCM) process to \u003ca href=\"http://subversion.tigris.org/\"\u003eSubversion\u003c/a\u003e, which is the source-control equivalent of the Wild Wild West\u0026ndash;anything goes, wheee!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeetings were held, proposals submitted, cost advantages debated, and finally the Big Muckety Muck cowboyed-up and made the call\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;re going to subversion and saving a gagillion dollars.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs with many such decisions, this was communicated to the worldwide distributed sites with the utmost care, forethought, and consideration. That\u0026rsquo;s right\u0026ndash;it was 13th out of 15 slides in a Powerpoint deck. Aforementioned plebians reacted with anything from curiosity to outright rebellion.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Meta: On version-control techniques"},{"content":"(Written using IE 7, since Firefox 3b2 is still as unstable as a tween headed to a Hannah Montana concert\u0026hellip;)\nI was up until 11 checking-in \u0026amp; building code for our 2/15 deadline, and it seemed like 10 seconds afer I closed my eyes, the weather radio started its DEEDLE-DEEDLE-DEEDLE of a warning:\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;has issued a Tornado Warning for\u0026hellip;Scott County in Central Kentucky.\u0026rdquo; Jumped up and checked the radar and, sure enough, God\u0026rsquo;s own squeege was headed across the state. So, we woke-up the kids (1:15 am\u0026hellip;ah, family time!) and huddled in our secure bunker, a.k.a. the 4-foot-wide half-bath in our hallway.\nYeah, that\u0026rsquo;s the only room in our house without an outside wall.\nAnyway, the sirens went off, we hung out for 1/2 an hour and went back to bed. Surveying the damage this morning, we lost two pieces of flashing off our eves, but nothing worse. The storm hit the house head-on, from the South/Southwest, much like a ship heading into the wind. Had it come directly west, it could\u0026rsquo;ve been much worse.\nSo far, 7 are confirmed dead across the state (mostly folks who stuck around in Mobile Homes too long), and Georgetown is down one Holiday Inn\nWhitney\u0026rsquo;s calling a contracting friend of ours from church to see about the eves. Should have pics up tonight or tomorrow.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/still-here.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e(Written using IE 7, since Firefox 3b2 is still as unstable as a tween headed to a Hannah Montana concert\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was up until 11 checking-in \u0026amp; building code for our 2/15 deadline, and it seemed like 10 seconds afer I closed my eyes, the weather radio started its DEEDLE-DEEDLE-DEEDLE of a warning:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;has issued a Tornado Warning for\u0026hellip;Scott County in Central Kentucky.\u0026rdquo; Jumped up and checked the radar and, sure enough, God\u0026rsquo;s own squeege was headed across the state. So, we woke-up the kids (1:15 am\u0026hellip;ah, family time!) and huddled in our secure bunker, a.k.a. the 4-foot-wide half-bath in our hallway.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Still here..."},{"content":"So, my esteemed father-in-law had a little birthday surprise of his 60th birthday of his own: A Ford 500!\n(Not his, obviously\u0026hellip;)\nHe picked-up a 1 year old Limited model (leather, the works\u0026hellip;) at Crossroads Ford in Indiana. It had only 10k miles on it, and I got to take a test drive yesterday.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a very well-executed car, and a great replacement for the Crown Victoria: Tremendous interior room, comfort, and driveability. The car stops, turns, and steers like a Euro sedan; driving it, I kept thinking \u0026ldquo;Volvo\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Audi\u0026rdquo;. I found the suspension tuning particularly impressive\u0026ndash;not harsh at all, but very well controlled\u0026hellip;bumps caused one well-damped motion. There was no float or wallow; the car went where it was pointed and changed directions better than it ought to given its size.\nThe only complaints I can level: No telescoping steering wheel (but, power-adjustable pedals, so that\u0026rsquo;s minor), and general lack of grunt from the 3.0 V6. Reviewers have said the Taurus (the renamed 500) comes alive with the 3.5L big six, and I could definitely see that. However, provided the transmission doesn\u0026rsquo;t hunt under load and the driver doesn\u0026rsquo;t want to win any on-ramp contests, the car moves out just fine and maintains a smooth cruise on the expressway.\nStu, George, and I mused on the car\u0026rsquo;s invisibility to consumers\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s a good car, and a great alternative to an SUV or minivan. The only things we decided were the anonymous styling and lack of good advertising. Perhaps with the bigger engine and more recognizable nameplate, the platform can prosper. Seems like it deserves it.\nAll-in-all, kudos to Stu for executing the \u0026ldquo;put up\u0026rdquo; in the \u0026ldquo;put up or shut up\u0026rdquo;. Great car, great deal, and a welcome addition for the long road trips they\u0026rsquo;ll be undertaking this year. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/pimp-my-ride-stu-edition.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, my esteemed father-in-law had a little birthday surprise of his 60th birthday of his own: A Ford 500!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://z.about.com/d/cars/1/7/d/b/jj_08ford500.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Not his, obviously\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe picked-up a 1 year old Limited model (leather, the works\u0026hellip;) at Crossroads Ford in Indiana. It had only 10k miles on it, and I got to take a test drive yesterday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a very well-executed car, and a great replacement for the Crown Victoria: Tremendous interior room, comfort, and driveability. The car stops, turns, and steers like a Euro sedan; driving it, I kept thinking \u0026ldquo;Volvo\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Audi\u0026rdquo;. I found the suspension tuning particularly impressive\u0026ndash;not harsh at all, but very well controlled\u0026hellip;bumps caused one well-damped motion. There was no float or wallow; the car went where it was pointed and changed directions better than it ought to given its size.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pimp my ride, Stu edition..."},{"content":"Carriage Ford, honey :) Whitney - Feb 1, 2008\nCarriage Ford, honey :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/pimp-my-ride-stu-edition...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"carriage-ford-honey-\"\u003eCarriage Ford, honey :)\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCarriage Ford, honey :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Pimp my ride, Stu edition... (Comments)"},{"content":"- Two Years, two Mannings.\n- Wes Welker deserved MVP.\n- Give the MVP to the Giants\u0026rsquo; D\u0026hellip;they kept Brady on his back.\n- Was Giselle hired by the NFC?\nIf it\u0026rsquo;s possible, I feel BAD for the Patriots? An unblemished season, and then beaten in an ugly, hard-to-watch game that felt like Muhamed Ali\u0026rsquo;s Ropeadope, played on a football field.\nBest commercial: The Bridgestone \u0026ldquo;Scream\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/17-14...wow.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e- Two Years, two Mannings.\u003cbr\u003e\n- Wes Welker deserved MVP.\u003cbr\u003e\n- Give the MVP to the Giants\u0026rsquo; D\u0026hellip;they kept Brady on his back.\u003cbr\u003e\n- Was Giselle hired by the NFC?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf it\u0026rsquo;s possible, I feel BAD for the Patriots? An unblemished season, and then beaten in an ugly, hard-to-watch game that felt like Muhamed Ali\u0026rsquo;s Ropeadope, played on a football field.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBest commercial: The Bridgestone \u0026ldquo;Scream\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"17-14...wow..."},{"content":"I missed a lot of them (distracted by Euchre and o\u0026hellip; Chris - Feb 0, 2008\nI missed a lot of them (distracted by Euchre and other things), but of the ones I saw and remember, I like that one best too.\nI still liked the silent Pepsi Commercial best, tho this is an easy second. There weren\u0026rsquo;t any other ones I liked at all really.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/17-14...wow...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-missed-a-lot-of-them-distracted-by-euchre-and-o\"\u003eI missed a lot of them (distracted by Euchre and o\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/15818848816851252383\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eChris\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 0, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI missed a lot of them (distracted by Euchre and other things), but of the ones I saw and remember, I like that one best too.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI still liked the silent Pepsi Commercial best, tho this is an easy second. There weren\u0026rsquo;t any other ones I liked at all really.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"17-14...wow... (Comments)"},{"content":"Wow\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ve been underwhelmed before, but just\u0026hellip;wow.\nOkay, so let\u0026rsquo;s review: I had a bout of unaccountable Car lust starting earlier this week. The Astra was the newest Euro kid on the block, all sexy and angular. So, today, I took a detour on my way to work and drove one.\nWalkaround: The car is handsome and substantial\u0026hellip;it really doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like an economy car, but rather an upscale small hatch, a segment the MINI Cooper created. Doors open and close with an assuring thunk. The hatch is pure euro, complete with parcel shelf and a good-sized storage area with the seats up. The rear window is very small (but we\u0026rsquo;ll get to that\u0026hellip;)\nInterior: Hard plastic abounds, and control layout is just bizarre. I adjusted the trip computer trying assuming that was the cruise control, and nearly got into an accident trying to turn on the radio. A large LED screen dominates the upper dash, and the center stack seems to be going for the waterfall effect from Volvo. The driving position is spacious, and 4 adults could fit pretty easily (I was driving the 4-door hatch)\nDriving position: Pure Focus, circa 1999. You feel like you\u0026rsquo;re sitting on the car, not in it. Visibility is good, excepting the rear view; the back glass is like a gunslit from the driver\u0026rsquo;s seat.\nDriving it: If you\u0026rsquo;ve driven a Mk.IV VW with the 2.0L engine, you\u0026rsquo;ve driven the astra. The car moves out, but does so reluctantly. Gear ratios in the transmission don\u0026rsquo;t take advantage of the engine, with 1st being too tall and 5th being too short. Sixty MPH yielded 3k rpms. The accelerator is too far below the plane of the brake pedal for heel/toe downshifts, but the shifter is so notchy and balky, you won\u0026rsquo;t want to heel/toe anyway. Again\u0026ndash;just like a VW!!! Seems like they were trying to mimic/benchmark the MkIV Golf, right down to the shift pattern and \u0026ldquo;sprung like a Buick\u0026rdquo; bodyroll.\nThe ONE redeeming characteristic was he steering\u0026ndash;it was accurate throughout the travel, and the car seemed nimble, until you booted the throttle and were rewarded with a coarse roar from the engine room. This tub just doesn\u0026rsquo;t want to move, similar to the old SPI Ford Focus, or the 2.0 VW.\nOverall, I know the ION was DOA, but I question the economics of bringing over a car that\u0026rsquo;s MUCH inferior to the equivalent Hyundai for FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS MORE?! Expect deep discounts on these if they hope to meet the meager sales goals of 30k this year. I really don\u0026rsquo;t see who this car is for\u0026hellip;econo-freaks won\u0026rsquo;t look twice at its 32 mpg, enthusiasts would want more power and better shifter, and hipsters demand bluetooth and gadgets galore. Like I said\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s a DUD!\n* * *\nOverall, the test drive did its job\u0026hellip;I climbed back into my 19 year old E30 and was never so glad to be in a RWD car with an engaging drivetrain.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/nevermind...the-saturn-astras-a-dud/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWow\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ve been underwhelmed before, but just\u0026hellip;wow.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, so let\u0026rsquo;s review: I had a bout of unaccountable Car lust starting earlier this week. The Astra was the newest Euro kid on the block, all sexy and angular. So, today, I took a detour on my way to work and drove one.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWalkaround: The car is handsome and substantial\u0026hellip;it really doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like an economy car, but rather an upscale small hatch, a segment the MINI Cooper created. Doors open and close with an assuring thunk. The hatch is pure euro, complete with parcel shelf and a good-sized storage area with the seats up. The rear window is very small (but we\u0026rsquo;ll get to that\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nevermind...the Saturn Astra's a dud"},{"content":"Looks like we\u0026rsquo;re down to Obama -v- Clinton, McCain -v- Romney. There are other players, but it\u0026rsquo;s apparent that Huckabee can\u0026rsquo;t play on the coasts, and Super Tuesday should seal that.\nProbably the best phenomenon of this primary season hasn\u0026rsquo;t been the campaigns or races themselves, it\u0026rsquo;s been the \u0026ldquo;race to decide\u0026rdquo; among the media. I used to identify this as a Fox News only phenomenon (NEWS DAMNIT!), but it seems to spread to others. Thing is, the networks seek certainty\u0026ndash;Who\u0026rsquo;s the front runner? Who is soon to be out?\nLast year, McCain was done because of financing problems and intra-office ego issues. Then it was Huckabee the reincarnation of Jimmy Carter, the aw-shucks guy from nowhere. Then it was Obama and Clinton was done. Then Mitt Romney was dead and buried. It\u0026rsquo;s just frigging tiresome\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s just like those stupid meetings in the corporate world that have 20 minutes of material and 1 hr of time\u0026ndash;people start making things up.\nYes, I\u0026rsquo;m sure because the intelligentsia among the media caucused and proclaimed it McCain-v-Obama (for today, at least), that the other 99.999% of America should follow suit. No, we\u0026rsquo;re too stupid or uninformed or religious to form our own opinions. As part of that, this year the parties themselves have disenfranchised whole states (Michigan and Florida)\u0026hellip;why should people even bother to vote?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/politics-and-then-there-were-four.-okay-four-ish/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLooks like we\u0026rsquo;re down to Obama -v- Clinton, McCain -v- Romney. There are other players, but it\u0026rsquo;s apparent that Huckabee can\u0026rsquo;t play on the coasts, and Super Tuesday should seal that.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProbably the best phenomenon of this primary season hasn\u0026rsquo;t been the campaigns or races themselves, it\u0026rsquo;s been the \u0026ldquo;race to decide\u0026rdquo; among the media. I used to identify this as a Fox News only phenomenon (\u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/on-cable/\" title=\"on cable\"\u003eNEWS DAMNIT!\u003c/a\u003e), but it seems to spread to others. Thing is, the networks seek certainty\u0026ndash;Who\u0026rsquo;s the front runner? Who is soon to be out?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Politics: And then there were Four.  (okay, Four-ish)"},{"content":"Joey: \u0026ldquo;I wish we had cable.\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nLOST why do I care again?\nEli Stone actually made it through a whole episode and found some stuff to like. On the whole, I\u0026rsquo;d rather sleep, but eh. This one gets the biggest award for \u0026ldquo;Zero chemistry between main character and his ice queen fiancee.\u0026rdquo;\nOh, and Sydney\u0026rsquo;s dad from Alias is a co-star. He pretty-much plays the same character. And \u0026lsquo;Ed\u0026rsquo; shows up in flashbacks as his Dad.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;m just ready for a day off and some sleep. If I felt like a superstar last week, I feel like congealed oatmeal this week.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/random-tv-goings-on.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJoey: \u0026ldquo;I wish we had cable.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/index?pn=index\"\u003eLOST\u003c/a\u003e why do I care again?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://abc.go.com/primetime/elistone/index?pn=index\"\u003eEli Stone\u003c/a\u003e actually made it through a whole episode and found some stuff to like. On the whole, I\u0026rsquo;d rather sleep, but eh. This one gets the biggest award for \u0026ldquo;Zero chemistry between main character and his ice queen fiancee.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, and Sydney\u0026rsquo;s dad from Alias is a co-star. He pretty-much plays the same character. And \u0026lsquo;Ed\u0026rsquo; shows up in flashbacks as his Dad.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Random TV goings-on..."},{"content":"yes but if you add water and reheat it, congealed \u0026hellip; Whitney - Feb 5, 2008\nyes but if you add water and reheat it, congealed oatmeal can be pretty good. by the way, you left something on at home. (K)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/02/random-tv-goings-on...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"yes-but-if-you-add-water-and-reheat-it-congealed-\"\u003eyes but if you add water and reheat it, congealed \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 5, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eyes but if you add water and reheat it, congealed oatmeal can be pretty good. by the way, you left something on at home. (K)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Random TV goings-on... (Comments)"},{"content":"\nI thought it odd that when I checked-out Rich Dad, Poor Dad as a book-on-tape from the library that the first cassette was not rewound. Nor was it at the end of a side\u0026hellip;it seemed as though someone had stopped in the middle of the tape. None of the other tapes were that way.\nThen I found out why: This book is complete crap.\nI suffered through half the tape, then took the book back. The author kept spouting platitudes like \u0026ldquo;Poor people work for money, Rich people have money work for them,\u0026rdquo; wrapped in some saccharine false anectdote format.\nThe shtik is the author is a 9-year old boy, who has two father figures. One his actual father (Poor Dad), who was (in his estimation) a loser who trusted others to take care of him\u0026ndash;job security, government entitlements, and his standing as an academic. The other had an 8th grade education but true entrepreneurial spirit, and so he became a rich man.\nI suffered through an hour of this guy\u0026rsquo;s overblown, self-important crap and couldn\u0026rsquo;t stand it anymore. I took it back to the library, again with the first tape set halfway through, as a clue to the next guy that this isn\u0026rsquo;t worth listening to!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/rich-dad-poor-dad-is-a-turd/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/29/Richdadpoordad.jpg/200px-Richdadpoordad.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/29/Richdadpoordad.jpg/200px-Richdadpoordad.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI thought it odd that when I checked-out \u003cem\u003eRich Dad, Poor Dad\u003c/em\u003e as a book-on-tape from the library that the first cassette was not rewound. Nor was it at the end of a side\u0026hellip;it seemed as though someone had stopped in the middle of the tape. None of the other tapes were that way.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen I found out why: This book is complete crap.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI suffered through half the tape, then took the book back. The author kept spouting platitudes like \u0026ldquo;Poor people work for money, Rich people have money work for them,\u0026rdquo; wrapped in some saccharine false anectdote format.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Rich Dad, Poor Dad\" is a turd"},{"content":"Dave Ramsey has recommended it on several occasion\u0026hellip; Chris - Jan 2, 2008\nDave Ramsey has recommended it on several occasions, so I added it to my \u0026ldquo;to read\u0026rdquo; list a few weeks ago. Looking for something to use a Borders\u0026rsquo; gift card on, I started going through that list last week to decide which book to get. After reading some reviews on Amazon and elsewhere about the book, I took it off the list. Seems like you\u0026rsquo;ve confirmed my assumptions from those reviews\u0026hellip; Thanks for the warning about it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/rich-dad-poor-dad-is-a-turd-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"dave-ramsey-has-recommended-it-on-several-occasion\"\u003eDave Ramsey has recommended it on several occasion\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/15818848816851252383\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eChris\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 2, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDave Ramsey has recommended it on several occasions, so I added it to my \u0026ldquo;to read\u0026rdquo; list a few weeks ago. Looking for something to use a Borders\u0026rsquo; gift card on, I started going through that list last week to decide which book to get. After reading some reviews on Amazon and elsewhere about the book, I took it off the list. Seems like you\u0026rsquo;ve confirmed my assumptions from those reviews\u0026hellip; Thanks for the warning about it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Rich Dad, Poor Dad\" is a turd (Comments)"},{"content":"Yeah, yeah, I\u0026rsquo;m a eurosnob. Sue me.\nThe Camry is getting on my nerves\u0026hellip;it sure beats walking, and it gets great mileage on the highway, but I\u0026rsquo;d really like to get back into a hatchback stick with good steering. I\u0026rsquo;ve heard good things about the Mazda3, but I don\u0026rsquo;t like their looks all that much.\nThe E30 has world-class steering, but it\u0026rsquo;s only a coupe, it gets 20mpg on a good day, and it\u0026rsquo;s loud and rides like a brick. And it\u0026rsquo;s about as safe as a car designed in 1980 with 1st gen high-explosive Airbags can be (that is, not very)\nThe Astra\u0026rsquo;s supposed to be a great car with the 5-speed\u0026ndash;very tractable in city traffic, with excellent steering. There are plenty of negatives:\nVisibility\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s a slave to fashion, so I don\u0026rsquo;t know how well one can see out of it.\nSize/practicality. Two kids (probably 3 by the time I can buy one of these puppies), and one of them will be sitting behind me.\nSafety. Safer than the E30, I\u0026rsquo;d wager, and Euro standards are pretty tough, especially in real-world situations like offset crashes. Still\u0026hellip;small car amid the oceans of SUVs\u0026hellip;\nIt has a timing belt. WTF?! I\u0026rsquo;m cursed by cars with timing belts\u0026ndash;the Camry, E30, and Odyssey all have \u0026rsquo;em.\nThe price is not right. They\u0026rsquo;re built in Beligium, so the Euro/Dollar exchange rate is inflating the price\u0026hellip;One could have a bare-bones MINI for $18k, though I don\u0026rsquo;t like the R56 MINIs at all. Plus, since it\u0026rsquo;s a Saturn, it\u0026rsquo;s a no-dicker situation.\nRarity. Sales targets are 30k/year, which is a drop in the bucket for the volume cars in the segment, and the majority of those will likely be autos. Upshot: Finding a used one in 3-5 years might be hard.\nEl-monstroso wheel \u0026amp; tire package. 16\u0026quot; standard with 17\u0026quot; or 18\u0026quot; optional. Say hello to $200/tire for replacements.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a pretty little car that\u0026rsquo;s turned my head. It seems like it could hustle, get good MPG, and get the fam around town without resorting to the Exxon Vadez\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;the Odyssey (14 mpg at last fillup).\nAnd it\u0026rsquo;s European!!!\nWhen I get like this, I typically go test drive the thing and it snaps me out of it. . .reality rarely matches fantasy. Thing is, I haven\u0026rsquo;t test-driven a NEW car in so long, I might just get the itch worse. :-)\nOh well, we\u0026rsquo;ll see\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/current-object-of-lust-saturn-astra/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYeah, yeah, I\u0026rsquo;m a eurosnob. Sue me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com//pictures/VEHICLE/2008/Saturn/2008.saturn.astra.20142846-E.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Camry is getting on my nerves\u0026hellip;it sure beats walking, and it gets great mileage on the highway, but I\u0026rsquo;d really like to get back into a hatchback stick with good steering. I\u0026rsquo;ve heard good things about the Mazda3, but I don\u0026rsquo;t like their looks all that much.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe E30 has world-class steering, but it\u0026rsquo;s only a coupe, it gets 20mpg on a good day, and it\u0026rsquo;s loud and rides like a brick. And it\u0026rsquo;s about as safe as a car designed in 1980 with 1st gen high-explosive Airbags can be (that is, not very)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Current Object of Lust: Saturn Astra"},{"content":"One part of programming I enjoy is the creative process\u0026ndash;taking a thing you\u0026rsquo;ve sketched out on a whiteboard, and making it come alive. Once you\u0026rsquo;re at this long enough though, you start to see common problems crop-up, no matter what problem you\u0026rsquo;re solving or what language you\u0026rsquo;re solving it in. I\u0026rsquo;d like to think through one of those today (or at least start to\u0026hellip;)\nThe problem is, I can\u0026rsquo;t really give a snazzy name to the problem itself. When you\u0026rsquo;re dealing with multithreaded programming, you can say \u0026ldquo;I have concurrency problems,\u0026rdquo; and someone in the ether will grok what you mean. When dealing with GUIs, you can talk Model-View-Controller (MVC) all day. As my friend Chuck would say, what I have here is a \u0026ldquo;meta\u0026rdquo; problem\u0026ndash;a problem about a problem.\nThe best way I can describe it is when a system is \u0026ldquo;over engineered\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;over factored\u0026rdquo;: At the machine level, a program is an algorithm\u0026ndash;a sequence of unambiguous instructions executed by a computer one at a time. In the early days of computing, that\u0026rsquo;s all there were, sequences of instructions, written in machine language. Then came assembly, a shorthand way of writing machine language. At that point, people started seeing commonality among lines of asseembly: \u0026ldquo;Hey, these 5 lines are repeated 200 times in our code!\u0026rdquo; So, people came-up with ways to factor-out those common pieces into their own blocks, and functions (or procedures) were born. Languages became more abstract, and programmers became \u0026ldquo;software engineeers\u0026rdquo;. Like real engineers, we want to reuse as much prior art as possible to get the job done\u0026ndash;prior art is often stable and debugged.\nBut this is where I\u0026rsquo;m getting to the problem\u0026ndash;as engineers, we like things to be strict and uniform. We try to make systems \u0026ldquo;freeze\u0026rdquo; so that we can layer things one atop another, each layer forming an abstraction for the layers above it. For instance, when I write a networking application, I can create a software construct called a \u0026ldquo;Socket\u0026rdquo;, which connects to another machine\u0026hellip;I need not worry about what sort of network is between our two machines, or if that other machine is running a different operating system. The socket abstraction takes care of all that.\nHeres where it starts getting dicey. Sometimes we overdo that layering and factoring, and it creates a problem, like the one I\u0026rsquo;m facing today: I have two systems that do pretty much the same thing. One is a monolithic win32 app, the other is a collection of 3 separate modules layered like this:\n\\-------------------- | UI layer | |------------------| | Core layer | |------------------| | Communication | | layer | \\-------------------| Oh, and by the way, the communication layer is a separate service/daemon process from the other piece. So here\u0026rsquo;s the problem: The UI layer needs a piece of information found deep in the Communication layer. In the monolithic app, this is no problem: I just added another getXXX() function to the communication piece, and then had the UI stuff call it\u0026ndash;it wasn\u0026rsquo;t that clean, but it was ~1/2 day worth of work to get working properly.\nThis other thing has been 2 months of design, coordination, and back-and-forth trying to achieve the same thing we could do in the monolithic app in 3 hrs.\nTo be blunt: I\u0026rsquo;ve seen this problem before. You need to pass an additional parameter WAAAAY down the call stack, or you need to pass back 2 new pieces of data where you\u0026rsquo;d designed your oh-so-nice system to use only 1. I\u0026rsquo;ve seen some good and bad approaches to this:\nUse global variables. That way, everything in the namespace has access to the data it needs, if it needs it. You\u0026rsquo;d be surprised how often I\u0026rsquo;ve seen this in production software, espeically the sort that started out as a \u0026ldquo;little thing\u0026rdquo; and grew to a \u0026ldquo;big hairy mess\u0026rdquo;. Global variables are evil\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re easy, but they quickly make a codebase unmanageable\nUse an external datastore to serialize the data from the upper layer, and suck it back at the lower layer, or vice-versa. That is, circumvent the callstack, and use a database or the registry as a global variable. LOTS of Win32 programs do this, and I think it\u0026rsquo;s a mistake. Just like with global variables, you quickly lose track of who\u0026rsquo;s depending upon this external store, and it makes your application more difficult to port or refactor. However, this is the devil\u0026rsquo;s bargain that most production apps are making today.\nPass parameters as variable length lists. This leads to a big, hairy mess, because flattening named parameters lists to an array is a lossy operation. I meant \u0026ldquo;address\u0026rdquo;, but your code flattened that into array element 0\u0026hellip;Which reveals my intent better? Perl does this, and I don\u0026rsquo;t like it much. Some homegrown Java frameworks do this too. ;-)\nPass parameters as maps/hashmaps/dictionaries. This is the Ruby way, seems like, and it\u0026rsquo;s a nice way of getting runtime flexibility without losing the semantics of named parameters.\nDisallow mutable state altogether and let people compose functions as they need. Yeah, you probably knew I was coming around to this: Functional programming, Erlang, Lisp, etc. These have a different take on encapsulation altogether\u0026ndash;forget O-O, just be very strict about who can change the state of a variable: NO ONE CAN.\nYeah, I\u0026rsquo;ve got a proper strawman, I know\u0026hellip;generalizing from an over-factored system as a particular example to why we should all chuck it and start learning Functional Programming (FP). Like I said\u0026hellip;these were just \u0026rsquo;thoughts'\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/thoughts-approaches-to-encapsulation/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne part of programming I enjoy is the creative process\u0026ndash;taking a thing you\u0026rsquo;ve sketched out on a whiteboard, and making it come alive. Once you\u0026rsquo;re at this long enough though, you start to see common problems crop-up, no matter what problem you\u0026rsquo;re solving or what language you\u0026rsquo;re solving it in. I\u0026rsquo;d like to think through one of those today (or at least start to\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe problem is, I can\u0026rsquo;t really give a snazzy name to the problem itself. When you\u0026rsquo;re dealing with multithreaded programming, you can say \u0026ldquo;I have concurrency problems,\u0026rdquo; and someone in the ether will grok what you mean. When dealing with GUIs, you can talk Model-View-Controller (MVC) all day. As my friend Chuck would say, what I have here is a \u0026ldquo;meta\u0026rdquo; problem\u0026ndash;a problem about a problem.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thoughts: Approaches to encapsulation"},{"content":"As a programmer, should it bother me that I\u0026rsquo;m beginning to think of Windows as a well-documented, flexible system? One that\u0026rsquo;s not-too-awful to program in?\nI beginning to understand why Rana found Java so jarring\u0026hellip;documentation varies in quality and it\u0026rsquo;s all over the place. With Windows, MSDN is your friend :D\n(Note: I don\u0026rsquo;t find windows secure, consistent, or all that well-designed, but after reading Raymond Chen\u0026rsquo;s excellent \u0026ldquo;The Old New Thing\u0026rdquo; it\u0026rsquo;s easy to see why the sins of Windows 1.0 through 3.11 really affected the designs of Win32, leading to many gaping kludges and security holes.)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/scary-thought-for-the-day.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs a programmer, should it bother me that I\u0026rsquo;m beginning to think of Windows as a well-documented, flexible system? One that\u0026rsquo;s not-too-awful to program in?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI beginning to understand why Rana found Java so jarring\u0026hellip;documentation varies in quality and it\u0026rsquo;s all over the place. With Windows, MSDN is your friend :D\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Note: I don\u0026rsquo;t find windows secure, consistent, or all that well-designed, but after reading Raymond Chen\u0026rsquo;s excellent \u0026ldquo;The Old New Thing\u0026rdquo; it\u0026rsquo;s easy to see why the sins of Windows 1.0 through 3.11 really affected the designs of Win32, leading to many gaping kludges and security holes.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scary thought for the day..."},{"content":"Skyscapes\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/yes-please/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.skyscapes.biz/index.html\"\u003eSkyscapes\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.skyscapes.biz/products/images/alice.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Yes, Please!!!"},{"content":"Spiffy. Jeff Roberts - Jan 4, 2008\nSpiffy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/yes-please-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"spiffy\"\u003eSpiffy.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 4, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpiffy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Yes, Please!!! (Comments)"},{"content":"Really enjoyed this one, in spite of myself. Jessica Alba\u0026rsquo;s hot, thought her blonde hairdo is jarring at best.\nLots of humor and social commentary here, especially surrounding Alba\u0026ndash;she wishes for a normal life, she laments being the hottest woman on the planet, she exclaims after a \u0026lsquo;wardrobe malfunction,\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Why does this always happen to me?!\u0026rdquo;\nThe beginning was very slow, as they try to ease us back into the characters we knew from the punchier 1st installment. The Four have grown very accustomed to their powers and their role as planetary protectors, so much so that they seem bored. Unfortunately, that\u0026rsquo;s exactly the same feeling I get about the actors here\u0026ndash;phoning it in, hitting their marks, but without the snap of the 1st movie. This felt more like a really, really expensive TV show than a summer blockbuster: The actors seem comfortable in their characters, and the scope of the action always centers around them. Some of the lines delivered seem like before-commercial, writers-room fodder, especially the lines from Ben Grim.\nDespite that, Susan\u0026rsquo;s inner turmoil provides enough depth to carry the story along. Is she REALLY that in love with Reed, the hopeless nerd? Does she still feel attracted to Von Doom, in spite of herself? And, when she gets to know the surfer, why do we feel she\u0026rsquo;d totally hit that?\nI liked this movie alot, if only because it moved along, entertained, and retained its sense of humor. It also didn\u0026rsquo;t subject us to whiney monologues from the main character like Spiderman!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/review-fantastic-four--the-rise-of-the-silver-surfer/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eReally enjoyed this one, in spite of myself. Jessica Alba\u0026rsquo;s hot, thought her blonde hairdo is jarring at best.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://thumbs.filmstarts.de/wallpaper/FantasticFour53.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLots of humor and social commentary here, especially surrounding Alba\u0026ndash;she wishes for a normal life, she laments being the hottest woman on the planet, she exclaims after a \u0026lsquo;wardrobe malfunction,\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;Why does this always happen to me?!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe beginning was very slow, as they try to ease us back into the characters we knew from the punchier 1st installment. The Four have grown very accustomed to their powers and their role as planetary protectors, so much so that they seem bored. Unfortunately, that\u0026rsquo;s exactly the same feeling I get about the actors here\u0026ndash;phoning it in, hitting their marks, but without the snap of the 1st movie. This felt more like a really, really expensive TV show than a summer blockbuster: The actors seem comfortable in their characters, and the scope of the action always centers around them. Some of the lines delivered seem like before-commercial, writers-room fodder, especially the lines from Ben Grim.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Fantastic Four--the Rise of the Silver Surfer"},{"content":"For my pal Jamie: GUI programming is hard.\nSo, the big marquee part of Microsoft Visual C++ has been the \u0026ldquo;Visual\u0026rdquo; part, where you draw-out your lovely dialog boxes using a GUI creation tool, then the IDE generates the code \u0026amp; and resource files from that.\nOkay, so far so good, but I spent most of this morning trying to get this little MFC app I\u0026rsquo;m upgrading to run as a static EXE instead of a DLL-linked EXE. That would mean the EXE would be a little fatter, but we could ship it without the associated MSVCRT.dll and MFC42.DLL, reducing a point of failure if those files get lost or damaged. It\u0026rsquo;s a win-win, right? Everyone benefits! Bonuses galore!\nExcept\u0026hellip;it doesn\u0026rsquo;t work. The app is structured to run as a .exe with an associated resource dll, loaded with AfxLoadLibrary() instead of just plain LoadLibrary(). I hacked around it so that the app compiled and ran, but it started failing in weird places (ASSERT() statements failing, etc.)\nUltimately, MFC is a limited C++ wrapper atop straight Win32, and it paints you into some serious corners. Joy. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/rant-mfc-is-dll-hell.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor my pal Jamie: GUI programming is hard.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, the big marquee part of Microsoft Visual C++ has been the \u0026ldquo;Visual\u0026rdquo; part, where you draw-out your lovely dialog boxes using a GUI creation tool, then the IDE generates the code \u0026amp; and resource files from that.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, so far so good, but I spent most of this morning trying to get this little MFC app I\u0026rsquo;m upgrading to run as a static EXE instead of a DLL-linked EXE. That would mean the EXE would be a little fatter, but we could ship it without the associated MSVCRT.dll and MFC42.DLL, reducing a point of failure if those files get lost or damaged. It\u0026rsquo;s a win-win, right? Everyone benefits! Bonuses galore!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rant: MFC is DLL Hell..."},{"content":"My 6-year-old ID badge is held together by scotch tape and a well-placed paperclip. I\u0026rsquo;ve worn through 4 plastic snaps to hold it tenously to my waist.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/how-i-know-im-a-good-steward-of-corporate-resources.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy 6-year-old ID badge is held together by scotch tape and a well-placed paperclip. I\u0026rsquo;ve worn through 4 plastic snaps to hold it tenously to my waist.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How I know I'm a good steward of corporate resources..."},{"content":"dude - get a new one! :) One to show your new se\u0026hellip; HarryC - Jan 3, 2008\ndude - get a new one! :) One to show your new sexy married responsible self to the world!\u0026hellip;.ok to the door opening thingie. but still! If you were a victim of spontaneous human combustion and the only thing left to identify you were your badge you wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want THAT old picture flashing on the news would you?!\nlove you!\n-above comment from wife who didnt know harvid was still logged into blogger\u0026hellip;.. oops!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/how-i-know-im-a-good-steward-of-corporate-resources...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"dude---get-a-new-one--one-to-show-your-new-se\"\u003edude - get a new one! :) One to show your new se\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 3, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003edude - get a new one! :) One to show your new sexy married responsible self to the world!\u0026hellip;.ok to the door opening thingie. but still! If you were a victim of spontaneous human combustion and the only thing left to identify you were your badge you wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want THAT old picture flashing on the news would you?!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How I know I'm a good steward of corporate resources... (Comments)"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m a member of a Restoratoin Movement Protestant Christian Church. On the face of it the Restoration Movement is a tremendous idea, hearkening to the ideas of both the early Apostolic Churches and the ideas of the Protestant Reformation. Key bullet points of our doctrine are:\nWe acknowledge only one authority in church matters\u0026ndash;the 66 book Protestant Bible. There is no synod, ecclesial council, catechism, or presbyteroi. The Bible says what it says.\nFrom that, it begs the question: \u0026ldquo;What does the Bible say?\u0026rdquo; On some things (lying, adultery, salvation, sin) the Bible is rather clear. On other things (how fast to drive your automobile) the Bible doesn\u0026rsquo;t speak at all. Which leads to our doctrine: \u0026ldquo;Where the Bible speaks, we speak. Where the Bible is silent, we are silent.\nThere is really only one \u0026ldquo;Church,\u0026rdquo; that of Christ himself. That concept ties directly to the council of Nicea and the Creed: \u0026ldquo;We believe in one Holy, Catholic (that is, \u0026ldquo;universal\u0026rdquo;) and Apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.\u0026rdquo;\nChurch operation should be modelled after the New Testament churches\u0026ndash;community-oriented, loving, outreaching, and proselytizing.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s not to like, right?\nI\u0026rsquo;m likely to get in trouble for this, but it\u0026rsquo;s been on my heart: Over the long-term, I\u0026rsquo;m not sure Restoration Churches can endure. Why do I ask that? Because the churches the movement is based upon didn\u0026rsquo;t endure. (Yes, this is an argument based upon history, not theology, but bear with me\u0026hellip;.)\nThe history\nAt the center of it, the early churches began in an explosion of the Holy Spirit, which broke like a wave across the Roman empire from ~33 AD to 90 AD, the period when the original apostles were alive. These were people who learned from Jesus\u0026rsquo;s original ministry, and they formed churches centered on the expectation that Jesus would be returning soon to setup His kingdom on the earth. The best expression of this was the \u0026ldquo;home\u0026rdquo; church in Jerusalem, run by James the brother of Jesus. At that community-oriented church, people dissolved all their worldly possessions, gave them to those who had need, and supported one another.\nTime passed, and the community church principle showed its flaws. James had to exhort the people to work, seeing that without works faith was \u0026ldquo;dead\u0026rdquo;. Paul had to take-up collection throughout the richer churches in Greece and Rome to send to the home church in Jerusalem. The home church was broke. False teachers began circulating. Who was right? *What* was right? How long until Jesus came back and settled all this?\nThen, Rome obliterated Jerusalem in 70 AD. Persecutions began. Churches like Corinth and those throughout modern Turkey lost their fervor and began intermingling Greek philosophy with Judeo-Christian theology. People denied Christ in order to avoid Roman persecution, then asked for forgiveness and readmission to the community after the persecutions passed.\nUltimately, PEOPLE became the church\u0026rsquo;s biggest problem. In the aftermath of the Apostles, the Church drifted through centuries of heresy, hierarchy, and intermingling politics with religion. The church split east/west in the great schism, then divided further in the Protestant Reformation. After the Counter Reformation, the Roman Catholics managed to hold it together, while the Protestants, bereft of any central authority on doctrine, continued to fissure.\nThen came the Restoration Movement in the 19th century. Division isn\u0026rsquo;t biblical\u0026ndash;we\u0026rsquo;re all \u0026ldquo;The Church\u0026rdquo;. Can\u0026rsquo;t we just go back to the practices of the early church and live that way?\nToday\nMy point is, I don\u0026rsquo;t know that we can. Restoration churches worship and grow with a fervor very similar to that of the early church just after Pentacost\u0026ndash;the \u0026ldquo;Megachurch\u0026rdquo; movement is a shining example of what large groups of fervent Christians can do if they agree to preach what Christ said. Many of these churches are now 20-30 years old, the same period of questioning and division that happened in the early churches. The question for the next 20-30 years is can they survive those growing pains without splintering.?\n* * *\nWhy am I so worked-up about this? Well, I don\u0026rsquo;t see a solution, for one thing. People suck at being their own priests and theologians. It\u0026rsquo;s preferable to letting OTHER human beings tell us what to do, I suppose, particularly if that priesthood has its agenda (They\u0026rsquo;re human, too.)\nFor another, my home church is about to go through a microcosm of the above, with clear lines developing between those who\u0026rsquo;d like an explosion of fervor and growth, and those who wish to maintain equilibrium at all costs. As my wife admonishes me often, I assume much and I often assume the worst, but I don\u0026rsquo;t see this ending well for our little congregation.\nHowever, if the last four months have taught me anything, it\u0026rsquo;s that things are possible that I can\u0026rsquo;t see. As the Bible says in Luke 18:27\n\u0026ldquo;What is impossible with men is possible with God.\u0026rdquo;\nSo I close with this prayer:\nLORD, you created us. You gave us minds, and personalities, and free will, so that our worship of You would mean something. That our fellowship and adoration and communion with You would be not at Your command, but through our own choice. You created Love, and made Love personified in your Son, Jesus.\nLORD, your Son created the Church, a community of all believers, as an encouragement and fellowship, a haven in a lost and dying world where we might have respite and spiritual food. It is in that community that we come together to grow and learn and worship You. I praise You for that.\nYet, LORD, we have sinned. We are not \u0026ldquo;in the world, yet not of the world.\u0026rdquo; There is plenty of world within us, and within our Church. We don\u0026rsquo;t know where to go, and how to get along with one another.\nLORD, you put me and my family with our church family, and I see the all-too-human problems and undercurrents we face. We have no arbiter but You, LORD. So my prayer is for guidance for the pastor and trustees, those men who have taken on the responsibility of leadership. I also pray for the membership, that we might have our hearts softened and opened to Your will. In Christ\u0026rsquo;s name, Amen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/frustrations-with-the-restoration-movement/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m a member of a \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_Movement\"\u003eRestoratoin Movement\u003c/a\u003e Protestant Christian Church. On the face of it the Restoration Movement is a tremendous idea, hearkening to the ideas of both the early Apostolic Churches and the ideas of the Protestant Reformation. Key bullet points of our doctrine are:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe acknowledge only one authority in church matters\u0026ndash;the 66 book Protestant Bible. There is no synod, ecclesial council, catechism, or presbyteroi. The Bible says what it says.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Frustrations with the Restoration Movement"},{"content":"I benefit from the polyglot nature of my upbringing. I speak two languages\u0026ndash;English and Kentuckian. I can blend into almost anything from a discussion of Platonic philosophy through a rib eating contest at the county fair.\nAt the Truck Pull tonight at Rupp Arena, I realized that not everyone benefits from this, so I thought I\u0026rsquo;d prepare this handy guide. Thus:\nEasy ways to tell if you\u0026rsquo;re having a Redneck good time\n- Men\u0026rsquo;s fashion comes in two flavors: Carhardt and NASCAR\n- Women have all three available hair colors: Blonde, Dirty Blonde, and Playmate Platinum Blonde\n- You\u0026rsquo;ve never seen so many nachos in your life.\n- You remark to yourself \u0026ldquo;They deep-fried THAT?!\u0026rdquo;\n- The event requires ear plugs\u0026hellip;\n- \u0026hellip;yet most people aren\u0026rsquo;t wearing them.\n- You arrive in something other than a truck and people point and laugh.\n- You arrive in an imported vehicle\u0026hellip;see above.\n- The announcer can embroil the crowd simply by asking who\u0026rsquo;s a Ford/Chevy/Dodge fan? If the announcer asks about Toyota, 10 GOTO END // NOT REDNECK.\n- You see a man sporting a tank top in subzero January.\n- Said man did not bring a coat.\n- Two words: Chewing tobacco.\n- The event leaves you reeking of unburned hydrocarbons.\n- The participants grab the emcee\u0026rsquo;s mike and taunt the audience.\n- The highlight of the night involves a wreck, accident, or explosion. (In our case it was a guy \u0026ldquo;competing\u0026rdquo; in his rock climbing racer who just happened to end-up flipping over. For the second night in a row. Yep, no shtik there\u0026hellip;.)\n- Desperate to fill the dead time between heats or during a technical problem, the camera guys at the event will pan across the audience and put people up on the big screen. At a redneck event, people will do ANYTHING to see themselves on that screen. Anything.\n* * *\nYet, for all I\u0026rsquo;d love to turn-up my nose, and \u0026ldquo;get above my raisin\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;, I LOVE TRACTOR PULLS. And Farm Implement shows. And Rodeos. And Monster truck jams. And, stock car races (at least, in person). Yes, I\u0026rsquo;ve watched a demolition derby before.\nI love all of it. Okay, I hate Pro Wrestling. Sue me.\nMy dad used to take me to these sorts of things, and taking Joey tonight was just neat. He\u0026rsquo;d never been before, and I bought him his own pair of earplugs and everything. The show itself was mediocre and amateur (as they always are in Rupp\u0026hellip;), but at least they didn\u0026rsquo;t have crushing technical difficulties or a blizzard this year.\nMuch like funnel cakes, I think I\u0026rsquo;ve had my fill thanks to our little excursion tonight, but I was glad I went. Much the same way I was glad I went to WWE Raw, Jackass: The Movie, and the Kentucky Derby Infield. Good times.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/analysis-how-to-tell-if-youre-having-a-redneck-good-time/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI benefit from the polyglot nature of my upbringing. I speak two languages\u0026ndash;English and Kentuckian. I can blend into almost anything from a discussion of Platonic philosophy through a rib eating contest at the county fair.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt the Truck Pull tonight at Rupp Arena, I realized that not everyone benefits from this, so I thought I\u0026rsquo;d prepare this handy guide. Thus:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEasy ways to tell if you\u0026rsquo;re having a Redneck good time\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Analysis:  How to tell if you're having a redneck good time"},{"content":"Thought about this on the way in today\u0026hellip;things I\u0026rsquo;d like to do before I die (yeah, alot of them are car-related, so I\u0026rsquo;d better do them before they outlaw the internal combustion engine\u0026hellip;)\n* Watch the 24 Hours of Daytona\n* Attend the Skip Barber Racing school.\n* (Re)Build an engine from scratch\n* Do the Classical Grand Tour: Rome, Florence, Venice, Athens.\n* Visit Paris (France, not Kentucky\u0026hellip;)\n* Have a ride in an aerobatic airplane/fighter jet.\n* Attend the Grand Prix of Monaco\n* Go sailing in the Carribean. (No Hurricanes, please!)\n* Learn to play piano\n* Go to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.\n* Visit Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Gettysburg.\n* Learn Spanish (seems like a must nowadays\u0026hellip;)\n* Learn Greek.\n* Read: St. Augustine, Plato, Martin Luther, John Locke\n* Run a 10k\n* Write a poem for each of my kids\n* Contribute *something* to greater society that has my name on it\u0026hellip;\nYes, I\u0026rsquo;d like to travel, and no, I don\u0026rsquo;t see me ever doing it. The Earth is 25,000 miles around, and so far I\u0026rsquo;ve seen precious little of it. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure that Africa, Asia, South America, Antarctica, or Australia really exist. Or Mexico. I\u0026rsquo;m a little sketchy on Mexico. But oh well, maybe my kids will be globetrotters!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/wishlist/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThought about this on the way in today\u0026hellip;things I\u0026rsquo;d like to do before I die (yeah, alot of them are car-related, so I\u0026rsquo;d better do them before they outlaw the internal combustion engine\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Watch the \u003ca href=\"http://www.daytona24hr.com/\"\u003e24 Hours of Daytona\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n* Attend the Skip Barber Racing school.\u003cbr\u003e\n* (Re)Build an engine from scratch\u003cbr\u003e\n* Do the Classical Grand Tour: Rome, Florence, Venice, Athens.\u003cbr\u003e\n* Visit Paris (France, not Kentucky\u0026hellip;)\u003cbr\u003e\n* Have a ride in an aerobatic airplane/fighter jet.\u003cbr\u003e\n* Attend the \u003ca href=\"http://www.visitmonaco.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage\u0026amp;pageId=383\"\u003eGrand Prix of Monaco\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n* Go sailing in the Carribean. (No Hurricanes, please!)\u003cbr\u003e\n* Learn to play piano\u003cbr\u003e\n* Go to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.\u003cbr\u003e\n* Visit Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Gettysburg.\u003cbr\u003e\n* Learn Spanish (seems like a must nowadays\u0026hellip;)\u003cbr\u003e\n* Learn Greek.\u003cbr\u003e\n* Read: St. Augustine, Plato, Martin Luther, John Locke\u003cbr\u003e\n* Run a 10k\u003cbr\u003e\n* Write a poem for each of my kids\u003cbr\u003e\n* Contribute *something* to greater society that has my name on it\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wishlist"},{"content":"Top headline on the Scott County Public Schools Homepage\nR U READY 4 COLLEGE SEMINAR\nAttention Parents of All Students Grades 8-12\nReady to send your kid to private school yet?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/ah-kentucky-public-edumacation/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTop headline on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.scott.k12.ky.us/\"\u003eScott County Public Schools Homepage\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eR U READY 4 COLLEGE SEMINAR\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAttention Parents of All Students Grades 8-12\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReady to send your kid to private school yet?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ah, Kentucky Public Edumacation"},{"content":"Sam Swope Smart\nWe are pleased to announce the opening of smart center Louisville at 11601 Plantside Drive in Louisville.\nI think this is a reaction to the \u0026ldquo;we passed on getting a MINI dealership back in 2001 (d\u0026rsquo;oh!)\u0026rdquo;. So, Swope has Smart cars\u0026hellip;interesting. Why do I see visions of every hipster on Bardstown road grabbing one of these itty bitty things?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/smart-cars-in-louisville/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.samswope.com/smart.aspx\"\u003eSam Swope Smart\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe are pleased to announce the opening of smart center Louisville at 11601 Plantside Drive in Louisville.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.usatoday.com/money/_photos/2006/06/28/smart3.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think this is a reaction to the \u0026ldquo;we passed on getting a MINI dealership back in 2001 (d\u0026rsquo;oh!)\u0026rdquo;. So, Swope has Smart cars\u0026hellip;\u003cem\u003einteresting\u003c/em\u003e. Why do I see visions of every hipster on Bardstown road grabbing one of these itty bitty things?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Smart\" Cars in Louisville"},{"content":"Brings back Italy memories. Those things are small\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jan 1, 2008\nBrings back Italy memories. Those things are small enough to perpendicular-park, rather than parallel (don\u0026rsquo;t try that with your church bus).\nI saw one here already - it crossed in front of us as we were entering Newtown from Stone last Sunday morning. (And without really pouring on the gas, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t catch up to get a closer look - what\u0026rsquo;s top speed on those things?)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/smart-cars-in-louisville-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"brings-back-italy-memories-those-things-are-small\"\u003eBrings back Italy memories. Those things are small\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 1, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBrings back Italy memories. Those things are small enough to perpendicular-park, rather than parallel (don\u0026rsquo;t try that with your church bus).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI saw one here already - it crossed in front of us as we were entering Newtown from Stone last Sunday morning. (And without really pouring on the gas, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t catch up to get a closer look - what\u0026rsquo;s top speed on those things?)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Smart\" Cars in Louisville (Comments)"},{"content":"Congrats to the NY Giants for sending the Dallas Cowboys to the sidelines for the NFC championship game. Both the home teams lost today. All-in-all, a tremendous afternoon of football, with two of the \u0026ldquo;Locks\u0026rdquo; going down\u0026ndash;The Cowboys and the Colts.\nWe get to see a January championship game in LAMBEAU FIELD, baby!! I can\u0026rsquo;t wait (won\u0026rsquo;t really matter, any of the AFC teams could kill any of the NFC teams, including Green Bay)\u0026hellip;\nAlso, given the look on Jerry Jones\u0026rsquo;s face as time expired, I don\u0026rsquo;t think the Cowboy\u0026rsquo;s coach should renew his country club membership in the Big D. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/wow...wow...wow/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCongrats to the NY Giants for sending the Dallas Cowboys to the sidelines for the NFC championship game. Both the home teams lost today. All-in-all, a tremendous afternoon of football, with two of the \u0026ldquo;Locks\u0026rdquo; going down\u0026ndash;The Cowboys and the Colts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get to see a January championship game in LAMBEAU FIELD, baby!! I can\u0026rsquo;t wait (won\u0026rsquo;t really matter, any of the AFC teams could kill any of the NFC teams, including Green Bay)\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"wow...Wow...WOW"},{"content":"So, I\u0026rsquo;m looking at my budget today, and I notice that I\u0026rsquo;m spending ~19% of my take-home pay on housing (yay\u0026ndash;well within our means), but 27% on transportation, including: Van payment, gas for 3 cars, registration, repairs + upkeep, and insurance.\n:-) I\u0026rsquo;m thinking of moving to new york!\n* * *\nOn the opposite tack, I came home last night to find that someone had left the passenger-side sliding door open on the van. For 2 hours. In a driving thunderstorm.\nYes, the water-in-the-car theme continues for me. Happily, that side was on the leeward side of the prevailing storm, and most of the soaking was the seat itself, which I removed from the van. Whitney spent the better part of an hour last night drying it out, and we left it toasting in front of my new electric heater in the garage all night. Seems to have dried, mostly.\nAfter the experience with the Beamer, I HATE MILDEW! The smell, the way it envelops you like moldy death\u0026hellip;ugh\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/tales-from-the-budget.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;m looking at my budget today, and I notice that I\u0026rsquo;m spending ~19% of my take-home pay on housing (yay\u0026ndash;well within our means), but 27% on transportation, including: Van payment, gas for 3 cars, registration, repairs + upkeep, and insurance.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) I\u0026rsquo;m thinking of moving to new york!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the opposite tack, I came home last night to find that someone had left the passenger-side sliding door open on the van. For 2 hours. In a driving thunderstorm.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tales from the budget..."},{"content":"Harvid, my mom still reads yr blog. She\u0026rsquo;s Oba\u0026hellip; Biru - Jan 4, 2008\nHarvid, my mom still reads yr blog. She\u0026rsquo;s Obaming! The market will hit a \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; bottom when its sorrow \u0026amp; woe is on the front page of the NYTimes\u0026ndash; not the business section, the front page.\nThen you \u0026amp; I will sweep in and buy Vanguard no-load index funds and sit on them until our noses bleed money. Mutual funds have too many fees!\nta\nbiru\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/quick-hits-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"harvid-my-mom-still-reads-yr-blog-shes-oba\"\u003eHarvid, my mom still reads yr blog. She\u0026rsquo;s Oba\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/09594316806068854919\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eBiru\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 4, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarvid, my mom still reads yr blog. She\u0026rsquo;s Obaming! The market will hit a \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; bottom when its sorrow \u0026amp; woe is on the front page of the NYTimes\u0026ndash; not the business section, the front page.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen you \u0026amp; I will sweep in and buy Vanguard no-load index funds and sit on them until our noses bleed money. Mutual funds have too many fees!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quick hits (Comments)"},{"content":"Ah the joys of compiling a large native product from scratch. The time to get a cup of coffee, or blog. Some random musings:\n* The stock market is in the crapper, and will probably stay there. The economy is fundamentally flawed, the the recession has already started\u0026ndash;no one\u0026rsquo;s owning up to that yet. I\u0026rsquo;m reading Alan Greenspan\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Age of Turbulence\u0026rdquo;, and I don\u0026rsquo;t think we\u0026rsquo;ve seen this sort of market since the 1980\u0026rsquo;s, though this is sort of a hybrid\u0026ndash;recession, but without fundamental strength in finance. Actually, it might be exactly like the early 1980\u0026rsquo;s, where the banking industry tried to kill itself lending money to Latin America.\n* I\u0026rsquo;m rather proud of the way our new administration in Kentucky has opened a dialog on our financial crisis\u0026ndash;the general fund will be something like 300 million dollars short for the current fiscal year. If you were one of the losers (like me) watching KET last night you saw the Republican and Democratic leadership of the Senate sit at a conference table and respectfully debating the ins-and-outs of how we might survive this as a solvent state. That didn\u0026rsquo;t happen with Fletcher in office, despite the same players existing in the General Assembly.\nNow, as long as they don\u0026rsquo;t turn to expanded gaming as a panacea, I look forward to wath they come up with.\n* It\u0026rsquo;s been FREAKISHLY WARM here in Kentucky\u0026hellip;65 degrees+ for the last two days. The cataclysmic storm front\u0026rsquo;s coming our way, though\u0026hellip;hope we don\u0026rsquo;t get the severe weather that Missouri got last night.\n* Work\u0026rsquo;s been going well since the New Year\u0026hellip;I seem to have reacquired my momentum and mojo. Things that took forever before are taking less time and I can \u0026ldquo;see my way through the maze\u0026rdquo; better. The biggest contributor here was getting some actual production code to work on\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s hard to get a feel for a codebase without a project inside it. Now that I have my footing, everything\u0026rsquo;s coming easier.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/ruminations-while-compiling/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh the joys of compiling a large native product from scratch. The time to get a cup of coffee, or blog. Some random musings:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* The stock market is in the crapper, and will probably stay there. The economy is fundamentally flawed, the the recession has already started\u0026ndash;no one\u0026rsquo;s owning up to that yet. I\u0026rsquo;m reading Alan Greenspan\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Age of Turbulence\u0026rdquo;, and I don\u0026rsquo;t think we\u0026rsquo;ve seen this sort of market since the 1980\u0026rsquo;s, though this is sort of a hybrid\u0026ndash;recession, but without fundamental strength in finance. Actually, it might be exactly like the early 1980\u0026rsquo;s, where the banking industry tried to kill itself lending money to Latin America.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ruminations while Compiling"},{"content":"Or\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;How I learned to love my own child less than sleep for 10 minutes\u0026rdquo;.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been off work since December 21st. During all that time, I got alot of sleep. I didn\u0026rsquo;t get enough, apparently.\nSo last night, I went out into what passes for a blizzard in Kentucky to pick-up Joey from his dad\u0026rsquo;s. I returned to find Whitney had a story for me\u0026ndash;Maria had clanged her head on the crib. Hard. In her soft spot. She\u0026rsquo;d called the Dr., but the Dr. said likely everything would be fine.\nEverything was not fine.\nAt ~2am, Maria awoke, screaming. I fed her a bottle, changed her diaper, rocked her gently, and lay her back down to sleep. She seemed to do her normal \u0026ldquo;Ah, lovely\u0026rdquo; sigh, roll over, suck her thumb and doze off.\nEverything was not fine.\nI made it to the midpoint of the stairs and the same cry loosed from her throat. I found her sitting bolt upright in the crib. So, I picked her up, let her finish off the rest of her bottle (2oz or so of formula), rocked her back to sleep, and lay her back down. By now it was ~3am or so.\nNope, still not fine. By the time I got back to bed, she was screaming. Okay, Mommy\u0026rsquo;s turn.\nMommy did the same as me for the next hour-and-a-half. No luck. Each time she\u0026rsquo;d doze off, but each time we put her down, she\u0026rsquo;d bounce back up screaming.\n\u0026ldquo;Fine, we\u0026rsquo;ll just let her cry it out,\u0026rdquo; we decided. Yeah, so 45 minutes of screaming later, I\u0026rsquo;ve had it, I go up, strip all her P.J.\u0026rsquo;s off, and take her down to the couch. This really pisses her off.\nBy now, it\u0026rsquo;s 5 am, we turn on the news to find Scott County\u0026rsquo;s called off school for today, and I decide to just let her sleep in my arms in my Lay-Z-Boy. So I sit there until 7 with her dozing fitfully.\nUltimate diagnosis: My daughter has a headache. They gave her some motrin and she\u0026rsquo;s dozing at home. I got a whole 3 hrs of sleep.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2008/01/marias-first-migraine/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOr\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;How I learned to love my own child less than sleep for 10 minutes\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been off work since December 21st. During all that time, I got alot of sleep. I didn\u0026rsquo;t get enough, apparently.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo last night, I went out into what passes for a blizzard in Kentucky to pick-up Joey from his dad\u0026rsquo;s. I returned to find Whitney had a story for me\u0026ndash;Maria had clanged her head on the crib. Hard. In her soft spot. She\u0026rsquo;d called the Dr., but the Dr. said likely everything would be fine.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maria's first migraine"},{"content":"Well, a week later, here we are. I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten and gotten-over a nasty stomach bug, so I managed to miss most of Wednesday through Friday.\nIn my absence, the Wii has replaced the iMac as the coolest thing in the household. Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s that good.\nJust to give you an idea, we had Stu and Cathy using it within 4 minutes of watching us play it. We\u0026rsquo;ve played it for at least 5 hours a day since we got it.\nSo far, the most popular game is the one that comes with the system, called Wii Sports, where you can play any of Tennis, Baseball, Bowling, Golf, or Boxing. We\u0026rsquo;ve really gotten into playing versus with two controllers, and it gets intense! Family game night may be very exciting from now on!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/and-ill-have-a-wii-christmas/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, a week later, here we are. I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten and gotten-over a nasty stomach bug, so I managed to miss most of Wednesday through Friday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn my absence, the Wii has replaced the iMac as the coolest thing in the household. Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s that good.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Wii_Wiimotea.png/451px-Wii_Wiimotea.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust to give you an idea, we had Stu and Cathy using it within 4 minutes of watching us play it. We\u0026rsquo;ve played it for at least \u003cem\u003e5 hours a day\u003c/em\u003e since we got it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"And I'll have a Wii Christmas"},{"content":"We returned from our 2 day roundtrip to balmy (!) Columbus, Ohio this evening, Joey running a 101.5 fever and Maria dozing contentedly.\nPretty uneventful trip\u0026ndash;ate too much, slept too much, saw Whitney\u0026rsquo;s Uncle Richard\u0026rsquo;s old\u0026hellip;ahem\u0026hellip;Ferrari.\nYep, honest-to-goodness Ferrari GT, Brown\u0026hellip;.V-12 \u0026amp; everything. Not a good looking car, particularly, but DUDE!\nSo, we\u0026rsquo;re opening presents tomorrow morning and doing stuff around the house, then going down to my Mom\u0026rsquo;s for Christmas Eve. We have to turn Joey over to his dad at 7am Christmas Day.\nHopefully, by tomorrow afternoon, I\u0026rsquo;ll have a full report on what playing a Wii is like!!!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/christmas-leg-1-complete/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe returned from our 2 day roundtrip to balmy (!) Columbus, Ohio this evening, Joey running a 101.5 fever and Maria dozing contentedly.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePretty uneventful trip\u0026ndash;ate too much, slept too much, saw Whitney\u0026rsquo;s Uncle Richard\u0026rsquo;s old\u0026hellip;ahem\u0026hellip;\u003ca href=\"http://www.jb330gt.com/\"\u003eFerrari\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep, honest-to-goodness Ferrari GT, Brown\u0026hellip;.V-12 \u0026amp; everything. Not a good looking car, particularly, but DUDE!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, we\u0026rsquo;re opening presents tomorrow morning and doing stuff around the house, then going down to my Mom\u0026rsquo;s for Christmas Eve. We have to turn Joey over to his dad at 7am Christmas Day.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Christmas: Leg 1 COMPLETE"},{"content":"2 hours and 20 minutes of THAT?!!!\nThis is a pretty-standard war/buddy flick. Some guys wanna go fly, they go through some training, meet an old salt who tells them they\u0026rsquo;re stupid, and get a rude awakening when they first meet the enemy. They ALL have backstories, and they\u0026rsquo;re all (poorly) developed. One resembles Porkins from Star Wars and dies similarly. There\u0026rsquo;s a love interest thrown-in and many long, conceited scenes flying about in a CGI wonderland resembling a decent WWI Video Game.\nAnd then they blow up a Zeppelin. Didn\u0026rsquo;t see that coming, did you?\nHad the director kept a tighter rein on his material, this could\u0026rsquo;ve been a run-of-the-mill war flick with good SFX. As is, it\u0026rsquo;s overblown dreck. UGH!\nStay far, far away.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/flyboys/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e2 hours and 20 minutes of THAT?!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a pretty-standard war/buddy flick. Some guys wanna go fly, they go through some training, meet an old salt who tells them they\u0026rsquo;re stupid, and get a rude awakening when they first meet the enemy. They ALL have backstories, and they\u0026rsquo;re all (poorly) developed. One resembles Porkins from Star Wars and dies similarly. There\u0026rsquo;s a love interest thrown-in and many long, conceited scenes flying about in a CGI wonderland resembling a decent WWI Video Game.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Flyboys\""},{"content":"I am glad that Dottie is feeling better. I hope th\u0026hellip; Susan - Dec 1, 2007\nI am glad that Dottie is feeling better. I hope that she keeps up her spirit and her strength as she starts treatment. If you need anything just call.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/the-weekend...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-am-glad-that-dottie-is-feeling-better-i-hope-th\"\u003eI am glad that Dottie is feeling better. I hope th\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/14266500429112482921\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eSusan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am glad that Dottie is feeling better. I hope that she keeps up her spirit and her strength as she starts treatment. If you need anything just call.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"The weekend... (Comments)"},{"content":"E! Article\nNew Line, meanwhile, was the woozy-feeling patient after its would-be franchise starter The Golden Compass (third place, $9 million) fell off a cliff, down 65 percent from a disappointing debut weekend.\nSo far, the $180 million fantasy film is the unwanted fruitcake of the holiday season, having taken in just $41 million overall. (It has performed stronger overseas; so, perhaps any sequels could be made expressly for Slovakia, et al.)\n* * *\nSeeking to understand the hype on this thing, but yet not support it commercially, Whitney and I grabbed a book-on-tape version of Pullman\u0026rsquo;s The Amber Spyglass. This is the third book in the series.\nEssentially, the book\u0026rsquo;s a protracted treatise on reconciling religion, quantum theory, and why we whacky humans believe in the Almighty (\u0026ldquo;The Authority\u0026rdquo; in Pullman-speak). Unlike most Atheists, Pullman not only accepts the supernatural; he embraces it. He simply melds what we would call \u0026ldquo;The Supernatural\u0026rdquo; with Arthur C Clarke\u0026rsquo;s quote:\nAny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic\nHe has Angels, \u0026ldquo;Heaven\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;The land of the dead,\u0026rdquo; etc., but these are merely different planes of existence, similar to quantum mechanics/string theory postulates of Membranes that are adjoining, but never interacting per human observation. Here, a character named Will can cut between worlds with a special knife.\nAnyway, the great \u0026ldquo;lie\u0026rdquo; that the series seeks to expose is the great recursive dilemma that every 5-year-old perceives when he first hears about God: \u0026ldquo;If God created everything, who created God?\u0026rdquo; Here, God isn\u0026rsquo;t the almighty creator, He\u0026rsquo;s just the first conscious being to coalesce out of Dust (presumably, from The Big Bang\u0026hellip;). He\u0026rsquo;s not omnipotent or omnisscient\u0026hellip;he\u0026rsquo;s just older than everyone else, and he lied to all his successive beings that he created them.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the crux of it. God not as loving Father, or almighty King, but as tyrant of the universe, with the Church (\u0026ldquo;The Magisterium\u0026rdquo;) his worldly arms in each reality.\nThus the theme: If we can just throw off the shackles of \u0026ldquo;God\u0026rdquo;, humans can transcend our provincal need for Providence and become fully realized.\nI think I\u0026rsquo;ve read that before:\nNow the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, \u0026ldquo;Did God really say, \u0026lsquo;You must not eat from any tree in the garden\u0026rsquo;?\u0026rdquo;\nThe woman said to the serpent, \u0026ldquo;We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, \u0026lsquo;You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.\u0026rsquo; \u0026quot;\n\u0026ldquo;You will not surely die,\u0026rdquo; the serpent said to the woman. \u0026ldquo;For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.\u0026rdquo;\n(Genesis 3:1-5.)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/golden-compass-crashnburn/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=3299f8a7-8142-4005-ae3a-0da9b7e633c4\"\u003eE! Article\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNew Line, meanwhile, was the woozy-feeling patient after its would-be franchise starter The Golden Compass (third place, $9 million) fell off a cliff, down 65 percent from a disappointing debut weekend.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo far, the $180 million fantasy film is the unwanted fruitcake of the holiday season, having taken in just $41 million overall. (It has performed stronger overseas; so, perhaps any sequels could be made expressly for Slovakia, et al.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Golden Compass: Crash'n'Burn"},{"content":"Sweet finish, dude. Jeff Roberts - Dec 2, 2007\nSweet finish, dude.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/golden-compass-crashnburn-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"sweet-finish-dude\"\u003eSweet finish, dude.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSweet finish, dude.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Golden Compass: Crash'n'Burn (Comments)"},{"content":"Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s that good.\nJust finished watching the Odyssey-in-a-Microbus, Little Miss Sunshine. It\u0026rsquo;s the type of movie my wife hates, but which I love, where all the characters are shades of gray. They\u0026rsquo;re intensely real, and flawed, and they love and hate one another. Yet they\u0026rsquo;re bound together by bonds that bring them together when it counts\u0026ndash;death, adversity, and the bald insanity of life.\nSteve Carell is a revelation as Frank Hoover, the frustrated homosexual academic who we meet in a hospital fresh off his failed suicide attempt. Out of work, without insurance, he\u0026rsquo;s kicked out of the pysch ward to the care of his overwrought sister, Sheryl. We meet her blended family next: Her husband Richard the self-help guru, the vow-of-silence goth teen Dwayne, the heroin-snorting profane Grandpa, and the little ingenue Olive.\nThe plot is almost \u0026ldquo;National Lampoon\u0026rdquo; worthy: After getting Frank home and settling him into his Albuquerque imprisonment with Dwayne (\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t kill yourself tonight\u0026rdquo; he scrawls on his omnipresent notebook beneath his oversized caricature of Nietzche), they get a call. Olive has moved up from being first runner-up to winner of the regional \u0026ldquo;Little Miss Sunshine\u0026rdquo; pageant. She needs to the semi-finals in Los Angeles.\nThey don\u0026rsquo;t have any money. They can\u0026rsquo;t fly. They have to be there in two days. They can\u0026rsquo;t leave Frank alone with anyone. They have to take Grandpa with them\u0026ndash;he\u0026rsquo;s Olive\u0026rsquo;s coach (sure, why not?). They have a VW Microbus, but Sheryl can\u0026rsquo;t drive a stick.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s right, folks\u0026ndash;Six people driving two thousand miles roundtrip in an aircooled relic from the 60\u0026rsquo;s. Then the clutch blows out 200 miles in, and the mechanic recommends push starting and shifting only between 3rd and 4th, without the clutch.\nThe van\u0026rsquo;s a character in the film in its own right. Unlike the rest, it starts whole and decays, absorbing their sins like a yellow, houndstooth-interior priest. At the end it\u0026rsquo;s falling apart, but they\u0026rsquo;ve gelled as people and as a family.\nIt was a great little movie that most everyone I know would hate. L.A. Confidential all over again, I suppose\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/little-miss-sunshine/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYes, it\u0026rsquo;s that good.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.impawards.com/2006/posters/little_miss_sunshine_ver5.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust finished watching the Odyssey-in-a-Microbus, \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0449059/\"\u003eLittle Miss Sunshine\u003c/a\u003e. It\u0026rsquo;s the type of movie my wife hates, but which I love, where all the characters are shades of gray. They\u0026rsquo;re intensely real, and flawed, and they love and hate one another. Yet they\u0026rsquo;re bound together by bonds that bring them together when it counts\u0026ndash;death, adversity, and the bald insanity of life.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSteve Carell is a revelation as Frank Hoover, the frustrated homosexual academic who we meet in a hospital fresh off his failed suicide attempt. Out of work, without insurance, he\u0026rsquo;s kicked out of the pysch ward to the care of his overwrought sister, Sheryl. We meet her blended family next: Her husband Richard the self-help guru, the vow-of-silence goth teen Dwayne, the heroin-snorting profane Grandpa, and the little ingenue Olive.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Little Miss Sunshine"},{"content":"Hey, everyone you know won’t hate Little Miss Suns\u0026hellip; BryanCombs - Dec 3, 2007\nHey, everyone you know won’t hate Little Miss Sunshine. I love it. It’s actually my favorite film from 2006. (Right ahead of The Departed and Borat) Dixie loves it too.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/little-miss-sunshine-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"hey-everyone-you-know-wont-hate-little-miss-suns\"\u003eHey, everyone you know won’t hate Little Miss Suns\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/02228242808724657342\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eBryanCombs\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHey, everyone you know won’t hate Little Miss Sunshine. I love it. It’s actually my favorite film from 2006. (Right ahead of The Departed and Borat) Dixie loves it too.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Little Miss Sunshine (Comments)"},{"content":"Happily, Mom didn\u0026rsquo;t have chemo on Friday.\nHer oncologist looked at the results of her PET scan and said the surgeon was full of it.\nShe doesn\u0026rsquo;t have ASC, she has CCC, Cholangiocarcinoma, a cancer of the bile duct that is fairly rare (1-2 cases / 100,000 ppl), but which is curable through surgery. Mom had surgery, and there\u0026rsquo;s no evidence the cancer had spread through her lymphatic system.\nThe short answer: Prognosis is much better than with ASC. Surgical resection allows for a cure, and follow-up radiation shows good results. Mom\u0026rsquo;s scheduled intensive, local radiation 5 days a week for the next 5 weeks, and an oral chemotherapy tablet after that. Her hair probably won\u0026rsquo;t fall out.\nI feel, well, amazed. Mom has a fighting chance.\nKeep it up, prayer warriors!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/mom--looking-up-/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHappily, Mom didn\u0026rsquo;t have chemo on Friday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer oncologist looked at the results of her PET scan and said the surgeon was full of it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe doesn\u0026rsquo;t have ASC, she has CCC, Cholangiocarcinoma, a cancer of the bile duct that is fairly rare (1-2 cases / 100,000 ppl), but which is curable through surgery. Mom had surgery, and there\u0026rsquo;s no evidence the cancer had spread through her lymphatic system.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe short answer: Prognosis is much better than with ASC. Surgical resection allows for a cure, and follow-up radiation shows good results. Mom\u0026rsquo;s scheduled intensive, local radiation 5 days a week for the next 5 weeks, and an oral chemotherapy tablet after that. Her hair probably won\u0026rsquo;t fall out.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mom -- looking up :-)"},{"content":"Praise God, what great news! Jeff Roberts - Dec 1, 2007\nPraise God, what great news!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/mom--looking-up-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"praise-god-what-great-news\"\u003ePraise God, what great news!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePraise God, what great news!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Mom -- looking up :-) (Comments)"},{"content":"CompUSA to close all its stores\nMeh. I\u0026rsquo;ll just have to go to Louisville to lust after Macs, I guess.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/compuseless-is-closing/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/07/technology/compusa.ap/\"\u003eCompUSA to close all its stores\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeh. I\u0026rsquo;ll just have to go to Louisville to lust after Macs, I guess.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CompUseless is closing"},{"content":"Bummer\u0026hellip;only went there rarely but I\u0026rsquo;ll have to f\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Dec 1, 2007\nBummer\u0026hellip;only went there rarely but I\u0026rsquo;ll have to find a new source for the one or two things I used to get there. Pay to UPS a UPS? I don\u0026rsquo;t think so.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/compuseless-is-closing-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"bummeronly-went-there-rarely-but-ill-have-to-f\"\u003eBummer\u0026hellip;only went there rarely but I\u0026rsquo;ll have to f\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBummer\u0026hellip;only went there rarely but I\u0026rsquo;ll have to find a new source for the one or two things I used to get there. Pay to UPS a UPS? I don\u0026rsquo;t think so.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"CompUseless is closing (Comments)"},{"content":"Yesterday was pretty tough\u0026ndash;I was up at 4:30, at work by 6, and home by 2:45 to watch the kids (4 kids now\u0026ndash;our two and two from Whitney\u0026rsquo;s BFF Sarah). While firehosing me with all the TODOs (change this, change that, sippy cup, etc.), Whitney mentioned, \u0026ldquo;Oh, and a guy from Kirby should be here from 3 to 5 to clean the carpets and shampoo the carpets for free.\u0026rdquo;\n:-) I was not too thrilled with this, as I\u0026rsquo;d been here before. Twenty-three years ago\u0026hellip;a guy showed up at Hacienda Combs and sold Mom \u0026amp; Dad a Kirby Heritage II vacuum. Thing was solid steel, essentially unbreakable. It was also $1200 give-or-take. (According to The CPI calculator, that\u0026rsquo;s $2400 in today\u0026rsquo;s money, folks!)\nAnyway, the guy shows up, and does the song-and dance with this new Kirby that\u0026rsquo;s self-powered, but (to me) made of the cheapest plastic they could find. And the guy\u0026rsquo;s sales technique\u0026hellip;ugh.\n\u0026ldquo;Please buy one.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Woncha just buy one so I can go home?\u0026rdquo;\nYeah, you can do that with exactly two things: Jewelry and MINI Coopers. Not vacuum cleaners.\nAnd the price for this jewel of cost-cutting and poor construction? $1600.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a link on some Kirby Vacuum cleaner sales practices.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/ah-that-time-of-year-again...snow-mistletoe-kirby-salesmen/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday was pretty tough\u0026ndash;I was up at 4:30, at work by 6, and home by 2:45 to watch the kids (4 kids now\u0026ndash;our two and two from Whitney\u0026rsquo;s BFF Sarah). While firehosing me with all the TODOs (change this, change that, sippy cup, etc.), Whitney mentioned, \u0026ldquo;Oh, and a guy from Kirby should be here from 3 to 5 to clean the carpets and shampoo the carpets for free.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://greatvacs.com/gallery/albums/album01/DSC00008.sized.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ah, that time of year again...snow, mistletoe, Kirby salesmen"},{"content":"Thanks everyone for your thoughts and prayers as I\u0026rsquo;ve shared about Mom\u0026rsquo;s sickness. I\u0026rsquo;ve not posted more, out of deference to her, and simply because we didn\u0026rsquo;t know much.\nMom had surgery on Halloween, but didn\u0026rsquo;t get any follow-up on pathology results until 2 weeks later, November 16th. That day, we went into the Transplant Clinic at UK Hospital (!) to get some results. I won\u0026rsquo;t go into it fully here, but it\u0026rsquo;s a rare hybrid of two cancers of the liver itself. They said to set-up an appointment with Oncologists as soon as she felt better.\nSo, Mom went in last Friday and had her first appointment with the Markey Cancer Center Oncologists. He and his team of nurses and nurse-practitioners really raised her spirits. They\u0026rsquo;ve got her on a plan of IV and oral chemotherapy to attack any remnants of the cancer they resected on Halloween. I think it\u0026rsquo;s an 8-week round of therapy overall.\nThroughout her life, Mom has been a survivor. When her mom died, she survived. When her father orphaned her and her 3 younger siblings, she took care of them all. In the Fall of 1978, she was pregnant, building a house, holding-down a full-time job, and her husband\u0026rsquo;s place of business burned to the ground. Through all of it, she survived.\nThis will not beat Mom. It may beat her body (eventually), but her spirit has survived worse than this. Whatever comes, God will take care of her. I just pray a bit more of that is still on this earth, particularly with her Grandchildren, who miss her very much.\nGood luck tomorrow, Mom. We all love you.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/mom-update--chemo-starting-tomorrow/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThanks everyone for your thoughts and prayers as I\u0026rsquo;ve shared about Mom\u0026rsquo;s sickness. I\u0026rsquo;ve not posted more, out of deference to her, and simply because we didn\u0026rsquo;t know much.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMom had surgery on Halloween, but didn\u0026rsquo;t get any follow-up on pathology results until 2 weeks later, November 16th. That day, we went into the Transplant Clinic at UK Hospital (!) to get some results. I won\u0026rsquo;t go into it fully here, but it\u0026rsquo;s a rare hybrid of two cancers of the liver itself. They said to set-up an appointment with Oncologists as soon as she felt better.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mom Update -- chemo starting tomorrow"},{"content":"Glad to hear Markey\u0026rsquo;s on the case and being agress\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Dec 4, 2007\nGlad to hear Markey\u0026rsquo;s on the case and being agressive. We\u0026rsquo;ll keep her and you guys in our prayers.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/mom-update--chemo-starting-tomorrow-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"glad-to-hear-markeys-on-the-case-and-being-agress\"\u003eGlad to hear Markey\u0026rsquo;s on the case and being agress\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 4, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGlad to hear Markey\u0026rsquo;s on the case and being agressive. We\u0026rsquo;ll keep her and you guys in our prayers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Mom Update -- chemo starting tomorrow (Comments)"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been with Firefox ( originally Phoenix, then Firebird, forked to IceWeasel) for years now. Yes, it was the chip off the old block (Son of Mozilla, rise!), and it was build upon Good Code©, and it bore no hint of That evil corporation that won the browser war by not playing fair\nIt was the best parts of mozilla, with none of the bloat of the suite (that email program that no one used)\nGreat. Except now, Firefox (both 2.0.1839 and 3.0B1) LEAK MEMORY LIKE A FRICKIN\u0026rsquo; SIEVE. On no planet should I have 4 tabs open and have a resident size of firefox of 256MB. I currently have google reader, blogger, netflix, and Microsoft.com open in IE and it\u0026rsquo;s using 94MB. Granted, that\u0026rsquo;s insane enough, but it\u0026rsquo;s 200MB less than Firefox.\nFirefox 1.5 wasn\u0026rsquo;t like this\u0026ndash;you could leave it up for days with dozens of tabs, no problem. Both 2.0 and Beta 1 of 3.0 are just unstable.\nMakes me sad, but I\u0026rsquo;m considering using IE. IE 7 is fast, tightly integrated with Windows, and doesn\u0026rsquo;t annoy me too badly (I\u0026rsquo;m looking at YOU IE 6!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/12/heresy...firefox-has-jumped-the-shark/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been with Firefox ( originally Phoenix, then Firebird, forked to IceWeasel) for years now. Yes, it was the chip off the old block (Son of Mozilla, rise!), and it was build upon Good Code©, and it bore no hint of \u003ca href=\"http://www.microsoft.com\"\u003eThat evil corporation that won the browser war by not playing fair\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was the best parts of mozilla, with none of the bloat of the suite (that email program that no one used)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Heresy...Firefox has jumped the shark?"},{"content":"If you ask a student out of college or technical school how software is developed, he\u0026rsquo;ll say the software development lifecycle (SDLC) is something like:\nGather requirements for a new system\nDesign the new system\u0026rsquo;s inputs, outputs, screens, etc.\nDevelop the system\nTest the system\nDeliver the system to the customer\nMaintain the system\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re *really lucky* he\u0026rsquo;s read enough slashdot to know, it\u0026rsquo;s more of a spiral or iterative approach\u0026ndash;less initial work, more testing, earlier customer involvement.\nThe more I\u0026rsquo;m exposed to real software, I\u0026rsquo;m convinced it\u0026rsquo;s closer to.\nSome nerd decided he needs a cool, fast widget to do \u0026lsquo;X\u0026rsquo;. He just wants to make his job easier. He codes it up after-hours, fueled by cheetos and Mountain Dew\nHe shows it to somebody in his cube. Immediately, that shameless self-promoter decides it\u0026rsquo;s the second coming of VisiCalc\nThe company makes a multi-language version of his Widget and starts selling it\nVersion 2.0 comes out, adds 20 new features, 40 annoying bugs.\nThree years pass. The original nerd left the company, no one can decipher his pointer-arithmetic, bitwise-shift-left code, so they just wrap it in a DLL and hope to God it doesn\u0026rsquo;t break. ( Or they choose to put the low man on the totem pole in charge of that code. Choose your poison ).\nAfter 5 years, the original widget is now a Java app that\u0026rsquo;s a 250MB download, translated into 13 languages. It\u0026rsquo;s slow and crashes randomly, and customers dislike it, but they depend on it. Managers present impressive PowerPoint slides on how they should SAVE THE WIDGET by \u0026ldquo;focusing on its core competency\u0026rdquo;.\nSomewhere else, disgusted with Widget 10.5.1, a nerd writes a cool fast Gadget to do \u0026lsquo;X\u0026rsquo;. He just wants to make his job easier. He codes it up\u0026hellip;\nLather, rinse, repeat.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/the-real-software-development-lifecycle.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you ask a student out of college or technical school how software is developed, he\u0026rsquo;ll say the software development lifecycle (SDLC) is something like:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGather requirements for a new system\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDesign the new system\u0026rsquo;s inputs, outputs, screens, etc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDevelop the system\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTest the system\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDeliver the system to the customer\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaintain the system\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;re *really lucky* he\u0026rsquo;s read enough slashdot to know, it\u0026rsquo;s more of a spiral or iterative approach\u0026ndash;less initial work, more testing, earlier customer involvement.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The \"Real\" Software Development Lifecycle..."},{"content":"I think you\u0026rsquo;re right (and I live in the same world\u0026hellip; DavidJarvis - Dec 3, 2007\nI think you\u0026rsquo;re right (and I live in the same world). One question is, how are companies like Microsoft making this sort of thing work? (I guess that presumes you accept that they are, as I do.) How do you \u0026ldquo;ride the nerd\u0026rdquo; to success and avoid the bloated remnant product? (Sort of like a lot of TV shows\u0026rsquo;s second season \u0026hellip;)\nDavid,\nI guess what I\u0026rsquo;d say is, follow the practices of Bob Martin (unclebob) like this:\n- Don\u0026rsquo;t let the code rot.\n- Don\u0026rsquo;t put the low man on the totem pole in charge of your utterly critical subsystem. As Uncle Bob says, peeling off a \u0026rsquo;tiger team\u0026rsquo; to work on the shiny new thing while leaving the other programmers to deal with legacy codebases eventually bites you. In the ass.\nWhat frustrates me is that people treat software as utterly disposable. If it sucks, so what? There\u0026rsquo;s 15 other widgets that do the same thing. I\u0026rsquo;ll use one of those.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/the-real-software-development-lifecycle...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-think-youre-right-and-i-live-in-the-same-world\"\u003eI think you\u0026rsquo;re right (and I live in the same world\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/13804469714577442103\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eDavidJarvis\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think you\u0026rsquo;re right (and I live in the same world). One question is, how are companies like Microsoft making this sort of thing work? (I guess that presumes you accept that they are, as I do.) How do you \u0026ldquo;ride the nerd\u0026rdquo; to success and avoid the bloated remnant product? (Sort of like a lot of TV shows\u0026rsquo;s second season \u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The \"Real\" Software Development Lifecycle... (Comments)"},{"content":"So, on the 16th, I sat with my Mom at the Transplant clinic of the UK hospital to get the lowdown on her cancer. The room was on the 4th floor, off the \u0026lsquo;B\u0026rsquo; elevators, and the atmosphere was grim. The people here had been or would be very sick, and most had a thousand yard stare, wishing they or their loved-one was anywhere but in that waiting room.\nExcept, that is, for my Uncle Dan.\nDan\u0026rsquo;s the jokester of the Haddix clan, father of three boys, Jesse, Justin, and Jade. Dan never met a sandwich he didn\u0026rsquo;t like, and he\u0026rsquo;s gregarious. He\u0026rsquo;s the sort of guy who never really grew up, and he\u0026rsquo;s never met a stranger. More precisely, he\u0026rsquo;s never occupied the same space with someone for more than 47 seconds without finding some common ground for conversation. He doesn\u0026rsquo;t DO uncomfortable silence, or silence at all.\nYes, I like my Uncle Dan, in spite of myself.\nAnyway, so Mom, Dad, and I are seated in a line at one side of the waiting room, and Dan plopped himself amid a group four seats down. Another peculiarity of this waiting room\u0026ndash;the acoustics were perfect. You could hear someone\u0026rsquo;s stomach rumble across the 20x20 room. The air rang with any sort of conversation. Dan\u0026rsquo;s conversation, mostly.\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;yeah, she\u0026rsquo;s just come out of surgery a couple weeks ago. That there is her son. Only one. Valedictorian of his class. Got a great job pulling down good money in Lexington. Loves her to death; wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hardly leave her side before and after that surgery.\u0026rdquo;\nAt this, the woman across from Dan perks-up. I made her to be ~40, coupla missing teeth. \u0026ldquo;I got a daughter.\u0026rdquo;\nNot missing a beat, I proffered my left hand: \u0026ldquo;I got a wife.\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nSometimes, I just feel like a character in Canterbury Tales :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/my-uncle-dan--a-funny-dialogue/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, on the 16th, I sat with my Mom at the Transplant clinic of the UK hospital to get the lowdown on her cancer. The room was on the 4th floor, off the \u0026lsquo;B\u0026rsquo; elevators, and the atmosphere was grim. The people here had been or would be very sick, and most had a thousand yard stare, wishing they or their loved-one was anywhere but in that waiting room.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExcept, that is, for my Uncle Dan.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My Uncle Dan + a funny dialogue"},{"content":"Funny story. I\u0026rsquo;m praying for your mom. Your Uncl\u0026hellip; Tabitha - Nov 1, 2007\nFunny story. I\u0026rsquo;m praying for your mom. Your Uncle Dan sounds like a good guy to have in a somber place like that. Take care.\nKeeping you all in our thoughts \u0026amp; prayers.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/my-uncle-dan--a-funny-dialogue-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"funny-story-im-praying-for-your-mom-your-uncl\"\u003eFunny story. I\u0026rsquo;m praying for your mom. Your Uncl\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10548787899239179422\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eTabitha\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFunny story. I\u0026rsquo;m praying for your mom. Your Uncle Dan sounds like a good guy to have in a somber place like that. Take care.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKeeping you all in our thoughts \u0026amp; prayers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"My Uncle Dan + a funny dialogue (Comments)"},{"content":"Watched several movies over the past few days (Thank you, Netflix). Some thoughts on them:\nConstantine: Creepy, dark film about a man blessed/cursed to see the interplay between angels and demons in our world. I really liked it, especially for its vivid portrayal of Hell.\nThe Muppet Show: Wow, this doesn\u0026rsquo;t age well. It\u0026rsquo;s about as interesting to the modern eye as the 70\u0026rsquo;s variety shows upon which it\u0026rsquo;s based. Plus, without \u0026ldquo;Pigs\u0026hellip;in\u0026hellip;space.\u0026rdquo; Bah!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/quick-hit-movie-reviews/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWatched several movies over the past few days (Thank you, \u003ca href=\"http://www.netflix.com\"\u003eNetflix\u003c/a\u003e). Some thoughts on them:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0360486/\"\u003eConstantine\u003c/a\u003e: Creepy, dark film about a man blessed/cursed to see the interplay between angels and demons in our world. I really liked it, especially for its vivid portrayal of Hell.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0074028/\"\u003eThe Muppet Show\u003c/a\u003e: Wow, this doesn\u0026rsquo;t age well. It\u0026rsquo;s about as interesting to the modern eye as the 70\u0026rsquo;s variety shows upon which it\u0026rsquo;s based. Plus, without \u0026ldquo;Pigs\u0026hellip;in\u0026hellip;space.\u0026rdquo; Bah!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"quick hit movie reviews"},{"content":"Movies I\u0026rsquo;ve seen lately\u0026hellip; 1. Perfect Strangers\u0026hellip; DavidJarvis - Dec 3, 2007\nMovies I\u0026rsquo;ve seen lately\u0026hellip;\n1. Perfect Strangers. A good friend recommend this. I told him afterwards he is no longer allowed to recommend movies to me. Ever. This movie leaves you with the same feeling you might get after finding someone had barfed in your food. After you ate it.\n2. Bertie and Elizabeth. Interesting and sympathetic look at the lesser-known brother of Edward VI (and a very unsympathetic look at the woman he dumped the crown for)\n3. Beowulf. Some are panning this because it doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow the original story exactly. Actually it does fairly closely but adds some unifying elements that I thought worked rather well. I liked it a lot, but adaptations don\u0026rsquo;t have to be authoritative versions for me to enjoy them; I guess I\u0026rsquo;m not a purist.\n4. How Green Was My Valley. Sappy but touching.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/quick-hit-movie-reviews-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"movies-ive-seen-lately\"\u003eMovies I\u0026rsquo;ve seen lately\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. Perfect Strangers\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/13804469714577442103\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eDavidJarvis\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMovies I\u0026rsquo;ve seen lately\u0026hellip;\u003cbr\u003e\n1. Perfect Strangers. A good friend recommend this. I told him afterwards he is no longer allowed to recommend movies to me. Ever. This movie leaves you with the same feeling you might get after finding someone had barfed in your food. After you ate it.\u003cbr\u003e\n2. Bertie and Elizabeth. Interesting and sympathetic look at the lesser-known brother of Edward VI (and a very unsympathetic look at the woman he dumped the crown for)\u003cbr\u003e\n3. Beowulf. Some are panning this because it doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow the original story exactly. Actually it does fairly closely but adds some unifying elements that I thought worked rather well. I liked it a lot, but adaptations don\u0026rsquo;t have to be authoritative versions for me to enjoy them; I guess I\u0026rsquo;m not a purist.\u003cbr\u003e\n4. How Green Was My Valley. Sappy but touching.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"quick hit movie reviews (Comments)"},{"content":"So, I\u0026rsquo;m trying to print something to our color printer. I go to our internet site to download a driver, then I find that the site is dog slow. So, I thought I\u0026rsquo;d report it to our IT operations.\nIT Guy: Hello my name is ____. How can I assist you?\nMe: The driver download site is very slow.\nIT Guy: Let me check. (pause) No it\u0026rsquo;s not.\nMe: Umm\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ve tried this three times and wasted 20 minutes of my life trying to print something.\nIT Guy: Well, let me call one of our service technicians. (LONG pause). Yes, Harold? The technician confirms that he sees no slowdown with the site.\nMe: Where are you?\nIT Guy: mhrf-hfrm..dia.\nMe: India?\nIT Guy: Yes.\nMe: Okay, well, as I recall, the site is hosted on different servers throughout the world, so couldn\u0026rsquo;t I be seeing a different configuration than you are?\nIT Guy: No, that is impossible. It is the same server. (\u0026hellip;protracted discussion of how I must not be seeing what cannot occcur\u0026hellip;.)\nMe: Ooookay. Thanks for your time.\nIT Guy: Well, if you want to contact me further, please do so via Sametime.\nMe: Sure thing.\n* * *\nPunchline? Our Sametime (Internal encrypted chat client) is down, too.\nBeautiful.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/my-wonderful-it-experience-this-morning/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;m trying to print something to our color printer. I go to our internet site to download a driver, then I find that the site is dog slow. So, I thought I\u0026rsquo;d report it to our IT operations.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIT Guy: Hello my name is ____. How can I assist you?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: The driver download site is very slow.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIT Guy: Let me check. \u003cem\u003e(pause)\u003c/em\u003e No it\u0026rsquo;s not.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: Umm\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ve tried this three times and wasted 20 minutes of my life trying to print something.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My wonderful IT experience this morning"},{"content":"Ugh. I\u0026rsquo;ve said it before (\u0026ldquo;Underworld\u0026rdquo;), but how do you dress Jennifer Garner up in this outfit and have a boring movie?\nLots of camera effects layered atop a very weak story, that\u0026rsquo;s how.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/review-electra/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUgh. I\u0026rsquo;ve said it before (\u0026ldquo;Underworld\u0026rdquo;), but how do you dress Jennifer Garner up in this outfit and have a boring movie?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://artfiles.art.com/images/-/Elektra-Poster-C10211564.jpeg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLots of camera effects layered atop a very weak story, that\u0026rsquo;s how.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Electra"},{"content":"Spoke with Mom this morning\u0026hellip;she\u0026rsquo;s resting at home, and letting Dad and my Aunt Norie take care of her, which makes me smile. She\u0026rsquo;s taken care of so many people her whole life\u0026hellip;thanks to everyone who\u0026rsquo;s written-in and keep up those prayers. I heard from Stu and Cathy that churches throughout the Louisville area are praying for Mom \u0026ndash; neighbors of theirs and their prayer groups. She goes in Friday for the lowdown on where things are and what the next steps are.\n* * *\nMy Toyota and I have a love/hate relationship: It loves me, and I hate it. I inherited Whitney\u0026rsquo;s car as a daily driver/kid schlepper after my Beamer sprang a leak. On paper, it\u0026rsquo;s a wonderful idea\u0026ndash;quiet, simple, reliable transportation. Modern safety features. Four doors. Better mileage. Better in bad weather.\nAll that\u0026rsquo;s true, but I can\u0026rsquo;t get over the feeling I\u0026rsquo;m driving a tin can, powered by 1.5 melancholy hamsters. It goes down the road well, but isn\u0026rsquo;t too excited about speeding up, slowing down, or changing direction.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;m pondering a wildly unpopular idea, one which will reassure my wife I\u0026rsquo;ve become a Democrat\u0026ndash;if not an outright Socialist: Why not use a substantial fuel tax to start changing people\u0026rsquo;s behavior? (Yes, I\u0026rsquo;m a car nut. Yes, I\u0026rsquo;m a Republican. Like I said\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m pondering this idea)\nOkay, my reasoning:\n1. America\u0026rsquo;s weakened position in the world exists (to an extent) because we\u0026rsquo;re at the mercy of whatever potentate or terrorist sells oil. Even beyond the logistics of it all, the oil markets hinge on every hiccup in supply and rise in demand.\n2. Traditionally, the government uses tax incentives to reward good behavior and outright taxes to discourage bad behavior. It\u0026rsquo;s a blunt instrument, but it works. The government wished to encourage home ownership, so mortgage interest became tax-deductible. We wanted people to hold stocks longer-term to promote stability, so short terms capital gains are taxed as ordinary income, but long-term gains are at a flat rate. This can get gimmicky (Hybrids? Ugh\u0026hellip;), but over time, it works.\n3. Europe discouraged people from too much personal consumption too ways: It placed a 100% tax on fuel. Even when oil was $20/barrel, Europeans were paying the equivalent of $5/gallon for gasoline. Furthermore, they saw that diesel engines were more efficient than gasoline (40-\u0026gt;50mpg versus 20-\u0026gt;30 mpg), so they constructed the taxes so that diesel was $1/gallon cheaper than gas. Result? Over 50% of the cars in Europe today are diesel, and they lead the world in developing powerful, efficient diesel engines. BMW\u0026rsquo;s 335d is nearly as fast as the scorching 335i bi-turbo, and gets 35mpg.\n4. Alternative sources could wean us off oil, but they need funding and they need a means to compete. Gas prices are getting there, but with the fuel tax funnelled directly to research or into building Nuclear/Hydrogen/Fuel-cell/uobtainium infrastructure, presumably they could get there in time for my kids to enjoy those benefits.\nThis is all just economics. I\u0026rsquo;m not even considering the environmental aspects\u0026hellip;after all, I\u0026rsquo;m a Republican. :-) From a long-term economic perspective, we need to wean ourselves from oil in 1 generation, and it will take concerted effort to do it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/ponderings/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSpoke with Mom this morning\u0026hellip;she\u0026rsquo;s resting at home, and letting Dad and my Aunt Norie take care of her, which makes me smile. She\u0026rsquo;s taken care of so many people her whole life\u0026hellip;thanks to everyone who\u0026rsquo;s written-in and keep up those prayers. I heard from Stu and Cathy that churches throughout the Louisville area are praying for Mom \u0026ndash; neighbors of theirs and their prayer groups. She goes in Friday for the lowdown on where things are and what the next steps are.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ponderings"},{"content":"You\u0026rsquo;re just saying all this because you want a new\u0026hellip; Whitney - Nov 2, 2007\nYou\u0026rsquo;re just saying all this because you want a new diesel vw. You forget I actually listen when you speak. :)\nI\u0026rsquo;ll just say I think you\u0026rsquo;re making the assumption that the federal government would actually honestly use the fuel tax to develop alternative energy sources or something else worthwhile, instead of adding to its own bloated bureaucracy \u0026hellip; I say this because I admit I\u0026rsquo;ve had the same thought, but the real problem is that the American public does not perceive this threat as clearly as you and I do. If they did there would be no objection to things like drilling in tiny areas of Alaska for domestic oil. In effect you\u0026rsquo;re saying because the American people aren\u0026rsquo;t smart enough to do the right thing, the government has to force it on them. And yes \u0026hellip; that would make you a Democrat. :)\n(Remember, I admitted I\u0026rsquo;ve had the same thought.)\nAnd thanks for reminding me I really don\u0026rsquo;t want a Corolla, as everyone has been suggesting lately \u0026hellip; :) \u0026ldquo;1.5 melancholy hamsters\u0026rdquo; \u0026hellip; that\u0026rsquo;s classic.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/ponderings-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"youre-just-saying-all-this-because-you-want-a-new\"\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re just saying all this because you want a new\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re just saying all this because you want a new diesel vw. You forget I actually listen when you speak. :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll just say I think you\u0026rsquo;re making the assumption that the federal government would actually honestly use the fuel tax to develop alternative energy sources or something else worthwhile, instead of adding to its own bloated bureaucracy \u0026hellip; I say this because I admit I\u0026rsquo;ve had the same thought, but the real problem is that the American public does not perceive this threat as clearly as you and I do. If they did there would be no objection to things like drilling in tiny areas of Alaska for domestic oil. In effect you\u0026rsquo;re saying because the American people aren\u0026rsquo;t smart enough to do the right thing, the government has to force it on them. And yes \u0026hellip; that would make you a Democrat. :)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ponderings (Comments)"},{"content":"Twenty-nine years ago today, I came squalling into the world, pissed-off that my head looked like this:\nMom was similarly disillusioned that my head was the size of this:\nSo, yeah\u0026hellip;birthday. Pretty-much feels like any other day\u0026hellip;I got one of these as a present:\nAs a result, my wife now gets to wake-up every morning at 5:20 on the dot to the sound of whirring blades, grinding coffee beans, and dripping hot water. I think of it as the gift that keeps on giving ;-)\nLast year nearly killed me: Maria\u0026rsquo;s birth, shipping my last version of MarkVision, losing Joey for the summer, deciding to change jobs, changing jobs, getting real with all my \u0026ldquo;stuff\u0026rdquo;, miscarriage, Maria\u0026rsquo;s burn, and now Mom\u0026rsquo;s surgery\u0026ndash;I can\u0026rsquo;t believe all that was my 28th year.\nThe big thing I learned was I couldn\u0026rsquo;t run and hide anymore. Everything around me had changed, but inside I hadn\u0026rsquo;t. I was still egocentric, and did all these \u0026ldquo;selfless\u0026rdquo; things not because I wanted to, but because it was \u0026ldquo;the right thing to do\u0026rdquo;. That bred resentment, resulting in anger. I was going down a pretty dark road, especially in August-\u0026gt;September. My world felt like it was collapsing.\nSo, I stand here today, 29 years old, on a ledge, a haven. I\u0026rsquo;ve stopped sliding, but I\u0026rsquo;ve yet to start the climb up the mountain. I strive for the attitude and priorities to prevail: I have a great group of people to keep me honest, and a family that I love very much. I approach tasks now not as a burden, but as a way to serve my family\u0026ndash;a way to show love.\nLife isn\u0026rsquo;t easy, but I find one\u0026rsquo;s attitude towards it can make it easier.\nGod bless you all, and keep you. May His peace lighten your heart, and His truth light your way, always.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/birthday-greetings/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwenty-nine years ago today, I came squalling into the world, pissed-off that my head looked like this:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/9/93/Coneheads_Poster.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMom was similarly disillusioned that my head was the size of this:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.robbinssports.com/sporting-goods-store/images/wilson-f1005r-leather-official-ncaa-football.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, yeah\u0026hellip;birthday. Pretty-much feels like any other day\u0026hellip;I got one of these as a present:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://cdn.overstock.com/images/products/P949432.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs a result, my wife now gets to wake-up every morning at 5:20 on the dot to the sound of whirring blades, grinding coffee beans, and dripping hot water. I think of it as the gift that keeps on giving ;-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Birthday greetings!"},{"content":"Happy birthday, Harvid! I\u0026rsquo;m thinking of you. \u0026lt;\u0026hellip; Bill Randall - Nov 0, 2007\nHappy birthday, Harvid! I\u0026rsquo;m thinking of you.\nBiru\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/birthday-greetings-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"happy-birthday-harvid-im-thinking-of-you\"\u003eHappy birthday, Harvid! I\u0026rsquo;m thinking of you.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026lt;\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/09594316806068854919\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eBill Randall\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 0, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHappy birthday, Harvid! I\u0026rsquo;m thinking of you.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBiru\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Birthday greetings! (Comments)"},{"content":"Shameless cross-link here\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/recent-maria-pics.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eShameless cross-link \u003ca href=\"http://monkeysontheside.blogspot.com/2007/11/pics.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Recent Maria Pics..."},{"content":"From Daniel 3 (KJV):\n16Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.\n17\u0026quot;If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.\n18But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.\u0026quot;\nParaphrasing Beth Moore:\nGod always delivers us. Sometimes God delivers us from a furnace, sometimes He delivers us through the furnace, and sometimes he delivers us via a furnace to His arms.\nRack, Shack, and Benny believed that, and believed in it enough to lay down their lives.\n* * *\nMom was not delivered from the furnace; preliminary pathology results are back, and she had/has Liver Cancer, confirming what we knew a week ago. The doctor didn\u0026rsquo;t go into more detail, but will either later today or at her follow-up appointment next week.\nOnce again with the numbness\u0026hellip;Mom has cancer.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/reaction...pathology-results.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom Daniel 3 (KJV):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e16Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e17\u0026quot;If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e18But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reaction...pathology results..."},{"content":"Well said. Jeff Roberts - Nov 3, 2007\nWell said.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/reaction...pathology-results...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"well-said\"\u003eWell said.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell said.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Reaction...pathology results... (Comments)"},{"content":"Mom slept pretty well last night, and is finally cleared for some solid foods. Everything is working in her digestive system, and they seem to be managing her pain well. She was resting comfortably (for the first time in 6 days) last night, according to my aunt.\n* * *\nWell, today is election day, or \u0026ldquo;The day the democrats take back the keys to the cesspit.\u0026rdquo; Getting anything done in this state is akin to the intrigues of Lorenzo de Medici\u0026rsquo;s Florence\u0026hellip;everything is a political game. Fletcher went into the governor\u0026rsquo;s mansions naively thinking he could undo centuries of entitlements and pork.\nTo be fair, his underlings and political \u0026ldquo;operatives\u0026rdquo; showed all the subtlety of a weed-whacker as they went through the transportation department, and they got burned for it. He lost the endorsement of the big stick in the party (Mitch McConnell [shudder\u0026hellip;I hate that guy]), and his own Lieutenant Governor turned on him. Beshear scored big in ads, despite doing his most convincing Wallace Wilkinson impression, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll not raise taxes because I\u0026rsquo;ll fund education with the lotter\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;Gaming. That\u0026rsquo;s right, GAMING!\u0026rdquo;\nAs icing, this Phone call business is just ridiculous. I hope there\u0026rsquo;s a full investigation of who\u0026rsquo;s doing this, and if it\u0026rsquo;s really the Republican Party of Kentucky, I hope they all get streeted.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/mom-update--election-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMom slept pretty well last night, and is finally cleared for some solid foods. Everything is working in her digestive system, and they seem to be managing her pain well. She was resting comfortably (for the first time in 6 days) last night, according to my aunt.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://media.graytvinc.com/images/Campaign+2007.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, today is election day, or \u0026ldquo;The day the democrats take back the keys to the cesspit.\u0026rdquo; Getting anything done in this state is akin to the intrigues of Lorenzo de Medici\u0026rsquo;s Florence\u0026hellip;everything is a political game. Fletcher went into the governor\u0026rsquo;s mansions naively thinking he could undo centuries of entitlements and pork.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mom update + election day"},{"content":"Just got off the phone with Mom. They\u0026rsquo;ve unhooked the epidural, so she\u0026rsquo;s in quite a lot of pain in the area of the surgery, which they\u0026rsquo;re counteracting with oral pain meds, augmenting with injections as needed. She still has a long road to go just recovering from this surgery.\nThe docs said biopsy/pathology results would be available in 4-5 days, so we\u0026rsquo;re in that window.\nThanks everyone for your encouragement and prayers.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/mom-update--recovering-no-prognosis-yet/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust got off the phone with Mom. They\u0026rsquo;ve unhooked the epidural, so she\u0026rsquo;s in quite a lot of pain in the area of the surgery, which they\u0026rsquo;re counteracting with oral pain meds, augmenting with injections as needed. She still has a long road to go just recovering from this surgery.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe docs said biopsy/pathology results would be available in 4-5 days, so we\u0026rsquo;re in that window.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThanks everyone for your encouragement and prayers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mom update -- recovering, no prognosis yet"},{"content":"Someone broke into my house today, right after Whitney left with Maria to pick-up Joey from school. Our ADT security system detected the intrusion and they called the police immediately. ADT called me and I told Whitney to go home and check-it-out. She said everything was still there, but the three drawers in our kitchen bar table were open wide.\nBizarre things\u0026ndash;it was broad daylight, and if they\u0026rsquo;ve been casing our house they know PEOPLE PICK UP THEIR KIDS BY THAT BUS STOP every day.\nMy going theory is they were after the iMac, having seen it through the rear windows.\nSometimes I just want to live in a bunker surrounded by a minefield, ya know?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/from-the-when-it-rains-it-pours-file/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSomeone broke into my house today, right after Whitney left with Maria to pick-up Joey from school. Our ADT security system detected the intrusion and they called the police immediately. ADT called me and I told Whitney to go home and check-it-out. She said everything was still there, but the three drawers in our kitchen bar table were open wide.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBizarre things\u0026ndash;it was broad daylight, and if they\u0026rsquo;ve been casing our house they know PEOPLE PICK UP THEIR KIDS BY THAT BUS STOP every day.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"From the \"When It Rains, it Pours\" file"},{"content":"I will complain about nothing today. I will com\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Nov 1, 2007\nI will complain about nothing today.\nI will complain about nothing today.\nI will complain about nothing today.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/from-the-when-it-rains-it-pours-file-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-will-complain-about-nothing-today\"\u003eI will complain about nothing today.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI will com\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI will complain about nothing today.\u003cbr\u003e\nI will complain about nothing today.\u003cbr\u003e\nI will complain about nothing today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"From the \"When It Rains, it Pours\" file (Comments)"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m trying to find the words to describe how awful yesterday was\u0026hellip;Dad is devestated, we\u0026rsquo;re all in shock\u0026hellip;\nFirst, the good news: When they got in there, they saw what they were dealing with, and the surgeon considered stopping the operation. He didn\u0026rsquo;t. He did not give up hope on Mom; that\u0026rsquo;s about the best news I can hold onto right now.\nThe facts of it: She had a tumor invading the right lobe of her liver, her diaphragm, and the bottom of her right lung. They did an initial analysis on the lymph nodes in her chest and they came back clear, so they went forward, removing 40% of her liver, 20% of that lung, and removing/reconstructing her diaphragm. The surgery took 6 hours, and involved 3 surgeons. They considered stopping the surgery several times, but didn\u0026rsquo;t.\nShe recovered from the surgery amazingly well\u0026ndash;the doctor said there wasn\u0026rsquo;t very much bleeding, and she was able to breathe on her own immediately in recovery. They placed an epidural prior to the surgery (anticipating how major this might be) and so she felt no pain below her chest last night\u0026ndash;she was rather lucid and talkative immediately (on a reconstructed diaphragm, no less!) and was even joking.\nThe one thing I regret the most (and I\u0026rsquo;ll deal with this at some point) was this exchange:\nMom: \u0026ldquo;Did they get it?\u0026rdquo;\nUs: \u0026ldquo;Yes\u0026rdquo;\nMom: \u0026ldquo;What was it?\u0026rdquo;\nus: \u0026ldquo;A tumor\u0026rdquo;\nMom: \u0026ldquo;But I\u0026rsquo;m okay now?\u0026rdquo;\nUs: \u0026ldquo;Absolutely.\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nMom, please forgive us for that. You\u0026rsquo;d been through so much, and you needed some good news. We all love you, and we wanted you to understand the surgery hadn\u0026rsquo;t been for nothing\u0026ndash;the surgeon said he \u0026ldquo;got everything that was there\u0026rdquo;, and you did fabulously through the surgery. You\u0026rsquo;re tough, and we didn\u0026rsquo;t want to burden you with that immediately after waking up.\n* * *\nAs for me\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m numb. I\u0026rsquo;m angry, because I\u0026rsquo;ve got to believe somebody SOMEWHERE knew this was happening to her. You don\u0026rsquo;t go from healthy to \u0026ldquo;advanced cancer\u0026rdquo; in 3 mos (or maybe you do\u0026hellip;I don\u0026rsquo;t know). I\u0026rsquo;m sad because I fear losing my mom, I fear my daughter never knowing this awesome, strong woman who is her grandmother.\nBut, she\u0026rsquo;s alive right now, and she\u0026rsquo;s at herself, and they\u0026rsquo;ve removed the thing that was causing her pain. God bless you all out there who\u0026rsquo;ve been praying for my mother, Dottie. Kiss your mom the next time you see her, and give your kids an extra tight squeeze.\nYou just don\u0026rsquo;t know what\u0026rsquo;s around the corner.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/11/cant-find-the-words/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m trying to find the words to describe how awful yesterday was\u0026hellip;Dad is devestated, we\u0026rsquo;re all in shock\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, the good news: When they got in there, they saw what they were dealing with, and the surgeon considered stopping the operation. He didn\u0026rsquo;t. He did not give up hope on Mom; that\u0026rsquo;s about the best news I can hold onto right now.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe facts of it: She had a tumor invading the right lobe of her liver, her diaphragm, and the bottom of her right lung. They did an initial analysis on the lymph nodes in her chest and they came back clear, so they went forward, removing 40% of her liver, 20% of that lung, and removing/reconstructing her diaphragm. The surgery took 6 hours, and involved 3 surgeons. They considered stopping the surgery several times, but didn\u0026rsquo;t.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Can't find the words"},{"content":"My mom\u0026rsquo;s having surgery tomorrow morning. Preliminary indications are the \u0026rsquo;thing\u0026rsquo; on her liver (they switch from calling it a lesion or a tumor every other time.) isn\u0026rsquo;t cancer. She still has one more test to undergo tonight, then she is \u0026ldquo;top of the list\u0026rdquo; for surgery tomorrow at UK.\nI just spoke with her, and she seems a little tired and on some pain meds, but she doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem scared.\nI\u0026rsquo;m taking tomorrow off work to be there for the surgery.\n* * *\nIn case you can\u0026rsquo;t tell, I\u0026rsquo;m a bit of a \u0026ldquo;Momma\u0026rsquo;s Boy\u0026rdquo;, and I love my mother very much. I\u0026rsquo;ve not agreed with her much since I got saved and became a man, but we\u0026rsquo;ve always had a special relationship and I hope and pray this \u0026ldquo;thing\u0026rdquo; is just as mundane as they said.\nI have a bad feeling it is more than they\u0026rsquo;re saying, but as Whitney says, \u0026ldquo;You ALWAYS have a bad feeling\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nYep.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/mom-update/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy mom\u0026rsquo;s having surgery tomorrow morning. Preliminary indications are the \u0026rsquo;thing\u0026rsquo; on her liver (they switch from calling it a lesion or a tumor every other time.) isn\u0026rsquo;t cancer. She still has one more test to undergo tonight, then she is \u0026ldquo;top of the list\u0026rdquo; for surgery tomorrow at UK.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI just spoke with her, and she seems a little tired and on some pain meds, but she doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem scared.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mom update"},{"content":"Just happened upon your blog. When my mom was sic\u0026hellip; Schottzie03 - Oct 3, 2007\nJust happened upon your blog. When my mom was sick I had some strangers let me know they were praying for her, and it made me feel good.\nI wanted to pass that feeling along to you, and wish all the best for you, your mom and your family.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/mom-update-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"just-happened-upon-your-blog-when-my-mom-was-sic\"\u003eJust happened upon your blog. When my mom was sic\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16624465932868582438\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eSchottzie03\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust happened upon your blog. When my mom was sick I had some strangers let me know they were praying for her, and it made me feel good.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI wanted to pass that feeling along to you, and wish all the best for you, your mom and your family.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mom update (Comments)"},{"content":"Thanks to all of you who\u0026rsquo;ve written offering prayers and well-wishes for Mom. She\u0026rsquo;s out of the hospital as of last Friday, but she\u0026rsquo;s going back tomorrow for further tests. What they think they know isn\u0026rsquo;t awful, but it will require more surgery.\nShe\u0026rsquo;s in pain, but she doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem too concerned (typical Mom, in other words!)\nPlease keep her in your prayers.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/update-sort-of/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThanks to all of you who\u0026rsquo;ve written offering prayers and well-wishes for Mom. She\u0026rsquo;s out of the hospital as of last Friday, but she\u0026rsquo;s going back tomorrow for further tests. What they \u003cem\u003ethink\u003c/em\u003e they know isn\u0026rsquo;t awful, but it will require more surgery.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe\u0026rsquo;s in pain, but she doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem too concerned (typical Mom, in other words!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePlease keep her in your prayers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Update (sort of)"},{"content":"There are days where I want to rename this blog \u0026ldquo;Tragedy and trials du jour\u0026rdquo;\nSo Mom\u0026rsquo;s back in the hospital for tests\u0026hellip;she has some sort of \u0026ldquo;lesion\u0026rdquo; on her liver. She just had her gallbladder out back in July, but had continued pain during her recovery.\nI\u0026rsquo;d really like to list the litany of crap that\u0026rsquo;s going on in my life right now, but that\u0026rsquo;s not going to do me much good. I feel like an over-saturated sponge (appropriate, considering), and I\u0026rsquo;ve lost the ability to internalize anything.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/moms-in-the-hospital.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThere are days where I want to rename this blog \u0026ldquo;Tragedy and trials du jour\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo Mom\u0026rsquo;s back in the hospital for tests\u0026hellip;she has some sort of \u0026ldquo;lesion\u0026rdquo; on her liver. She just had her gallbladder out back in July, but had continued pain during her recovery.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d really like to list the litany of crap that\u0026rsquo;s going on in my life right now, but that\u0026rsquo;s not going to do me much good. I feel like an over-saturated sponge (\u003ca href=\"http://bimmerwhoas.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-in-saga-of-leaky-bmw.html\"\u003eappropriate, considering\u003c/a\u003e), and I\u0026rsquo;ve lost the ability to internalize anything.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mom's in the hospital..."},{"content":"Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I w\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Oct 5, 2007\nSponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn\u0026rsquo;t happen. \u0026ndash; Steven Wright\nIt is hard I know. If you need anything or just to talk call me or e-mail. I will pray for you all.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/moms-in-the-hospital...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"sponges-grow-in-the-ocean-that-just-kills-me-i-w\"\u003eSponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I w\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn\u0026rsquo;t happen. \u0026ndash; Steven Wright\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is hard I know. If you need anything or just to talk call me or e-mail. I will pray for you all.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mom's in the hospital... (Comments)"},{"content":"I know I know\u0026hellip;where are freakin\u0026rsquo; pics? Well, it\u0026rsquo;s been crazy at home, and I haven\u0026rsquo;t had 10 minutes on the computer to upload (insert excuse #2 here\u0026hellip;.insert excuse #3 here)\nSummary: She is amazing. We\u0026rsquo;re massaging lotion into her new skin over the burns 4 times a day, and the areas are pinking right up. She\u0026rsquo;s learned to locomotor on all fours the right way, and she can blitz across the living room anytime she sees something shiny. She\u0026rsquo;s one smiling amazing baby girl.\nThe doctors admonished us to keep those areas away from the sun for a full year, and to be aware that for the rest of her life those areas will hold a tan longer and be more susceptible to skin cancer. (Yay :-( )\nOverall, though, she\u0026rsquo;s doing tremendously well, and the constant prayers and well-wishes have been great.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/maria-update-iii/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI know I know\u0026hellip;where are freakin\u0026rsquo; pics? Well, it\u0026rsquo;s been crazy at home, and I haven\u0026rsquo;t had 10 minutes on the computer to upload (insert excuse #2 here\u0026hellip;.insert excuse #3 here)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSummary: She is amazing. We\u0026rsquo;re massaging lotion into her new skin over the burns 4 times a day, and the areas are pinking right up. She\u0026rsquo;s learned to locomotor on all fours the right way, and she can blitz across the living room anytime she sees something shiny. She\u0026rsquo;s one smiling amazing baby girl.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maria Update III"},{"content":"Praise God, so glad she\u0026rsquo;s doing well. Jeff Roberts - Oct 2, 2007\nPraise God, so glad she\u0026rsquo;s doing well.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/maria-update-iii-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"praise-god-so-glad-shes-doing-well\"\u003ePraise God, so glad she\u0026rsquo;s doing well.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePraise God, so glad she\u0026rsquo;s doing well.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Maria Update III (Comments)"},{"content":"Wow, if I just throw sex in there, we\u0026rsquo;ll have all three taboo topics in one, n\u0026rsquo;est-ce pas?\nResponse to my post yesterday has been overwhelming (well, for me. I\u0026rsquo;m no Dawn). I think my wife put it best: \u0026ldquo;Jesus wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have been [Republican or Democrat]. He was a-political.\u0026rdquo;\nLet me say this right up front\u0026ndash;Christianity is tremendous. To me, it is Truth personified, the Creator of the universe reaching out to us as lovingly as He can, trying to reconcile the ultimate divide (sin) between Himself and us.\nHowever, if I might put my historical and practical hat on for a moment, Christianity is an awful form of government. It presumes two principles: 1) Love God. 2) Love your neighbor as your self.\nGovernments (especially democracy) are set up with the opposite principles: 1) You love yourself. 2) You hate your neighbor and wish he\u0026rsquo;d go away, along with his dog that craps on your hydrangea. Or as I\u0026rsquo;ve put it at intervals before: Democracy operates on healthy self-interest.\nTo bring this home: What am I? I\u0026rsquo;m a Republican. Politically, I believe in controlling myself, my money, and my environment, and choosing the disposition thereof. I believe in small government, and that as my commenter Tabitha said, many \u0026ldquo;programs\u0026rdquo; are abused, because people ARE lazy, fraudulent, and deceitful.\nBut that\u0026rsquo;s where it ends for me, because as a Christian, I\u0026rsquo;m a sinner, the same as everyone else. I screw-up every day. I have a hope in Jesus, and a way to live my life that I might glorify God and help others. I will not align that to one party or another.\nBless you all, and please be in the Word to find out for yourself. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/followup--religion-and-politics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWow, if I just throw sex in there, we\u0026rsquo;ll have all three taboo topics in one, n\u0026rsquo;est-ce pas?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eResponse to my post yesterday has been overwhelming (well, for me. I\u0026rsquo;m no \u003ca href=\"http://mom2my6pack.blogspot.com/\"\u003eDawn\u003c/a\u003e). I think my wife put it best: \u0026ldquo;Jesus wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have been [Republican or Democrat]. He was a-political.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet me say this right up front\u0026ndash;Christianity is tremendous. To me, it is Truth personified, the Creator of the universe reaching out to us as lovingly as He can, trying to reconcile the ultimate divide (sin) between Himself and us.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Followup -- Religion and politics"},{"content":"I was trying to find a way to word something simil\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Oct 2, 2007\nI was trying to find a way to word something similar yesterday. Jesus did indeed stand apart from the government - one of the reasons the Jews rejected him was they were looking for a king and that\u0026rsquo;s not why he came.\nHe didn\u0026rsquo;t downplay the fact that there were commandments, rules, laws and consequences, and he didn\u0026rsquo;t say that right and wrong are in the eye of the beholder, or changing at the whim of the culture.\nBut he wasn\u0026rsquo;t there to enforce those rules and make sure everyone got the punishment they had coming, nor was he there to try to rework those guidelines, as if more or different rules can change peoples\u0026rsquo; behavior. Instead, he was there to point to and provide the way to mercy and forgiveness.\nIn a sense, to he Godly is to know and obey what God has commanded, and to be Christlike is to see how far each of us falls short of that, realize that all of us are fighting that same battle and do all we can out of compassion to help others be more victorious.\nSomewhere in all this I keep thinking of our Spanish church - I don\u0026rsquo;t know of any illegals there, and I hope there are none, but the best thing we know to do for them is point them to Jesus.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/followup--religion-and-politics-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-was-trying-to-find-a-way-to-word-something-simil\"\u003eI was trying to find a way to word something simil\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was trying to find a way to word something similar yesterday. Jesus did indeed stand apart from the government - one of the reasons the Jews rejected him was they were looking for a king and that\u0026rsquo;s not why he came.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe didn\u0026rsquo;t downplay the fact that there were commandments, rules, laws and consequences, and he didn\u0026rsquo;t say that right and wrong are in the eye of the beholder, or changing at the whim of the culture.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Followup -- Religion and politics (Comments)"},{"content":"Flash of insight I received during the sermon yesterday: Jesus was a Democrat (or, more appropriately, a \u0026lsquo;Liberal\u0026rsquo;). More specifically, I don\u0026rsquo;t see any way I could call Him a Republican or a Conservative.\nThis all spills out from our current sermon series on the book of Mark. Mark is (probably) the first gospel to be composed, and it was likely written by John Mark, a disciple of Simon Peter, the guy of whom Jesus said \u0026ldquo;Upon this Rock (literally Petra == Rock) I shall build my church\u0026rdquo;. Mark is all business\u0026ndash;this is what Jesus said, this is what it means. If something seems unclear or too Judean, he explains it in a parenthetical note. Mark\u0026rsquo;s the Cliffs\u0026rsquo; Notes for Christ.\nSo, if I might oversimplify my definitions:\nRepublican: Socially, fiscally conservative. Believing in small government, low taxes, and the rights of the individual. Likewise believes each individual is responsible for his own station in life. Believes in harsh punishment for criminals. Unequal wealth distribution is normal, even desirable\nDemocrat: Socially, fiscally liberal, believing in larger government programs to assist the needy, working class (and lower). Seeks to redistribute wealth from the top 1% towards those less fortunate, and provide opportunity for the disadvantaged.\nThe Republican attitude is: \u0026ldquo;I can do it on my own, stay the @#%( out of my way. If you\u0026rsquo;re from bad circumstances, too bad. Get a job.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s a very inspiring (and very American) attitude. Thing is, from a spiritual perspective, that\u0026rsquo;s UTTERLY BANKRUPT. We\u0026rsquo;re ALL from bad circumstances (sin), and there\u0026rsquo;s nothing we can DO in and of ourselves to overcome that. It\u0026rsquo;s only by reliance on God and interdependence with and aid to our fellow man that we might attain salvation through Him.\nJesus reached out to the poor, the sinners, the crippled, the shunned. He despised people of high station who wouldn\u0026rsquo;t stoop to aid a dying man.\n* * *\nLook, I\u0026rsquo;m not urging anyone to switch political parties. I just had a realization that maybe we\u0026rsquo;re missing the bigger picture: Republican rhetoric always appeals to the Christian (esp. Evangelical) vote, but does the CORE of Republican belief line up with who Christ himself was?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/jesus-was-a-democrat/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFlash of insight I received during the sermon yesterday: Jesus was a Democrat (or, more appropriately, a \u0026lsquo;Liberal\u0026rsquo;). More specifically, I don\u0026rsquo;t see any way I could call Him a Republican or a Conservative.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis all spills out from our current sermon series on the book of Mark. Mark is (probably) the first gospel to be composed, and it was likely written by John Mark, a disciple of Simon Peter, the guy of whom Jesus said \u0026ldquo;Upon this Rock (literally Petra == Rock) I shall build my church\u0026rdquo;. Mark is all business\u0026ndash;this is what Jesus said, this is what it means. If something seems unclear or too Judean, he explains it in a parenthetical note. Mark\u0026rsquo;s the Cliffs\u0026rsquo; Notes for Christ.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jesus was a Democrat ???"},{"content":"Aww, man! And he might have helped the Samaritans\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Oct 1, 2007\nAww, man! And he might have helped the Samaritans sneaking across the border, too!\nCertainly, there\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;if any would not work, neither should he eat\u0026rdquo; (2 Thess 3:10) and other verses that seem Republican-ish. And the far left seems awash in moral relativism at best, whereas God is clearly serious about rules and consequences.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure I would totally agree that Jesus was a Democrat, but Republicans need to be careful not to become the Pharisees.\nYep, that was the trigger. \u0026hellip; HarryC - Oct 1, 2007\nRe: Pharisees.\nYep, that was the trigger. We had a sermon on Mark Chapter 7, and it hit me square in the eyes.\n7:8 \u0026ldquo;Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men\u0026rdquo;\nIntro: Whitney and I met through freecycle and have exchanged emails. We were born on the same day in 1979 and our daughters are about a month apart. :) I was looking at your blog for a Maria update.\nAnyway, I appreciate your point of view, but I would like to opine on the subject as a proud Republican. I don\u0026rsquo;t want people to just deal with being poor. I just don\u0026rsquo;t want the government to take 1/3 of my salary and decide what program they want to use it for. I believe that charity is the appropriate way to help those in need. God has blessed my husband and I, and we feel a responsibility and desire to helo others. However, I\u0026rsquo;d rather give my money to the single mom that is doing her best to raise her children instead of the drug addict that is collecting a welfare check to feed his/her meth addiction. So many government programs are wrought with abuse and fraud. It would be amazing to be able to get a hard number on how many millions of dollars are given away in food stamps that are then traded for drugs. I KNOW this happens on a regular basis.\nI\u0026rsquo;m a numbers person and I know how easily numbers can be manipulated, but one of the Dateline type shows did a series on who \u0026ldquo;gives\u0026rdquo; more. Republicans were more generous by far, and in tithes and charitable contributions outgave the democrats by a considerable margin.\nNeither party is perfect, but I think when you look at all the issues, Jesus would probably register independent and search his heart each election to decide who to vote for.\nI enjoyed your post. Take care, and I\u0026rsquo;d love to know how your daughter is doing with her recovery. I\u0026rsquo;ve been praying for her.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/jesus-was-a-democrat-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"aww-man-and-he-might-have-helped-the-samaritans\"\u003eAww, man! And he might have helped the Samaritans\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAww, man! And he might have helped the Samaritans sneaking across the border, too!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCertainly, there\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;if any would not work, neither should he eat\u0026rdquo; (2 Thess 3:10) and other verses that seem Republican-ish. And the far left seems awash in moral relativism at best, whereas God is clearly serious about rules and consequences.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jesus was a Democrat ??? (Comments)"},{"content":"(Blathering description of how a device was probably broken, but if it was I had a magic way to fix it \u0026rsquo;temporarily')\nMy colleague: \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re into all that nerdly stuff, arencha?\u0026rdquo;\nYes. Yes I am.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/quote-of-the-day-so-far/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e(Blathering description of how a device was probably broken, but if it was I had a magic way to fix it \u0026rsquo;temporarily')\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy colleague: \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re into all that nerdly stuff, arencha?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes. Yes I am.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote of the day (so far)"},{"content":"I had some really bad chili Wednesday night at church and\u0026hellip;well, let\u0026rsquo;s just say I won\u0026rsquo;t be eating chili again for awhile. Maybe ever. I awoke around midnight and began a 36 hour nausea bender, combined with weakness, muscle aches, and general exhaustion.\nYep, I was sick.\nSo, Thursday and Friday pretty much didn\u0026rsquo;t exist, and Saturday. Well, Saturday was hard. No excuses, just\u0026hellip;I was not my normal, loving self; I was abnormally self-loving, and that wasn\u0026rsquo;t cool.\nWe accomplish much outside once I could stand upright. We dug-up the front planter and put in a Japanese maple and 3 hedges. (Hey, considering I trimmed the holly bushes back to a nub and killed all the backyard stuff with deck sealant, we needed SOMETHING!)\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;m back at work today, with a meeting to figure out where (if anywhere) we can go with all this Web Services stuff. My stomach\u0026rsquo;s still not feeling its usual cast-iron self, but aside from that, all is well.\nQuick hits:\n- Still haven\u0026rsquo;t purchased a minivan\n- No new house\n- No one has sustained any dread injury\n- The house has no new leaks (internal or external!)\n- My fantasy football week STANK. I\u0026rsquo;ll be lucky to pull out a win with my sparkling 99 points. Ugh\u0026hellip;I hate being an \u0026lsquo;also ran\u0026rsquo;.\n- \u0026ldquo;Knocked up\u0026rdquo; is brilliant.\n- \u0026ldquo;George Carlin: Back in Town\u0026rdquo; is profane and mean. Ergo, it\u0026rsquo;s a typical George Carlin set.\nTopic for later: I think Jesus would be a Democrat. Just something that hit me in church yesterday.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/trying-to-get-back-in-the-swing.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI had some really bad chili Wednesday night at church and\u0026hellip;well, let\u0026rsquo;s just say I won\u0026rsquo;t be eating chili again for awhile. Maybe ever. I awoke around midnight and began a 36 hour nausea bender, combined with weakness, muscle aches, and general exhaustion.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep, I was sick.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, Thursday and Friday pretty much didn\u0026rsquo;t exist, and Saturday. Well, Saturday was hard. No excuses, just\u0026hellip;I was not my normal, loving self; I was abnormally self-loving, and that wasn\u0026rsquo;t cool.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trying to get back in the swing..."},{"content":"disagree. I think Jesus would be a liberal conser\u0026hellip; Whitney - Oct 1, 2007\ndisagree. I think Jesus would be a liberal conservative. Saying \u0026ldquo;democrat\u0026rdquo; has no meaning for most of the world, and means something different NOW domestically than it did 100 years ago\u0026hellip;.but go on\u0026hellip;.\n\u0026lsquo;Liberal conservative\u0026rsquo;\u0026hellip;is that like a \u0026lsquo;drunken teetotaler\u0026rsquo;?\nYeah, I debated saying \u0026rsquo;liberal\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;Democrat\u0026rsquo;, but thought Democrat would have more meaning.\nMore to come\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/trying-to-get-back-in-the-swing...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"disagree-i-think-jesus-would-be-a-liberal-conser\"\u003edisagree. I think Jesus would be a liberal conser\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003edisagree. I think Jesus would be a liberal conservative. Saying \u0026ldquo;democrat\u0026rdquo; has no meaning for most of the world, and means something different NOW domestically than it did 100 years ago\u0026hellip;.but go on\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026lsquo;Liberal conservative\u0026rsquo;\u0026hellip;is that like a \u0026lsquo;drunken teetotaler\u0026rsquo;?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, I debated saying \u0026rsquo;liberal\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;Democrat\u0026rsquo;, but thought Democrat would have more meaning.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trying to get back in the swing... (Comments)"},{"content":"I write this in hopes of saving you some time, if you\u0026rsquo;re looking at MSFT\u0026rsquo;s new RegisterForPrintAsyncNotifications API (new in Vista and Server 2008).\nAt first glance (and second, and third) glance, this API doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to work. It promises to provide asynchronous notifications of state changes to the print objects in the spooler, but how the $#@^ does it work? Let\u0026rsquo;s look at it more closely. (It\u0026rsquo;s defined int he file prnasnot.h, if you\u0026rsquo;ve got your sdk handy.\nHRESULT RegisterForPrintAsyncNotifications( LPCWSTR pName, PrintAsyncNotificationType \\*pSchema, PrintAsyncNotifyUserFilter filter, PrintAsyncNotifyConversationStyle directionality, IPrintAsyncNotifyCallback \\*pCallback, HANDLE \\*pRegistrationHandler ); pName is a pointer to the name of the print object you want to monitor. If you want alerts from all objects, you can pass NULL here (or so I\u0026rsquo;ve observed!)\npSchema is a pointer to a schema that the client expects. This is the hinge of the whole mess. More about that in a moment. For now, take it on faith that this has to be the right \u0026ldquo;Magic String\u0026rdquo; to get you what you want.\nfilter. Where this notification will be sent. can be \u0026lsquo;kPerUser\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;kAllUsers\u0026rsquo;.\ndirectionality. Wonderful, meaningless name, isn\u0026rsquo;t it? What this means is, is the channel specified in \u0026lsquo;pSchema\u0026rsquo; biDirectional or uniDirectional. That is, will the code that\u0026rsquo;s listening for events sent thing back to the other end of the pipe. Values are \u0026lsquo;kBiDirectional\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;kUniDirectional\u0026rsquo;. The 2008 Server DDK includes a bidirectional example in \u0026lsquo;src\\print\\asyncnotify\u0026rsquo;, but I\u0026rsquo;ve just been using kUniDirectional.\npCallback. This is a pointer to your code that the server will call-back to when there\u0026rsquo;s an event. In O-O, this is the \u0026lsquo;observer\u0026rsquo; object. It HAS to be a pointer to an object on the heap (learned that the hard way).\npRegistrationHandler This is your handle back to the registration when you\u0026rsquo;re done listening, you unregister by calling Unregister like this:\n::UnRegisterForPrintAsyncNotifications(hRegistration); Still will me? \u0026lsquo;Kay, here\u0026rsquo;s a snippet showing how this all ties together:\nHANDLE hRegistration; HANDLE unregisterForNotificationsEvent = CreateEvent(NULL, FALSE, FALSE, NULL); IPrintAsyncNotifyCallback\\* pCallback = new CPrintAsyncNotifyCallback( unregisterForNotificationsEvent); HRESULT hr = ::RegisterForPrintAsyncNotifications( argv\\[1\\], const\\_cast(\u0026amp;PRINT\\_APP\\_BIDI\\_NOTIFY\\_CHANNEL), kAllUsers, kUniDirectional, pCallback, \u0026amp;hRegistration ); Couple of things to note:\n- that PRINT_APP_BIDI_NOTIFY_CHANNEL is the undocumented magic you really need. It\u0026rsquo;s defined in prnasnot.h, but documented nowhere else. I stumbled across it in desperation, but it\u0026rsquo;s just what you need to listen in on the same bidiSchema updates that the spooler is receiving.\n- pCallBack derives from IUnknown, so yes, you\u0026rsquo;re implementing a COM object. Mainly, that\u0026rsquo;s just so the interface can reference-count and allow the object to clean-up.\n- The IPrintAsyncNotifyCallback implementation is kludgy, but if you follow the example in the ddk, it\u0026rsquo;s not too bad. What you end-up getting back is XML that conforms to the Microsoft BidiSchema.\nI swore for 2 months that this interface was non-functional, but once I found the PRINT_APP_BIDI_NOTIFY_CHANNEL guid, then it started working.\nEnjoy :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/registerforprintasyncnotifications/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI write this in hopes of saving you some time, if you\u0026rsquo;re looking at MSFT\u0026rsquo;s new \u003ca href=\"http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536114.aspx\"\u003eRegisterForPrintAsyncNotifications\u003c/a\u003e API (new in Vista and Server 2008).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt first glance (and second, and third) glance, this API doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to work. It promises to provide asynchronous notifications of state changes to the print objects in the spooler, but how the $#@^ does it work? Let\u0026rsquo;s look at it more closely. (It\u0026rsquo;s defined int he file prnasnot.h, if you\u0026rsquo;ve got your sdk handy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RegisterForPrintAsyncNotifications"},{"content":"I am using the AsyncUI sample code provided with t\u0026hellip; Sangeeta - Apr 4, 2008\nI am using the AsyncUI sample code provided with the printer samples. The\nAsyncUIMessageBox displays correctly on the server when the printer is\ninstalled as the local printer on Vista.\nI cannot get the message box to appaer on the client PC though. The\nRegisterForPrintAsyncNotifications function on the client PC never returns\nwhen a remote printer name is passed to it. The\ndocumentation(http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa506182.aspx)\nsuggests that a local/remote printer or server name can be passed to this\nfunction.\nI tried passing the server name to RegisterForPrintAsyncNotifications\nfunction without any success. I also tried installimg the shared printer on\nthe client PC but that also does not solve the problem.\nHow do I display the message box on a shared printer ?\nAny help will be appreciated.\nSangeeta\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/registerforprintasyncnotifications-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-am-using-the-asyncui-sample-code-provided-with-t\"\u003eI am using the AsyncUI sample code provided with t\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/02429989719422950764\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eSangeeta\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 4, 2008\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am using the AsyncUI sample code provided with the printer samples. The\u003cbr\u003e\nAsyncUIMessageBox displays correctly on the server when the printer is\u003cbr\u003e\ninstalled as the local printer on Vista.\u003cbr\u003e\nI cannot get the message box to appaer on the client PC though. The\u003cbr\u003e\nRegisterForPrintAsyncNotifications function on the client PC never returns\u003cbr\u003e\nwhen a remote printer name is passed to it. The\u003cbr\u003e\ndocumentation(\u003ca href=\"http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa506182.aspx\"\u003ehttp://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa506182.aspx\u003c/a\u003e)\u003cbr\u003e\nsuggests that a local/remote printer or server name can be passed to this\u003cbr\u003e\nfunction.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RegisterForPrintAsyncNotifications (Comments)"},{"content":"Had to steal this from the whiteboard in my old building.\n\u0026ldquo;Potential Mottos for the family crest\u0026rdquo;\nWhy does this keep happening to me?\nAgain?!\nRecidite, plebes!\nDuty, honor, payment\nWe don\u0026rsquo;t know what\u0026rsquo;s broke or how to fix it\nThe next one will be normal, you\u0026rsquo;ll see!\nFabricati diem\ntoo lazy to work, too nervous to steal\nwe don\u0026rsquo;t have clue one\nWhat, me worry?\nrex cloaca!\nProbably our fault\nSeldom right, but never in doubt\npraying for sterility for over 300 years\nI drank what?\nYour family is no prize, either.\nClovis had it right\nWe\u0026rsquo;re all out of toner!\nGive us time, we\u0026rsquo;ll screw it up.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/preserved-for-posterity/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHad to steal this from the whiteboard in my old building.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Potential Mottos for the family crest\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy does this keep happening to me?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAgain?!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRecidite, plebes!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDuty, honor, payment\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe don\u0026rsquo;t know what\u0026rsquo;s broke or how to fix it\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next one will be normal, you\u0026rsquo;ll see!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFabricati diem\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003etoo lazy to work, too nervous to steal\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ewe don\u0026rsquo;t have clue one\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat, me worry?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003erex cloaca!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProbably our fault\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Preserved for posterity"},{"content":"Nearly a week on and no update on my daughter. Sorry!\nAs is typical with me, no news is good news\u0026ndash;Maria\u0026rsquo;s Aquacell bandages (think big synthetic scabs) have fallen off, and her torso is healing very well. It\u0026rsquo;s trending more towards a healthy pink away from the angry red that it was.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re not so pleased with her leg. Her wound there is still seeping in two places; we\u0026rsquo;re calling the Dr\u0026rsquo;s for opinions on that.\nAs I said before, her mood is pretty normal for an 8-month-old (just as of yesterday): She\u0026rsquo;s curious about everything, and very concerned with how much her teething hurts her. I love her toothless grin so much, it almost pains me to think of her with teeth. Still, that\u0026rsquo;s part of it\u0026ndash;can\u0026rsquo;t eat baby food and formula forever!\nI\u0026rsquo;ll try to post-up some pics soon, thanks to our new iMac 20\u0026quot;. MAN I LOVE THAT COMPUTER!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/maria-update-ii/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNearly a week on and no update on my daughter. Sorry!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs is typical with me, no news is good news\u0026ndash;Maria\u0026rsquo;s Aquacell bandages (think big synthetic scabs) have fallen off, and her torso is healing very well. It\u0026rsquo;s trending more towards a healthy pink away from the angry red that it was.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re not so pleased with her leg. Her wound there is still seeping in two places; we\u0026rsquo;re calling the Dr\u0026rsquo;s for opinions on that.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maria Update II"},{"content":"Just sat through Karl Schoemer\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The New Reality\u0026rdquo; seminar. Schoemer, an Indiana-Weslyan University grad (Woohoo!), teaches a tough-love seminar on recognizing change, dealing with your responses to it (Shock, Denial, Identity Crisis, and Search for Solutions), and recognizing positive and negative behaviors associated with it.\nThe overall message is: \u0026ldquo;Old reality\u0026rdquo; is dead. The social contract of selling your soul to a company, working there for 30 years and retiring as a good \u0026ldquo;company man\u0026rdquo; no longer exists. Each person is responsible for his relative contribution, attitudes, and responses to change. It\u0026rsquo;s never going back to \u0026ldquo;the good old days\u0026rdquo;. Stop having this familial, parent/child attitude towards work. They owe you nothing, aside from a paycheck.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not all as harsh as that, but he\u0026rsquo;s the first person to look at us LXK\u0026rsquo;ers and say \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re pissed-off. Great! What are you going to do about it?\u0026rdquo;\nTremendous workshop and experience. I *do* have some questions about the ultimate limits of human nature\u0026ndash;how much change is simply TOO fast to deal with? How large or small does an organization have to be to be \u0026ldquo;agile\u0026rdquo;? But, those are questions for a later time, I guess\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/review-the-new-reality-seminar/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust sat through Karl Schoemer\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;The New Reality\u0026rdquo; \u003ca href=\"http://www.vqsolutions.com/NR_Home.html\"\u003eseminar\u003c/a\u003e. Schoemer, an Indiana-Weslyan University grad (Woohoo!), teaches a tough-love seminar on recognizing change, dealing with your responses to it (Shock, Denial, Identity Crisis, and Search for Solutions), and recognizing positive and negative behaviors associated with it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.vqsolutions.com/images/VQ_Team_11.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe overall message is: \u0026ldquo;Old reality\u0026rdquo; is dead. The social contract of selling your soul to a company, working there for 30 years and retiring as a good \u0026ldquo;company man\u0026rdquo; no longer exists. Each person is responsible for his relative contribution, attitudes, and responses to change. It\u0026rsquo;s never going back to \u0026ldquo;the good old days\u0026rdquo;. Stop having this familial, parent/child attitude towards work. They owe you nothing, aside from a paycheck.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: \"The New Reality\" Seminar"},{"content":"Try this\nLeave it to compsci guys to take all the fun out of \u0026ldquo;Six Degress of Kevin Bacon\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/kevin-bacon/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://oracleofbacon.org/\"\u003eTry this\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave it to compsci guys to take all the fun out of \u0026ldquo;Six Degress of Kevin Bacon\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kevin Bacon"},{"content":"First of all, let me thank everyone for the outpouring of support we\u0026rsquo;ve been given! Family, church, friends, and mere acquaintances have all written, emailed, called, and visited. If it takes a village to raise a child, then our real and virtual \u0026ldquo;village\u0026rdquo; has closed ranks like I\u0026rsquo;ve never seen.\nMaria seems to be getting better. She remains comfortable during dressing changes, and her outer dressings are no longer \u0026ldquo;dirty\u0026rdquo; when we change them. Honestly, I think she\u0026rsquo;s more concerned with eating and playing with toys than her burn at this point. She\u0026rsquo;s even gotten up on her hands-and-knees to crawl for short distances.\nWhitney has been a superior nurse, despite the trauma of reliving the experience each time she sees the burn. She\u0026rsquo;s born the brunt of this, while still taking care of the household. I\u0026rsquo;d be a complete mess (see \u0026ldquo;After Maria\u0026rsquo;s Birth\u0026rdquo;!) if it were left just to me.\nSo, we wait. We wait with hope and prayer for a good report tomorrow. More news then.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/maria-update/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFirst of all, let me thank everyone for the outpouring of support we\u0026rsquo;ve been given! Family, church, friends, and mere acquaintances have all written, emailed, called, and visited. If it takes a village to raise a child, then our real and virtual \u0026ldquo;village\u0026rdquo; has closed ranks like I\u0026rsquo;ve never seen.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaria seems to be getting better. She remains comfortable during dressing changes, and her outer dressings are no longer \u0026ldquo;dirty\u0026rdquo; when we change them. Honestly, I think she\u0026rsquo;s more concerned with eating and playing with toys than her burn at this point. She\u0026rsquo;s even gotten up on her hands-and-knees to crawl for short distances.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maria Update"},{"content":"At 11am Saturday, while she was out enjoying breakfast at Cracker Barrel with Whitney and her Grandmother Cathy, my daughter Maria was scalded over 10% of her body by a carafe of boiling water. The waitress sat the water too close to her, and she reached out and pulled it onto herself.\nShe was seated in a highchair at the time, and the boiling liquid burned her from the center of her chest to her waist, and the upper part of her right thigh. A nurse behind Whitney directed them the administer first aid, and an ambulance took her directly to the University of Kentucky hospital E.R.\nEvaluating the burn, the doctors said it was 2nd degree, and should not require surgery. They admitted her to the Children\u0026rsquo;s Hospital, room 441, where she remained for observation until yesterday afternoon. Doctors administered morphine in the ER, tylenol with codene at the Children\u0026rsquo;s Hospital, and we\u0026rsquo;re managing her pain with straight tylenol and motrin here at home.\nShe\u0026rsquo;s been given an advanced type of burn dressing that will remain on the burn until it heals, keeping it sterile and moist, and preventing infection. She\u0026rsquo;s in pain and has little appetite, but seems to be \u0026ldquo;herself\u0026rdquo;. She\u0026rsquo;s supposed to go back to the KY clinic Friday for evaluation by the plastic surgeons.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s been an outpouring of love from our family, friends, and church. Both sets of grandparents have been down to help, and our church family is providing our dinners this week.\nI\u0026rsquo;m home today, as Whitney and I are both exhausted.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/near-tragedy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt 11am Saturday, while she was out enjoying breakfast at Cracker Barrel with Whitney and her Grandmother Cathy, my daughter Maria was scalded over 10% of her body by a carafe of boiling water. The waitress sat the water too close to her, and she reached out and pulled it onto herself.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe was seated in a highchair at the time, and the boiling liquid burned her from the center of her chest to her waist, and the upper part of her right thigh. A nurse behind Whitney directed them the administer first aid, and an ambulance took her directly to the University of Kentucky hospital E.R.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Near tragedy"},{"content":"Poor baby! Give us a yell if you need anything! Jeff Roberts - Oct 1, 2007\nPoor baby! Give us a yell if you need anything!\nI am so sorry to hear about Maria being hurt. Let me know if you need anything.\nUpdate: She\u0026rsquo;s had a pretty good day today. She\u0026rsquo;s in pain, but she\u0026rsquo;s eaten a couple of times and we\u0026rsquo;ve changed her dressings without causing her too much pain.\nWe got some supplies from the Medial supply store at the corner of Virginia and South Broadway (FREAKY place, BTW\u0026hellip;imagine a converted furniture store selling medial scissors and gauze, along with lots of wigs.\nI will be thinking of all of you. I hope that all goes well. Call if you need anything.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/10/near-tragedy...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"poor-baby-give-us-a-yell-if-you-need-anything\"\u003ePoor baby! Give us a yell if you need anything!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePoor baby! Give us a yell if you need anything!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am so sorry to hear about Maria being hurt. Let me know if you need anything.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUpdate: She\u0026rsquo;s had a pretty good day today. She\u0026rsquo;s in pain, but she\u0026rsquo;s eaten a couple of times and we\u0026rsquo;ve changed her dressings without causing her too much pain.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Near tragedy... (Comments)"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Isn\u0026rsquo;t it awful that he\u0026rsquo;s so old he only gets the parts of the dead guy?\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/09/courtesy-of-my-mother-in-law/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Isn\u0026rsquo;t it awful that he\u0026rsquo;s so old he only gets the parts of the dead guy?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Courtesy of my mother-in-law"},{"content":"Wha??? Jeff Roberts - Sep 6, 2007\nWha???\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/09/courtesy-of-my-mother-in-law-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"wha\"\u003eWha???\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 6, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWha???\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Courtesy of my mother-in-law (Comments)"},{"content":"From the Herald-Misleader:\nGeorgetown officials yesterday placed mandatory restrictions on outdoor watering. Among the uses banned are watering established lawns or golf courses, filling fountains or pools, and washing sidewalks. Soaker hoses may be used on sod, vegetable gardens, flowers, trees and shrubs. That should happen only on certain hours and days. The schedule is the same followed by Kentucky American Water customers: 6 to 10 a.m. and 6 to 10 p.m. People with addresses ending in odd numbers water on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Those with even numbers water on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Billy Jenkins, manager of the city\u0026rsquo;s water service, said officials hope to reduce consumption by 15 percent to 30 percent. Royal Spring, which usually supplies most of Georgetown\u0026rsquo;s water, has been dropping rapidly, Jenkins said. In recent days, Georgetown bought up to 60 percent of its water from Frankfort.\nSo, I can keep my trees alive with my soaker hose Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Yikes we need rain.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/09/hoo-boy-we-need-rain/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the Herald-Misleader:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGeorgetown officials yesterday placed mandatory restrictions on outdoor watering. Among the uses banned are watering established lawns or golf courses, filling fountains or pools, and washing sidewalks. Soaker hoses may be used on sod, vegetable gardens, flowers, trees and shrubs. That should happen only on certain hours and days. The schedule is the same followed by Kentucky American Water customers: 6 to 10 a.m. and 6 to 10 p.m. People with addresses ending in odd numbers water on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Those with even numbers water on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Billy Jenkins, manager of the city\u0026rsquo;s water service, said officials hope to reduce consumption by 15 percent to 30 percent. Royal Spring, which usually supplies most of Georgetown\u0026rsquo;s water, has been dropping rapidly, Jenkins said. In recent days, Georgetown bought up to 60 percent of its water from Frankfort.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hoo Boy we need RAIN"},{"content":".flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }\ncloseup_cropped, originally uploaded by miniharryc.\nDaddy with severe 5 o\u0026rsquo;clock shadow and Maria squinting at the camera :-)\nMy boss cooing at Maria\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/09/latest-shot/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/51223307@N00/1413021015/\" title=\"photo sharing\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1048/1413021015_fde0f0219b.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/51223307@N00/1413021015/\"\u003ecloseup_cropped\u003c/a\u003e, originally uploaded by \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/people/51223307@N00/\"\u003eminiharryc\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDaddy with severe 5 o\u0026rsquo;clock shadow and Maria squinting at the camera :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1182/1413021047_3bfd144105_o.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy boss cooing at Maria\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Latest Shot"},{"content":"link\nThey are some awesome (expensive!) components. At the height of my gadget craze, I almost bought an Acoustic Wave, but just couldn\u0026rsquo;t justify it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/09/lovely-article-about-mr.-bose/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://crunchgear.com/2007/09/19/dr-bose-tells-all-company-sercrets-why-they-dont-publish-specs-and-more/\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey are some awesome (expensive!) components. At the height of my gadget craze, I almost bought an Acoustic Wave, but just couldn\u0026rsquo;t justify it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lovely article about Mr. Bose"},{"content":"Tired.\nBored.\nLonely.\nBitter.\nAngry.\nHelpless.\nControlled.\nConcealed.\nAfraid.\nAggravated.\nImprisoned.\nObligated.\nI really don\u0026rsquo;t have anywhere to hide today. I\u0026rsquo;ve ALWAYS had somewhere to hide\u0026ndash;work, women, racing, ****, friends, school, academics, video games, chat rooms, reading. That\u0026rsquo;s the comforting thing about being obsessive\u0026ndash;you lose yourself in things, easily. You\u0026rsquo;re not YOU when it\u0026rsquo;s uncomfortable to be there. Obsession, fantasy, denial\u0026ndash;they all go hand-in-hand. They\u0026rsquo;re my trinity of \u0026ldquo;not dealing with stuff\u0026rdquo;.\nSure, sometimes reality smacked me in the face, but it was a temporary thing. I could \u0026ldquo;deal\u0026rdquo; with it and get back to where all was okay: Inside my head. Life in a bubble? Yep. That bubble led me to screw-over many good people in my life\nWhat I\u0026rsquo;m trying to do, step by step is just to be real: Stop lying to myself and others, and stop the obsessions that are just escapism. I\u0026rsquo;d like to be able to sit in a room by myself and just BE, without feeling compelled to seek real or virtual companionship to escape my own thoughts, those ugly feelings I listed at the start of this entry. Likewise, I\u0026rsquo;d like to sit in a room full of other people and feel like I belong, just as a citizen of humanity. Nowadays, I can take it for so long, and then I have to retreat back to my cloistered mind, my bubble.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a window into how I\u0026rsquo;ve lived my life since I was about 14. Yikes.\nPerhaps my friends have similar (or worse) struggles. In that case I say, \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re not alone.\u0026rdquo; Perhaps they think I\u0026rsquo;m a raving lunatic.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/09/my-struggle/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTired.\u003cbr\u003e\nBored.\u003cbr\u003e\nLonely.\u003cbr\u003e\nBitter.\u003cbr\u003e\nAngry.\u003cbr\u003e\nHelpless.\u003cbr\u003e\nControlled.\u003cbr\u003e\nConcealed.\u003cbr\u003e\nAfraid.\u003cbr\u003e\nAggravated.\u003cbr\u003e\nImprisoned.\u003cbr\u003e\nObligated.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI really don\u0026rsquo;t have anywhere to hide today. I\u0026rsquo;ve ALWAYS had somewhere to hide\u0026ndash;work, women, racing, ****, friends, school, academics, video games, chat rooms, reading. That\u0026rsquo;s the comforting thing about being obsessive\u0026ndash;you lose yourself in things, easily. You\u0026rsquo;re not YOU when it\u0026rsquo;s uncomfortable to be there. Obsession, fantasy, denial\u0026ndash;they all go hand-in-hand. They\u0026rsquo;re my trinity of \u0026ldquo;not dealing with stuff\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My struggle"},{"content":"I can identify with trying to remove distractions \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Sep 5, 2007\nI can identify with trying to remove distractions and make time to just be still.\nWe all need to be in our own little bubble sometimes it is what keeps us sane. And yes I think that everyone goes through the same struggles.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/09/my-struggle-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-can-identify-with-trying-to-remove-distractions-\"\u003eI can identify with trying to remove distractions \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI can identify with trying to remove distractions and make time to just be still.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe all need to be in our own little bubble sometimes it is what keeps us sane. And yes I think that everyone goes through the same struggles.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My struggle (Comments)"},{"content":"\nProbably the worst Disney animated film of the modern era. They sanitized the lusty, humanist story of Heracles. Example:\nOne of Heracles\u0026rsquo;s challenges was put to him by King Thespius of Thespiae who wished him to kill the Lion of Cithaeron. As a reward, the king offered him the chance to impregnate each of his 50 daughters. Accordingly, Heracles did this in one night (sometimes referred to as his 13th Labour).\nYeah. This is a Rated \u0026lsquo;R\u0026rsquo; story turned into a redemptive tale.\nAnyway the movie itself:\n- The songs are stupid, trite, and forgettable.\n- The characters are wooden, minus James Woods\u0026rsquo;s excellent Hades.\n- Disney cliché abounds\u0026ndash;shrill sidekick, outsider protagonist, etc.\n- The animation\u0026rsquo;s no great shakes. I think they killed their 2D studio after this turd.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/09/hercules-awful/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/95/15/16m.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProbably the worst Disney animated film of the modern era. They sanitized the lusty, humanist story of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracles#Myths_of_Heracles\"\u003eHeracles\u003c/a\u003e. Example:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of Heracles\u0026rsquo;s challenges was put to him by King Thespius of Thespiae who wished him to kill the Lion of Cithaeron. As a reward, the king offered him the chance to impregnate each of his 50 daughters. Accordingly, Heracles did this in one night (sometimes referred to as his 13th Labour).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Hercules\":  AWFUL"},{"content":" I was sitting at a red light when they rolled up beside me, the guy riding his Suzuki Do-Me 8000 with his hot female companion on the back, her thongage pouring out of her low-rise jeans. Her blond hair fell from beneath the helmet and fluffed weightlessly in the hot breeze. Her skintight ballistic-armor motorcycle jacket was unzipped down to her navel. It\u0026rsquo;s a good look, I guess, if you go in for that sort of thing.\nAs I sat there in the Amana-white 2008 Honda Accord EX-L sedan, she looked over at me. I knew what she was thinking. I knew she wanted me.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m a smoldering volcano of straight suburban love\u0026rdquo;. DUDE!\nArticle\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/09/rofl.../","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting at a red light when they rolled up beside me, the guy riding his Suzuki Do-Me 8000 with his hot female companion on the back, her thongage pouring out of her low-rise jeans. Her blond hair fell from beneath the helmet and fluffed weightlessly in the hot breeze. Her skintight ballistic-armor motorcycle jacket was unzipped down to her navel. It\u0026rsquo;s a good look, I guess, if you go in for that sort of thing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ROFL!!..."},{"content":"Scene: Kitchen table. Joey\u0026rsquo;s eating his A-B-C\u0026rsquo;s \u0026amp; 123\u0026rsquo;s. I\u0026rsquo;m reading the paper. The contents of my wallet lay spread upon the table, drying from their recent trip through the washer. (\u0026ldquo;But Honey, I was going to wear those shorts!\u0026rdquo;/\u0026ldquo;For the THIRD DAY IN A ROW?!\u0026rdquo;). Joey regards one card intently.\nJoe: \u0026ldquo;Harold\u0026hellip;umm\u0026hellip;.this doesn\u0026rsquo;t make sense.\u0026rdquo;\nMe: \u0026ldquo;Huh?\u0026rdquo;\nJoe: \u0026ldquo;Well\u0026hellip;this says Auto-Zone Re-Wards.\u0026rdquo;\nMe: \u0026ldquo;Yeah\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nJoe: \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s nothing rewarding at Autozone.\u0026rdquo;\nYep\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/09/courtesy-of-joey.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eScene: Kitchen table. Joey\u0026rsquo;s eating his A-B-C\u0026rsquo;s \u0026amp; 123\u0026rsquo;s. I\u0026rsquo;m reading the paper. The contents of my wallet lay spread upon the table, drying from their recent trip through the washer. (\u0026ldquo;But Honey, I was going to wear those shorts!\u0026rdquo;/\u0026ldquo;For the THIRD DAY IN A ROW?!\u0026rdquo;). Joey regards one card intently.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoe: \u0026ldquo;Harold\u0026hellip;umm\u0026hellip;.this doesn\u0026rsquo;t make sense.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: \u0026ldquo;Huh?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoe: \u0026ldquo;Well\u0026hellip;this says Auto-Zone Re-Wards.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: \u0026ldquo;Yeah\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoe: \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s nothing rewarding at Autozone.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Courtesy of Joey..."},{"content":"I believe the answer to \u0026ldquo;Honey, I was going to wea\u0026hellip; Whitney - Sep 3, 2007\nI believe the answer to \u0026ldquo;Honey, I was going to wear those shorts!\u0026rdquo; was \u0026ldquo;I washed them because they were in the laundry pile.\u0026rdquo; Forget that you were gonna wear them for the third day in a row\u0026hellip;.the third day in a row out of the hamper? Now that\u0026rsquo;s gross. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my husband.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/09/courtesy-of-joey...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-believe-the-answer-to-honey-i-was-going-to-wea\"\u003eI believe the answer to \u0026ldquo;Honey, I was going to wea\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI believe the answer to \u0026ldquo;Honey, I was going to wear those shorts!\u0026rdquo; was \u0026ldquo;I washed them because they were in the laundry pile.\u0026rdquo; Forget that you were gonna wear them for the third day in a row\u0026hellip;.the third day in a row out of the hamper? Now that\u0026rsquo;s gross. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my husband.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Courtesy of Joey... (Comments)"},{"content":"TCL goodness\nOne girl told me I loved my car more than I loved her.\nI replied that I love my car. I don\u0026rsquo;t love you.\nOy. Make a girl feels special, whydoncha?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/tcl-quote-of-the-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zerothread?id=3413904\"\u003eTCL goodness\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne girl told me I loved my car more than I loved her.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI replied that I love my car. I don\u0026rsquo;t love you.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOy. Make a girl feels special, whydoncha?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"TCL quote of the day"},{"content":"She: Your car is a hunk of junk. Me: At least i\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Aug 2, 2007\nShe: Your car is a hunk of junk.\nMe: At least it doesn\u0026rsquo;t belong to my Daddy.\nYeah, that was the beginning of the end.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/tcl-quote-of-the-day-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"she-your-car-is-a-hunk-of-junk\"\u003eShe: Your car is a hunk of junk.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: At least i\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe: Your car is a hunk of junk.\u003cbr\u003e\nMe: At least it doesn\u0026rsquo;t belong to my Daddy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, that was the beginning of the end.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"TCL quote of the day (Comments)"},{"content":"Yeah, you knew it had to happen\u0026hellip;I like football. Why not indulge in that national passion\u0026ndash;Fantasy Football.\nMy team\u0026rsquo;s called the \u0026lsquo;Madden 09 Wannabees\u0026rsquo;, and we had our draft at Bufallo Wild Wings on Todd\u0026rsquo;s road:\nView Larger Map\nAnywho, Here\u0026rsquo;s the linueup I got (picked #8 in a serpentine draft):\nStarters:\nRB - Brian Wetbrook - Philly\nRB - Willis McGahee - Balt\u0026rsquo;more\nQB - Vince Young - Ten\nWR - Larry Fitzgerald - Arizona\nWR - Plaxico Burress - NY Giants\nTE - Tony Gonzales - Kansas City\nRB - Ahman Green - Houston\nK - Josh Scobee - Jacksonville\nDef - Dallas\nDa Bench:\nRB - Jamal Lewis - Cleveland\nWR - Joey Galloway - Tampa Bay\nRB - LenDale Whilte - Tennesee\nWR - Jerry Porter - Oakland\nQB - Rex Grossman - Chi-town. (yes, yes, I caught alot of ridicule for this one\u0026hellip;)\nTE - Ben Watson - New England\nWent in with a pretty conservative strategy:\n- 3 decent running backs, with two backups (or trade fodder)\n- 2 good WR\u0026rsquo;s, with 2 alternates.\n- 1 backup each for QB \u0026amp; TE.\n- A Kicker and a Defense of some sort.\nThis is a point-per-reception league, which will probably burn me. I was drafted too late to get a real stud running back (Westbrook is #8 on my depth chart). My real regret is not making the obvious pick in the 2nd round to get Peyton Manning instead of a Running Back. PEYTON MANNING!!! Meh, he\u0026rsquo;ll probably have a let-down year. You know, only 25 TD\u0026rsquo;s instead of 31. ::sigh::\nThe draft itself was very enjoyable; a bit past my bedtime, and I was definitely feeling it. I got pretty cranky towards the end but a nice trip back up the interstate, shifting my rejuvinated transmission perked me up.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/fantasy-football/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYeah, you knew it had to happen\u0026hellip;I like football. Why not indulge in that national passion\u0026ndash;Fantasy Football.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy team\u0026rsquo;s called the \u0026lsquo;Madden 09 Wannabees\u0026rsquo;, and we had our draft at Bufallo Wild Wings on Todd\u0026rsquo;s road:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q\u0026amp;hl=en\u0026amp;geocode=\u0026amp;q=buffalo+wild+wings\u0026amp;sll=38.200557,-84.53288\u0026amp;sspn=0.006644,0.019591\u0026amp;safe=on\u0026amp;ie=UTF8\u0026amp;ll=38.200557,-84.53288\u0026amp;spn=0.326826,0.03004\u0026amp;t=k\u0026amp;om=1\u0026amp;source=embed\"\u003eView Larger Map\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnywho, Here\u0026rsquo;s the linueup I got (picked #8 in a serpentine draft):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStarters:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRB - Brian Wetbrook - Philly\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRB - Willis McGahee - Balt\u0026rsquo;more\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQB - Vince Young - Ten\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fantasy Football!!!"},{"content":"Here is my team: STARTERS:\nQB: Carson P\u0026hellip; BryanCombs - Aug 2, 2007\nHere is my team:\nSTARTERS:\nQB: Carson Palmer\nWR: Chad Johnson\nWR: Marvin Harrison\nWR: Calvin Johnson\nRB: Adrian Peterson\nRB: Cedric Benson\nTE: Jason Witten\nK: Adam Vinatieri\nDEF: Green Bay\nBENCH:\nQB: Tony Romo\nRB: DeAngelo Williams\nWR: Mushin Muhammad\nWR Marty Booker\nTE: David Martin\nDEF: Cincinnati\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/fantasy-football-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"here-is-my-team\"\u003eHere is my team:\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSTARTERS:\u003cbr\u003e\nQB: Carson P\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/02228242808724657342\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eBryanCombs\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere is my team:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSTARTERS:\u003cbr\u003e\nQB: Carson Palmer\u003cbr\u003e\nWR: Chad Johnson\u003cbr\u003e\nWR: Marvin Harrison\u003cbr\u003e\nWR: Calvin Johnson\u003cbr\u003e\nRB: Adrian Peterson\u003cbr\u003e\nRB: Cedric Benson\u003cbr\u003e\nTE: Jason Witten\u003cbr\u003e\nK: Adam Vinatieri\u003cbr\u003e\nDEF: Green Bay\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBENCH:\u003cbr\u003e\nQB: Tony Romo\u003cbr\u003e\nRB: DeAngelo Williams\u003cbr\u003e\nWR: Mushin Muhammad\u003cbr\u003e\nWR Marty Booker\u003cbr\u003e\nTE: David Martin\u003cbr\u003e\nDEF: Cincinnati\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fantasy Football!!! (Comments)"},{"content":"We had GREAT seats. I\u0026rsquo;ve never had seats like that for anything\u0026hellip;not a High School band concert, even. We were 2 rows back from \u0026ldquo;center stage\u0026rdquo;. When they were doing their skits, the performers were maybe 5 feet away from me. I could see the creases in the makeup, that some performers were a LOT older than they wanted to appear.\nAnd then, it hits me. I\u0026rsquo;ve got highly made-up women on a platform above me dancing in spandex, sequins, and stockings:\nThis is as close as I\u0026rsquo;m ever going to get to a strip club.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/one-more-thing-about-the-circus..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe had GREAT seats. I\u0026rsquo;ve never had seats like that for anything\u0026hellip;not a High School band concert, even. We were 2 rows back from \u0026ldquo;center stage\u0026rdquo;. When they were doing their skits, the performers were maybe 5 feet away from me. I could see the creases in the makeup, that some performers were a LOT older than they wanted to appear.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd then, it hits me. I\u0026rsquo;ve got highly made-up women on a platform above me dancing in spandex, sequins, and stockings:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"One more thing about the circus...."},{"content":"You\u0026rsquo;d think the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Baily Circus is unchanging, right?\nWrong.\nTwo words for you: House Cats.\nYes, there\u0026rsquo;s an act in the middle of the 1st act of the Circus where a two trainers do an act with trained housecats. I\u0026rsquo;d pay real money if Letterman would do a walk-on and and make some quip about \u0026ldquo;Stupid Pet Tricks\u0026rdquo;.\nBut, it got better.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been to the circus in Lexington many times, most recently in 2001, when the \u0026ldquo;Red\u0026rdquo; Ringling Bros. circus came to town. This is the circus with Bello, a clown/aerialist/acrobat main character with Vanilla Ice\u0026rsquo;s haircut. It\u0026rsquo;s also the traditional, 3-ring \u0026ldquo;Big Top\u0026rdquo; show. What we got this time in Lexington is the \u0026ldquo;Blue\u0026rdquo; circus, a one-ring circus with a plot (trust me!) that plays like an amalgam of Cirque du Soleil and a broadway show.\nThe theme to the blue circus is the \u0026ldquo;Circus of Dreams\u0026rdquo;, and they have a faux family (all players in the circus, natch) \u0026ldquo;join\u0026rdquo; the circus, and each gets to become a circus performer. Dad becomes the Ringmaster, Mom an aerialist, Sis is a dancer, and Dan\u0026hellip; Well, Dan\u0026rsquo;s our protagonist. He doesn\u0026rsquo;t know what he wants to do.\nOkay, let\u0026rsquo;s talk about Dan for sec. Dan is an all american 10-year-old\u0026hellip;played by a muscular 20 year-old Chinese acrobat. Jarring\u0026hellip;yes, just a bit.\nAnyway, so the plot is in two acts, and revolves around Dan\u0026rsquo;s journey through the various circus performers, sort of a \u0026ldquo;Through the Looking Glass\u0026rdquo; experience.\nEnough, enough\u0026hellip;how was it as a circus/entertainment? The first act was a disaster. When I saw the house cat act, I wanted to get up and leave. Even P.T. Barnum himself wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have the stones to charge peopel $40 / head to show them TRAINED HOUSECATS.\nLike I said, it got better. Since there\u0026rsquo;s a Cirque influence, the show eschewed glitz for more style and focus on the central action\u0026ndash;Lots of acrobatics, stylistic dance moves, and \u0026ldquo;skits\u0026rdquo;. My favorite part was the white tigers and their trainer, though the 7-person motorcycle \u0026ldquo;ball of death\u0026rdquo; was a nice capstone to the show.\nI ended-up really liking it, and Joey and Whitney (both Circus virgins) loved it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/review-ringling-bros-blue-circus/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;d think the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Baily Circus is unchanging, right?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://z.about.com/d/cleveland/1/0/g/6/-/-/ringling_bros_04.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWrong.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo words for you: House Cats.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, there\u0026rsquo;s an act in the middle of the 1st act of the Circus where a two trainers do an act with trained housecats. I\u0026rsquo;d pay real money if Letterman would do a walk-on and and make some quip about \u0026ldquo;Stupid Pet Tricks\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut, it got better.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been to the circus in Lexington many times, most recently in 2001, when the \u0026ldquo;Red\u0026rdquo; Ringling Bros. circus came to town. This is the circus with Bello, a clown/aerialist/acrobat main character with Vanilla Ice\u0026rsquo;s haircut. It\u0026rsquo;s also the traditional, 3-ring \u0026ldquo;Big Top\u0026rdquo; show. What we got this time in Lexington is the \u0026ldquo;Blue\u0026rdquo; circus, a one-ring circus with a plot (trust me!) that plays like an amalgam of Cirque du Soleil and a broadway show.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Ringling Bros \"Blue\" Circus"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Gold\u0026rdquo; is coming to town where I live next month. \u0026hellip; Thomas J. Brown - Aug 5, 2007\n\u0026ldquo;Gold\u0026rdquo; is coming to town where I live next month. I\u0026rsquo;ve never been big on the circus, but their female ring leader, Liliana Escobar, is pretty hot. Maybe I\u0026rsquo;ll go see the circus. -)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/review-ringling-bros-blue-circus-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"gold-is-coming-to-town-where-i-live-next-month-\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Gold\u0026rdquo; is coming to town where I live next month. \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/04969763988007667949\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eThomas J. Brown\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Gold\u0026rdquo; is coming to town where I live next month. I\u0026rsquo;ve never been big on the circus, but their female ring leader, \u003ca href=\"http://www.ringling.com/explore/hometown/stars/lescobar.aspx\"\u003eLiliana Escobar\u003c/a\u003e, is pretty hot. Maybe I\u0026rsquo;ll go see the circus. -)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Review: Ringling Bros \"Blue\" Circus (Comments)"},{"content":"Back in the dark ages of 1998, I took my first programming class. As was the style of the time, the class was taught in Pascal, a language Nicklaus Wirth designed explicitly to teach structured programming concepts. Think of Pascal like an advanced jet trainer:\nThey teach you all the cool stuff with it, before they turn you loose in the F-15\u0026rsquo;s to wax some MiGs.\nAnyway, Pascal had some neat concepts and quirks, one of which was the way it made a distinction between \u0026lsquo;functions\u0026rsquo; (subroutines that returned data) and \u0026lsquo;procedures\u0026rsquo; (subroutines that were passed data and operated on it). So, for example, you might have a function called \u0026lsquo;double\u0026rsquo; that took an integer and returned that number times 2:\nfunction double( k: integer ): integer; begin double := k*2; end With the above, the parameter \u0026lsquo;k\u0026rsquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t modified, so you\u0026rsquo;d call the code this way:\n`\n\u0026hellip;\nvar i:integer, result:integer;\ni: = 2;\nresult := double(i);\nat this point, \u0026lsquo;i\u0026rsquo; is still 2, and \u0026lsquo;result\u0026rsquo; is 4. `\nSo, what\u0026rsquo;s a procedure do, then? It\u0026rsquo;s like a function, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t return anything to the caller. Instead, it just operates on is parameters. Rewriting \u0026lsquo;double\u0026rsquo; as a procedure:\nprocedulre double( k: integer, var result: integer ); begin result := k*2 end; This changes our calling convention, as well:\nvar i:integer, result:integer\ni:= 2;\nresult := 0\ndouble(i, result);\n# at this point, \u0026lsquo;i\u0026rsquo; is still 2, and \u0026lsquo;result\u0026rsquo; is 4.\n* * *\nWhew! Why did I take this particular trip down memory lane? And in Pascal, of all things? Because I see a rift, a rift in the way C programmers (specifically Win32 coders) and Java do it. Basically:\nC programmers like procedures\nJava programmers like functions\nJust reading the code I\u0026rsquo;ve been looking over for the past few weeks, I see tons of this:\n`\nunsigned long errorCode = ERROR_SUCCESS;\nlist listToPopulate;\nerrorCode = bigApiCall( handle, listToPopulate );\nif (errorCode)\n\u0026hellip;take evasive action\u0026hellip;`\nthe above is sort of a hybrid function/procedure, since C/C++ makes no distinction\u0026ndash;at the lowest level, every subroutine call is a \u0026lsquo;function\u0026rsquo;, though some functions don\u0026rsquo;t return anything (that is, they\u0026rsquo;re void). Anyway, the big deal here is, in java, the above would be something like this:\nList listToPopulate = bigApiCall( handle );\nSee the difference? You\u0026rsquo;re returning the value from the function, not populating it via a reference parameter. Thing is, you could do the same thing in Java, at least for Object types\u0026ndash;the \u0026ldquo;pass references by value\u0026rdquo; semantics allow you to call methods on the object passed in, changing its state. You just don\u0026rsquo;t see that much in Java class libraries.\nJust an interesting distinction I thought I\u0026rsquo;d highlight. I don\u0026rsquo;t see one as intrinsically superior to the other. The C-style favors error codes and that\u0026rsquo;s probably a good thing for most large-scale programs (yes, I\u0026rsquo;m one of those wonks who thinks exceptions and stack unwinding doesn\u0026rsquo;t scale\u0026hellip;), but the Java-style is simpler and less prone to side-effects in my experience.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/rumination-on-calling-conventions/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBack in the dark ages of 1998, I took my first programming class. As was the style of the time, the class was taught in \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)\"\u003ePascal\u003c/a\u003e, a language Nicklaus Wirth designed explicitly to teach structured programming concepts. Think of Pascal like an advanced jet trainer:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/d/db/250px-Hawk.trainer.arp.750pix.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey teach you all the cool stuff with it, before they turn you loose in the F-15\u0026rsquo;s to wax some MiGs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, Pascal had some neat concepts and quirks, one of which was the way it made a distinction between \u0026lsquo;functions\u0026rsquo; (subroutines that returned data) and \u0026lsquo;procedures\u0026rsquo; (subroutines that were passed data and operated on it). So, for example, you might have a function called \u0026lsquo;double\u0026rsquo; that took an integer and returned that number times 2:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rumination on calling conventions"},{"content":"I went to my first meeting with my new division yesterday, and I must say, It sounds pretty good. A particular highpoint was The Wifi Guy. Nice idea for the new media\u0026ndash;funny, viral, very over-the-top.\nLXK\u0026rsquo;s making a big foray into wireless consumer printers. Thing that gets me\u0026ndash;why aren\u0026rsquo;t we doing some sort of co-branding with Apple? Apple\u0026rsquo;s main selling point these days is cordless, wireless, de-cluttered desktops. With this new line, seems like we\u0026rsquo;d be right there.\nAnyway, good to be hearing a different tune.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/the-wifi-guy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI went to my first meeting with my new division yesterday, and I must say, \u003ca href=\"http://ad.lexmark.com/wifi2/en%2Dus/\"\u003eIt sounds pretty good\u003c/a\u003e. A particular highpoint was \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/thewifiguy\"\u003eThe Wifi Guy\u003c/a\u003e. Nice idea for the new media\u0026ndash;funny, viral, very over-the-top.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLXK\u0026rsquo;s making a big foray into wireless consumer printers. Thing that gets me\u0026ndash;why aren\u0026rsquo;t we doing some sort of co-branding with Apple? Apple\u0026rsquo;s main selling point these days is cordless, wireless, de-cluttered desktops. With this new line, seems like we\u0026rsquo;d be right there.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"The Wifi Guy\""},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m writing some toy apps that integrate with our libraries, and so I was looking for a good, Windows-compliant version of GNU Getopt. Cygwin has a version, but that ties me to the cygwin installation (I think\u0026hellip;)\nAnyway, Getopt is straight POSIX C, and googling around I found this C++ .h called TCLAP it\u0026rsquo;s well documented and implemented as inlines in the tclap/CmdLine.h. Seems very similar to the ruby \u0026lsquo;optparse\u0026rsquo; module in spirit and implementation.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/neat-little-c-templatized-command-line-parser/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m writing some toy apps that integrate with our libraries, and so I was looking for a good, Windows-compliant version of \u003ca href=\"http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Getopt.html#Getopt\"\u003eGNU Getopt\u003c/a\u003e. Cygwin has a version, but that ties me to the cygwin installation (I think\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, Getopt is straight POSIX C, and googling around I found this C++ .h called \u003ca href=\"http://tclap.sourceforge.net/\"\u003eTCLAP\u003c/a\u003e it\u0026rsquo;s well documented and implemented as inlines in the \u003ccode\u003etclap/CmdLine.h\u003c/code\u003e. Seems very similar to the ruby \u0026lsquo;optparse\u0026rsquo; module in spirit and implementation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Neat little C++, templatized command line parser"},{"content":"hello my name is harold and i like to spend my tim\u0026hellip; Whitney - Aug 2, 2007\nhello my name is harold and i like to spend my time inventing my own language and pretending other ppl know what I\u0026rsquo;m talking about\u0026hellip;.\nNo! I don\u0026rsquo;t want to go on the cart!\nBring out yer dead\nlollercart\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/neat-little-c-templatized-command-line-parser-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"hello-my-name-is-harold-and-i-like-to-spend-my-tim\"\u003ehello my name is harold and i like to spend my tim\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ehello my name is harold and i like to spend my time inventing my own language and pretending other ppl know what I\u0026rsquo;m talking about\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo! I don\u0026rsquo;t want to go on the cart!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.scaredmonkeys.com/fun-images/monty_python_small.jpg\"\u003eBring out yer dead\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003elollercart\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Neat little C++, templatized command line parser (Comments)"},{"content":"Ah, Luc Besson (The man who wrote The Fifth Element) brings us another gem of style-over-substance.\nIf you could epitomize Eurotrash in a movie, this is it.\nBut, God, such fun!\nNothing like a man barrel-rolling a W-12 powered Audi A8 to remove a bomb attached to its undercarriage. Frank (Jason Statham), is a very, very bad man, but his schtick great\u0026ndash;Always wearing a crisp suit, always in a clean car, always in control.\nThis was one great Action movie, and even Whitney stared transfixed for 75 out of 88 minutes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/transporter-2/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, Luc Besson (The man who wrote \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0377917/\"\u003eThe Fifth Element\u003c/a\u003e) brings us another gem of style-over-substance.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you could epitomize Eurotrash in a movie, this is it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut, God, such fun!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNothing like a man barrel-rolling a W-12 powered Audi A8 to remove a bomb attached to its undercarriage. Frank (Jason Statham), is a very, very bad man, but his schtick great\u0026ndash;Always wearing a crisp suit, always in a clean car, always in control.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Transporter 2"},{"content":"Ah, so two weeks have elapsed of my new job, two weeks that skated between elation, boredom, fear, and frustration. It\u0026rsquo;s a whole different world over here. Some people like it, some people don\u0026rsquo;t. Me? I\u0026rsquo;m withholding judgment for now. I do like my team\u0026ndash;they seem like quiet, competent, hardworking folks. They\u0026rsquo;ve been helpful to a total outsider in all senses of the word\u0026ndash;an old unix + java wonk who\u0026rsquo;s now playing in the world of C/C++ and Windows.\nThe code is a revelation\u0026ndash;tight, Object Oriented, and thought out. These folks don\u0026rsquo;t vomit out code the second an idea strikes (yes, I\u0026rsquo;m talking about myself there\u0026hellip;). For one thing, C++ really doesn\u0026rsquo;t benefit from that style\u0026ndash;the separation of header implementation files makes you be more deliberate. The only downside there is it seems to encourage copy/paste coding because things are so darn\u0026hellip;finicky. There\u0026rsquo;s lots of macros/typedefs/etc to remember, and it\u0026rsquo;s impossible to keep everything in your head without referencing MSDN.\nAnyway, not all is roses\u0026ndash;the tools have been killing me. Just getting ClearCase/ClearQuest installed and playing nice with Visual Studio 8 is still ongoing. Coming from Subversion, ClearCase seems like an answer in search of a question\u0026ndash;locks everywhere, \u0026ldquo;branches\u0026rdquo; (called streams) on top of more branches.\nI understand the reasoning behind most of it: We\u0026rsquo;re working in Microsoft Certification hell. Basically, Microsoft runs a certification suite against the driver we produce, and then digitally signs that code. After that, if we change even one bit (yeah, I\u0026rsquo;m talking computer bits here\u0026ndash;a single 1 or 0 in the compiled code), then that signature won\u0026rsquo;t match and the driver is no longer certified. Not the optimal thing, but like I said, \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;in the new reality\u0026rdquo;.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve had the dreaded Intellisense problem in Visual Studio 2005\u0026ndash;I loaded-up the product .sln file (this is like an Eclipse \u0026ldquo;workspace\u0026rdquo;) and then Visual C++ showed a message \u0026ldquo;Updating Intellisense\u0026rdquo;. This never completes. I tried installing the Service Pack 1, but that installation failed about because it requires TWO GIGABYTES of HD space to install.\nThe main lesson here is: I probably should\u0026rsquo;ve reimaged my trusty Windows XP box before embarking on this journey. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t like the Micro$oft tools very much. :D\n* * *\nBut hey, let\u0026rsquo;s remember the intangibles\u0026ndash;Good management chain, own office, regular hours, new problems to solve.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/getting-up-to-speed-in-the-new-reality.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, so two weeks have elapsed of my new job, two weeks that skated between elation, boredom, fear, and frustration. It\u0026rsquo;s a whole different world over here. Some people like it, some people don\u0026rsquo;t. Me? I\u0026rsquo;m withholding judgment for now. I do like my team\u0026ndash;they seem like quiet, competent, hardworking folks. They\u0026rsquo;ve been helpful to a total outsider in all senses of the word\u0026ndash;an old unix + java wonk who\u0026rsquo;s now playing in the world of C/C++ and Windows.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Getting up-to-speed in the new reality..."},{"content":"(Scene: Inside a meeting room with my new department, going over survey results)\nS: \u0026ldquo;Well, the results indicate I\u0026rsquo;m not doing too well with y\u0026rsquo;allz careers on and individual level. So let me know if you\u0026rsquo;re aching to do something different..or if you\u0026rsquo;re bored with what you\u0026rsquo;ve been doing for 6 years.\u0026rdquo;\nB: \u0026ldquo;Like\u0026hellip;Harold was.\u0026rdquo;\nYep\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/quote-of-the-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e(Scene: Inside a meeting room with my new department, going over survey results)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eS: \u0026ldquo;Well, the results indicate I\u0026rsquo;m not doing too well with y\u0026rsquo;allz careers on and individual level. So let me know if you\u0026rsquo;re aching to do something different..or if you\u0026rsquo;re bored with what you\u0026rsquo;ve been doing for 6 years.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eB: \u0026ldquo;Like\u0026hellip;Harold was.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eYep\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote of the Day"},{"content":":-) I\u0026rsquo;m pretty content with what I\u0026rsquo;m doing,\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Aug 3, 2007\n:-)\nI\u0026rsquo;m pretty content with what I\u0026rsquo;m doing, although I just started ramping up for this iteration and found that all 3 of the things on my list are gated until NK does some work. Oh, well, another day or so to tie up loose ends before they turn into PTRs.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/quote-of-the-day-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"-\"\u003e:-)\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m pretty content with what I\u0026rsquo;m doing,\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m pretty content with what I\u0026rsquo;m doing, although I just started ramping up for this iteration and found that all 3 of the things on my list are gated until NK does some work. Oh, well, another day or so to tie up loose ends before they turn into PTRs.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote of the Day (Comments)"},{"content":"Link\nSo, basically:\nCreate a struct to hold your class.\nCreate a Window struct.\nEnter your event loop and process events\nThat\u0026rsquo;s kinda it\u0026hellip;The rest is a bunch of nasty #define\u0026rsquo;s and macros Windows has built-up.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/win32-in-a-nutshell/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://winprog.org/tutorial/\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, basically:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCreate a struct to hold your class.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCreate a Window struct.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEnter your event loop and process events\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s kinda it\u0026hellip;The rest is a bunch of nasty #define\u0026rsquo;s and macros Windows has built-up.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Win32 in a nutshell"},{"content":"So, I\u0026rsquo;m reading through the documentation on Windows printing, trying to learn what this is all about. My team writes stuff that sits between the Windows Spooler (spoolsrv.exe) and the Kernel-model communications pieces.\nAnyway, so I come to a great fork in the road: GDI and XPS. GDI (Graphical Device Interface) is the way that earlier windows programs (Win32) talk to the display and printing subsystem. Essentially, everything in GDI is a bitmap. This is \u0026ldquo;the old way of doing things\u0026rdquo;.\nXPS is a whole \u0026rsquo;nother ball of wax. XPS stands for Xml Paper Specification, and it offers a way to describe, render, and print information. It can function as an XML-based Page Description Language (PDL).\nAt first XPS and the new XPS-based print subsystem sounds like a great idea: The application stores its documents in XPS format, sends the documents to the screen via the Windows Presentation Framework (WPF), which natively speaks in XPS, and then the printing subsystem is even more snazzy.\nSee, they got this great ideas: Why not have the driver implement a series of stages (filters) that you can set-up using a file instead of using code? That way, you can have these cool filters that you can reuse in different drivers. Modular. Smart.\nYeah\u0026hellip;here\u0026rsquo;s the catch.\nTHIS WHOLE FREAKING CONCEPT IS STOLEN FROM APPLE and UNIX.\nIn the Unix world, they came-up with the concept of CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System, which is the filter-chain concept described above. Print \u0026ldquo;drivers\u0026rdquo; in cups become a series of stateless filters, chained together by a PostScript Printer Definition (PPD) file.\nIt gets better. In Mac OS X, they use the same unified document concept, only instead of some hokey solution, they use the industry standard for document interoperatbility\u0026ndash;Adobe\u0026rsquo;s PDF files.\nI can\u0026rsquo;t tell if the whole XPS/Metro concept is just a massive case of Not-invented-here (NIH) or if Microsoft genuinely thinks it can do better by reinventing 2 wheels. No wonder Vista was years late!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/cups...er-i-mean-xps/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;m reading through the documentation on Windows printing, trying to learn what this is all about. My team writes stuff that sits between the Windows Spooler (spoolsrv.exe) and the Kernel-model communications pieces.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, so I come to a great fork in the road: GDI and XPS. GDI (Graphical Device Interface) is the way that earlier windows programs (Win32) talk to the display and printing subsystem. Essentially, everything in GDI is a bitmap. This is \u0026ldquo;the old way of doing things\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cups...er, I mean XPS"},{"content":"Hrm\u0026hellip;let\u0026rsquo;s see. Yesterday:\n- A French Bank closed 3 subprime hedge funds because there\u0026rsquo;s not enough liquidity to value them. I don\u0026rsquo;t know what that means exactly, but it sounds bad.\n- The S\u0026amp;P dropped 3% yesterday.\n- The subprime mortgage fiasco is turning into a vortex.\nI yanked my 401(k) back into a money market. I\u0026rsquo;m NOT looking forward to a repeat of the bath I took on my Roth in 2001.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/black-friday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHrm\u0026hellip;let\u0026rsquo;s see. Yesterday:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- A French Bank closed 3 subprime hedge funds because there\u0026rsquo;s not enough liquidity to value them. I don\u0026rsquo;t know what that means exactly, but it sounds bad.\u003cbr\u003e\n- The S\u0026amp;P dropped 3% yesterday.\u003cbr\u003e\n- The subprime mortgage fiasco is turning into a vortex.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI yanked my 401(k) back into a money market. I\u0026rsquo;m NOT looking forward to a repeat of the bath I took on my Roth in 2001.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Black Friday?"},{"content":"not enough liquidity to value them\u0026hellip;.the mtg co\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip; Whitney - Aug 5, 2007\nnot enough liquidity to value them\u0026hellip;.the mtg co\u0026rsquo;s are so far upside down on their lending that it\u0026rsquo;s not even worth the analysts\u0026rsquo; time?\nwell, the hedge funds were invested in the subprime mortgages and mortgage brokers themselves. I used to be invested in Harbor Fund\u0026rsquo;s Harbor Bond fund and it had a great run investing in mortgages, but it scared me so I got out before 2005.\nMaybe Chuck can jump on here and explain it for us.\nAs a student of history, alot of these events are \u0026ldquo;butterfly effect\u0026rdquo; scenarios: Something triggers something else in a chaotic chain of events. Alot of the stock market is set-up to prevent that\u0026ndash;if there\u0026rsquo;s a panic, the market shuts down to stop the automatically programmed stop-loss orders from the brokerages.\nStill, it can get fun. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nWell, the Fed jumped in with $20 Billion and bailed-out the scared investors. We\u0026rsquo;ll see if that holds\u0026hellip;I think the fundamentals of this market are just whacked.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/black-friday-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"not-enough-liquidity-to-value-themthe-mtg-cos\"\u003enot enough liquidity to value them\u0026hellip;.the mtg co\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003enot enough liquidity to value them\u0026hellip;.the mtg co\u0026rsquo;s are so far upside down on their lending that it\u0026rsquo;s not even worth the analysts\u0026rsquo; time?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ewell, the hedge funds were invested in the subprime mortgages and mortgage brokers themselves. I used to be invested in Harbor Fund\u0026rsquo;s Harbor Bond fund and it had a great run investing in mortgages, but it scared me so I got out before 2005.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Black Friday? (Comments)"},{"content":"link\nThe final type is known simply as the demand clause, and this means that the lender can demand repayment of the loan in full at any time for any reason. This clause gives the lender the same powers as the acceleration and due on sale clauses, but also allows the lender to raise interest rates even if you aren’t selling your property.\nYikes\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/why-its-imperative-to-read-your-mortagage-agreement.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.mortgageloanplace.com/lending-guide/home-mortgages/due-on-sale-demand-and-acceleration-clauses\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe final type is known simply as the demand clause, and this means that the lender can demand repayment of the loan in full at any time for any reason. This clause gives the lender the same powers as the acceleration and due on sale clauses, but also allows the lender to raise interest rates even if you aren’t selling your property.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYikes\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why it's imperative to read your mortagage agreement..."},{"content":"Yeah but that\u0026rsquo;s typically included in ANY loan ya \u0026hellip; Whitney - Aug 2, 2007\nYeah but that\u0026rsquo;s typically included in ANY loan ya get. The lender USUALLY reserves the right to demand payment in full at any time for any reason\u0026hellip;..every loan I ever did had that as part as the standard loanliner - at both bank and CU.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/why-its-imperative-to-read-your-mortagage-agreement...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"yeah-but-thats-typically-included-in-any-loan-ya-\"\u003eYeah but that\u0026rsquo;s typically included in ANY loan ya \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah but that\u0026rsquo;s typically included in ANY loan ya get. The lender USUALLY reserves the right to demand payment in full at any time for any reason\u0026hellip;..every loan I ever did had that as part as the standard loanliner - at both bank and CU.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Why it's imperative to read your mortagage agreement... (Comments)"},{"content":"The good:\nI have an office (yes, my own!) and it\u0026rsquo;s really sweet\u0026ndash;near the door, the printing area, the break area, and the AA desk. I got all my stuff over here in 1 load, and everyone\u0026rsquo;s been really nice so far.\nThe bad:\nI don\u0026rsquo;t have a power cord for my phone yet. If you want to contact me, better try email, IM, or cell.\nThink I\u0026rsquo;ll break for lunch and hit some yummy leftovers.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/first-blog-from-my-new-office/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe good:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have an office (yes, my own!) and it\u0026rsquo;s really sweet\u0026ndash;near the door, the printing area, the break area, and the AA desk. I got all my stuff over here in 1 load, and everyone\u0026rsquo;s been really nice so far.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe bad:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t have a power cord for my phone yet. If you want to contact me, better try email, IM, or cell.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThink I\u0026rsquo;ll break for lunch and hit some yummy leftovers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"First Blog from my new office"},{"content":"Sounds cool! I keep talking to the empty side of \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Aug 1, 2007\nSounds cool! I keep talking to the empty side of your old office but no one answers :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/first-blog-from-my-new-office-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"sounds-cool-i-keep-talking-to-the-empty-side-of-\"\u003eSounds cool! I keep talking to the empty side of \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSounds cool! I keep talking to the empty side of your old office but no one answers :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"First Blog from my new office (Comments)"},{"content":"So, I took one 2 hr block to myself. I grabbed my once-a-month blow fund and headed out after a rather trying Saturday of watching the kids, and said, \u0026ldquo;Damn it, I\u0026rsquo;m going to see something for me.\u0026rdquo;\nSomething with nary a trace of romantic comedy, meaningful plotline, or maybe even sense. I went to watch \u0026ldquo;The Simpsons Movie\u0026rdquo;.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s cut to the chase. You get to see Bart\u0026rsquo;s penis, Homer flips-off the residents of Springfield, Otto hits a bong, and Marge says \u0026lsquo;Goddamn\u0026rsquo;. That\u0026rsquo;s why this movie is PG-13.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s dumb and boring. I nearly got up and left right after they went to Alaska. If they\u0026rsquo;re shooting for \u0026lsquo;duh duh\u0026rsquo;, at least make it move apace. How do you make (generously) 90 minutes that BORING?\nThere were some pleasant vignettes and quick-hits; in particular, they skewer the gov\u0026rsquo;t very well. However, I can\u0026rsquo;t help buth thinking they made this \u0026lsquo;movie\u0026rsquo; a few years ago, and it made a big \u0026rsquo;thud\u0026rsquo; with test audiences, so they went in and added some \u0026ldquo;Family Guy\u0026rdquo; humor, and then cut the actual plot down to nothing, then released it.\nShame on them. I wish I\u0026rsquo;d just driven to Lexington to watch Transformers.\n\\\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/i-hated-the-simpsons-movie/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I took one 2 hr block to myself. I grabbed my once-a-month blow fund and headed out after a rather trying Saturday of watching the kids, and said, \u0026ldquo;Damn it, I\u0026rsquo;m going to see something for \u003cem\u003eme\u003c/em\u003e.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething with nary a trace of romantic comedy, meaningful plotline, or maybe even sense. I went to watch \u0026ldquo;The Simpsons Movie\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s cut to the chase. You get to see Bart\u0026rsquo;s penis, Homer flips-off the residents of Springfield, Otto hits a bong, and Marge says \u0026lsquo;Goddamn\u0026rsquo;. That\u0026rsquo;s why this movie is PG-13.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I HATED \"THE SIMPSONS MOVIE\""},{"content":".flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }\nHolden Beach Sunrise, originally uploaded by miniharryc.\n(Trying out a post from Flickr, so forgive me if this is weird\u0026hellip;)\nRest of the set\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/holden-beach-sunrise/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/51223307@N00/992005512/\" title=\"photo sharing\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1190/992005512_aae13d0392.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/51223307@N00/992005512/\"\u003eHolden Beach Sunrise\u003c/a\u003e, originally uploaded by \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/people/51223307@N00/\"\u003eminiharryc\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Trying out a post from Flickr, so forgive me if this is weird\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/51223307@N00/sets/72157601180009552/detail/\"\u003eRest of the set\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Holden Beach Sunrise"},{"content":"Nice pics! Jeff Roberts - Aug 5, 2007\nNice pics!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/holden-beach-sunrise-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"nice-pics\"\u003eNice pics!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNice pics!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Holden Beach Sunrise (Comments)"},{"content":"Why I hate frameworks\nPut in my context: \u0026ldquo;Here\u0026rsquo;s a 150MB download with a Java Virtual Machines, a Tomcat webserver, the entire Spring framework, extensions to the spring framework, a firebird database, and two Windows Services you must install.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s it do?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;It gets 5 pieces of data from a fleet of widgets. But it\u0026rsquo;s really fast.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;How long did it take to develop?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;2 years\u0026rdquo;\n::sigh::\nI also believe a 747 can be used to squash a flea, but YIKES\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/great-funny-read/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.219431\"\u003eWhy I hate frameworks\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePut in my context: \u0026ldquo;Here\u0026rsquo;s a 150MB download with a Java Virtual Machines, a Tomcat webserver, the entire Spring framework, extensions to the spring framework, a firebird database, and two Windows Services you must install.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s it do?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;It gets 5 pieces of data from a fleet of widgets. But it\u0026rsquo;s really fast.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;How long did it take to develop?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;2 years\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e::sigh::\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI also believe a 747 can be used to squash a flea, but YIKES\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Great, funny read"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Do you go a day without self-reflection?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yes\u0026rdquo;\n(narrowed eyes) \u0026ldquo;Do you go TWO days without it?\u0026rdquo;\n(long pause) \u0026ldquo;Yes. To answer your next question: Three days is pushing it.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/08/quote-for-the-day-yesterday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Do you go a day without self-reflection?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Yes\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(\u003cem\u003enarrowed eyes\u003c/em\u003e) \u0026ldquo;Do you go TWO days without it?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(long pause) \u0026ldquo;Yes. To answer your next question: Three days is pushing it.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote for the day (yesterday)"},{"content":"Returning from our jaunt around Georgetown last night around 8, Joey and I entered a house that couldn\u0026rsquo;t be more tranquil: A load of laundry swished in the washer, the dishwasher was humming, and the pleasant smell of the new Airwick was in the air.\nJoey went up to shower, and I sat down to veg-out.\nA few minutes later, feeling peaked, I went to the fridge for a cheese stick. As I closed the door, processed cheese in hand I felt something hit my foot. Then I looked up to see A STREAM OF WATER GUSHING FROM THE LIGHT FIXTURE.\nMy mind raced. I (apparently) dropped my cheese stick in the floor, wondering if a pipe burst. I shut off the lights and yelled \u0026lsquo;JOEY!\u0026rsquo;. Whitney thought I was yelling for no reason, then I told her, \u0026ldquo;THERE\u0026rsquo;S WATER COMING FROM THE CEILING\u0026rdquo;. I ran upstairs as fast as I could to find water running in puddles all over the bathroom.\n\u0026ldquo;Wha\u0026hellip;.You\u0026hellip;.Wha\u0026hellip;.?!\u0026rdquo; Yeah, that\u0026rsquo;s me sputtering.\nJoey (in towel): \u0026ldquo;The sink overflowed\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Wha\u0026hellip;.WHY?!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I was just trying to get my Dinosaurs to grow.\u0026rdquo; (Aside: Joey has these toy dinosaurs that get bigger when you drop \u0026rsquo;em in water)\nSo, there I am trying to come to terms with my hydro-maniac son who\u0026rsquo;s decided (for the 4th time in a week) that playing with running water is a good idea. My anxiety over a housefire is fading, replaced by my realization that I\u0026rsquo;ll probably have water damage in the upstairs bathroom AND the ceiling drywall in the kitchen.\nAt that point I told Whitney to deal with Joey. I went downstairs, flipped off the breaker to the lights in the kitchen, and then waited for the water to stop dripping.\nAh, multi-story houses. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/...and-now-im-a-real-homeowner.-part-687/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eReturning from our jaunt around Georgetown last night around 8, Joey and I entered a house that couldn\u0026rsquo;t be more tranquil: A load of laundry swished in the washer, the dishwasher was humming, and the pleasant smell of the new Airwick was in the air.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoey went up to shower, and I sat down to veg-out.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA few minutes later, feeling peaked, I went to the fridge for a cheese stick. As I closed the door, processed cheese in hand I felt something hit my foot. Then I looked up to see A STREAM OF WATER GUSHING FROM THE LIGHT FIXTURE.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"...and now, I'm a real homeowner. (Part 687)"},{"content":"So, at my time on the beach, I inhaled Lippman\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;C++ Primer (4th Edition)\u0026rdquo;, attempting to get back up-to-speed on a language I left 6 years ago. At that time, I knew enough to be dangerous, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t know enough programming theory to \u0026ldquo;get\u0026rdquo; half the stuff. My instruction on C++ had been \u0026ldquo;C using iostream\u0026rdquo;, and some cursory stuff on classes and templates.\nAnyway, I\u0026rsquo;m both impressed and horrified at C++. After coming through its ISO standardization, the language picked up some heavy-duty container and algorithm libraries, and they\u0026rsquo;re well thought-out and consistent. However, C++ makes some design decisions that are almost contradictory, and the programmer pays the price for it. It\u0026rsquo;s a compiled, strongly-typed language that allows multiple inheritance and operator overloading. Put a different way: It\u0026rsquo;s a language that lets you prove how smart you think you are, while shooting yourself in the foot, ankle, leg\u0026hellip;you get the idea.\nC++ tries to be all things to all people\u0026ndash;elegant, powerful, abstract, concrete, accessible, portable. Truly, you *can* do anything you want to with it, and squeeze every last cycle out of the hardware you\u0026rsquo;re working on. But, the gotchas involved seem severe. If you want closeness to the machine, and the removal of barriers to hacking, just use C. If you want to think in higher O-O terms, why not use a VM-based language like C# or Java? If you *really* want to be productive, choose a tool like Ruby, Python, or (gasp) VB and get the job done.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/thoughts-c-is-whacked/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, at my time on the beach, I inhaled Lippman\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;C++ Primer (4th Edition)\u0026rdquo;, attempting to get back up-to-speed on a language I left 6 years ago. At that time, I knew enough to be dangerous, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t know enough programming theory to \u0026ldquo;get\u0026rdquo; half the stuff. My instruction on C++ had been \u0026ldquo;C using iostream\u0026rdquo;, and some cursory stuff on classes and templates.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, I\u0026rsquo;m both impressed and horrified at C++. After coming through its ISO standardization, the language picked up some heavy-duty container and algorithm libraries, and they\u0026rsquo;re well thought-out and consistent. However, C++ makes some design decisions that are almost contradictory, and the programmer pays the price for it. It\u0026rsquo;s a compiled, strongly-typed language that allows multiple inheritance and operator overloading. Put a different way: It\u0026rsquo;s a language that lets you prove how smart you think you are, while shooting yourself in the foot, ankle, leg\u0026hellip;you get the idea.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thoughts: C++ (is whacked!)"},{"content":"First things first\u0026ndash;thanks for the well-wishes! Mom\u0026rsquo;s doing okay\u0026ndash;she had gallbladder surgery July 20th, and sailed through with flying colors.\nWe embarked on our vacation, and I\u0026rsquo;ll be writing several updates to go with that, but to summarize: Eight days with no computer, and barely any traveling in the car were awesome. The drive down there and back with two small kids was not so great. Didn\u0026rsquo;t get too sunburned.\nYes, getting up again at my normal 5am was hard.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/short-update/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFirst things first\u0026ndash;thanks for the well-wishes! Mom\u0026rsquo;s doing okay\u0026ndash;she had gallbladder surgery July 20th, and sailed through with flying colors.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe embarked on our vacation, and I\u0026rsquo;ll be writing several updates to go with that, but to summarize: Eight days with no computer, and barely any traveling in the car were awesome. The drive down there and back with two small kids was not so great. Didn\u0026rsquo;t get too sunburned.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Short update"},{"content":"My mom is in the hospital, awaiting surgery today at 11 am. It\u0026rsquo;s just a gallbladder removal\u0026ndash;simple, laproscopic, and routine. I\u0026rsquo;m still uneasy\u0026ndash;the pain she\u0026rsquo;s been having doesn\u0026rsquo;t add-up to just gallbladder problems.\nIf all goes well with that, I\u0026rsquo;m headed out on vacation tomorrow, 654 miles to the Atlantic Seaboard, namely Holden Beach, North Carolina. I pray we all stay safe and that all goes well with Mom\u0026rsquo;s surgery.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/prayer-requests.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy mom is in the hospital, awaiting surgery today at 11 am. It\u0026rsquo;s just a gallbladder removal\u0026ndash;simple, laproscopic, and routine. I\u0026rsquo;m still uneasy\u0026ndash;the pain she\u0026rsquo;s been having doesn\u0026rsquo;t add-up to just gallbladder problems.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf all goes well with that, I\u0026rsquo;m headed out on vacation tomorrow, 654 miles to the Atlantic Seaboard, namely Holden Beach, North Carolina. I pray we all stay safe and that all goes well with Mom\u0026rsquo;s surgery.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Prayer Requests..."},{"content":"I hope and pray that your Mom is fine. Susan - Jul 5, 2007\nI hope and pray that your Mom is fine.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/prayer-requests...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-hope-and-pray-that-your-mom-is-fine\"\u003eI hope and pray that your Mom is fine.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/14266500429112482921\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eSusan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI hope and pray that your Mom is fine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Prayer Requests... (Comments)"},{"content":"At 11:42 pm this past Saturday, I had a moment: I had a useless piece of information to impart regarding the topic at hand, and I DIDN\u0026rsquo;T SAY ANYTHING.\nI\u0026rsquo;m usually the guy who\u0026rsquo;s throwing in random facts. This is because I have (or had) a burning desire to appear intelligent.\nThis marks the only time in recent memory where I had the opportunity and didn\u0026rsquo;t say anything\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/factoid-milestone/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt 11:42 pm this past Saturday, I had a moment: I had a useless piece of information to impart regarding the topic at hand, and I DIDN\u0026rsquo;T SAY ANYTHING.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m usually the guy who\u0026rsquo;s throwing in random facts. This is because I have (or had) a burning desire to appear intelligent.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis marks the only time in recent memory where I had the opportunity and didn\u0026rsquo;t say anything\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Factoid milestone"},{"content":"Idyllic weekend\u0026hellip;reading, exercise, and trying to buy a piano in Da Hood.\nFriday night: walked around Scott Co Park for 1 1/2 hrs.\nSaturday: The Piano Story.\nSunday: Church, hanging out at home.\n* * *\nThe Piano Story:\nWhitney wants a piano. She wants the kids to take piano lessons, and she\u0026rsquo;d like to start playing again herself. I dig pianos, too. Well, I like music in general.\nThing is, in order to afford one, we need to get one used. This isn\u0026rsquo;t really a problem, because lots of people move cross-country and don\u0026rsquo;t want to take their thousand pound piano with them.\nSince Craigslist is your friend, Whitney found a Kawai piano for $200. This is rather like finding a BMW for $2000, from what I understand. Anyway, she tries for a week to get an appointment with this gal Robin to see the piano, but nothing. She finally calls her Friday to see if we can see it Saturday. Arrangements are made, but things seem a little sketchy. The piano\u0026rsquo;s in a very bad part of Lousiville (15th street @ W Hill), in some sort of storage facility.\nAt this point, my wife has not only bought the piano in her head, she\u0026rsquo;s also derived the optimum location for it in our living room, as well as the practice schedule Maria will be following when she\u0026rsquo;s 5. That is she\u0026rsquo;s got the FEVER.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve had the fever. Had it many times, for everything from cars to palm pilots to cameras. Nothing can cure it except obtaining the item or convincing YOURSELF it\u0026rsquo;s not a good idea. Thus, there was no way I\u0026rsquo;m letting her do this by herself\u0026ndash;much the same way two priests go into an exorcism. She needs a wingman.\nAnyway, we piled into Yoda and head to Lousiville early Saturday, Maria in tow. Leaving her with Stu, Whitney and I head to da Hood. It\u0026rsquo;s remarkable how much Lousiville and St. Louis look alike\u0026ndash;same structure, same gradual transition between neighborhoods. Arriving at the appointed time, the seller\u0026rsquo;s not there, and it looks like a scene out of \u0026lsquo;Law and Order\u0026rsquo;: Train tracks, closed-up shipping dock, and steel cargo containers arrayed around the grounds in \u0026lsquo;V\u0026rsquo; formation.\nHmmm\u0026hellip;apparently \u0026lsquo;storage facility\u0026rsquo; can also mean: Steel cargo containers with padlocks in the middle of a parking lot.\nSo, Bella calls the gal, and she says she\u0026rsquo;ll scrambling to get someone to help her unload the cargo conatiner. The piano\u0026rsquo;s at the back. (Alarm bell #689: If you\u0026rsquo;re trying to unload something you don\u0026rsquo;t want, why\u0026rsquo;s it at the back of a cargo container?) She\u0026rsquo;ll be down by about 1pm.\nQuote of the day:\nWhitney: \u0026ldquo;So, should we just wait around for you down here?\u0026rdquo;\nSeller: \u0026ldquo;Under no circumstances should you wait there for any length of time.\u0026rdquo;\nHoo boy.\nSo, we kill 90 minutes in downtown Louisville, observing that there should probably be a cliff or something at the I65 bridge\u0026ndash;east of that, Renaissance city, west of that, postmodern Hell. We return, and the seller\u0026rsquo;s just gotten there with her really skinny 50-ish helper, and she says she\u0026rsquo;ll call back when she\u0026rsquo;s got the piano out.\nYeah, this was really not happening. I got back in the car and just started to shake my head. \u0026ldquo;Tell her to forget it,\u0026rdquo; I murmured.\n\u0026ldquo;No, let\u0026rsquo;s come back one more time, \u0026quot; Bella replied. I\u0026rsquo;ve been there\u0026hellip;the desire for the shiny thing was fading, but she\u0026rsquo;d already put it in our living room, so she needed time for it to sink it. So, we drove back to JTown, and sitting in her parents\u0026rsquo; front parlor, what I\u0026rsquo;d said the night before finally hit her:\nIf it\u0026rsquo;s meant to be, everything will fall into place. If it\u0026rsquo;s not, then it will be OBVIOUS that it\u0026rsquo;s not.\nYeah, 6 hours of aggravation had shown: RUN AWAY!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/the-weekend-that-was...funny-story-ahead/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIdyllic weekend\u0026hellip;reading, exercise, and trying to buy a piano in Da Hood.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFriday night: walked around Scott Co Park for 1 1/2 hrs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaturday: The Piano Story.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSunday: Church, hanging out at home.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Piano Story:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney wants a piano. She wants the kids to take piano lessons, and she\u0026rsquo;d like to start playing again herself. I dig pianos, too. Well, I like music in general.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThing is, in order to afford one, we need to get one used. This isn\u0026rsquo;t really a problem, because lots of people move cross-country and don\u0026rsquo;t want to take their thousand pound piano with them.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The weekend that was...(funny story ahead)"},{"content":"yup :) Whitney - Jul 2, 2007\nyup :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/the-weekend-that-was...funny-story-ahead-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"yup-\"\u003eyup :)\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eyup :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"The weekend that was...(funny story ahead) (Comments)"},{"content":" Project management in the software industry seems to suffer from a level of delusion that would get a person heavily medicated and assigned to a padded room for their own safety. One definition of insanity is expecting different results from the same input. And yet project after project gets planned with the same naive assumption that deliverable dates will be met, changes will not be added at the last minute and that senior VPs will not want to mark the project by making a pointless last minute addition just so they can say they had input into the project and justify their salaries.\nNot saying I totally agree with this guy, but an overwrought \u0026lsquo;I\u0026rsquo;m mad as hell and I\u0026rsquo;m not gonna take it anymore\u0026rsquo; rant is fun to watch.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;ve not dealt with this lately because I quit my job. Or rather my many jobs: Team lead, offshore development coordinator, technical advisor, management flunky, and maintenance support programmer. Wasn\u0026rsquo;t that I didn\u0026rsquo;t like it; I\u0026rsquo;m enough like my parents that I love to work.\nI just took a step back and saw where it all was going\u0026ndash;nowhwere. More work, more responsibility, and an asymptotic increase in stress level. I finally asked Whitney one day, \u0026ldquo;Do you think I\u0026rsquo;m a happy person?\u0026rdquo;\nA: \u0026ldquo;You used to be.\u0026rdquo;\nThat was a wakeup call.\nYep, it\u0026rsquo;s like I\u0026rsquo;m the old me again\u0026ndash;straight talk, relaxed, appreciative of others, able to think about stuff besides work.\nDidn\u0026rsquo;t quit my company; just applied for and got another job. It\u0026rsquo;s quite possible my company may quit me, but again\u0026ndash;not too worried about it. It\u0026rsquo;s pretty much in God\u0026rsquo;s hands, and I believe He\u0026rsquo;ll give me the tools to deal with it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/loving-a-good-rant/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProject management in the software industry seems to suffer from a level of delusion that would get a person heavily medicated and assigned to a padded room for their own safety. One definition of insanity is expecting different results from the same input. And yet project after project gets planned with the same naive assumption that deliverable dates will be met, changes will not be added at the last minute and that senior VPs will not want to mark the project by making a pointless last minute addition just so they can say they had input into the project and justify their salaries.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Loving a good rant"},{"content":"A couple of years after the last film came out we have the next installment of the Daniel Radcli\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;Harry Potter movies, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s get this out of the way\u0026ndash;I LOVED THIS MOVIE! The trio can really act these days (particularly Emma Watson and Radcliffe), and the movie was a visual and comedic delight. From the first scene on, we\u0026rsquo;re in the land of tasteful CGI\u0026ndash;From the first scene\u0026rsquo;s dementor attack throught he climactic battle between Voldemort and Dumbledoor, it\u0026rsquo;s a wizard\u0026rsquo;s world, and wonder abounds.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s also a claustrophobic, small world\u0026ndash;the visual language of this movie turns the expansive, bright world of the earlier movies inside out. Bravo! Here most scenes are at night, and daylight exteriors are shot tight against the actors. This is an intimate story about Harry as a young adult, filled with guilt about Cedric\u0026rsquo;s death the previous term. He\u0026rsquo;s increasingly isolated, and he feels the evil within him rising.\nAmid all that, we find delightful asides and comedy\u0026ndash;Harry\u0026rsquo;s burgeoning relationship with Cho, Hermione and Ron\u0026rsquo;s teasing, \u0026ldquo;Dumbledoor\u0026rsquo;s Army,\u0026rdquo; and the room of requirement. This is the third act, and it provides enough of a relief to pick-up the story and get us involved with the actors again. No longer the kids from \u0026ldquo;The Sorcerer\u0026rsquo;s Stone,\u0026rdquo; they\u0026rsquo;re an interesting lot now. Even Neville Longbottom is deep in this story.\nGreat fun, and worth seeing in a theatre. It\u0026rsquo;s the noir Harry Potter, and it makes me eager to read \u0026ldquo;The Deathly Hallows\u0026rdquo; to find out how this all ends.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/review-harry-potter-and-the-order-of-the-phoenix/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA couple of years after the \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/review-harry-potter-and-the-goblet-of-fire/\" title=\"goblet of fire\"\u003elast film came out\u003c/a\u003e we have the next installment of the Daniel Radcli\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;\u003cem\u003eHarry Potter\u003c/em\u003e movies, \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0373889/\"\u003eHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s get this out of the way\u0026ndash;I LOVED THIS MOVIE! The trio can really act these days (particularly Emma Watson and Radcliffe), and the movie was a visual and comedic delight. From the first scene on, we\u0026rsquo;re in the land of tasteful CGI\u0026ndash;From the first scene\u0026rsquo;s dementor attack throught he climactic battle between Voldemort and Dumbledoor, it\u0026rsquo;s a wizard\u0026rsquo;s world, and wonder abounds.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"},{"content":"Had a fascinating conversation with Chuck the other day, where he said:\nThe best thing that ever happened to me is when they cut out my pension\nThis got me thinking: Today, if you\u0026rsquo;re lucky you have some employer-matching, tax-deferred retirement plan, like a 401(k), 403(b), SIMPLE, ABC-XYZ-Dooflatchie. These plans are all portable\u0026ndash;quit or get laid-off, and you take the money with you.\nFrom a corporate perspective, this moves legacy costs off the books. once you\u0026rsquo;ve contributed to the plan, your obligation ends, and the employee and the servicing company (say, Fidelity or Vanguard) handle the rest. This is A Good Thingtm.\nBut, is there an unintended side effect? Does this make employees more willing to move when tough times hit.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/correlation-no-pension-no-loyalty/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHad a fascinating conversation with \u003ca href=\"http://gnarled.blogspot.com/\"\u003eChuck\u003c/a\u003e the other day, where he said:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe best thing that ever happened to me is when they cut out my pension\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis got me thinking: Today, if you\u0026rsquo;re lucky you have some employer-matching, tax-deferred retirement plan, like a 401(k), 403(b), SIMPLE, ABC-XYZ-Dooflatchie. These plans are all portable\u0026ndash;quit or get laid-off, and you take the money with you.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom a corporate perspective, this moves legacy costs off the books. once you\u0026rsquo;ve contributed to the plan, your obligation ends, and the employee and the servicing company (say, Fidelity or Vanguard) handle the rest. This is A Good Thingtm.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Correlation: No pension == no loyalty?"},{"content":"ABSOLUTELY!! When I started at the credit uni\u0026hellip; Whitney - Jul 2, 2007\nABSOLUTELY!!\nWhen I started at the credit union, retirement benefits included 100% pension with 100% healthcare costs covered.\nAs soon as the first people retired (5 in one year, four years ago), they cut retirement for everyone, changing it to 50% pension from the average of your last 5 years of salary with no healthcare costs covered, including cutting the healthcare coverage for the 5 existing pension recipients. Granted most companies offer no pension (their excuse and main bragging point during transition) but it definitely negated any niggling loyalty I had to the CU. If a company\u0026rsquo;s not going to offer retirement benefits, in addition to treating you like crap while you\u0026rsquo;re there, why bother to stay?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/correlation-no-pension-no-loyalty-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"absolutely\"\u003eABSOLUTELY!!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen I started at the credit uni\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eABSOLUTELY!!\u003cbr\u003e\nWhen I started at the credit union, retirement benefits included 100% pension with 100% healthcare costs covered.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs soon as the first people retired (5 in one year, four years ago), they cut retirement for everyone, changing it to 50% pension from the average of your last 5 years of salary with no healthcare costs covered, including cutting the healthcare coverage for the 5 existing pension recipients. Granted most companies offer no pension (their excuse and main bragging point during transition) but it definitely negated any niggling loyalty I had to the CU. If a company\u0026rsquo;s not going to offer retirement benefits, in addition to treating you like crap while you\u0026rsquo;re there, why bother to stay?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Correlation: No pension == no loyalty? (Comments)"},{"content":"Replying to your earlier email about the quality of my work.\nI\u0026rsquo;d just like to reiterate that while your comments about the bathroom and vending areas are valid (and appreciated), I would remind you that this building has four floors. I agree that your floor is sub-optimal. I think our whole product support organization would join me in echoing your sentiments that toilets that flush are preferable to \u0026lsquo;sewer gas spewing [expletive deleted] holes\u0026rsquo;.\nPlease allow me to recharacterize: The other three floors of this building have been in production for six years now, and have given very many good years of service. They\u0026rsquo;ve met (and, indeed, exceeded!) all customer and business requirements. I\u0026rsquo;d like to build consensus and shift the conversation to those positive aspects, and away from the bad report from the unfortunate incident.\nAfter all, the other three floors are key business-drivers. We have four gold-class accounts served by those floors. I agree that, as you put it, the \u0026lsquo;damned visitor center\u0026rsquo; is on the floor that is sub-optimal. But really, how can we count the number of people in the visitor\u0026rsquo;s center? We have metrics proving that those four accounts are very happy with my cleaning work.\nReally, it\u0026rsquo;s a matter of perception. Please remember that before CC\u0026rsquo;ing the CEO about \u0026ldquo;Billy being eaten by the rats in the vending area.\u0026rdquo;\nThank you for your attention.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/janitorial-spin/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eReplying to your earlier email about the quality of my work.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d just like to reiterate that while your comments about the bathroom and vending areas are valid (and appreciated), I would remind you that this building has four floors. I agree that your floor is sub-optimal. I think our whole product support organization would join me in echoing your sentiments that toilets that flush are preferable to \u0026lsquo;sewer gas spewing [expletive deleted] holes\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Janitorial Spin"},{"content":"WTF? Whitney - Jul 4, 2007\nWTF?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/07/janitorial-spin-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"wtf\"\u003eWTF?\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 4, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWTF?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Janitorial Spin (Comments)"},{"content":" POWERS OF CONCENTRATION\nIf there is one trait that best defines an engineer it is the ability to concentrate on one subject to the complete exclusion of everything else in the environment. This sometimes causes engineers to be pronounced dead prematurely. Some funeral homes in high-tech areas have started checking resumes before processing the bodies. Anybody with a degree in electrical engineering or experience in computer programming is propped up in the lounge for a few days just to see if he or she snaps out of it.\nlink\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/engineers-explained/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePOWERS OF CONCENTRATION\u003cbr\u003e\nIf there is one trait that best defines an engineer it is the ability to concentrate on one subject to the complete exclusion of everything else in the environment. This sometimes causes engineers to be pronounced dead prematurely. Some funeral homes in high-tech areas have started checking resumes before processing the bodies. Anybody with a degree in electrical engineering or experience in computer programming is propped up in the lounge for a few days just to see if he or she snaps out of it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Engineers explained"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ll take an E30-size car with 240 hp for under $30k, please, Alex :-)\nI think BMW finally figured-out that the 3-series was getting a little too big. Supposedly, there\u0026rsquo;s plenty of the previous gen 3-series engineering in this car (as there is in the R50/R53 MINIs).\nNummy\u0026hellip;now in about 10 years when I can afford a used one :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/the-1-series-is-coming/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll take an E30-size car with 240 hp for under $30k, please, Alex :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.caranddriver.com/assets/image/2007/W26/062820071038204190.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think BMW finally figured-out that the 3-series was getting a little too big. Supposedly, there\u0026rsquo;s plenty of the previous gen 3-series engineering in this car (as there is in the R50/R53 MINIs).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNummy\u0026hellip;now in about 10 years when I can afford a used one :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The 1-series is coming!!"},{"content":"J-M (with heavy French accent): \u0026hellip;and now vee have zee tree per-son who get ze \u0026lsquo;ate wall certification.\nJ: [raised hand] May I ask a question?\nJ-M: Cer-tan-lee\nJ: What\u0026rsquo;s \u0026rsquo;eight wall\u0026rsquo;.\nJ-M: It is zee next thing af-tur seven wall.\n* * *\nPerhaps this was one of those \u0026lsquo;you had to be there\u0026rsquo; moments, but dang was it funny! J-M goofing on my old boss. Beautiful.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/from-a-beautiful-meeting-a-few-days-ago.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJ-M (with heavy French accent): \u0026hellip;and now vee have zee tree per-son who get ze \u0026lsquo;ate wall certification.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJ: [raised hand] May I ask a question?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJ-M: Cer-tan-lee\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJ: What\u0026rsquo;s \u0026rsquo;eight wall\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJ-M: It is zee next thing af-tur seven wall.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePerhaps this was one of those \u0026lsquo;you had to be there\u0026rsquo; moments, but dang was it funny! J-M goofing on my old boss. Beautiful.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"From a beautiful meeting a few days ago..."},{"content":"link\nAt Georgetown College, I took Compilers, a 400-level capstone course that scared the hell out of everyone. Everyone was like 10 students, because our CS department was that small. However, it was a required course. If you wanted to graduate witha B.S. in CompSci, then you had to have this course.\nThe prof was Bryan Crawley. Mister Crawley (insert Ozzy reference here). A strange guy, he was without a terminal degree, which made him the bootheel of the Math, Physics, and Computer Science department. The one thing this guy *loved* was compilers\u0026ndash;he started introducing compiler-like concepts back in CS 111.\nAnyway, the class was pretty boring, but it covered all the bases\u0026ndash;using lex and regex\u0026rsquo;s to tokenize, then using yacc to generate the Abstract Syntax Tree, and then writing the C code to do the code generation by traversing the tree. The language we were using was a fairly trivial stack-based affair, but it did demonstrate most of the problems with compillation. In particular, I thought \u0026lsquo;backpatching\u0026rsquo; (a natural result of a recusive-descent parser) was going to make my brain melt.\nBut, eventually, we figured it out.\nI do encourage everyone slogging through a decent CS program to seek out a compiler class, taught by a good prof.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/on-compilers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-food.html\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt Georgetown College, I took Compilers, a 400-level capstone course that scared the hell out of everyone. Everyone was like 10 students, because our CS department was that small. However, it was a \u003cem\u003erequired\u003c/em\u003e course. If you wanted to graduate witha B.S. in CompSci, then you \u003cem\u003ehad\u003c/em\u003e to have this course.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe prof was Bryan Crawley. Mister Crawley (insert Ozzy reference here). A strange guy, he was without a terminal degree, which made him the bootheel of the Math, Physics, and Computer Science department. The one thing this guy *loved* was compilers\u0026ndash;he started introducing compiler-like concepts back in CS 111.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"Compilers\""},{"content":"Our compiler class at UK, taught by Prof. Kubota w\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jun 6, 2007\nOur compiler class at UK, taught by Prof. Kubota was a joke. Lotsa theory scribbled over the board and one project that it took most of the class the whole semester to complete. I wish we HAD done some hands-on with lex and yacc - I get the concepts behind it all but it\u0026rsquo;s still easier for me to write a strtok() parser for simple stuff. That and so few people know enough to maintain a lex/yacc parser that you\u0026rsquo;re just asking for trouble. Drives me nuts when someone \u0026ldquo;shows off\u0026rdquo; by writing a parser for something nearly as simple as a property file.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/on-compilers-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"our-compiler-class-at-uk-taught-by-prof-kubota-w\"\u003eOur compiler class at UK, taught by Prof. Kubota w\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 6, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur compiler class at UK, taught by Prof. Kubota was a joke. Lotsa theory scribbled over the board and one project that it took most of the class the whole semester to complete. I wish we HAD done some hands-on with lex and yacc - I get the concepts behind it all but it\u0026rsquo;s still easier for me to write a strtok() parser for simple stuff. That and so few people know enough to maintain a lex/yacc parser that you\u0026rsquo;re just asking for trouble. Drives me nuts when someone \u0026ldquo;shows off\u0026rdquo; by writing a parser for something nearly as simple as a property file.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"Compilers\" (Comments)"},{"content":"Two words: Loved it.\nlink\nDumb, enjoyable comic book movie. Not pretentious (a la \u0026ldquo;Hulk\u0026rdquo;), nor overlong (Spidey #3).\nAny move where a flaming skeleton rides a demonic motorcycle up a skyscraper to defeat an elemental demon is worth at least a look. The CGI looked great, and Cage got to chew the scenery (and co-star Eva Mendes) for a full 112 minutes.\nProbably the best part for me is Peter Fonda as Satan, strolling by Cage\u0026rsquo;s motorcycle offering \u0026ldquo;Nice Bike.\u0026rdquo; Cage\u0026rsquo;s bike is a replica of Fonda\u0026rsquo;s from \u0026ldquo;Easy Rider\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/review-ghost-rider/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwo words: Loved it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0259324/\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://z.about.com/d/comicbooks/1/0/9/7/ghostrider2.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDumb, enjoyable comic book movie. Not pretentious (a la \u0026ldquo;Hulk\u0026rdquo;), nor overlong (Spidey #3).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAny move where a flaming skeleton rides a demonic motorcycle up a skyscraper to defeat an elemental demon is worth at least a look. The CGI looked great, and Cage got to chew the scenery (and co-star Eva Mendes) for a full 112 minutes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProbably the best part for me is Peter Fonda as Satan, strolling by Cage\u0026rsquo;s motorcycle offering \u0026ldquo;Nice Bike.\u0026rdquo; Cage\u0026rsquo;s bike is a replica of Fonda\u0026rsquo;s from \u0026ldquo;Easy Rider\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Ghost Rider"},{"content":"yeah I liked it too. campy, but I\u0026rsquo;d hit that. Whitney - Jun 5, 2007\nyeah I liked it too. campy, but I\u0026rsquo;d hit that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/review-ghost-rider-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"yeah-i-liked-it-too-campy-but-id-hit-that\"\u003eyeah I liked it too. campy, but I\u0026rsquo;d hit that.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eyeah I liked it too. campy, but I\u0026rsquo;d hit that.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Review: Ghost Rider (Comments)"},{"content":"Happy Father\u0026rsquo;s day to all the men out there.\nAs I sat in Church today, I was taken back to February 10th, to a particular moment I\u0026rsquo;d like to share.\n* * *\nThe operation was over. Maria was fine\u0026ndash;pink, healthy, and squalling. Whitney was holding up well; I hated to leave her, but I wanted to stay with the baby in her first minutes of life. I gazed upon her as she got her first examinations; the pediatrician said she was fine, with a nice twinkle in her eyes.\nI guess they could ID the noobies (never had a baby before) dads. My relief was like another person in the room\u0026hellip;I wish I\u0026rsquo;d had a mirror to look into so I could say, \u0026ldquo;She\u0026rsquo;s gonna be okay.\u0026rdquo;\nThis was the moment I came back to in church today, this moment of relief, of the battle being over. That day, the feeling broke over me like a wave, and I excused myself.\nI went back to the room, snuck into the bathroom and sobbed like a baby. I\u0026rsquo;ve never felt smaller, more powerless in my life. Good when God smacks you in the head like that sometimes.\n* * *\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the incongruity I\u0026rsquo;m dealing with today\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve been under so much stress in the past few months, that when Whitney asked me what I wanted for Fathers Day, I replied (offhandedly): \u0026ldquo;I want a day to myself.\u0026rdquo;\n:-) Careful what you wish for, I guess. They\u0026rsquo;re up in Louisville this afternoon through tomorrow.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/fathers-day-meditation/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHappy Father\u0026rsquo;s day to all the men out there.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs I sat in Church today, I was taken back to \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/the-condensed-version-maria-coming-into-the-world/\" title=\"maria\"\u003eFebruary 10th\u003c/a\u003e, to a particular moment I\u0026rsquo;d like to share.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe operation was over. Maria was fine\u0026ndash;pink, healthy, and squalling. Whitney was holding up well; I hated to leave her, but I wanted to stay with the baby in her first minutes of life. I gazed upon her as she got her first examinations; the pediatrician said she was fine, with a nice twinkle in her eyes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Father's Day meditation"},{"content":"Good post, by the way! Jeff Roberts - Jun 3, 2007\nGood post, by the way!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/fathers-day-meditation-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"good-post-by-the-way\"\u003eGood post, by the way!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGood post, by the way!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Father's Day meditation (Comments)"},{"content":"Blue People\nYes, this is an article in Pravda (the former Soviet newspaper) about the blue Fugates from Troublesome Creek, on the border between Breathitt and Perry counties.\nFun times.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/in-honor-of-my-pal-susan-blue-people/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/93410-0/\"\u003eBlue People\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, this is an article in Pravda (the former Soviet newspaper) about the blue Fugates from Troublesome Creek, on the border between Breathitt and Perry counties.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFun times.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"In honor of my pal Susan: Blue people"},{"content":"LOL that is great.. Susan - Jun 6, 2007\nLOL that is great..\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/in-honor-of-my-pal-susan-blue-people-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"lol-that-is-great\"\u003eLOL that is great..\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/14266500429112482921\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eSusan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 6, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLOL that is great..\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"In honor of my pal Susan: Blue people (Comments)"},{"content":"Gary Sinise\u0026rsquo;s 1992 remake of the John Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men was long and boring, but strangely compeling. Sinise plays George, a migrant worker in Californa during the Great Depression. George is joined at the hip to a giant named Lennie Smalls, played by John Malkovich.\nAs the movie opens, we see Lennie and George fleeing from a posse, George has done some very bad thing, and they had to get away, hiding among the reeds in a creek to throw off the bloodhounds. From there, the story revolves around them as they seek work at a Barley farm, doing hard manual labor as they desperately try to stay out of trouble.\nLike many Steinbeck pieces, and like the Robert Burns poem \u0026ldquo;To A Mouse\u0026rdquo; on which the story is based, at its center this is a universal story told through simple (almost parable-like themes). For instance, an old man has a very old dog that that the bunkhouse agrees should be put out of its misery. The dog suffers through each day, but its the old man\u0026rsquo;s only friend in the world, loving him unconditionally. Eventually, another ranch hand takes the dog out and shoots it.\nThe simple theme here is one of burden and responsibility, posing the question: How much burden is too much, and when does our responsibility move from the ones we love to the greater good of community?\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a tragic, sad story, but one worth watching. The performances by Sinise and Malkovich are wonderful, and the supporting cast draws our interest. It\u0026rsquo;s a dirty, sweaty story, told in the same meandering way as Paul Neuman\u0026rsquo;s Cool Hand Luke: When we reach the climactic tragedies, they seem unavoidable.\nThat inevitability is tough to swallow, but so is life, sometimes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/review-of-mice-and-men/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGary Sinise\u0026rsquo;s 1992 remake of the John Steinbeck novel \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0105046/\"\u003eOf Mice and Men\u003c/a\u003e was long and boring, but strangely compeling. Sinise plays George, a migrant worker in Californa during the Great Depression. George is joined at the hip to a giant named Lennie Smalls, played by John Malkovich.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs the movie opens, we see Lennie and George fleeing from a posse, George has done some very bad thing, and they had to get away, hiding among the reeds in a creek to throw off the bloodhounds. From there, the story revolves around them as they seek work at a Barley farm, doing hard manual labor as they desperately try to stay out of trouble.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: \"Of Mice And Men\""},{"content":"I enjoyed the book quite a bit and thought it was \u0026hellip; Chuck Fouts - Jun 5, 2007\nI enjoyed the book quite a bit and thought it was an excellent window into the life of two generations ago. I hadn\u0026rsquo;t heard of the movie but your \u0026ldquo;long and boring\u0026rdquo; along with the \u0026ldquo;but one worth watching\u0026rdquo; has me confused. Is this a good movie for the replication of the original story, for the mind set of watching the vagaries of life, or for the performance of the actors themselves. To be honest Malkovich has worn me thin over the years but I could watch Cool Hand Luke every year or so without getting too tired of it.\nHaven\u0026rsquo;t read the book, so my commen\u0026hellip; HarryC - Jun 6, 2007\n@Chuck:\nHaven\u0026rsquo;t read the book, so my comment wasn\u0026rsquo;t directed at the quality of the adaptation.\nI would suppose the middle (option \u0026lsquo;B\u0026rsquo;\u0026hellip;wow, I could be a manager!) of the choices is what I was getting at: The movie is slow, but yet relentless. There\u0026rsquo;s this air of doom that follows George and Lennie, and it builds with each scene.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/review-of-mice-and-men-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-enjoyed-the-book-quite-a-bit-and-thought-it-was-\"\u003eI enjoyed the book quite a bit and thought it was \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/17807245803341116147\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eChuck Fouts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI enjoyed the book quite a bit and thought it was an excellent window into the life of two generations ago. I hadn\u0026rsquo;t heard of the movie but your \u0026ldquo;long and boring\u0026rdquo; along with the \u0026ldquo;but one worth watching\u0026rdquo; has me confused. Is this a good movie for the replication of the original story, for the mind set of watching the vagaries of life, or for the performance of the actors themselves. To be honest Malkovich has worn me thin over the years but I could watch \u003cem\u003eCool Hand Luke\u003c/em\u003e every year or so without getting too tired of it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: \"Of Mice And Men\" (Comments)"},{"content":"From my pal Chris Cool (yes, that is his real name\u0026hellip;). His band EYESUPONUS is playing Icthus this weekend\nThanks to all your support and all your votes, we will be playing the\nIchthus Festival in Wilmore, KY this weekend!\nThe festival is Thursday 14th - Saturday 16th. There are three stages: the\nmain stage, the Deep End stage, and the Edge stage.\nWe are scheduled to play Saturday at 3:40 pm on The Edge stage. If you are\nat the festival, please come and hang out with us for our 25-minute set. We\nwouldn\u0026rsquo;t be here if it weren\u0026rsquo;t for you all, and EYESUPONUS truly appreciates\nthe love and support we have gotten throughout this entire process. I hope\nto see as many of you there as possible.\nProps to a man who\u0026rsquo;s known adversity, given it all up to the Lord, and praises him through his extreme talent for music.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/props-to-eyesuponus/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom my pal Chris Cool (yes, that is his real name\u0026hellip;). His band EYESUPONUS is playing Icthus this weekend\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThanks to all your support and all your votes, we will be playing the\u003cbr\u003e\nIchthus Festival in Wilmore, KY this weekend!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe festival is Thursday 14th - Saturday 16th. There are three stages: the\u003cbr\u003e\nmain stage, the Deep End stage, and the Edge stage.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe are scheduled to play Saturday at 3:40 pm on The Edge stage. If you are\u003cbr\u003e\nat the festival, please come and hang out with us for our 25-minute set. We\u003cbr\u003e\nwouldn\u0026rsquo;t be here if it weren\u0026rsquo;t for you all, and EYESUPONUS truly appreciates\u003cbr\u003e\nthe love and support we have gotten throughout this entire process. I hope\u003cbr\u003e\nto see as many of you there as possible.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Props to EYESUPONUS"},{"content":"Just downloaded the public Windows beta of Safari from here, and I must say I\u0026rsquo;m impressed\u0026hellip;\nIt\u0026rsquo;s really fast, and it automatically imported my Firefox bookmarks.\nGuess this is apple\u0026rsquo;s plan, eat Windows from the inside out :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/checkin-out-safari-on-windows/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust downloaded the public Windows beta of Safari from \u003ca href=\"http://www.apple.com/safari/download/\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e, and I must say I\u0026rsquo;m impressed\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s really fast, and it automatically imported my Firefox bookmarks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGuess this is apple\u0026rsquo;s plan, eat Windows from the inside out :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Checkin' out 'Safari' on windows"},{"content":"My daughter is now 14 lbs, 10 oz, and 25 inches long, and 4 months old.\nBack to your regularly scheduled ranting.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/in-other-news/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy daughter is now 14 lbs, 10 oz, and 25 inches long, and 4 months old.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBack to your regularly scheduled ranting.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"In other news"},{"content":"You forgot \u0026ldquo;and cute as a button\u0026rdquo;. Jeff Roberts - Jun 1, 2007\nYou forgot \u0026ldquo;and cute as a button\u0026rdquo;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/in-other-news-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"you-forgot-and-cute-as-a-button\"\u003eYou forgot \u0026ldquo;and cute as a button\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou forgot \u0026ldquo;and cute as a button\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"In other news (Comments)"},{"content":"Our church Wednesday night group is reading Making Room for Life.\nThe book extols simple living, but not in the systematic, hair-shirted way others have. Instead, it takes some biblical principles as axioms and wraps modern problems around them. The main axiom is the \u0026ldquo;Hebrew Day\u0026rdquo;, which you could also rename the \u0026ldquo;Agrarian Day\u0026rdquo;. That is, a daily schedule defined, as its name implies, by daylight and darkness\u0026ndash;daylight is for productive work, darkness is for rest and individual/communal recuperation.\nFrazee treats his subject matter like most self-help books do: He analyzes the problems of modern life, then proposes a cure, then proceeds to show how that cure can fit many problems. Frazee\u0026rsquo;s problem is the death of community, which he postulates people need to survive. He does a very poor job of proving his postulation, but I\u0026rsquo;ll let that slide\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s almost self-evident that people need other people. We\u0026rsquo;re social creatures, even if you won\u0026rsquo;t accept that God set it up that way to begin with.\nSo we\u0026rsquo;re social creatures, but we\u0026rsquo;ve cocooned ourselves into suburbs with unknown neighbors and fears around each corner, with our kids unable to deal with the rich, multigenerational society that we once were. Instead, we sub-divide and try to find community elsewhere. He doesn\u0026rsquo;t touch on it, but the implications are obvious\u0026ndash;myspace, chatrooms, gangs, etc.\nThe solution? Constrain your work to the daytime, build relationships and sleep at night. ALWAYS eat family dinner together each night. Live in community with\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;your neighbors, in a sort of self-supporting, proximity-based relationship so that you don\u0026rsquo;t have to stress when you need to leave th kids with someone, you just leave them with a trusted neighbor. Imagine \u0026lsquo;Cheers\u0026rsquo; without the alcohol, or Mayberry. (Or my hometown, but replace \u0026lsquo;community\u0026rsquo; with \u0026lsquo;monstrous co-located extended family\u0026rsquo;.)\nThe second half of the book talks about practical applications of this idea, from moderate (trim your workload) to radical (change careers, move closer to work, get deeply involved with your neighbors). Some of it\u0026rsquo;s ivory-tower (as one amazon reviewer notes), but most of it is practical IF you want to follow-through on Frazee\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Hebrew Day\u0026rdquo; approach.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;m interested to see how my church takes this book, because EVERYONE at our church is over-scheduled, running from activities hither and yon. You might even call us borderline workaholics, at least the younger couples. The implications of this book are pretty profound:\nStop scheduling activities after 6pm Ooooookay, there go Wednesday night bible study and Sunday evening services. That discussion night should be fun.\nSome public school homework is just busy-work. \u0026lsquo;B\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;C\u0026rsquo; grades are okay, taken in context I really want to agree with this, but kids need to excel academically, especially if they\u0026rsquo;re in public school in KY.\nBe neighborly. And what if your neighbors are psychopaths? Or crack dealers? Or Psychopathic Crack Dealers?\nThe book itself is breezy, wordy, and quick. It\u0026rsquo;s written like an overzealous college paper, with plenty of references, but no counter to obvious arguments\u0026ndash;many of his conclusions are drawn from correlations (e.g. coincidences) not well-reasoned or researched causations. For example, people that work at night don\u0026rsquo;t live as long as people who work during the day. Married people live longer than unmarried people. Religious people live longer than atheists. What conclusions can you draw from those statistics?\nAnswer: Without constraining your argument, not a darn thing.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not that I disagree with this guy at all; it just gets on my nerves when self-help authors (religious or otherwise) invoke academic rigor without refuting or acknowledging the opposing position.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/review-making-room-for-life-by-randy-frazee/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOur church Wednesday night group is reading \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Making-Room-Life-Lifestyles-Relationships/dp/0310250161/\"\u003eMaking Room for Life\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book extols \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_living\"\u003esimple living\u003c/a\u003e, but not in the systematic, hair-shirted way others have. Instead, it takes some biblical principles as axioms and wraps modern problems around them. The main axiom is the \u0026ldquo;Hebrew Day\u0026rdquo;, which you could also rename the \u0026ldquo;Agrarian Day\u0026rdquo;. That is, a daily schedule defined, as its name implies, by daylight and darkness\u0026ndash;daylight is for productive work, darkness is for rest and individual/communal recuperation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: \"Making Room for Life\" by Randy Frazee"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;d have to take the \u0026ldquo;radical\u0026rdquo; option - move to a \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jun 2, 2007\nI\u0026rsquo;d have to take the \u0026ldquo;radical\u0026rdquo; option - move to a condo where the only chores are indoor ones, and where my neighbors are right in my face, since we\u0026rsquo;re all going to be so neighborly anyway.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/review-making-room-for-life-by-randy-frazee-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"id-have-to-take-the-radical-option---move-to-a-\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d have to take the \u0026ldquo;radical\u0026rdquo; option - move to a \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;d have to take the \u0026ldquo;radical\u0026rdquo; option - move to a condo where the only chores are indoor ones, and where my neighbors are right in my face, since we\u0026rsquo;re all going to be so neighborly anyway.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Review: \"Making Room for Life\" by Randy Frazee (Comments)"},{"content":"Interesting Consumer Price Index chart, from 1978 to now\nBasically, some items are going up much faster than inflation (Cost of college being #1) and some are flat to declining (cost of cars, televisions).\nI\u0026rsquo;ve got this theory that people are buying more expensive cars because of zero down, 0% interest loans that encourage them to get overextended. This leads to debt-slavery, meaning you become accustomed to always having a car payment, even though that (probably) isn\u0026rsquo;t necessary.\nIt seems similar to the subprime lending problem: The market for home buyers stagnated, then the Fed lowered rates and sub-prime lenders started financing questionable buyers, propping-up the housing market (creating a bubble, in many cases). If that\u0026rsquo;s true, then the auto industry is headed for the same contraction on a nation (global?) scale.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s lots of variables, as discussed in my Car Lounge Topic\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/cpi-chart-1978-to-now/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eInteresting Consumer Price Index chart, from 1978 to now\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/5572/costofgoodscpi19782004dm9.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, some items are going up much faster than inflation (Cost of college being #1) and some are flat to declining (cost of cars, televisions).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve got this theory that people are buying more expensive cars because of zero down, 0% interest loans that encourage them to get overextended. This leads to debt-slavery, meaning you become accustomed to always having a car payment, even though that (probably) isn\u0026rsquo;t necessary.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"CPI chart: 1978 to now"},{"content":"Yes, it had lots of plot holes, but it was light-hearted, escapist fun. I liked it because it didn\u0026rsquo;t take itself too seriously, electing to scream at the audience \u0026ldquo;Sure, WHY NOT?!\u0026rdquo;\nThe special effects are very well done, and the acting\u0026rsquo;s decent, if tounge-in-cheek.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/review-night-at-the-museum/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYes, it had lots of \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0477347/goofs\"\u003eplot holes\u003c/a\u003e, but it was light-hearted, escapist fun. I liked it because it didn\u0026rsquo;t take itself too seriously, electing to scream at the audience \u0026ldquo;Sure, WHY NOT?!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe special effects are very well done, and the acting\u0026rsquo;s decent, if tounge-in-cheek.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Night at the Museum"},{"content":"We liked it, too. \u0026ldquo;Do they look happy?!\u0026rdquo; Jeff Roberts - Jun 3, 2007\nWe liked it, too.\n\u0026ldquo;Do they look happy?!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Naw, they look saaad.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/review-night-at-the-museum-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"we-liked-it-too\"\u003eWe liked it, too.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Do they look happy?!\u0026rdquo;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe liked it, too.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Do they look happy?!\u0026rdquo;\u003cbr\u003e\n\u0026ldquo;Naw, they look saaad.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Review: Night at the Museum (Comments)"},{"content":" qsort([]) -\u0026gt; []; qsort([Pivot|T]) -\u0026gt; qsort([X || X \u0026lt;- T, X \u0026lt; Pivot]) ++ [Pivot] ++ qsort([X || X \u0026lt;- T, X \u0026gt;= Pivot]). (taken from \u0026lsquo;Programming Erlang\u0026rsquo; by the pragmatic programmers).\nThat\u0026rsquo;s just\u0026hellip;beautiful. Quicksort in 4 lines. Nothing extraneous, just the pure recursive algorithm.\nErlang is bending my mind, but that\u0026rsquo;s okay\u0026hellip;it needs a little kick every so often.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/how-erlang-just-blew-my-mind/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ccode\u003e  qsort([]) -\u0026gt; [];   qsort([Pivot|T]) -\u0026gt; qsort([X || X \u0026lt;- T, X \u0026lt; Pivot])   ++ [Pivot] ++   qsort([X || X \u0026lt;- T, X \u0026gt;= Pivot]).  \u003c/code\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(taken from \u0026lsquo;Programming Erlang\u0026rsquo; by the pragmatic programmers).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s just\u0026hellip;beautiful. Quicksort in 4 lines. Nothing extraneous, just the pure recursive algorithm.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eErlang is bending my mind, but that\u0026rsquo;s okay\u0026hellip;it needs a little kick every so often.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How erlang just blew my mind"},{"content":"As we\u0026rsquo;re all a little down about Joey leaving for the summer, I suggested we go test-driving. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s been jonesing for minivans since Maria arrived, and I thought a test-drive of two of these behemoths would get it out of her system, or redirect her at something smaller like a Mazda5.\nNope.\nHer current object d\u0026rsquo;amour:\nThat\u0026rsquo;s a Sienna LE.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/van-shopping/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs we\u0026rsquo;re all a little down about Joey leaving for the summer, I suggested we go test-driving. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s been jonesing for minivans since Maria arrived, and I thought a test-drive of two of these behemoths would get it out of her system, or redirect her at something smaller like a Mazda5.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNope.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer current object d\u0026rsquo;amour:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.toyota.com/byt/pub/media?id=16279979\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s a Sienna LE.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Van shopping"},{"content":"That was the best rated mini-van when we purchased\u0026hellip; Chuck - Jun 0, 2007\nThat was the best rated mini-van when we purchased one back in 2003. We ended up buying a Honda Odyssey since was also highly rated but cheaper by a few thousand at the time. Love the Honda except for the fact that there is more road noise than I find acceptable. Friends of mine that didn\u0026rsquo;t like the stigma associated with a mini-van ended up buying the Honda Pilot.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/van-shopping-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"that-was-the-best-rated-mini-van-when-we-purchased\"\u003eThat was the best rated mini-van when we purchased\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/17807245803341116147\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eChuck\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 0, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat was the best rated mini-van when we purchased one back in 2003. We ended up buying a Honda Odyssey since was also highly rated but cheaper by a few thousand at the time. Love the Honda except for the fact that there is more road noise than I find acceptable. Friends of mine that didn\u0026rsquo;t like the stigma associated with a mini-van ended up buying the Honda Pilot.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Van shopping (Comments)"},{"content":"Link\nTeenagers have a wonderful term for this self-deception: “We suck less.” Being less bad is not good. Teens recognize, rightfully, that being better off than terrible is still fairly terrible.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/06/dysfunctional-organizations/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.coopercomm.com/dysfnorg.htm\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeenagers have a wonderful term for this self-deception: “We suck less.” Being less bad is not good. Teens recognize, rightfully, that being better off than terrible is still fairly terrible.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e","title":"Dysfunctional Organizations"},{"content":"Revelation of the morning:\n\u0026ldquo;Piano Man\u0026rdquo; by Billy Joel is LIMERICKS!\nHe says, son, can you play me a memory?\nIm not really sure how it goes\nBut its sad and its sweet\nand I knew it complete\nWhen I wore a younger mans clothes\nNow john at the bar is a friend of mine\nHe gets me my drinks for free\nAnd hes quick with a joke\nor to light up your smoke\nBut theres someplace that hed rather be\nNow paul is a real estate novelist\nWho never had time for a wife\nAnd hes talkin with davy\nwhos still in the navy\nAnd probably will be for life\nIts a pretty good crowd for a saturday\nAnd the manager gives me a smile\ncause he knows that its me\ntheyve been comin to see\nTo forget about life for a while\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/soylent-green-is-people/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRevelation of the morning:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Piano Man\u0026rdquo; by Billy Joel is LIMERICKS!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe says, son, can you play me a memory?\u003cbr\u003e\nIm not really sure how it goes\u003cbr\u003e\nBut its sad and its sweet\u003cbr\u003e\nand I knew it complete\u003cbr\u003e\nWhen I wore a younger mans clothes\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow john at the bar is a friend of mine\u003cbr\u003e\nHe gets me my drinks for free\u003cbr\u003e\nAnd hes quick with a joke\u003cbr\u003e\nor to light up your smoke\u003cbr\u003e\nBut theres someplace that hed rather be\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Soylent green is PEOPLE!!!!"},{"content":"There once was programmer from Kentucky.\nIn finding an office, he was unlucky.\nThey cleaned out his bin,\nAnd gave it to Min,\nA PM who was much more plucky.\n* * *\nWow\u0026hellip;just\u0026hellip;wow.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/dilbertian-moment-office-space-literally/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere once was programmer from Kentucky.\u003cbr\u003e\nIn finding an office, he was unlucky.\u003cbr\u003e\nThey cleaned out his bin,\u003cbr\u003e\nAnd gave it to Min,\u003cbr\u003e\nA PM who was much more plucky.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWow\u0026hellip;just\u0026hellip;wow.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dilbertian moment: Office Space (literally!)"},{"content":" I just wanted to tell you and remind others that we are leaving Monday,\nMay 28 for Tanzania, Africa. We will be traveling until May 30th, due to a\n14 hour layover in London, England. Please pray for our team of 7 for a\nsafe flight and time in Africa.\n:-) May your journey be blessed from Him above, from Whom all blessings flow.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/shout-out-to-crystal-fields-on-her-mission-trip/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI just wanted to tell you and remind others that we are leaving Monday,\u003cbr\u003e\nMay 28 for Tanzania, Africa. We will be traveling until May 30th, due to a\u003cbr\u003e\n14 hour layover in London, England. Please pray for our team of 7 for a\u003cbr\u003e\nsafe flight and time in Africa.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) May your journey be blessed from Him above, from Whom all blessings flow.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Shout-out to Crystal Fields on her Mission Trip"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s a new \u0026lsquo;Pirates\u0026rsquo; movie\n* * *\nIn other news, Alea iacta est. More to follow.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/todays-sign-of-the-apocalypse/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-boxoffice29may29,1,141520.story?coll=la-headlines-business\u0026amp;track=crosspromo\"\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a new \u0026lsquo;Pirates\u0026rsquo; movie\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn other news, \u003cem\u003eAlea iacta est\u003c/em\u003e. More to follow.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Today's sign of the apocalypse"},{"content":"Pirates of the Caribbean\nIn sum: What the hell was that?\nIt was long: 168 minutes. Trim 30 or 40 minutes, and call me in the morning.\nIt was confusing. Isn\u0026rsquo;t there some screenwriter rule against more than 4 double-crosses in the same scene? Everyone betrays everyone else. As you might expect, this makes it tough for the audience to understand their motivations or actions.\nThe action scenes explode without context. Who\u0026rsquo;s fighting whom on which ship, and by the way, which way is UP? When you can\u0026rsquo;t answer any of these questions as a viewer, you\u0026rsquo;re watching an overwrought mess.\n:-)\nOn the bright side, it was a night at the Bourbon Drive-in, one of my favorite places, even if Whitney hates it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/review-pirates-of-the-caribbean/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0449088/\"\u003ePirates of the Caribbean\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn sum: What the hell was that?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was long: 168 minutes. Trim 30 or 40 minutes, and call me in the morning.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was confusing. Isn\u0026rsquo;t there some screenwriter rule against more than 4 double-crosses in the same scene? \u003cem\u003eEveryone\u003c/em\u003e betrays everyone else. As you might expect, this makes it tough for the audience to understand their motivations or actions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe action scenes explode without context. Who\u0026rsquo;s fighting whom on which ship, and by the way, which way is UP? When you can\u0026rsquo;t answer any of these questions as a viewer, you\u0026rsquo;re watching an overwrought mess.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Pirates of the Caribbean"},{"content":"\nGood Night, and Good Luck reminds us that history isn\u0026rsquo;t always rosy. Set in that halcyon era after World War Two, but before the Cuban Missile Crisis, Gary Powers\u0026rsquo;s U-2, or Castro\u0026rsquo;s revolution in Cuba, the film reveals that all is not right in Utopia.\nCommunists are everywhere, or so \u0026ldquo;the junior senator from Wisconsin,\u0026rdquo; Joseph McCarthy, would have them believe. As the film opens, it\u0026rsquo;s 1953, the height of McCarthyism, when folks with any prior association with Communists\u0026ndash;even decades before\u0026ndash;find themselves blacklisted and convicted with hearsay evidence. Accusation assures conviction, especially among intellecutals and entertainers.\nEnter into this, Edward R Murrow (David Strathairn), voice of America during World War Two, and now the most recognized face of the new medium, television. It\u0026rsquo;s worth noting, at this point there were only two \u0026lsquo;channels\u0026rsquo; as we\u0026rsquo;d know them today\u0026ndash;Columbia Broadcasting Service (CBS) and the National Broadcasting Company. ABC wouldn\u0026rsquo;t arrive for over a decade. So, when Murrow spoke, he often had 50% of America listening to him.\nThe story starts simply enough\u0026ndash;as the chainsmoking cadre of reporters sit in the newsroom working up stories for a broadcast, Murrow brings-up a story from Detroit about a blacklisted Air Force Reservist, convicted on hidden evidence. From there, the story moves apace to programs attacking McCarthy himself, framed with clips of the McCarthy hearings.\nAs a history buff, I loved this film, as well as the subdued, nuanced performances of its ensemble cast. Murrow is a man torn between duty and convictions, who\u0026rsquo;d like to do hard-hitting news each day, but must pay the bills with fluff interviews on \u0026lsquo;Person to Person\u0026rsquo;. He despises such grunt work, but does it anyway. He\u0026rsquo;d like to help-out a friend, but must focus his energy on bringing down McCarthy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/review-good-night-and-good-luck/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.thecinematheque.com/poster_goodnight3.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0433383/\"\u003eGood Night, and Good Luck\u003c/a\u003e reminds us that history isn\u0026rsquo;t always rosy. Set in that halcyon era after World War Two, but before the Cuban Missile Crisis, Gary Powers\u0026rsquo;s U-2, or Castro\u0026rsquo;s revolution in Cuba, the film reveals that all is not right in Utopia.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCommunists are everywhere, or so \u0026ldquo;the junior senator from Wisconsin,\u0026rdquo; Joseph McCarthy, would have them believe. As the film opens, it\u0026rsquo;s 1953, the height of McCarthyism, when folks with any prior association with Communists\u0026ndash;even decades before\u0026ndash;find themselves blacklisted and convicted with hearsay evidence. \u003cem\u003eAccusation\u003c/em\u003e assures conviction, especially among intellecutals and entertainers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: \"Good Night, and Good Luck\""},{"content":"This is a bit of a stretch, but here goes:\nImagine building an airplane not in a factory, but on the runway itself. Let\u0026rsquo;s say the runway is 5000 feet long, and you have to build the airplane as its accelerating for takeoff.\nYou\u0026rsquo;re the only one on the plane, because what kind of fool would tie himself to a plane that might not make it off the ground? :-)\nAs you look to your left and right, you see all sorts of people yelling at you, telling you what to do as the plane slowly, inexorably lumbers down the runway. They shout encouragement, or distract you, or maybe jump on and off the plane, but they\u0026rsquo;re NOT tied to the plane itself like you are. That\u0026rsquo;s just\u0026hellip;insane. Who would do that?\nIf you get done properly, the plane takes flight and you\u0026rsquo;re a hero. If you don\u0026rsquo;t, you crash and burn in the wreckage. You\u0026rsquo;ll survive, but you won\u0026rsquo;t be the same again.\n* * *\nSo, taking the above analogy, we got 4000 feet down the runway, and we were at takeoff speed and someone on the side said, \u0026ldquo;Wait! You\u0026rsquo;re left engine\u0026rsquo;s on fire.\u0026rdquo; Being the only one lashed to the plane, this made me nervous.\n\u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s okay, we\u0026rsquo;ll give you another 300 feet of runway! Fix it!\u0026rdquo;\nLooking at the engine, I found out that it was installed backwards, upside down, and it had to run on bourbon instead of jet fuel. Somehow, though, I climbed out on the wing and got it installed correctly (no mean feat for a moving plane with a burning engine).\nSo, right now, I\u0026rsquo;m still strapped to the plane, with a bunch of folks on the sidelines shouting \u0026ldquo;FLY, DAMN YOU! YOU\u0026rsquo;RE OUT OF RUNWAY!\u0026rdquo;.\nAs one of my testers likes to say: \u0026ldquo;Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/yet-another-analogy-for-developing-software/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is a bit of a stretch, but here goes:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eImagine building an airplane not in a factory, but on the runway itself. Let\u0026rsquo;s say the runway is 5000 feet long, and you have to build the airplane as its accelerating for takeoff.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re the only one on the plane, because what kind of fool would tie himself to a plane that might not make it off the ground? :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"(Yet Another) analogy for developing software"},{"content":"Bourbon instead of jet fuel, LOL. Sort of like pr\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 3, 2007\nBourbon instead of jet fuel, LOL. Sort of like project decisions being made at Happy Hour instead of in meetings?\nHere\u0026rsquo;s my impression of a Manager:\nH, that\u0026rsquo;s a superb analogy and I totally get what you\u0026rsquo;re saying - we never have enough runway for these things. So I have a GENIOUS IDEA: From now on we only build HELICOPTERS! Eh? Eh?\nAnd I know three toothless men in a shanty town who\u0026rsquo;ll build those prop thingies - rotors? yeah - out of bamboo for a handful of rice a day! You\u0026rsquo;ll have to meet with them at 3am our time each day, though, and they can\u0026rsquo;t afford teleconferencing equipment, so here are two cans - do you have several thousand miles of string? No? Well just do a TEA.\nProblem solved! I\u0026rsquo;m off to one-minute-manage someone else before my hair gel dries out.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/yet-another-analogy-for-developing-software-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"bourbon-instead-of-jet-fuel-lol-sort-of-like-pr\"\u003eBourbon instead of jet fuel, LOL. Sort of like pr\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBourbon instead of jet fuel, LOL. Sort of like project decisions being made at Happy Hour instead of in meetings?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s my impression of a Manager:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eH, that\u0026rsquo;s a superb analogy and I totally get what you\u0026rsquo;re saying - we never have enough runway for these things. So I have a GENIOUS IDEA: From now on we only build HELICOPTERS! Eh? Eh?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"(Yet Another) analogy for developing software (Comments)"},{"content":"Having passed him on my way out to lunch that day,\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 3, 2007\nHaving passed him on my way out to lunch that day, I\u0026rsquo;m left to wonder if EY inspired her hair gel comment. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/quote-for-the-day-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"having-passed-him-on-my-way-out-to-lunch-that-day\"\u003eHaving passed him on my way out to lunch that day,\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHaving passed him on my way out to lunch that day, I\u0026rsquo;m left to wonder if EY inspired her hair gel comment. :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Quote for the day (Comments)"},{"content":"This is ridiculously mundane.\nOn our return trip from the Cane Ridge Shrine today, we needed gas and all I had was cash, so I went in at the Shell Station, corner of US460 and US68 an prepaid for $25.\nSo, I started the 87-octane fueling and checked the oil. By the time I was done, We\u0026rsquo;d pumped 8 or so gallons, at a bill of $25.08\nCrap.\nI never considered saying \u0026ldquo;too bad\u0026rdquo; and driving off. I fished out a nickel and 3 pennies and paid.\n:-) It was a good feeling.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/proud-of-myself/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is ridiculously mundane.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn our return trip from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.caneridge.org/\"\u003eCane Ridge Shrine\u003c/a\u003e today, we needed gas and all I had was cash, so I went in at the Shell Station, corner of US460 and US68 an prepaid for $25.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, I started the 87-octane fueling and checked the oil. By the time I was done, We\u0026rsquo;d pumped 8 or so gallons, at a bill of $25.08\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCrap.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI never considered saying \u0026ldquo;too bad\u0026rdquo; and driving off. I fished out a nickel and 3 pennies and paid.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Proud of myself"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s an e-pat on the back! Jeff Roberts - May 1, 2007\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an e-pat on the back!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/proud-of-myself-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"heres-an-e-pat-on-the-back\"\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s an e-pat on the back!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s an e-pat on the back!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Proud of myself (Comments)"},{"content":"As title states.\nI took one of my India guys to the movies on our team outing two weeks ago, and it was a different sort of experience, just riding in the car with him. His mind seemed alive with questions about America\u0026ndash;how we get to work, our various religions, how my family is organized, politics, culture, etc.\nThen, when I got him back to his place, he invited me to come in and sit awhile, relax and have something to drink. We then continued our discussion of education, and the various differences between American and Indian public education.\nAnyway, two things struck me:\n- This guy (Indians use the term \u0026ldquo;This guy\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;That guy\u0026rdquo; in place of \u0026lsquo;he\u0026rsquo;\u0026hellip;sometimes) works more than I do, and yet, he seems to have work/life balance figured-out, where I do not.\n- This guy has to be dead tired, and yet he invited me to his apartment in a mannerly way and conversed with me.\n- This guy has broad interests outside work.\n* * *\nI was warned way back by my friend Bill Randall that the corporate world would suck the life right out of me and make me an uninteresting person. Check.\nI mean, I\u0026rsquo;m writing this before coffee, but this reality-distortion field known as corporate America is crap. Work yourself down to a nub, looking over your shoulder at the guy from the developing world who can do it for 1/8th the cost, who never says \u0026rsquo;no\u0026rsquo;. Work so much you have no other interests, can\u0026rsquo;t even CONVERSE in anything besides what you\u0026rsquo;re working on. Work so much that you ACTIVELY HATE people interrupting you, viewing them as a distraction.\nHealthy, no?\nYeah, yeah, I\u0026rsquo;m at a low point. I\u0026rsquo;ve been killing myself to shore up an overcomplicated code module that isn\u0026rsquo;t threadsafe and leaks memory. Oh, and it can deadlock; just found THAT one yesterday at 5:30. If that gal were still working here, I\u0026rsquo;d tell her to put the keyboard down and back away slowly\u0026ndash;don\u0026rsquo;t USE threads until you understand them!\nThankfully, I FINALLY found-out that it\u0026rsquo;s probably a firmware issue that\u0026rsquo;s hosing us, and so for the last day or so I\u0026rsquo;ve been decompressing.\n:-) Time for coffee.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/ever-wonder-if-americans-are-ill-mannered-boring-people/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs title states.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI took one of my India guys to the movies on our team outing two weeks ago, and it was a different sort of experience, just riding in the car with him. His mind seemed alive with questions about America\u0026ndash;how we get to work, our various religions, how my family is organized, politics, culture, etc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen, when I got him back to his place, he invited me to come in and sit awhile, relax and have something to drink. We then continued our discussion of education, and the various differences between American and Indian public education.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ever wonder if Americans are ill-mannered, boring people?"},{"content":"They say we\u0026rsquo;re ignorant and apathetic, but I don\u0026rsquo;t\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 3, 2007\nThey say we\u0026rsquo;re ignorant and apathetic, but I don\u0026rsquo;t know and I don\u0026rsquo;t care. :-)\nI have no words of wisdom. I\u0026rsquo;m sorta balancing right now but only precariously.\nI can relate. I was borderline rude the other day to one of my co-workers just because she stopped in to chat for a moment at a moment while I was stressing over various work issues/questions. You have to maintain your humanity \u0026hellip; it used to be so much easier for me. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what has changed.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/ever-wonder-if-americans-are-ill-mannered-boring-people-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"they-say-were-ignorant-and-apathetic-but-i-dont\"\u003eThey say we\u0026rsquo;re ignorant and apathetic, but I don\u0026rsquo;t\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey say we\u0026rsquo;re ignorant and apathetic, but I don\u0026rsquo;t know and I don\u0026rsquo;t care. :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have no words of wisdom. I\u0026rsquo;m sorta balancing right now but only precariously.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI can relate. I was borderline rude the other day to one of my co-workers just because she stopped in to chat for a moment at a moment while I was stressing over various work issues/questions. You have to maintain your humanity \u0026hellip; it used to be so much easier for me. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what has changed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ever wonder if Americans are ill-mannered, boring people? (Comments)"},{"content":"Watched The Rose last Sunday from 4am to 6am. Yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s been a weird week.\nIt was a very compelling story, if difficult to watch. Bette Midler is stunning as Janis Joplin\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;Mary Rose (\u0026ldquo;The Rose\u0026rdquo;) Foster. According to IMDB, the original script was the Janis Joplin story, but Midler said it was too soon after her death to portray the story onscreen so it was rewritten. In any case, the highpoints are similar\u0026ndash;a tortured woman with an incredible voice whose story ends in an overdose.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/review-the-rose/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWatched \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0079826/\"\u003eThe Rose\u003c/a\u003e last Sunday from 4am to 6am. Yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s been a weird week.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a very compelling story, if difficult to watch. Bette Midler is stunning as Janis Joplin\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;Mary Rose (\u0026ldquo;The Rose\u0026rdquo;) Foster. According to IMDB, the original script \u003cem\u003ewas\u003c/em\u003e the Janis Joplin story, but Midler said it was too soon after her death to portray the story onscreen so it was rewritten. In any case, the highpoints are similar\u0026ndash;a tortured woman with an incredible voice whose story ends in an overdose.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: \"The Rose\""},{"content":"Update from Jeff:\nSo, apparently, he went by Don Jacobs a couple of hours later, and the police were ESCORTING people in orderly caravans, with one cop car in the lead and another at the rear.\nYeah, I feel like crap.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/update-it-gets-worse/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUpdate from Jeff:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, apparently, he went by Don Jacobs a couple of hours later, and the police were ESCORTING people in orderly caravans, with one cop car in the lead and another at the rear.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, I feel like crap.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Update: It gets worse"},{"content":"\nLet me summarize: I got asked to leave and not come back. I was asked to LEAVE A CHARITY EVENT and not return.\nThis is not a proud story, but I\u0026rsquo;m learning to deal with it. Here goes:\nI got to Don Jacobs BMW around 1:15 and signed my waiver with my information (including my cell phone #). They had all sorts of BMW\u0026rsquo;s to drive, from Z4 roadsters to 3-, 5-, 6-, and 7-series cars, all with different engines and Rear- and All-wheel-drive configurations. I was in heaven.\nThe place was busy, but I was interested in driving only one car for my first drive, a BMW 335i coupe (E92 in BMW parlance). This was THE car, BMW\u0026rsquo;s first turbo passenger car in 20+ years, twin-turbocharged and tractable. So, I put my name in and waited patiently, watching the crew of permatan 20-somethings shuffling people in and out of the 18 cars, wagons, and SUVs they brought. This was a much bigger event than the last one I attended on a lark back in 2001.\nAfter about an hour, Gal in the White Cap called for me and I piled into the silver 335. I got my bearings and departed, adjusting the seat, mirrors, radio, transmission, sunroof and steering wheel en route. They trust you enough to send you out alone, after signing your life away on the form, so by halfway up West New Circle, I got my mind on navigation.\nI set-up a cruise on New Circle at around 70, then exit at Versailles RD (US 60) going towards town. The seats were amazing, as was the steering\u0026ndash;it was pleasantly heavy, and the car pointed like a laser beam, point and go.\nThe Versailles road exit is an ogival curve, bullet shaped and sharpest in the middle. The car ate it at 60 mph, with a hint of stability control in the middle. They don\u0026rsquo;t put tires on these cars, they put MEATS. Eighteen inch wheels, sporting 225/40 tires up front, and 255/35 out back. A right at Parker\u0026rsquo;s Mill road led to some backroad running to Man O\u0026rsquo;War, then an urban cycle to Harrodsburg and then to New Circle.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s where I got into trouble. I was kinda bored with the car\u0026ndash;so much capability, no way to take advantage of it\u0026ndash;so, I cut the route short by getting back on New Circle and running up to Nicholasville. The car was (again) a laser in traffic: Holes appeared, and the 335i filled them. It was pure joy.\nAnd so, as I got to the exit ramp, the light was turning and I blazed through it, traction control off, a nice 10-degree slip angle as the car dug in 2nd gear. In short, I drifted a $45k car on the busiest section of road in Kentucky. At 3pm.\nThen I blazed across the overpass at 60-70mph, and shot into the parking lot. I got out of the car and really wasn\u0026rsquo;t interesting in driving much else, so I left.\nThen the cell phone rang.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t recognize the #, so I let it ring through to voicemail. What can I say, I get lots of wrong #\u0026rsquo;s!\nAnyway, it was Chip, or Lance, or some other marketing-drone name, said he was from Ultimate Drive for the Cure and he politely asked me to call him back. I dialed back as I was working my way towards Georgetown Road.\nTranscript:\nDrone: \u0026ldquo;This is Lance\u0026rdquo;.\nMe: \u0026ldquo;Hi, this is Harold\u0026hellip;you called?\u0026rdquo;\nD: \u0026ldquo;Yes sir! Just wanted to touch base with you\u0026hellip;are you still at the event?\u0026rdquo;\nM: \u0026ldquo;No, I\u0026rsquo;m headed home\u0026hellip;what\u0026rsquo;s up?\u0026rdquo;\nD: \u0026ldquo;Were you the one driving the 335, number nine?\u0026rdquo;\nM: \u0026ldquo;Sure was\u0026hellip;man it was awesome!\u0026rdquo;\nD: \u0026ldquo;Glad you liked it. Well, just wanted to let you know, we were contacted by the police. Apparently, they saw you driving on Nicholasville Road and came by and asked that you be removed from the event.\u0026rdquo;\nM: \u0026ldquo;Uh\u0026hellip;okay.\u0026rdquo;\nD: \u0026ldquo;Just think, next time you want to come to the event, you want to understand what we\u0026rsquo;re trying to acccomplish here, and behave accordingly. You endangered a multi-million dollar event here.\u0026rdquo; (That\u0026rsquo;s the gist of the guilt-trip he laid on me\u0026hellip;)\n(click)\nYeah. \u0026ldquo;Asked not to return\u0026rdquo; Joy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/driving-for-the-cure...-or-how-i-got-blacklisted.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.bmwusa.com/nr/rdonlyres/12c4adbb-e6c1-4b53-a00a-3a9e46c71887/0/ultimate_drive_overview.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet me summarize: I got asked to leave and not come back. I was asked to LEAVE A CHARITY EVENT and not return.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is not a proud story, but I\u0026rsquo;m learning to deal with it. Here goes:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI got to Don Jacobs BMW around 1:15 and signed my waiver with my information (including my cell phone #). They had all sorts of BMW\u0026rsquo;s to drive, from Z4 roadsters to 3-, 5-, 6-, and 7-series cars, all with different engines and Rear- and All-wheel-drive configurations. I was in heaven.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Driving for the Cure...?  (Or, how I got blacklisted...)"},{"content":"Yeeeouch! Jeff Roberts - May 2, 2007\nYeeeouch!\nJust thought I\u0026rsquo;d let you know that you fit nicely into this morning\u0026rsquo;s devotion about how even if you only break a small part of the law, you\u0026rsquo;ve broken the whole law and thus no matter how \u0026ldquo;good\u0026rdquo; you are, we all need Jesus bc even a little sin is a sin and sinners don\u0026rsquo;t go to heaven\u0026hellip;eg, even if the light is only a little pink, it\u0026rsquo;s still breaking the law and \u0026hellip;..\nJoey enjoyed using you as an illustration. :-)\nLove you!\n_\nHey Sonny! I take m\u0026hellip;_ HarryC - May 5, 2007\nFrom my mother:\n_\nHey Sonny! I take my hat off to you! You didn\u0026rsquo;t break the law, they just didn\u0026rsquo;t give people a chance to try out their vehicle to see what it would do. Who wants a vehicle that\u0026rsquo;s dull in speed? Have a laugh! You enjoyed yourself!!!!! Love you! Mom_\nThe good news is that stories like this become more and more comfortable over time and more fun to tell. The events where everything go as planned and regulated are very forgettable \u0026hellip; hey, at least you didn\u0026rsquo;t go the wrong way on a one-way street (I\u0026rsquo;m sure you\u0026rsquo;ll becall the reference) :)\n\u0026hellip;with a bunch of Indian guys in th\u0026hellip; HarryC - May 1, 2007\n@David\n\u0026hellip;with a bunch of Indian guys in the back.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/driving-for-the-cure...-or-how-i-got-blacklisted...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"yeeeouch\"\u003eYeeeouch!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeeeouch!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust thought I\u0026rsquo;d let you know that you fit nicely into this morning\u0026rsquo;s devotion about how even if you only break a small part of the law, you\u0026rsquo;ve broken the whole law and thus no matter how \u0026ldquo;good\u0026rdquo; you are, we all need Jesus bc even a little sin is a sin and sinners don\u0026rsquo;t go to heaven\u0026hellip;eg, even if the light is only a little pink, it\u0026rsquo;s still breaking the law and \u0026hellip;..\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Driving for the Cure...?  (Or, how I got blacklisted...) (Comments)"},{"content":"Spiderman 3 is a boring mess. The story is a mishmash of plotlines, centering around the three (yes, THREE) villains \u0026ndash; Goblin Jr., Sandman, and Venom. Overlong, the film languishes in its many plots, opening with Spidey wounding his friend Harry Osborne, now the reborn Green Goblin, then sauntering to the Sandman, and the Venom super-spidey suit.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s no discernible momentum until Mary Jane calls it quits with Peter, who\u0026rsquo;s been quite an ass, though she herself has been a needy baggage for 4 reels. In any case, this sets off a battle between Harry and Peter, and FINALLY some action. Had the movie begun here and run for a tight 85 minutes, cutting out the Sandman character altogether, it would\u0026rsquo;ve been awesome. As it stands, this bloated ($300 million) mess has probably killed its franchise.\n* * *\nAlso, I need to remind myself that I get sick if I eat too much popcorn.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/spiderman-3...why/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSpiderman 3 is a boring mess. The story is a mishmash of plotlines, centering around the three (yes, THREE) villains \u0026ndash; Goblin Jr., Sandman, and Venom. Overlong, the film languishes in its many plots, opening with Spidey wounding his friend Harry Osborne, now the reborn Green Goblin, then sauntering to the Sandman, and the Venom super-spidey suit.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s no discernible momentum until Mary Jane calls it quits with Peter, who\u0026rsquo;s been quite an ass, though she herself has been a needy baggage for 4 reels. In any case, this sets off a battle between Harry and Peter, and FINALLY some action. Had the movie begun here and run for a tight 85 minutes, cutting out the Sandman character altogether, it would\u0026rsquo;ve been awesome. As it stands, this bloated ($300 million) mess has probably killed its franchise.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Spiderman 3\"...WHY?!"},{"content":"Oh, the movie was OK, I guess. I had low expectat\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 6, 2007\nOh, the movie was OK, I guess. I had low expectations and a free ticket.\nMyself, I almost left before the previews were over. I know the movie was PG-13, just like the last Star Wars was, but surely they know there are going to be kids at a super hero movie?! I think I\u0026rsquo;ve about had it with the theater experience.\n:-) It\u0026rsquo;s particularly nice to watch a movie with a group of friends.\nI\u0026rsquo;m with Jeff, I had low expectations. I\u0026rsquo;m far enough past my comic-reading days that I enjoy what they do well from the comics and don\u0026rsquo;t care too much about the things they don\u0026rsquo;t. I even think some of the changes are an improvement, such as having the webbing come right out of his hands (his DNA did get rewritten, after all) instead of having him just happen to invent high-tech web shooters in his spare time. I agree they incorporated too many villains but I was oddly impressed with the way they got away with the absurdly short transformation of Harry Osborne into an insane villain. They (probably correctly) assume that the filmgoer already saw William Dafoe as Norm slip gently into madness in the first film \u0026ndash; so anything beyond a few seconds of transformation for Harry (in the worldview of modern moviemaking) would have seemed tedious, I guess.\nI liked the Bruce Campbell bit.\nStill haven\u0026rsquo;t seen the ending - had to leave early to pick up my daughter.\nOh, one thing that was really weak. I think Kirsten Dunst is an incredible actress, but the movie required her to do a couple of completely unbelievable things. She sees Harry show up suddenly as a super-villian. And she just what he commands, though glaring at him like a really mean guy, I mean like whatever. Maybe the ending I missed makes it more plausible.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/spiderman-3...why-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"oh-the-movie-was-ok-i-guess-i-had-low-expectat\"\u003eOh, the movie was OK, I guess. I had low expectat\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 6, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, the movie was OK, I guess. I had low expectations and a free ticket.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMyself, I almost left before the previews were over. I know the movie was PG-13, just like the last Star Wars was, but surely they know there are going to be kids at a super hero movie?! I think I\u0026rsquo;ve about had it with the theater experience.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Spiderman 3\"...WHY?! (Comments)"},{"content":"\nThe Day After Tomorrow is a strangely compelling disaster flick tarring Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhal. Quaid plays climatologist Jack Hall, who predicts a nightmarish return of an ice age if the world doesn\u0026rsquo;t wise up and stop pumping Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere.\nYeah, \u0026lsquo;bout that\u0026hellip;looks like when Gaia gets pissed, she doesn\u0026rsquo;t take gradual measures. Over the course of a week, the weather rakes the Northern Hemisphere with globe-spanning ice hurricanes that flash-freeze everything. Millions die, with the small-scale human story of Hall and his son (Gyllenhall) framing the events.\nI really liked this movie\u0026ndash;the science is sound, and the characters were believable. Like any disaster flick, there\u0026rsquo;s a surreal quality to the action, from New York\u0026rsquo;s inundation three choppers deep-frozen in mid-air. Still yet, it\u0026rsquo;s plausible.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/05/review-the-day-after-tomorrow/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.technofile.com/images/day_after_tomorrow.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Day After Tomorrow\u003c/em\u003e is a strangely compelling disaster flick tarring Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhal. Quaid plays climatologist Jack Hall, who predicts a nightmarish return of an ice age if the world doesn\u0026rsquo;t wise up and stop pumping Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, \u0026lsquo;bout that\u0026hellip;looks like when Gaia gets pissed, she doesn\u0026rsquo;t take gradual measures. Over the course of a week, the weather rakes the Northern Hemisphere with globe-spanning ice hurricanes that flash-freeze everything. Millions die, with the small-scale human story of Hall and his son (Gyllenhall) framing the events.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: \"The Day After Tomorrow\""},{"content":"I sequestered myself all weekend. It was wonderful! I\u0026rsquo;m lightly sunburned, but my grass is mowed and I rotated the tires and flushed the brakes on my car, as well as washing both of \u0026rsquo;em.\nI organized the garage a bit, so I can (once again!) get both cars inside.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/idylls-of-the-combs/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI sequestered myself all weekend. It was wonderful! I\u0026rsquo;m lightly sunburned, but my grass is mowed and I rotated the tires and flushed the brakes on my car, as well as washing both of \u0026rsquo;em.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI organized the garage a bit, so I can (once again!) get both cars inside.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Idylls of the Combs"},{"content":"Getting both cars in the garage is as satisfying a\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Apr 1, 2007\nGetting both cars in the garage is as satisfying as working oneself back into one\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;skinny jeans\u0026rdquo; :-)\nIndeed! Now, if we could just get ri\u0026hellip; HarryC - Apr 1, 2007\n@Jeff\nIndeed! Now, if we could just get rid of 1/2 the stuff in the garage and the attic above it\u0026hellip;.\nI\u0026rsquo;m a minimalist, and I married a pack-rat (\u0026quot;\u0026hellip;but I might need that sometime!\u0026quot;)\nHEY!! You never know when we\u0026rsquo;re gonna get a bigger house and need another pair of lamps to go in it\u0026hellip;.\nQuestion:\nWhy are you a programmer and not a test driver for consumer reports (they pay you to autocross on the weekdays\u0026hellip;.what could be better)?!\nActually, there is a guy on the vwv\u0026hellip; HarryC - Apr 1, 2007\n@Bella.\nActually, there is a guy on the vwvortex (handle is \u0026lsquo;mutch\u0026rsquo;) who works for CR. Doesn\u0026rsquo;t test cars though.\nPlus, Consumer\u0026rsquo;s Union is in Upstate New York. You know, land of the fingerlakes, Watkins Glen, and BIG FRICKIN BLIZZARDS! (Lake effect, baby, yeah!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/idylls-of-the-combs-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"getting-both-cars-in-the-garage-is-as-satisfying-a\"\u003eGetting both cars in the garage is as satisfying a\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGetting both cars in the garage is as satisfying as working oneself back into one\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;skinny jeans\u0026rdquo; :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIndeed! Now, if we could just get ri\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e@Jeff\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIndeed! Now, if we could just get rid of 1/2 the stuff in the garage and the attic above it\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Idylls of the Combs (Comments)"},{"content":"(In other news, my life now revolves around Kate Beckinsdale movies)\nI loved this movie the first time I watched it. It was called Tora, Tora, Tora and Thirty Seconds over Tokyo.\nMany of the supporting cast are an unexpected delight, particularly Cuba Gooding, Jr as Petty Officer Miller, and Jon Voight as President Roosevelt. The main love triangle\u0026hellip;meh. Not plausible in the least.\nAdditionally, yeah, a P-40 outmaneuvering six Zeros? Sure. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/review-pearl-harbor/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e(In other news, my life now revolves around Kate Beckinsdale movies)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.moviecritic.ca/reviews/2001/pearl_harbor/poster.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI loved this movie the first time I watched it. It was called \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0066473/\"\u003eTora, Tora, Tora\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0037366/\"\u003eThirty Seconds over Tokyo\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMany of the supporting cast are an unexpected delight, particularly Cuba Gooding, Jr as Petty Officer Miller, and Jon Voight as President Roosevelt. The main love triangle\u0026hellip;meh. Not plausible in the least.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdditionally, yeah, a P-40 outmaneuvering six Zeros? Sure. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Pearl Harbor"},{"content":"Why is Jon Voight suddenly the man who must be hir\u0026hellip; DavidJarvis - May 1, 2007\nWhy is Jon Voight suddenly the man who must be hired to play every historical figure? Roosevelt, Coach Rupp, the Pope \u0026hellip; the list goes on and on.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/review-pearl-harbor-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"why-is-jon-voight-suddenly-the-man-who-must-be-hir\"\u003eWhy is Jon Voight suddenly the man who must be hir\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/13804469714577442103\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eDavidJarvis\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy is Jon Voight suddenly the man who must be hired to play every historical figure? Roosevelt, Coach Rupp, the Pope \u0026hellip; the list goes on and on.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Review: Pearl Harbor (Comments)"},{"content":"\nHrm\u0026hellip;so, when using your snazzy power bleeder from bavarian automotive, you note the following:\nYou\u0026rsquo;re unable to get the pressure in the bleeder past 10 psi, no matter how hard you pump the cylinder.\nYou\u0026rsquo;re hearing a strange hissing, dripping sound\nYou peer past the master cylinder and reservoir to note the large puddle of brake fluid pooling beneath your car.\nSir, you have two alternatives:\n(A) You just asploded your 17-year-old master cylinder by pressurizing the system past the seal tolerance\n(B) You didn\u0026rsquo;t tighten the pressure cap on the reservoir, and it\u0026rsquo;s been spewing out the top the whole time like an over boiled lobster thermadore.\nI\u0026rsquo;m the bonehead who didn\u0026rsquo;t tighten the pressure cap. The rest of the bleeding procedure went like a charm.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/power-bleeding-the-brakes./","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.bavauto.com//assets/product_images/tool/pb03.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHrm\u0026hellip;so, when using your snazzy power bleeder from bavarian automotive, you note the following:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re unable to get the pressure in the bleeder past 10 psi, no matter how hard you pump the cylinder.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re hearing a strange hissing, dripping sound\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou peer past the master cylinder and reservoir to note the large puddle of brake fluid pooling beneath your car.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSir, you have two alternatives:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(A) You just asploded your 17-year-old master cylinder by pressurizing the system past the seal tolerance\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Power bleeding the brakes."},{"content":"Wow, I\u0026rsquo;m glad I\u0026rsquo;m not the only one who makes puddl\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Apr 1, 2007\nWow, I\u0026rsquo;m glad I\u0026rsquo;m not the only one who makes puddles on the driveway!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/power-bleeding-the-brakes.-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"wow-im-glad-im-not-the-only-one-who-makes-puddl\"\u003eWow, I\u0026rsquo;m glad I\u0026rsquo;m not the only one who makes puddl\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWow, I\u0026rsquo;m glad I\u0026rsquo;m not the only one who makes puddles on the driveway!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Power bleeding the brakes. (Comments)"},{"content":"MP3 link\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/code-monkey/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.jonathancoulton.com/mp3/Code%20Monkey.mp3\"\u003eMP3 link\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Code Monkey\""},{"content":"YES!!!!!!!!! I LOVE IT!!! Whitney - Apr 0, 2007\nYES!!!!!!!!! I LOVE IT!!!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/code-monkey-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"yes-i-love-it\"\u003eYES!!!!!!!!! I LOVE IT!!!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 0, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYES!!!!!!!!! I LOVE IT!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"\"Code Monkey\" (Comments)"},{"content":"Sometimes, you just take a step\u0026hellip;you don\u0026rsquo;t know if it\u0026rsquo;s the right one, and there\u0026rsquo;s really no way TO know.\nNext week should be interesting, to say the least.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/vague-ramblings-and-hope/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSometimes, you just take a step\u0026hellip;you don\u0026rsquo;t know if it\u0026rsquo;s the right one, and there\u0026rsquo;s really no way TO know.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNext week should be interesting, to say the least.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Vague ramblings and hope"},{"content":"How mysterious\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ll put you down for an \u0026ldquo;unspoke\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Apr 0, 2007\nHow mysterious\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ll put you down for an \u0026ldquo;unspoken\u0026rdquo; on my prayer list.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/vague-ramblings-and-hope-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"how-mysteriousill-put-you-down-for-an-unspoke\"\u003eHow mysterious\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ll put you down for an \u0026ldquo;unspoke\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 0, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow mysterious\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ll put you down for an \u0026ldquo;unspoken\u0026rdquo; on my prayer list.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Vague ramblings and hope (Comments)"},{"content":":-)\nDear __________,\nWe’re thrilled you\u0026rsquo;ll be taking part in the Susan G. Komen for the Cure drive.\nYour reservation for this worthwhile cause has been confirmed for the following date:\nMay 8, 2007\nDon Jacobs BMW\nHehe\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/we-goin-beamer...we-goin-beamer/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e:-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDear __________,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re thrilled you\u0026rsquo;ll be taking part in the Susan G. Komen for the Cure drive.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYour reservation for this worthwhile cause has been confirmed for the following date:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMay 8, 2007\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDon Jacobs BMW\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHehe\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"We goin' Beamer...we goin' beamer"},{"content":"\nHow is it possible that I adored School Of Rock and liked Cheaper By the Dozen and yet, I hated Daddy Day Care? Some movies even alcohol can\u0026rsquo;t save.\nMaybe I just wasn\u0026rsquo;t in the mood for formulaic \u0026ldquo;family\u0026rdquo; comedy\u0026hellip;I don\u0026rsquo;t know. There were many funny moments, but they lay at the periphery\u0026ndash;Steve Zahn\u0026rsquo;s Marvin was a real treat as the Star Trek geek that \u0026ldquo;gets\u0026rdquo; kids and their thought patterns, and the scene where Phil\u0026rsquo;s traumatized by changing diapers was awesome. Also the central theme of the movie is awesome\u0026ndash;do work that\u0026rsquo;s fulfilling, not what\u0026rsquo;s lucrative.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/review-daddy-day-care/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.thecinemasource.com/moviesdb/images/Daddy%20Day%20CareDVD-300.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow is it possible that I adored \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0332379/\"\u003eSchool Of Rock\u003c/a\u003e and liked \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0349205/\"\u003eCheaper By the Dozen\u003c/a\u003e and yet, I hated \u003cem\u003eDaddy Day Care\u003c/em\u003e? Some movies even alcohol can\u0026rsquo;t save.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaybe I just wasn\u0026rsquo;t in the mood for formulaic \u0026ldquo;family\u0026rdquo; comedy\u0026hellip;I don\u0026rsquo;t know. There were many funny moments, but they lay at the periphery\u0026ndash;Steve Zahn\u0026rsquo;s Marvin was a real treat as the Star Trek geek that \u0026ldquo;gets\u0026rdquo; kids and their thought patterns, and the scene where Phil\u0026rsquo;s traumatized by changing diapers was awesome. Also the central theme of the movie is awesome\u0026ndash;do work that\u0026rsquo;s fulfilling, not what\u0026rsquo;s lucrative.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Daddy Day Care"},{"content":"_\nBlack.\nBlack like my mood.\nBlack, the absence of color, yet hot, alive.\nLiquid black.\nIt gives awareness, replacing stupor with its flowing life.\nIt owns my thoughts.\n_\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/meditation-coffee/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e_\u003cbr\u003e\nBlack.\u003cbr\u003e\nBlack like my mood.\u003cbr\u003e\nBlack, the absence of color, yet hot, alive.\u003cbr\u003e\nLiquid black.\u003cbr\u003e\nIt gives awareness, replacing stupor with its flowing life.\u003cbr\u003e\nIt owns my thoughts.\u003cbr\u003e\n_\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Meditation: Coffee"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;is a good one :-)\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a very vocal minority who read my blog just for the \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s broken on his car today?\u0026rdquo; aspect. Not to disappoint: I came out of the office last Friday to see not only the usual weird-piece-hanging-down, but a whole buncha things hanging down. Looked under the car and it looked like the whole heat shield was loose.\n\u0026ldquo;Not a problem\u0026rdquo;, I thought. Bolt probably fell out or rusted through. Should be simple enough to fix.\nWell, simple to fix. Wrong diagnosis, though. I got under there to see:\nThat, friends is a catalytic converter heat shield, RUSTED IN HALF, from stem to stern. Oddly, I took great joy in this. I had gloves. I had many different hammers and pliers, plus a creeper and eye protection. Nothing quite so visceral as clanging in your garage :-)\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the after pic:\nAnd here\u0026rsquo;s the rusty bits:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/any-day-involving-jackstands-rust-and-a-ball-peen-hammer.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;is a good one :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a very vocal minority who read my blog just for the \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s broken on his car today?\u0026rdquo; aspect. Not to disappoint: I came out of the office last Friday to see not only the usual weird-piece-hanging-down, but a whole buncha things hanging down. Looked under the car and it looked like the whole heat shield was loose.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Not a problem\u0026rdquo;, I thought. Bolt probably fell out or rusted through. Should be simple enough to fix.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Any day involving jackstands, rust, and a ball peen hammer..."},{"content":"Arr arr arr! Jeff Roberts - Apr 2, 2007\nArr arr arr!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/any-day-involving-jackstands-rust-and-a-ball-peen-hammer...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"arr-arr-arr\"\u003eArr arr arr!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eArr arr arr!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Any day involving jackstands, rust, and a ball peen hammer... (Comments)"},{"content":"Thank you for smoking is (nearly) pure satire, similar to the Tim Robbins pic Bob Roberts. It pokes fun at Big Tobacco (natch), but mainly, it skewers our victimization culture of poor education and worse parenting.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s oddly flat, in the same way I found Bob Roberts flat\u0026ndash;the central character is an anti-hero, so as the action \u0026lsquo;rises\u0026rsquo;, I found myself more depressed\u0026ndash;we are that dumb as a nation. Yes, we do fall for straight lines like that. Yes, we\u0026rsquo;re eager to believe anyone who\u0026rsquo;ll tell us that the road to Nirvana is smoking a pack of cigarettes per day, chugging Coca-Cola, downing three meals of McDonalds, watching 10 hours of TV, and playing PS3 the remaining 12 hours of our impotent (in both senses) existence.\nThe message here, to me, is be wary of those selling something too good to be true.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/review-thank-you-for-smoking/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0427944/\"\u003eThank you for smoking\u003c/a\u003e is (nearly) pure satire, similar to the Tim Robbins pic Bob Roberts. It pokes fun at Big Tobacco (natch), but mainly, it skewers our victimization culture of poor education and worse parenting.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s oddly flat, in the same way I found Bob Roberts flat\u0026ndash;the central character is an anti-hero, so as the action \u0026lsquo;rises\u0026rsquo;, I found myself more depressed\u0026ndash;we are that dumb as a nation. Yes, we do fall for straight lines like that. Yes, we\u0026rsquo;re eager to believe anyone who\u0026rsquo;ll tell us that the road to Nirvana is smoking a pack of cigarettes per day, chugging Coca-Cola, downing three meals of McDonalds, watching 10 hours of TV, and playing PS3 the remaining 12 hours of our impotent (in both senses) existence.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Thank You for Smoking"},{"content":"Underworld\nMeh.\nTake Blade, remove the throbbing soundtrack, satisfying action sequences, suspension of disbelief, and credible (!) backstory, add Kate Beckinsdale in a catsuit.\nYou have KATE BECKINSDALE in a CATSUIT for TWO HOURS! How the freak do you make a movie this bad?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/mini-review-underworld/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0320691/\"\u003eUnderworld\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeh.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTake \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0120611/\"\u003eBlade\u003c/a\u003e, remove the throbbing soundtrack, satisfying action sequences, suspension of disbelief, and credible (!) backstory, add Kate Beckinsdale in a catsuit.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou have KATE BECKINSDALE in a CATSUIT for TWO HOURS! How the freak do you make a movie this bad?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.tccandler.com/IMAGES/actresses/KateBeckinsale/kate%20beckinsale%20UHQ%20blue%20curtain_small.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mini review: Underworld"},{"content":"(That title sounds vaguely Latin\u0026hellip;)\nLet me be as clear as possible: Imus a curmudgeon, a former coke-fiend who disdains ALL humanity. He\u0026rsquo;s mean. He\u0026rsquo;s ugly.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s also intelligent, incisive, and provocative, in a way that brain-dead Howard Stern CAN NEVER BE. Not that I\u0026rsquo;ve not laughed at some random Howard Stern bits that I\u0026rsquo;m too ashamed of to post on a blog my mother reads. (Google \u0026lsquo;Sybian\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;Howard Stern\u0026rsquo; if you\u0026rsquo;re feeling particularly raunchy)\n\u0026hellip;Back to Imus. I hate what happened. I hate that Al Charlatan won and that Jessie Jackson achieved relevance. I hate that I can\u0026rsquo;t rant about how much I HATE DON IMUS\u0026rsquo;S CURMUDGEONY WAYS.\nI particularly like the fact that the governor who was trying to glom-on to the publicity of this nation-gone-mad, Political Correctness charade was karmically smacked-down while not wearing his seat belt on the way to the coup de grace of this sad affair.\nI think Mr. Dilbert said it best:\nI removed today\u0026rsquo;s post so that my governor would not have a car accident.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/on-imus/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e(That title sounds vaguely Latin\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet me be as clear as possible: Imus a curmudgeon, a former coke-fiend who disdains ALL humanity. He\u0026rsquo;s mean. He\u0026rsquo;s ugly.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s also intelligent, incisive, and provocative, in a way that brain-dead Howard Stern CAN NEVER BE. Not that I\u0026rsquo;ve not laughed at some random Howard Stern bits that I\u0026rsquo;m too ashamed of to post on a blog my mother reads. (Google \u0026lsquo;Sybian\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;Howard Stern\u0026rsquo; if you\u0026rsquo;re feeling particularly raunchy)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Imus"},{"content":"Yeah, mountain out of molehill. What he sai\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Apr 1, 2007\nYeah, mountain out of molehill.\nWhat he said wasn\u0026rsquo;t good, but:\n- If ANY person of color had been a guest on the show and said it instead, no story.\n- If I called into the show (is it even a call-in show?) and he called me a bible-thumping republitard, no story. (This is where someone jumps in and says I can change my religion or political affiliation)\n- Whatever happened to \u0026ldquo;absence of malice\u0026rdquo;? \u0026ldquo;Sticks and stones\u0026rdquo;?\n- He did apologize.\n- A week\u0026rsquo;s suspension, maybe. I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure they had to pay him handsomely for being fired.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/on-imus-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"yeah-mountain-out-of-molehill\"\u003eYeah, mountain out of molehill.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat he sai\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, mountain out of molehill.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat he said wasn\u0026rsquo;t good, but:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- If ANY person of color had been a guest on the show and said it instead, no story.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- If I called into the show (is it even a call-in show?) and he called me a bible-thumping republitard, no story. (This is where someone jumps in and says I can change my religion or political affiliation)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Imus (Comments)"},{"content":"(I\u0026rsquo;m too tired to sleep, so here goes)\nAt 2am today, my wife decided to void the contents of her stomach all over the sheet, thanks to some stomach bug. As said contents were large, recognizable quantities of spaghetti, the resulting smell and stain is left to the reader to imagine.\nSo, from 2 to 5 am, I cleaned that up, did laundry, and supported my wife as she retched uncontrollably, unable to keep even Gatorade down. Then I slept until 7ish, when I had to feed my daughter, who I\u0026rsquo;d just fed at 2 and 5 am.\nCalled in to work and laughed about how I should go in, just to write some REALLY bad code given my mental status.\nAt that point, I hadn\u0026rsquo;t had coffee. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t get any coffee until after 2pm.\nThe rest of the day was a blur, swaying between a very grumpy maria and a very sick Whitney, while trying to pay at least some attention to Joey.\nIn other words, I had a typical day for a housewife.\nSign-me-up for the foreign legion. At this point, I can\u0026rsquo;t remember how many feedings Maria\u0026rsquo;s had. Alot. I lost track of diapers somewhere after 15.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/why-id-be-a-bad-housewife/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e(I\u0026rsquo;m too tired to sleep, so here goes)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt 2am today, my wife decided to void the contents of her stomach all over the sheet, thanks to some stomach bug. As said contents were large, recognizable quantities of spaghetti, the resulting smell and stain is left to the reader to imagine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, from 2 to 5 am, I cleaned that up, did laundry, and supported my wife as she retched uncontrollably, unable to keep even Gatorade down. Then I slept until 7ish, when I had to feed my daughter, who I\u0026rsquo;d just fed at 2 and 5 am.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why I'd be a bad housewife"},{"content":"Dude, that\u0026rsquo;s rough. Flu or food? Days like that ma\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Apr 3, 2007\nDude, that\u0026rsquo;s rough. Flu or food? Days like that make me feel inadequate, too.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/why-id-be-a-bad-housewife-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"dude-thats-rough-flu-or-food-days-like-that-ma\"\u003eDude, that\u0026rsquo;s rough. Flu or food? Days like that ma\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eApr 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDude, that\u0026rsquo;s rough. Flu or food? Days like that make me feel inadequate, too.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Why I'd be a bad housewife (Comments)"},{"content":"MINIs set record\n\u0026#39;Cause we got a mighty convoy Rockin\u0026#39; through the night Yeah, we got a mighty convoy Ain\u0026#39;t she a beautiful sight C\u0026#39;mon and join our Convoy Ain\u0026#39;t nothin\u0026#39; gonna get in our way We gonna roll this MINI convoy \u0026#39;Cross the USA Convoy Convoy ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/convooooooooooooooy..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.thecarconnection.com/blog/?p=561\"\u003eMINIs set record\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\u003ccode\u003e\n\n\u0026#39;Cause we got a mighty convoy  \nRockin\u0026#39; through the night  \nYeah, we got a mighty convoy  \nAin\u0026#39;t she a beautiful sight  \nC\u0026#39;mon and join our Convoy  \nAin\u0026#39;t nothin\u0026#39; gonna get in our way  \nWe gonna roll this MINI convoy  \n\u0026#39;Cross the USA  \nConvoy  \nConvoy  \n\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e","title":"Convooooooooooooooy...."},{"content":"link\nThe Supreme Court has charged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with protecting us from ourselves, limiting the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions from sources like power plants, cars and trucks, and those methane factories known as cattle.\nWhat does this mean in real terms? More expensive everything. Most of the power produced in this country is from fossil fuels, and cleaning these plants and/or implementing \u0026lsquo;cleaner\u0026rsquo; solutions. Energy costs like that will ripple through our economy from top to bottom. Costs of production and OpEx for every company will rise.\nWhat will this do to the auto industry? \u0026ldquo;So long, and thanks for all the fish\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; If Detroit was on the best footing possible (as it was during the EPA reforms in the late 60\u0026rsquo;s and 70\u0026rsquo;s), it could weather it okay. As it is, it\u0026rsquo;s the death knell, IMHO. They don\u0026rsquo;t have the capital to absorb those sorts of changes on any sort of timescale. Even \u0026ldquo;clean\u0026rdquo; automakers like Honda will be streching to change/update their internal combustion offerings to match new regs.\nCertain companies may benefit, but we have an economy highly optimized for cheap, plentiful energy. Witness \u0026ldquo;Just in time\u0026rdquo; inventory, next-day-air deliveries. Regs could double or triple every source now available: Electricity, natural gas, and fuel.\n* * *\nOf course, the other side of this is, we either do this in a controlled fashion now, or we do it after Peak Oil and/or a terrorist action in the Middle East. This is the challenge for our generation, and we must face it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/02-apr-2007--the-day-the-auto-died/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.edmunds.com/karl/473\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Supreme Court has charged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with protecting us from ourselves, limiting the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions from sources like power plants, cars and trucks, and those methane factories known as cattle.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat does this mean in real terms? More expensive everything. Most of the power produced in this country is from fossil fuels, and cleaning these plants and/or implementing \u0026lsquo;cleaner\u0026rsquo; solutions. Energy costs like that will ripple through our economy from top to bottom. Costs of production and OpEx for every company will rise.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"02 Apr 2007 --\u003e The day the auto died"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been through many bad meetings at LXK, but my 3 o\u0026rsquo;clock yesterday ranks right up there as one of the worst. Ingredients\n* Meeting shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have happened. It\u0026rsquo;s a meeting that should\u0026rsquo;ve been a whiteboarding session between me and one other guy.\n* Six people, each with a slightly different agenda.\n* No common manager, hence no one to make a decision if there\u0026rsquo;s a conflict.\nAnyway, so it\u0026rsquo;s a meeting past my threshold of exhaustion (I suck at meetings after 3pm\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s too late in the day and my brain is tapioca.).\nSo, it was a total trainwreck. I did get a nice quote of the day candidate:\n\u0026ldquo;If [the widget] isn\u0026rsquo;t easy to configure after it\u0026rsquo;s built, then it\u0026rsquo;s a boat anchor\u0026rdquo;\nEasily offended programmer: \u0026ldquo;DID YOU JUST CALL ME A BOAT ANCHOR?!!!\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/04/the-worst-meeting-ever.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been through many bad meetings at LXK, but my 3 o\u0026rsquo;clock yesterday ranks right up there as one of the worst. Ingredients\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Meeting shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have happened. It\u0026rsquo;s a meeting that should\u0026rsquo;ve been a whiteboarding session between me and one other guy.\u003cbr\u003e\n* Six people, each with a slightly different agenda.\u003cbr\u003e\n* No common manager, hence no one to make a decision if there\u0026rsquo;s a conflict.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, so it\u0026rsquo;s a meeting past my threshold of exhaustion (I suck at meetings after 3pm\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s too late in the day and my brain is tapioca.).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The worst meeting ever..."},{"content":"Let me sum this up: It\u0026rsquo;s just like the book. The book makes no sense; neither does the movie. It\u0026rsquo;s unwatchable nonsense most of the time.\nThe whole point of the book is to catch Douglas Adams\u0026rsquo;s quotes and sideline commentary.\nOnly redeeming part: My favorite Elf (Zoe Deschanel) is trillian:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/movie-hitchikers-guide-to-the-galaxy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLet me sum this up: It\u0026rsquo;s just like the book. The book makes no sense; neither does the movie. It\u0026rsquo;s unwatchable nonsense most of the time.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe whole point of the book is to catch Douglas Adams\u0026rsquo;s quotes and sideline commentary.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOnly redeeming part: My favorite Elf (Zoe Deschanel) is trillian:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.girlskickbutt.com/images/girls/zooey_deschanel/zooey_deschanel_020.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Movie: \"Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy\""},{"content":"McClaren Racing\nOh, you know\u0026hellip;writing software for F1 racers!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/my-wet-dream-job/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?1657\"\u003eMcClaren Racing\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, you know\u0026hellip;writing software for F1 racers!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My wet-dream job"},{"content":"I was so exhausted yesterday, I don\u0026rsquo;t remember much\u0026hellip;I think I may have proposed marriage to several people (all hopefully women).\nTo any of those, my apologies, I\u0026rsquo;m already taken, and I\u0026rsquo;m semi-conscious today. But, the morning is still young.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/my-apologies/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was so exhausted yesterday, I don\u0026rsquo;t remember much\u0026hellip;I think I may have proposed marriage to several people (all hopefully women).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo any of those, my apologies, I\u0026rsquo;m already taken, and I\u0026rsquo;m semi-conscious today. But, the morning is still young.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My apologies"},{"content":"Other titles consider:\n- Oh Haiiiiiil, no!\n- What the Hail?\n- Hail for certain.\n* * *\nAt 3 o\u0026rsquo;clock this morning, I awoke from a dream where I was apologizing to my dead Uncle Chester for ragging on him my entire life, only to hear what sounded like large pigeons (possibly pelicans\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m not sure) pounding against my roof. Looking outside, we quickly determined a few things.\n- No pigeons.\n- There was lightning\n- Our windows were all open.\n- My Beamer was sitting outside.\nCouldn\u0026rsquo;t do much about the beamer, but we did have time to slam all the windows shut before the worst of the storm rolled-in.\nDidn\u0026rsquo;t take any pics, but the hail was about nickel-size, and it rolled-off my roof like a Dippin\u0026rsquo; Dots truck exploded.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/oh-hail/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOther titles consider:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Oh Haiiiiiil, no!\u003cbr\u003e\n- What the Hail?\u003cbr\u003e\n- Hail for certain.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt 3 o\u0026rsquo;clock this morning, I awoke from a dream where I was apologizing to my dead Uncle Chester for ragging on him my entire life, only to hear what sounded like large pigeons (possibly pelicans\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m not sure) pounding against my roof. Looking outside, we quickly determined a few things.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- No pigeons.\u003cbr\u003e\n- There was lightning\u003cbr\u003e\n- Our windows were all open.\u003cbr\u003e\n- My Beamer was sitting outside.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Oh, Hail!"},{"content":"I believe in some strange way one of those pigeons\u0026hellip; JarvoSpeaks - Mar 5, 2007\nI believe in some strange way one of those pigeons may have been your departed Uncle Chester, returned in spirt form just to say, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s all right, young Harold, I understand, we all go through these things. However, just to even things up I pooped on your beamer.\u0026rdquo;\nI believe in some strange way one of those pigeons may have been your departed Uncle Chester, returned in spirt form just to say, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s all right, young Harold, I understand, we all go through these things. However, just to even things up I pooped on your beamer.\u0026rdquo;\nI believe in some strange way one of those pigeons may have been your departed Uncle Chester, returned in spirt form just to say, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s all right, young Harold, I understand, we all go through these things. However, just to even things up I pooped on your beamer.\u0026rdquo;\nGiven how inarticulate my Uncle was, I\u0026rsquo;d be mighty impressed if the great beyond gave him such a gift for gab. :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/oh-hail-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-believe-in-some-strange-way-one-of-those-pigeons\"\u003eI believe in some strange way one of those pigeons\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/01705426928526831426\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJarvoSpeaks\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI believe in some strange way one of those pigeons may have been your departed Uncle Chester, returned in spirt form just to say, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s all right, young Harold, I understand, we all go through these things. However, just to even things up I pooped on your beamer.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Oh, Hail! (Comments)"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;[Because I talk so much] I need to put in 12 to 15 hours per day just to get in 8 hours of work\u0026rdquo;\nYikes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/qotd/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;[Because I talk so much] I need to put in 12 to 15 hours per day just to get in 8 hours of work\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYikes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"QOTD"},{"content":"W H O are you getting these from?! :-) Jeff Roberts - Mar 2, 2007\nW H O are you getting these from?! :-)\nVarious people\u0026hellip;sometimes, they just s\u0026hellip; HarryC - Mar 3, 2007\n:-)\nVarious people\u0026hellip;sometimes, they just stick in my mind.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/qotd-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"w-h-o-are-you-getting-these-from--\"\u003eW H O are you getting these from?! :-)\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eW H O are you getting these from?! :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVarious people\u0026hellip;sometimes, they just s\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVarious people\u0026hellip;sometimes, they just stick in my mind.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"QOTD (Comments)"},{"content":"Okay, at this point in my life, there\u0026rsquo;s only one show I watch religiously: Grey\u0026rsquo;s Anatomy.\nThe last two episodes have caused me physical pain. You see, the main characters, the swooping eagles of the show\u0026ndash;Merideth, Derek, Christina, and Burke\u0026ndash;mean nothing to me. They\u0026rsquo;re interesting in a surreal sort of way.\nThere are two characters I DO care about\u0026ndash;Izzie and George. They seem very real to me\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re best friends and confidants, and they\u0026rsquo;re flawed. They don\u0026rsquo;t soar quite as high as the rest, but they do have a depth of emotion that is the anchor of this show \u0026ndash; when George\u0026rsquo;s dad died, I had to consider what my own response will be to my father\u0026rsquo;s passing. When Izzie lost Denny, the man for whom she threw away her career, I had to examine just what I would do if my own beloved were dying and there was precious little I could do about it.\nSo, they affect me. And, secretly, I\u0026rsquo;ve always wished they got together. For one thing, I married my best friend and confidant, and it\u0026rsquo;s a beautiful thing. Things\u0026ndash;everything ;-)--is much more fulfilling when you\u0026rsquo;re sharing it with someone who\u0026rsquo;s that close. Someone who gets you. Who can finish your sentences, who has the same thoughts you do at random times.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s what a relationship ought to be\u0026ndash;someone who transcends the physical or spiritual, who can see right to your soul.\nWrench in this plan: George is married. Got married in a quickie wedding to one extraordinary woman. A beautiful, talented, spoiled resident named Callie. She loves him intensely. To her, he\u0026rsquo;s just as handsome, loving, and desirable as Derek is to Meredith.\nSo, the spoiled part\u0026ndash;Callie is jealous and insecure because George has this unstable blonde supermodel as his confidant. This is the chick HE\u0026rsquo;S talking to about her. So, they have a fight, George has enough of it, and he violates just about every rule in the Married Man\u0026rsquo;s Handbook:\nDon\u0026rsquo;t let the sun go down on your anger. Cool off, yes. But don\u0026rsquo;t abandon the field of battle after a minor skirmish.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t get intoxicated to drown your problems\nFailing that, don\u0026rsquo;t get intoxicated around women while drowning your problems\nFailing that, DON\u0026rsquo;T GET INTOXICATED AROUND A WOMAN in private, while drowning your problems.\nGeorge pretty-much violated all these (fairly common-sense) rules and woke up next to his best friend the next morning.\n* * *\nAs with many things, be careful what you wish for. What could\u0026rsquo;ve been a beautiful thing is now dirty and shameful.\nLike I said, I\u0026rsquo;m in pain.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/ga--theyre-back./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, at this point in my life, there\u0026rsquo;s only one show I watch religiously: Grey\u0026rsquo;s Anatomy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two episodes have caused me physical pain. You see, the main characters, the swooping eagles of the show\u0026ndash;Merideth, Derek, Christina, and Burke\u0026ndash;mean nothing to me. They\u0026rsquo;re interesting in a surreal sort of way.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are two characters I DO care about\u0026ndash;Izzie and George. They seem very real to me\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re best friends and confidants, and they\u0026rsquo;re flawed. They don\u0026rsquo;t soar quite as high as the rest, but they do have a depth of emotion that is the anchor of this show \u0026ndash; when George\u0026rsquo;s dad died, I had to consider what my own response will be to my father\u0026rsquo;s passing. When Izzie lost Denny, the man for whom she threw away her career, I had to examine just what I would do if my own beloved were dying and there was precious little I could do about it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"GA -- they're back."},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Assuming I can get this to work\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/qotd/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Assuming I can get this to work\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"QOTD"},{"content":"Two powerpoint presentations for my Managers to present.\nKill me now.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/my-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwo powerpoint presentations for my Managers to present.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKill me now.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My day"},{"content":"[Scene. Interior. A Conference room with a conference table shaped like a badly-imagined Star Trek insignia contains folks awaiting an early morning call. A dark-skinned Indian fellow, running the meeting sits across from a dark-skinned Brazilian man with curly hair. The Brazilian man\u0026rsquo;s humor is less infectious than he\u0026rsquo;d like to believe.]\nBrazilian guy: I love languages. I know how to say \u0026lsquo;good morning\u0026rsquo; 25 languages.\nIndian guy: That\u0026rsquo;s nice\nBG: No, really, teach me. I love to learn. How do you say \u0026lsquo;Good morning\u0026rsquo;.\nIndian guy [dryly, with a smile]: \u0026lsquo;Good morning\u0026rsquo;.\n* * *\nFor those of you scoring at home, folks from West Bengal (Kolkata\u0026rsquo;s region) can speak English, Hindi, and Bengali from the time they\u0026rsquo;re 2 years old.\nnice\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/quote-for-the-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e[Scene. Interior. A Conference room with a conference table shaped like a badly-imagined Star Trek insignia contains folks awaiting an early morning call. A dark-skinned Indian fellow, running the meeting sits across from a dark-skinned Brazilian man with curly hair. The Brazilian man\u0026rsquo;s humor is less infectious than he\u0026rsquo;d like to believe.]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBrazilian guy: I love languages. I know how to say \u0026lsquo;good morning\u0026rsquo; 25 languages.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIndian guy: That\u0026rsquo;s nice\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote for the day"},{"content":"That I understood this post or that I understood within 3 seconds that it could be better written as:\nBOOL IsIpAddressZero( LONG lIpAddress ) { return !lIpAddress; } ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/i-dont-know-what-worries-me-more.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThat I understood \u003ca href=\"http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/Net_Shift_.aspx\"\u003ethis post\u003c/a\u003e or that I understood within 3 seconds that it could be better written as:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\u003ccode\u003e\nBOOL IsIpAddressZero( LONG lIpAddress )  \n{  \n      return  !lIpAddress;  \n}  \n\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e","title":"I don't know what worries me more..."},{"content":"300\nTagline for the movie posters:\nThis has to be the best movie involving half-naked [gay] men I\u0026rsquo;ve seen all year.\nOkay, I\u0026rsquo;m a history buff, and I\u0026rsquo;ve reviewed Other works about Thermopylae before. In many ways the Pressfield book (and, I\u0026rsquo;m assuming, Frank Miller\u0026rsquo;s graphic novels) were better interpretations of Thermopylae, but the movie was interesting.\nSome advisories:\n- Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s that gory. It\u0026rsquo;s about a battle waged hand-to-hand over three days, and it gives you precious little time to forget that. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t exactly glorify battle, but it does remind us that modern warfare is much more antiseptic than its ancient forebear.\n- For the Homophobes: No there is no frontal male nudity. Thankfully. Yes, there are naked male behinds (lit for a night scnene). There are no openly gay references, but it is hinted at in a couple of exchanges on the battlefield.\n- Equal opportunity: Yes, lots of breasts on display.\n- Irony alert: Yes, the Spartans fought bravely to save their way of life, a way of life that included slavery for the tens-of-thousands of Messenian Helots that they terrorized on the Pelloponesian peninsula. How else did you think they could spend ALL their time training for war? Their economy was entirely based upon slave labor.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/review-300/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://imdb.com/title/tt0416449/\"\u003e300\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTagline for the movie posters:\u003cbr\u003e\nThis has to be the best movie involving half-naked [gay] men I\u0026rsquo;ve seen all year.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, I\u0026rsquo;m a history buff, and I\u0026rsquo;ve reviewed \u003ca href=\"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/depression/\" title=\"depressing blog\"\u003eOther works about Thermopylae before\u003c/a\u003e. In many ways the Pressfield book (and, I\u0026rsquo;m assuming, Frank Miller\u0026rsquo;s graphic novels) were better interpretations of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae\"\u003eThermopylae\u003c/a\u003e, but the movie was interesting.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome advisories:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s that gory. It\u0026rsquo;s about a battle waged hand-to-hand over three days, and it gives you precious little time to forget that. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t exactly glorify battle, but it does remind us that modern warfare is much more antiseptic than its ancient forebear.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: 300"},{"content":"Oh, to be a fly on THAT wall. Unless, of course, \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Mar 5, 2007\nOh, to be a fly on THAT wall. Unless, of course, I\u0026rsquo;m the empty shell.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/quote-for-the-day-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"oh-to-be-a-fly-on-that-wall-unless-of-course-\"\u003eOh, to be a fly on THAT wall. Unless, of course, \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, to be a fly on THAT wall. Unless, of course, I\u0026rsquo;m the empty shell.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Quote for the day (Comments)"},{"content":"Duke\u0026rsquo;s OUT of the tournament\nGeorge finally hit that\nI had a snappy comeback. For once. Felt good.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/what-a-night/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDuke\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/gamecenter/recap/NCAAB_20070315_VACOMM@DUKE\"\u003eOUT of the tournament\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGeorge finally hit that\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://z.about.com/d/tvdramas/1/0/A/5/kheigl.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a snappy comeback. For once. Felt good.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What a night"},{"content":"Car rumps, that is :-)\nNissan is famous for screwing-up the back-end of every car they make, producing bulbous, unattractive forms that destroy the tidy lines of the car. Seems to me they\u0026rsquo;re always trying to add \u0026lsquo;visual excitement\u0026rsquo; (a Pontiac term!) to the cars.\nWell, I LOVE the new Altima.\nThe back end had a muscular look, very reminiscent of a G35, skyline, or a 350z. Pictures really don\u0026rsquo;t do it justice: The curve from the C pillar is organic, down through the tail lights. It reminds me of the way Ferrari finishes-off its great GT cars like the 456GT.\nSigh\u0026hellip;yes, it\u0026rsquo;s spring. It\u0026rsquo;s time for me to look at cars. I really have an itch to test drive a Civic Si sedan after reading this review\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/ive-got-this-thing-for-rumps.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCar rumps, that is :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNissan is famous for screwing-up the back-end of every car they make, producing bulbous, unattractive forms that destroy the tidy lines of the car. Seems to me they\u0026rsquo;re always trying to add \u0026lsquo;visual excitement\u0026rsquo; (a Pontiac term!) to the cars.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, I LOVE the new Altima.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com//pictures/VEHICLE/2007/Nissan/2007.nissan.altima.20105780-E.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe back end had a muscular look, very reminiscent of a G35, skyline, or a 350z. Pictures really don\u0026rsquo;t do it justice: The curve from the C pillar is organic, down through the tail lights. It reminds me of the way Ferrari finishes-off its great GT cars like the 456GT.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I've got this thing for rumps..."},{"content":"But have you checked out the gluteus on the Maxima\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Mar 3, 2007\nBut have you checked out the gluteus on the Maximas? :-)\none word: minivan.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/ive-got-this-thing-for-rumps...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"but-have-you-checked-out-the-gluteus-on-the-maxima\"\u003eBut have you checked out the gluteus on the Maxima\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut have you checked out the gluteus on the Maximas? :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eone word: minivan.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"I've got this thing for rumps... (Comments)"},{"content":"Snow Crash\nConsumed this book this weekend, and it was a great mind-F***, similar to the first time you watch \u0026ldquo;The Matrix\u0026rdquo;.\nWhere to begin? The central character, Hiro Protagonist (You have to admire a man with the stones to call his protagonist Mr. Protagonist!), lives in a dystopian future overrun by corporations, in which the world is split in two\u0026ndash;Reality is, well, the real world, and the Metaverse is the hipper virtual world where everyone has avatars and can interact via being \u0026lsquo;Goggled-in\u0026rsquo;.\nHiro is a pizza delivery boy / katana-wielding swordsman in the real world, and a Hacker God in the Metaverse. He works for the CostaNostra (yes, the Mafia) as a pizza delivery boy, whose motto is \u0026lsquo;Delivery in 30 minutes or ELSE!\u0026rsquo; The novel opens as Hiro tries to get a pizza pie door-to-door in less than 10 minute, along the way attracting a 15 year old jailbait skateboard Kourier named \u0026lsquo;Y.T.\u0026rsquo; (Stands for \u0026lsquo;Yours Truly\u0026rsquo;).\nThe plot centers around a \u0026lsquo;virus\u0026rsquo; that someone wrote which can infect people\u0026rsquo;s software\u0026ndash;namely, their brain stem, turning them into mindless automatons. This virus is delivered via a drug, known as \u0026lsquo;Snow Crash\u0026rsquo;, and the drug exists in both the real and virtual worlds. As Hiro learns more and more, the novel becomes a techno-thriller in which Hiro, Y.T., and a motley consortium of the powers-that-be try to stop the folks behind Snow Crash from taking over the world.\n\u0026hellip;Along the way, we have lots of Heinlien-esque conceits in which Hiro dialogs with the Library of Congress computer about the nature of many things\u0026ndash;language, religion, and human history. Along the way, he posits (in true Platonic dialog fashion) that organized religion is, itself, a virus. That it spreads, civilizes, controls, and enslaves (at least, that\u0026rsquo;s what I took away from it!)\nThat\u0026rsquo;s why this book is a MindF***\u0026hellip;it causes you to re-examine stuff. In my pre-religious, atheistic days, I used to wonder if Civilization invented religion, along the lines of Marx\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;opium for the masses,\u0026rdquo; as a way to control the masses and make people satisfied with their crappy lot in life. Snow Crash turns that idea on its head, suggesting that religion invented civilization as a way of spreading religion.\nStephenson is a real geek, and it shows in his writing\u0026ndash;Powers of 2 abound, everything has an order and a taxonomy, and his female characters are essentially men with vaginas\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re practical, logical, and oversexed. But anyway, I\u0026rsquo;ve been on a bit of a geek binge in the past 3 weeks, and this book was a fine capstone for that.\nNow I\u0026rsquo;m off to see if I can integrate a Future with my uber-fast SNMP client.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/snow-crash/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash\"\u003eSnow Crash\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Snowcrash.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConsumed this book this weekend, and it was a great mind-F***, similar to the first time you watch \u0026ldquo;The Matrix\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhere to begin? The central character, Hiro Protagonist (You have to admire a man with the stones to call his protagonist Mr. Protagonist!), lives in a dystopian future overrun by corporations, in which the world is split in two\u0026ndash;Reality is, well, the real world, and the Metaverse is the hipper virtual world where everyone has avatars and can interact via being \u0026lsquo;Goggled-in\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Snow Crash"},{"content":"\nMy blog is worth $2,822.70.\nHow much is your blog worth?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/meme-how-much-is-your-blog-worth/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/23/25822676_789bf55448_t.jpg\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nMy \u003ca href=\"http://harvid.blogspot.com\"\u003eblog\u003c/a\u003e is worth \u003cstrong\u003e$2,822.70\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/\"\u003eHow much is your blog worth?\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.technorati.com/\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://technorati.com/pix/tech-logo-embed.gif\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Meme: How much is your blog worth?"},{"content":"jjetsam.wordpress.com: $2,258.16 jeffingtown.bl\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Mar 6, 2007\njjetsam.wordpress.com: $2,258.16\njeffingtown.blogspot.com: $6,209.94\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/meme-how-much-is-your-blog-worth-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"jjetsamwordpresscom-225816\"\u003ejjetsam.wordpress.com: $2,258.16\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ejeffingtown.bl\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 6, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ejjetsam.wordpress.com: $2,258.16\u003cbr\u003e\njeffingtown.blogspot.com: $6,209.94\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Meme: How much is your blog worth? (Comments)"},{"content":"Article\nUnderstand, I don\u0026rsquo;t like Spring all that much. For a \u0026rsquo;lightweight\u0026rsquo; framework, it\u0026rsquo;s awfully heavy on the stuff you need to ship to have an \u0026lsquo;app\u0026rsquo; (or at least, it seems that way to me). Still, this guy\u0026rsquo;s critiques are just\u0026hellip;weak!\nThoughts:\nOn Configuration\n\u0026ldquo;Setter injection is bad\u0026rdquo;. Yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s bad. It allows you to create objects in an invalid state, and causes all sorts of runtime state checking of what (often) is an immutable or stateless Object. Still, all recent versions of Spring have allowed us to use constructor injection.\n\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t combine application wiring and configuration\u0026rdquo;. Yeah. Use a property configurator and a regular java .properties file.\nOn Dependency graphs\nEvery class implements an interface, just to make it easy for Spring. I wholeheartedly agree with this one, but it\u0026rsquo;s a nit. You can just as easily NOT do this.\nOn Aspect oriented programming\n\u0026ldquo;This isn\u0026rsquo;t healthy in the general case\u0026rdquo;. Correct, it\u0026rsquo;s not. Most logic should be expressed vertically (a typical algorithm or Object-oriented decomposition), not as an aspect. Even the name implies this, because when programming an aspect, you\u0026rsquo;re programming an aspect OF something.\nHis assertion here is that Spring sucks because it makes AOP easy enough that non-experts can use it. Spring does add AOP to your toolbox, but the ultimate decision for using it responsibly is yours.\nOn transparency and abstraction\nThe crux: Spring does so many things for you behind the scenes, when it breaks, you\u0026rsquo;re stuck. Also, you might involve so many remoting calls that you create a monstrously inefficient application.\nAs others said in the comments, ultimately programming is hard. Gluing together multiple programs/processes across networks is harder.\nThe one good point he makes here is Spring\u0026rsquo;s flexibility is somewhat illusory\u0026ndash;likely , if you make an app that exposes an API via HTTP, you\u0026rsquo;re never going to change an XML file and magically have that app expose that API via RMI. Why? Because there are rarely requirements for such things. One of the first things you decide on when doing a client/server or distributed app is the method(s) you\u0026rsquo;ll use for remoting.\n* * *\nMy summary: Spring is a juggernaut, but it\u0026rsquo;s in a very precarious place. It allows gluing up applications that can run in J2EE environments, but to have that capability, it\u0026rsquo;s a little bit heavy for writing smaller applications (in the Ruby on Rails vein) that do straightforward things. That is, if I have an app with a dozen or so classes, using a couple of open source libraries, I\u0026rsquo;ll probably just tie it together the old fasioned way\u0026ndash;a compiled JAR file, shipped with its dependencies.\nOf course, if I\u0026rsquo;m writing a \u0026lsquo;small\u0026rsquo; app, I\u0026rsquo;m much more likely to use Ruby. But that\u0026rsquo;s another Tech Head entry, altogether :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/tech-head-rather-weak-spring-critique/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://floatingpoint.tinou.com/2007/03/a_critique_of_s.html\"\u003eArticle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnderstand, I don\u0026rsquo;t like Spring all that much. For a \u0026rsquo;lightweight\u0026rsquo; framework, it\u0026rsquo;s awfully heavy on the stuff you need to ship to have an \u0026lsquo;app\u0026rsquo; (or at least, it seems that way to me). Still, this guy\u0026rsquo;s critiques are just\u0026hellip;weak!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThoughts:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOn Configuration\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Setter injection is bad\u0026rdquo;. Yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s bad. It allows you to create objects in an invalid state, and causes all sorts of runtime state checking of what (often) is an immutable or stateless Object. Still, all recent versions of Spring have allowed us to use constructor injection.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tech Head: Rather weak spring critique"},{"content":"Link\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/cutest-job-posting-ive-ever-seen/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?1550\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cutest job posting I've ever seen"},{"content":"I KNOW THAT GUY!!! CRAP WHAT IS HIS NAME?! no n\u0026hellip; Whitney - Mar 4, 2007\nI KNOW THAT GUY!!! CRAP WHAT IS HIS NAME?! no not him\u0026hellip;.the other one\u0026hellip;.in the red shirt\u0026hellip;.I think I went to Highview with him\u0026hellip;.or maybe Southeast\u0026hellip;.crap!\nOh, wait, we\u0026rsquo;d have to\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Mar 4, 2007\nTAKE ME WITH YOU!!!!\nOh, wait, we\u0026rsquo;d have to stage a hostile takeover to both work THERE. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/cutest-job-posting-ive-ever-seen-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-know-that-guy-crap-what-is-his-name-no-n\"\u003eI KNOW THAT GUY!!! CRAP WHAT IS HIS NAME?! no n\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 4, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI KNOW THAT GUY!!! CRAP WHAT IS HIS NAME?! no not him\u0026hellip;.the other one\u0026hellip;.in the red shirt\u0026hellip;.I think I went to Highview with him\u0026hellip;.or maybe Southeast\u0026hellip;.crap!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, wait, we\u0026rsquo;d have to\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMar 4, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cutest job posting I've ever seen (Comments)"},{"content":"Only two 10 pound objects can hold a room of adults hostage:\nPlastic explosives or a crying baby.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/03/monday-thought-hostages/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOnly two 10 pound objects can hold a room of adults hostage:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePlastic explosives or a crying baby.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Monday thought: Hostages"},{"content":"Well, after yesterday\u0026rsquo;s Miniature global stock market meltdown, looks like my options sale won\u0026rsquo;t go forward after all.\nSomething about chickens, counting, and hatcheries. :)\nLesson learned: When God smacks you upside the head and says \u0026ldquo;SELL AT 70\u0026rdquo;, listen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/queering-the-deal...pt-2/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, after yesterday\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/02/27/market-meltdown-causes-biz-cx_tvr_0228meltdown.html\"\u003eMiniature global stock market meltdown\u003c/a\u003e, looks like my options sale won\u0026rsquo;t go forward after all.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething about chickens, counting, and hatcheries. :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLesson learned: When God smacks you upside the head and says \u0026ldquo;SELL AT 70\u0026rdquo;, listen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Queering the deal...pt 2"},{"content":"Pediatricians would seem to be just like veterinarians: Their patients can\u0026rsquo;t communicate with them to tell them where it hurts.\nMaria\u0026rsquo;s developed a new trick\u0026ndash;caterwauling between 6 and 8 pm. My impression of her thoughts:\nAh, that was a great feeding\u0026hellip;mmmm\u0026hellip;.look at that twirly thing up there. I\u0026rsquo;m so hap\u0026ndash;WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!\nWHAT THE FREAK IS THAT?!!!\nWHY IN THE WORLD DOES MY BOTTOM HURT!\nWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA\nMAKEITSTOPMAKITSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!\n(add 10 mins of that)\n[gush, plop. Crying abruptly ends]\nOoooh\u0026hellip;what\u0026rsquo;s that? That\u0026rsquo;s different.\nUGH! That\u0026rsquo;s weird\nWHAT THE FREAK IS THAT?!\nWHY IS MY BOTTOM WET AND SMELLY?!\nWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!\n[diaper changes]\nWow, that\u0026rsquo;s a cool baby in the mirror. When do I eat again, mummy? [grin]\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/random-thought-on-pediatrics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePediatricians would seem to be just like veterinarians: Their patients can\u0026rsquo;t communicate with them to tell them where it hurts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaria\u0026rsquo;s developed a new trick\u0026ndash;caterwauling between 6 and 8 pm. My impression of her thoughts:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAh, that was a great feeding\u0026hellip;mmmm\u0026hellip;.look at that twirly thing up there. I\u0026rsquo;m so hap\u0026ndash;WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWHAT THE FREAK IS THAT?!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWHY IN THE WORLD DOES MY BOTTOM HURT!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMAKEITSTOPMAKITSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(add 10 mins of that)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Random thought on pediatrics"},{"content":"ROFL. I am so freakin slap happy.\n\u0026hellip; Whitney - Feb 2, 2007\nROFL.\nI am so freakin slap happy.\nlooks like you are too.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/random-thought-on-pediatrics-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"rofl\"\u003eROFL.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am so freakin slap happy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eROFL.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am so freakin slap happy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003elooks like you are too.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Random thought on pediatrics (Comments)"},{"content":"link\n[Is it wrong\u0026hellip;]\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;.that I have to mention to my husband that \u0026ldquo;B-double E-double R-U-N, beer run\u0026rdquo; is NOT an appropriate lullaby?b\n:-) Lyrics!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/lie-lies-/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://monkeysontheside.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html#1280288180723110239\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[Is it wrong\u0026hellip;]\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;.that I have to mention to my husband that \u0026ldquo;B-double E-double R-U-N, beer run\u0026rdquo; is NOT an appropriate lullaby?b\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) \u003ca href=\"http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/snider-todd/beer-run-13882.html\"\u003eLyrics!\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lie, lies! :-)"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s Friday, I\u0026rsquo;m a new dad, the coffee has kicked in, I solved an issue for Porsche yesterday, and it\u0026rsquo;s sunny outside. My Teleconference at 7am was cancelled today. Spring isn\u0026rsquo;t far away, and the mercury hit 50 yesterday for the first time in 6 weeks of dull winter. My Dad called, and for the first time in awhile, I didn\u0026rsquo;t vent at him for 15 solid minutes about being tired, fed-up, and depressed.\nMay have a triple-boon coming up\u0026ndash;tax return, company bonus, and sale of some stock options (if we hit a certain price!). I have spring fever for everything\u0026ndash;a new car, a new house, a vacation, and gadgets galore, but I\u0026rsquo;ll probably end-up saving most of it.\nBoth the cars are going to need some massive refresh work this Spring, but I\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to doing most of it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/friday-frolick/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s Friday, I\u0026rsquo;m a new dad, the coffee has kicked in, I solved an issue for Porsche yesterday, and it\u0026rsquo;s sunny outside. My Teleconference at 7am was cancelled today. Spring isn\u0026rsquo;t far away, and the mercury hit 50 yesterday for the first time in 6 weeks of dull winter. My Dad called, and for the first time in awhile, I didn\u0026rsquo;t vent at him for 15 solid minutes about being tired, fed-up, and depressed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Friday frolick"},{"content":"After a week of exposure, I can\u0026rsquo;t get the smell of poopy diapers out of my nostrils.\nI think it\u0026rsquo;s scent memory.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/slightly-disgusting-discovery.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter a week of exposure, I can\u0026rsquo;t get the smell of poopy diapers out of my nostrils.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think it\u0026rsquo;s scent memory.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Slightly disgusting discovery..."},{"content":"Well, looks like most of my team at work has my blog address now.\n:-) Oh well.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/cats-out-of-the-bag/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, looks like most of my team at work has my blog address now.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) Oh well.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cat's out of the bag"},{"content":"Once again, I am sorry. How many hours of free ba\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Feb 1, 2007\nOnce again, I am sorry. How many hours of free babysitting do I owe you?? :-)\n(Off I go to write flattering posts about each member of your team\u0026hellip;)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/cats-out-of-the-bag-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"once-again-i-am-sorry-how-many-hours-of-free-ba\"\u003eOnce again, I am sorry. How many hours of free ba\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOnce again, I am sorry. How many hours of free babysitting do I owe you?? :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Off I go to write flattering posts about each member of your team\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Cat's out of the bag (Comments)"},{"content":"Maria\u0026rsquo;s world is expanding a bit, including a preference for being awake with the lights on\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;which is a problem if she sleeps during the day, then wants to be awake last night. We had her up for her 4am feeding, and that was it. Her day started from that point, and she was UP, baby :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/free-running/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMaria\u0026rsquo;s world is expanding a bit, including a preference for being awake with the lights on\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;which is a problem if she sleeps during the day, then wants to be awake last night. We had her up for her 4am feeding, and that was it. Her day started from that point, and she was UP, baby :)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Free Running\""},{"content":"She is beautiful. I am so happy for you and Whitne\u0026hellip; Susan - Feb 2, 2007\nShe is beautiful. I am so happy for you and Whitney. Enjoy the baby!!!\nBeautiful! And she has your haircut, too!\nshe is beautiful! congrats to you two! i am so happy for you. enjoy\u0026ndash;they grow fast.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/pics-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"she-is-beautiful-i-am-so-happy-for-you-and-whitne\"\u003eShe is beautiful. I am so happy for you and Whitne\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/14266500429112482921\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eSusan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe is beautiful. I am so happy for you and Whitney. Enjoy the baby!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBeautiful! And she has your haircut, too!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eshe is beautiful! congrats to you two! i am so happy for you. enjoy\u0026ndash;they grow fast.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pics!!! (Comments)"},{"content":"Is it a requirement that a good labor and delivery nurse be a mother?\nMan, I\u0026rsquo;m tired.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/thought/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIs it a requirement that a good labor and delivery nurse be a mother?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMan, I\u0026rsquo;m tired.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"thought"},{"content":"I dunno but Sandra once had an OB/GYN who became a\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Feb 2, 2007\nI dunno but Sandra once had an OB/GYN who became a lot more caring after having her own first kid :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/thought-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-dunno-but-sandra-once-had-an-obgyn-who-became-a\"\u003eI dunno but Sandra once had an OB/GYN who became a\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI dunno but Sandra once had an OB/GYN who became a lot more caring after having her own first kid :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"thought (Comments)"},{"content":"Friday: 5:00 am - Alarm Clock rings\n6:00 - arrive at hospital. One contraction in the parking lot\n6:30 - Pitocin drip starts 5mL/hr. External fetal and uterine monitoring.\n7:30 - Pitocin drip to 10mL/hr. Whitney and I take a 30 min nap.\n8:30 - Pitocin drip to 15mL/hr. Mild contractions.\n10 - Pitocin drip to 35mL/hr. Interesting contractions. Labor seems to be established. IV removed. Maria has significant heart-rate deceleration (a \u0026ldquo;decel\u0026rdquo;)\n12 - Contractions slow down.\n2pm - Contractions stopped.\n4:30 - Water broken by midwife. Better contractions 3-5 mins apart.\n6:30 - No change in dilation or station. Pitocin augmentation begun again, at 15mL/hr, upped every 20 minutes.\n6:30 - 7:30: Transition 7cm to full dilation. Contractions at 100+, 2 mins apart. Whitney breathes through them like a champ.\n7:30 - \u0026ldquo;Get Melody! I feel like pushing\u0026rdquo;\n7:30 - 9pm: Pushing, in various positions.\n9pm - Whitney\u0026rsquo;s exhausted, Maria transverse at -2 station. Her head is wedged 90 degress from her body. No position (Hands and knees, etc.) has helped. To this point, still no pain meds. Epidural offered, accepted, and the on call anesthesiologist paged.\n9:30pm - Epidural placed. (Aside: This guy was GOOD\u0026hellip;placed an epidural in a woman having contractions 40 seconds apart, exhausted, and barely cooperative.)\n9:45pm - pushing attempted with epidural placed. No change. Signficant heart-rate decels. I decide we\u0026rsquo;re going for a C-Section. I\u0026rsquo;m scared to death I\u0026rsquo;m going to lose both my girls. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s BP is rising fast, she\u0026rsquo;s hemorrhaging, she\u0026rsquo;s exhausted, and Maria\u0026rsquo;s heartbeat is failing.\n10:30 - O.R. team in place. Operation begins.\n10:40 - Maria born\n10:50 - I follow her with the pediatrician back to the nursery. Whitney goes to recovery.\n11:30 - Whitney back in her room\n* * *\nThat, ladies and gentlemen, was the 18 hour ordeal of my daughter coming into the world.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/the-condensed-version-maria-coming-into-the-world/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"friday\"\u003eFriday:\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5:00 am - Alarm Clock rings\u003cbr\u003e\n6:00 - arrive at hospital. One contraction in the parking lot\u003cbr\u003e\n6:30 - Pitocin drip starts 5mL/hr. External fetal and uterine monitoring.\u003cbr\u003e\n7:30 - Pitocin drip to 10mL/hr. Whitney and I take a 30 min nap.\u003cbr\u003e\n8:30 - Pitocin drip to 15mL/hr. Mild contractions.\u003cbr\u003e\n10 - Pitocin drip to 35mL/hr. Interesting contractions. Labor seems to be established. IV removed. Maria has significant heart-rate deceleration (a \u0026ldquo;decel\u0026rdquo;)\u003cbr\u003e\n12 - Contractions slow down.\u003cbr\u003e\n2pm - Contractions stopped.\u003cbr\u003e\n4:30 - Water broken by midwife. Better contractions 3-5 mins apart.\u003cbr\u003e\n6:30 - No change in dilation or station. Pitocin augmentation begun again, at 15mL/hr, upped every 20 minutes.\u003cbr\u003e\n6:30 - 7:30: Transition 7cm to full dilation. Contractions at 100+, 2 mins apart. Whitney breathes through them like a champ.\u003cbr\u003e\n7:30 - \u0026ldquo;Get Melody! I feel like pushing\u0026rdquo;\u003cbr\u003e\n7:30 - 9pm: Pushing, in various positions.\u003cbr\u003e\n9pm - Whitney\u0026rsquo;s exhausted, Maria transverse at -2 station. Her head is wedged 90 degress from her body. No position (Hands and knees, etc.) has helped. To this point, still no pain meds. Epidural offered, accepted, and the on call anesthesiologist paged.\u003cbr\u003e\n9:30pm - Epidural placed. (Aside: This guy was GOOD\u0026hellip;placed an epidural in a woman having contractions 40 seconds apart, exhausted, and barely cooperative.)\u003cbr\u003e\n9:45pm - pushing attempted with epidural placed. No change. Signficant heart-rate decels. I decide we\u0026rsquo;re going for a C-Section. I\u0026rsquo;m scared to death I\u0026rsquo;m going to lose both my girls. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s BP is rising fast, she\u0026rsquo;s hemorrhaging, she\u0026rsquo;s exhausted, and Maria\u0026rsquo;s heartbeat is failing.\u003cbr\u003e\n10:30 - O.R. team in place. Operation begins.\u003cbr\u003e\n10:40 - Maria born\u003cbr\u003e\n10:50 - I follow her with the pediatrician back to the nursery. Whitney goes to recovery.\u003cbr\u003e\n11:30 - Whitney back in her room\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The condensed version: Maria coming into the world"},{"content":"Maria Elizabeth Combs (\u0026ldquo;mec\u0026rdquo;)\nBorn via Cesarean Section at 10:40pm February 10\n8 lbs 5 oz\n19 inches long\nAPGAR score: 9.9\nMom and baby are doing well.\nI have never been more scared, elated, or tired in my life.\nPics to follow\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/my-little-dude/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMaria Elizabeth Combs (\u003ca href=\"http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/g/mec.htm\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;mec\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBorn via Cesarean Section at 10:40pm February 10\u003cbr\u003e\n8 lbs 5 oz\u003cbr\u003e\n19 inches long\u003cbr\u003e\nAPGAR score: 9.9\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMom and baby are doing well.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have never been more scared, elated, or tired in my life.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePics to follow\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My little \"Dude\""},{"content":"Dude! I mean, Dad! (and Mom! and big Bro!) Jeff Roberts - Feb 0, 2007\nDude! I mean, Dad! (and Mom! and big Bro!)\nCongratulations!\nCongratulations! You are the man \u0026hellip; no, wait, Whitney is the man. Congratulations to all three (and Joey) from all of us here at the Jarvis house \u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/my-little-dude-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"dude-i-mean-dad-and-mom-and-big-bro\"\u003eDude! I mean, Dad! (and Mom! and big Bro!)\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 0, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDude! I mean, Dad! (and Mom! and big Bro!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCongratulations!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCongratulations! You are the man \u0026hellip; no, wait, Whitney is the man. Congratulations to all three (and Joey) from all of us here at the Jarvis house \u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"My little \"Dude\" (Comments)"},{"content":"I love \u0026ldquo;Grey\u0026rsquo;s Anatomy\u0026rdquo;, but they Jumped the Shark many different ways last night.\nA very special\u0026hellip;: On tonight\u0026rsquo;s very special introduction to the three-episode story-arc from Hell, we concoct a ferry-boat hitting a container ship, turn thousands of characters you don\u0026rsquo;t care about into hamburger so that we can beleaguer a metaphor for a central character who feels lost. Yay.\nHair care\u0026hellip;: We will have an entire, poorly shot elevator scene of uncomfortable actors trying to do material about an aging, balding black man\u0026rsquo;s hair. The only female will cluck her hen-like, \u0026ldquo;Leave him Be!\u0026rdquo; Four more times that should be allowed by the Screen Actor\u0026rsquo;s Guild.\nNot that there\u0026rsquo;s anything wrong with it\u0026hellip;(George). The actor who plays George is gay. Which leads me to\u0026hellip; .\nMarriage\u0026ndash;Georget \u0026amp; Callie. It was a cute concept, but\u0026hellip;now, really, what \u0026rsquo;s the deal here? This is a sub-plot that\u0026rsquo;s going nowhere.\nOn Shonda\u0026rsquo;s Blog she does everything but cop to the fact that they shot this monstrosity with only her \u0026ldquo;ideas\u0026rdquo;, not a script. Yeah, no script for an ensemble cast. \u0026ldquo;Ishtar,\u0026rdquo; anyone?\n[Comic book guy]\nI want you to know I was on the internet within minutes registering my distaste. Worst. Episode. Ever.\n[/Comic book guy]\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/greys-anatomy-what-happened/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI love \u0026ldquo;Grey\u0026rsquo;s Anatomy\u0026rdquo;, but they \u003ca href=\"http://www.jumptheshark.com\"\u003eJumped the Shark\u003c/a\u003e many different ways last night.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA very special\u0026hellip;\u003c/em\u003e: On tonight\u0026rsquo;s very special introduction to the three-episode story-arc from Hell, we concoct a ferry-boat hitting a container ship, turn thousands of characters you don\u0026rsquo;t care about into hamburger so that we can beleaguer a metaphor for a central character who feels lost. Yay.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHair care\u0026hellip;\u003c/em\u003e: We will have an entire, poorly shot elevator scene of uncomfortable actors trying to do material about an aging, balding black man\u0026rsquo;s hair. The only female will cluck her hen-like, \u0026ldquo;Leave him Be!\u0026rdquo; Four more times that should be allowed by the Screen Actor\u0026rsquo;s Guild.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Grey's Anatomy, what happened?!"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Man, you look on edge. You haven\u0026rsquo;t even said anything and you just look totally stressed!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;My family tree isn\u0026rsquo;t so much a tree as a climbing, criss-crossing trestle of ivy.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You ever wonder if Jesus told a lot of jokes? I have this vision of him telling all these blonde jokes then going, \u0026lsquo;No, really\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re these people from up North. Scandinavia. Bah, what do you people know from comedy?! Oy Vey!\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/quotable-quotes-from-lunch/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Man, you look on \u003cstrong\u003eedge\u003c/strong\u003e. You haven\u0026rsquo;t even said anything and you just look totally stressed!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;My family tree isn\u0026rsquo;t so much a tree as a climbing, criss-crossing trestle of ivy.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You ever wonder if Jesus told a lot of jokes? I have this vision of him telling all these blonde jokes then going, \u0026lsquo;No, really\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re these people from up North. Scandinavia. Bah, what do you people know from comedy?! Oy Vey!\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quotable quotes from lunch"},{"content":"So, I\u0026rsquo;m set-up at my kitchen table, laptop open, totally \u0026ldquo;in the zone\u0026rdquo;. Birds are singing, pregnant women are speaking, and kids are flying around everywhere (as kids are wont to do\u0026hellip;)\nWhitney catches my eye and says, \u0026ldquo;Do you do that at the office, too?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Huh?\u0026rdquo;\nW: \u0026ldquo;Do you randomly yell at your computer?\u0026rdquo;\nHad to think about that for a minute.\n\u0026ldquo;Yeah, I guess I do\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; :-)\n* * *\nFor the rest of the day, Whitney and Joey walked around me like people watching the gorillas at the zoo. I could see \u0026rsquo;em thinking: What will he do next?\u0026hellip;Wow, he\u0026rsquo;s weeeeird!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/working-from-home-has-lots-of-surprises/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;m set-up at my kitchen table, laptop open, totally \u0026ldquo;in the zone\u0026rdquo;. Birds are singing, pregnant women are speaking, and kids are flying around everywhere (as kids are wont to do\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney catches my eye and says, \u0026ldquo;Do you do that at the office, too?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Huh?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eW: \u0026ldquo;Do you randomly yell at your computer?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHad to think about that for a minute.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Yeah, I guess I do\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Working from home has lots of surprises"},{"content":"Yeah, about that:\nWhitney\u0026rsquo;s very strong, regular contractions just\u0026hellip;stopped\u0026hellip;right around 10 today. Then they went back to the irregular, 7-10-12-10 minute pattern they\u0026rsquo;ve been in for 2 weeks now.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve gone through the gamut today\u0026ndash;excitement, concentration, benevolence, resignation, exhaustion, anger, disappointment, and now (post power-nap) resignation.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/no-baby-yet.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYeah, about that:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney\u0026rsquo;s very strong, regular contractions just\u0026hellip;stopped\u0026hellip;right around 10 today. Then they went back to the irregular, 7-10-12-10 minute pattern they\u0026rsquo;ve been in for 2 weeks now.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve gone through the gamut today\u0026ndash;excitement, concentration, benevolence, resignation, exhaustion, anger, disappointment, and now (post power-nap) resignation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"No baby yet..."},{"content":"Contracting since last night. Moderate to hard contractions since 4am. Joey at a friends house since 6:30 this morning.\nContractions in the 5-to-3 minute range. Waters intact, and no show yet.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/labor-update/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eContracting since last night. Moderate to hard contractions since 4am. Joey at a friends house since 6:30 this morning.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eContractions in the 5-to-3 minute range. Waters intact, and no show yet.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Labor update"},{"content":"Yeah\u0026hellip;February of 78 was pretty bad\nThat\u0026rsquo;s when I was conceived. :-)\n* * *\nWe\u0026rsquo;re under a \u0026lsquo;Heavy Snow Warning\u0026rsquo; for tonight. 3-5 inches expected. EVERYBODY PANIC.\nOkay, done?\nGood.\nYeah, probably gonna pick-up a snow shovel today, somewhere.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/the-winter-of-77-78/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYeah\u0026hellip;February of 78 was \u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/16631804.htm?source=rss\u0026amp;channel=kentucky_news\"\u003epretty bad\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s when I was conceived. :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re under a \u0026lsquo;Heavy Snow Warning\u0026rsquo; for tonight. 3-5 inches expected. EVERYBODY PANIC.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, done?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGood.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, probably gonna pick-up a snow shovel today, somewhere.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The winter of 77-78"},{"content":"Fond, FOND memories of that magical winter. Trudg\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Feb 2, 2007\nFond, FOND memories of that magical winter. Trudging through the snow to Mike Lee\u0026rsquo;s house where we mixed Campbell\u0026rsquo;s soups with spices from his mother\u0026rsquo;s cabinets\u0026hellip;and sometimes even ATE our dastardly creation. Walking the length of the frozen creek through Sycamore Estates, almost shooting his sister\u0026rsquo;s eye out with a needle dart (OK, not so fond there), listening to AM talk radio where they had \u0026ldquo;snow shark\u0026rdquo; warnings. Ahhh, childhood.\nThanks for the link, I had not seen the article.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/the-winter-of-77-78-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"fond-fond-memories-of-that-magical-winter-trudg\"\u003eFond, FOND memories of that magical winter. Trudg\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 2, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFond, FOND memories of that magical winter. Trudging through the snow to Mike Lee\u0026rsquo;s house where we mixed Campbell\u0026rsquo;s soups with spices from his mother\u0026rsquo;s cabinets\u0026hellip;and sometimes even ATE our dastardly creation. Walking the length of the frozen creek through Sycamore Estates, almost shooting his sister\u0026rsquo;s eye out with a needle dart (OK, not so fond there), listening to AM talk radio where they had \u0026ldquo;snow shark\u0026rdquo; warnings. Ahhh, childhood.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The winter of 77-78 (Comments)"},{"content":"I can only imagine, but what I\u0026rsquo;m feeling now is a nervous anticipation, similar to what I\u0026rsquo;d expect a paratrooper feels making his first jump. I\u0026rsquo;ve trained for this, but I\u0026rsquo;ve never done it before. Can I deal with having a daughter born on Groundhog Day? :-) (Short answer\u0026ndash;sure\u0026hellip;the nicknames they come a-plenty: Shadow, Weathergirl, Punxsutawney.)\nWe had a bunch of snow this morning (\u0026ldquo;bunch\u0026rdquo; in Kentucky-ese is 1 or 2 inches), so I went down to work to grab my laptop and I came back home. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s had semi-regular contractions last night after her acupuncture, so we\u0026rsquo;ll see what happens. I\u0026rsquo;m attempting to stay calm, but I\u0026rsquo;ve got this dual thing going on\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m very here in the moment, and I\u0026rsquo;m also distant from it. Can\u0026rsquo;t REALLY believe I\u0026rsquo;m about to be a father.\nGuess everybody has that.\nNaturally, with the white stuff obliterating the grass and making for the BMW-doughnuts fun, there\u0026rsquo;s no school today in Scott County.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/what-this-is-like/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI can only imagine, but what I\u0026rsquo;m feeling now is a nervous anticipation, similar to what I\u0026rsquo;d expect a paratrooper feels making his first jump. I\u0026rsquo;ve trained for this, but I\u0026rsquo;ve never done it before. Can I deal with having a daughter born on Groundhog Day? :-) (Short answer\u0026ndash;sure\u0026hellip;the nicknames they come a-plenty: Shadow, Weathergirl, Punxsutawney.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a bunch of snow this morning (\u0026ldquo;bunch\u0026rdquo; in Kentucky-ese is 1 or 2 inches), so I went down to work to grab my laptop and I came back home. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s had semi-regular contractions last night after her acupuncture, so we\u0026rsquo;ll see what happens. I\u0026rsquo;m attempting to stay calm, but I\u0026rsquo;ve got this dual thing going on\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m very here in the moment, and I\u0026rsquo;m also distant from it. Can\u0026rsquo;t REALLY believe I\u0026rsquo;m about to be a father.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What this is like"},{"content":"You can ignore this if my previous comment actuall\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Feb 5, 2007\nYou can ignore this if my previous comment actually took\u0026hellip;I guess Groundhog Day beats April Fool\u0026rsquo;s - we escaped that by less than 7 hours. Poor Katie would only be turning 4 this year!\nKinda messy out there. The bridge over I-75 and the on-ramp were SLICK!\nI think accupuncture would give ME contractions. Our prayers are with you guys. Shame about the weather when you would have had a perfectly great excuse to drive the Bimmer as fast as possible to the hospital.\nSorry to be so verbose - I\u0026rsquo;m locked out of my own blog :-)\nNo, wait, she\u0026rsquo;d be 3. Duh. I think I need the math equivalent of crossword puzzles (but NOT sudoku) to exercise that part of my brain.\nHmm, the word verification for this post is \u0026ldquo;inmib\u0026rdquo;. Perhaps there\u0026rsquo;s SNMP work in my future.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/02/what-this-is-like-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"you-can-ignore-this-if-my-previous-comment-actuall\"\u003eYou can ignore this if my previous comment actuall\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou can ignore this if my previous comment actually took\u0026hellip;I guess Groundhog Day beats April Fool\u0026rsquo;s - we escaped that by less than 7 hours. Poor Katie would only be turning 4 this year!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKinda messy out there. The bridge over I-75 and the on-ramp were SLICK!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What this is like (Comments)"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s pictures like this that make me want to travel:\nFull set here\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/little-slice-of-ecuador/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s pictures like this that make me want to travel:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y195/nianmuzik/IMG_4241.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFull set \u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zerothread?id=3051791\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Little slice of Ecuador"},{"content":"okie\u0026hellip;.thats an aerial view, prolly taken from a \u0026hellip; Whitney - Jan 3, 2007\nokie\u0026hellip;.thats an aerial view, prolly taken from a helicopter\u0026hellip;.no thanks. And it\u0026rsquo;s not cold enough here for you?! brrrrr\u0026hellip;. :)\nActually, it was taken from a prop-driven puddle jumper that made me have flashbacks to the Movie \u0026lsquo;Alive\u0026rsquo;, especially when the guy talks about the approach into Quito, Ecuador.\nOne place doesn\u0026rsquo;t have an instrument approach. Begs the question what you do if there\u0026rsquo;s clouds/fog?\nA: You die. Or you die and then you\u0026rsquo;re eaten by your fellow passengers in an attempt to stay\u0026hellip;Alive!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/little-slice-of-ecuador-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"okiethats-an-aerial-view-prolly-taken-from-a-\"\u003eokie\u0026hellip;.thats an aerial view, prolly taken from a \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 3, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eokie\u0026hellip;.thats an aerial view, prolly taken from a helicopter\u0026hellip;.no thanks. And it\u0026rsquo;s not cold enough here for you?! brrrrr\u0026hellip;. :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eActually, it was taken from a prop-driven puddle jumper that made me have flashbacks to the Movie \u0026lsquo;Alive\u0026rsquo;, especially when the guy talks about the approach into Quito, Ecuador.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Little slice of Ecuador (Comments)"},{"content":" I swear, the pre-merger Merc diesels are the automotive equivalent of Chuck Norris.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/its-been-a-good-day-at-the-car-lounge/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI swear, the pre-merger Merc diesels are the automotive equivalent of Chuck Norris.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e","title":"It's been a good day at The Car Lounge"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been touch typing ever since I was about 12, though that initial learning curve was steep, and I\u0026rsquo;m not all l33t like the guys who use the Dvorak layout.\nHad a random thought this morning as I was clickety-clacking away on my 12th email\u0026hellip;is typing a perishable skill, or is it muscle memory like bicycling? That is, if I stop typing today, how long (if ever) would it take me to forget how to type?\nLongest I\u0026rsquo;ve ever gone since learning was probably\u0026hellip;hmm\u0026hellip;1-2 weeks\u0026hellip;\nI expect it\u0026rsquo;s a perishable skill if enough other stuff comes to the forefront of my brain. Drop me in medieval Europe, and I\u0026rsquo;d probably forget all about typing in a month or two.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/q-of-the-day-can-you-forget-how-to-type/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been touch typing ever since I was about 12, though that initial learning curve was steep, and I\u0026rsquo;m not all l33t like the guys who use the Dvorak layout.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHad a random thought this morning as I was clickety-clacking away on my 12th email\u0026hellip;is typing a perishable skill, or is it muscle memory like bicycling? That is, if I stop typing today, how long (if ever) would it take me to forget how to type?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Q of the day: Can you forget how to type?"},{"content":" But, Wal mart TLE [Tire/Lube Express] isn\u0026rsquo;t there for knowledgeable people who care about their vehicles. Wal mart TLE is there for Mama with her Taurus or Trans Sport who runs the tires till they\u0026rsquo;re bald and the oil till it is so black it has it\u0026rsquo;s own gravity.\nAh, I love The Car Lounge\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/walmart-quote-of-the-day/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut, Wal mart TLE [Tire/Lube Express] isn\u0026rsquo;t there for knowledgeable people who care about their vehicles. Wal mart TLE is there for Mama with her Taurus or Trans Sport who runs the tires till they\u0026rsquo;re bald and \u003cstrong\u003ethe oil till it is so black it has it\u0026rsquo;s own gravity.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAh, I love \u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zerothread?id=3047561\u0026amp;page=3\"\u003eThe Car Lounge\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Walmart quote of the day:"},{"content":":) hehe\nAs one (satisfied) customer said \u0026ldquo;If I\u0026rsquo;m going to pay $4 for a cup of coffee, I\u0026rsquo;m not going to get served by a guy.\u0026rdquo;\narticle\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/idiocracy-followup.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e:) hehe\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs one (satisfied) customer said \u0026ldquo;If I\u0026rsquo;m going to pay $4 for a cup of coffee, I\u0026rsquo;m not going to get served by a guy.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.slashfood.com/2007/01/28/seattle-coffee-shops-say-sexpresso-sells/\"\u003earticle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Idiocracy, followup..."},{"content":"Watched this trainwreck with Whitney last night. Full disclosure: I LOVE Maya Rudolph.\nLove her. Don\u0026rsquo;t know why.\nAnyway, the movie\u0026rsquo;s basically Mike Judge running amok for 90 minutes with Matte paintings, bad SNL actors (sorry, redundant. Should say: \u0026ldquo;SNL Actors\u0026rdquo;). The premise is pretty good, actually\u0026ndash;that smart people will be squeezed out of existence by dumb people who have LOTS of kids. Think the dumb kids in high school that get all the attention and resources, spread over a planetary scale.\n\u0026hellip;And then it falls apart. GREAT opening, pointless everything else. Much like watching \u0026ldquo;Beavis \u0026amp; Butthead\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;King of the Hill\u0026rdquo;, there were lots of quotable quotes, but nothing to hold it together.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s great to have Netflix. You can watch a turd like this, and realize you didn\u0026rsquo;t pay 5 bucks for it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/idiocracy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWatched \u003ca href=\"http://monkeysontheside.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html#630853906690829035\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e trainwreck with Whitney last night. Full disclosure: I LOVE Maya Rudolph.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://shiftingbaselines.org/blog/images/MR%20570-thumb.JPG\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLove her. Don\u0026rsquo;t know why.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, the movie\u0026rsquo;s basically Mike Judge running amok for 90 minutes with Matte paintings, bad SNL actors (sorry, redundant. Should say: \u0026ldquo;SNL Actors\u0026rdquo;). The premise is pretty good, actually\u0026ndash;that smart people will be squeezed out of existence by dumb people who have LOTS of kids. Think the dumb kids in high school that get all the attention and resources, spread over a planetary scale.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Idiocracy"},{"content":"Sounds like a classic science fiction story I read\u0026hellip; JarvoSpeaks - Feb 5, 2007\nSounds like a classic science fiction story I read years ago called \u0026ldquo;The Marching Morons\u0026rdquo; \u0026hellip; wonder if there\u0026rsquo;s a connection?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/idiocracy-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"sounds-like-a-classic-science-fiction-story-i-read\"\u003eSounds like a classic science fiction story I read\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/01705426928526831426\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJarvoSpeaks\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eFeb 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSounds like a classic science fiction story I read years ago called \u0026ldquo;The Marching Morons\u0026rdquo; \u0026hellip; wonder if there\u0026rsquo;s a connection?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Idiocracy (Comments)"},{"content":"No, not the pitter-patter of little feet. Bought Joey and myself a pair of these:\nYep, Yamaha YRN-22B Baroque-fingering recorders. Perfect instrument to teach some musical basics. I still have my tenor sax and a frankenstein clarinet from my days in the Breathitt County High School Band of Pride, but neither is suited to a 6-year-old.\nMusic was a big part my life, and now I\u0026rsquo;d like to at least introduce that to Joey and the rest of our children. If he likes it, great. If he doesn\u0026rsquo;t, that\u0026rsquo;s fine too, but at least it will broaden his horizons a bit.\n* * *\nPlayed around with the recorder for probably an hour in the past week, and it\u0026rsquo;s a neat little instrument. There\u0026rsquo;s no set-up required\u0026ndash;no moving parts, no reed to soak, no valves to oil, no pads to go bad. The fingering for it is (as you\u0026rsquo;d expect) like a flute, and since a saxophone\u0026rsquo;s fingering is based on flute fingering, most of the regular notes are familiar to me. The sharps and flats, though\u0026hellip;um\u0026hellip;aren\u0026rsquo;t.\nThe recorder has a 2+ octave range, from middle C up (this being a soprano model), and the timbre of the sound in the lower octave is pleasant, though the upper octave can be shrill. The real weakness I see is a lack of dynamic range\u0026ndash;because the mouthpiece is fixed, more breath support to get to a mezzo-forte or forte sound will just cause the tone to go sharp. (At least, that\u0026rsquo;s what it seems like to me, so far). In that regard, you can see why the single-reed clarinet replaced the recorder, much like the forte-piano replaced the harpsichord.\nProbably the neatest thing about the recorder is that it really makes you use your ear to develop a sound. Switching between octaves is more a matter of embouchure and ear than it is of hitting certain fingering. In that regard, it\u0026rsquo;s like the altissimo register on a saxophone (which I could never hit!).\nAnyway, my goal with all this is to get Joey some music theory under his belt and help train his ear to appreciate some of the really great music\u0026ndash;Bach, Mozart, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. And yeah, scratch my inner Band Geek.\nSue me.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/a-new-sound-in-the-house/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNo, not the pitter-patter of little feet. Bought Joey and myself a pair of these:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.yamaha.com/yamahavgn/Images/BandOrchestra/Product/Main/YRN22B.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep, Yamaha YRN-22B Baroque-fingering recorders. Perfect instrument to teach some musical basics. I still have my tenor sax and a frankenstein clarinet from my days in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.geocities.com/bchsbandofpride/\"\u003eBreathitt County High School Band of Pride\u003c/a\u003e, but neither is suited to a 6-year-old.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMusic was a big part my life, and now I\u0026rsquo;d like to at least introduce that to Joey and the rest of our children. If he likes it, great. If he doesn\u0026rsquo;t, that\u0026rsquo;s fine too, but at least it will broaden his horizons a bit.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A new sound in the house"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ll scratch your inner band geek\u0026hellip;..hehe \u0026hellip;..u\u0026hellip; Whitney - Jan 5, 2007\nI\u0026rsquo;ll scratch your inner band geek\u0026hellip;..hehe\n\u0026hellip;..unless it\u0026rsquo;s wearing a onesie that is\u0026hellip;.\nYeah, I could never master altissimo either (that\u0026rsquo;s the squealing harmonic notes, right??). That\u0026rsquo;s when I realized I\u0026rsquo;d never be the world\u0026rsquo;s greatest alto saxophone player.\nRecorders are cool, if you get two or more going together it sounds like the beginning of Stairway to Heaven \u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/a-new-sound-in-the-house-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"ill-scratch-your-inner-band-geekhehe-u\"\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll scratch your inner band geek\u0026hellip;..hehe \u0026hellip;..u\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 5, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll scratch your inner band geek\u0026hellip;..hehe\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;..unless it\u0026rsquo;s wearing a onesie that is\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, I could never master altissimo either (that\u0026rsquo;s the squealing harmonic notes, right??). That\u0026rsquo;s when I realized I\u0026rsquo;d never be the world\u0026rsquo;s greatest alto saxophone player.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRecorders are cool, if you get two or more going together it sounds like the beginning of Stairway to Heaven \u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A new sound in the house (Comments)"},{"content":"Short version: Because I\u0026rsquo;m a zombie on Fridays.\nSince my prolonged Christmas break, I\u0026rsquo;ve shifted my schedule around. And by \u0026ldquo;shifted\u0026rdquo;, that means getting to work earlier and leaving at the same time or later. On the whole, this works out great Monday-\u0026gt;Wednesday, is passable on Thursday, but by Friday I\u0026rsquo;m just mental mush.\nIn fact, I\u0026rsquo;m writing this blog just to try and get some creative juices flowing.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/on-why-i-hope-maria-doesnt-arrive-on-a-friday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eShort version: Because I\u0026rsquo;m a zombie on Fridays.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince my prolonged Christmas break, I\u0026rsquo;ve shifted my schedule around. And by \u0026ldquo;shifted\u0026rdquo;, that means getting to work earlier and leaving at the same time or later. On the whole, this works out great Monday-\u0026gt;Wednesday, is passable on Thursday, but by Friday I\u0026rsquo;m just mental mush.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn fact, I\u0026rsquo;m writing this blog just to try and get some creative juices flowing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On why I hope Maria doesn't arrive on a Friday"},{"content":" Thanks for bothering you\nBye\nAh, India.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/typo-of-the-day/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThanks for bothering you\u003cbr\u003e\nBye\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAh, India.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Typo of the day"},{"content":":-) Anthropologists love the mundane. They study the way people live day-to-day, the things we take for granted. So, here\u0026rsquo;s a snapshot of my typical Monday:\n4:54 am: Wake up and realize it\u0026rsquo;s almost time to get up, but fall back asleep anyway, entering the depths of REM just in time for\u0026hellip;\n5am: Alarm goes off. Hit snooze bar for 9 minutes.\n5:06am: Inexplicably wake-up, turn off alarm and arise from bed.\n5:07am: Do what most people do immediately after getting up\n5:10am: eat breakfast, watch the poor Lexington morning news anchors who\u0026rsquo;ve been up since 3am try to sound funny\n5:30am: Spend next hour getting ready for work.\n6:45: Banzai run to get to my 7am meeting. Pass carnage on I75 N.\n7am meeting:\n- Them: \u0026ldquo;Oh, we signed off the beta\u0026rdquo;\n- Me: \u0026ldquo;Aren\u0026rsquo;t there two gating issues still?\u0026rdquo;\n- Them: \u0026ldquo;Oh, yes, but we signed-off the beta on time\u0026rdquo;.\n7:20am: Find out that our stability test from the past weekend blew up. Yep, it\u0026rsquo;s Monday.\n7:30am: Make coffee for entire floor.\n8:30am: Officemate if I know if there are any doughnuts around. I reply: \u0026ldquo;If I knew where some doughnuts were, do you think I\u0026rsquo;d still be sitting here !?!\u0026rdquo;\n9am: Receive surprisingly ironic phone call. Retrieve doughnut from the latest AYPT-cum-regular-employee. Mmm\u0026hellip;doughnut.\n9:30am: Daily stand-up meeting where programmers agree (like the cult that we are) that we have no idea why the stability test failed on Sunday. Agree that current project will never die. Coffee soothes the pain.\n10:00am: Another daily stand-up meeting with different group of programmers, where we agree (like the cult that we are) that the best thing about their project is that it\u0026rsquo;s not the other project that I work on. Manage to convince high ranking programmer on loan that overhauling our entire build process 2 weeks from Release Candidate is \u0026ldquo;A Bad Thing\u0026rdquo;, because it has no upside other than \u0026ldquo;it ought to be that way\u0026rdquo;.\n10:30am -\u0026gt; 11:30 am: Monitor the email barrage between team and test group about why the stability test failed this weekend. Summary:\nDevelopers: \u0026ldquo;Testers, your methodology sucks\u0026rdquo;. Testers: \u0026ldquo;Developers, your code sucks.\u0026rdquo; Ah, the checks-and-balances of Software development.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/a-typical-monday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e:-) Anthropologists love the mundane. They study the way people live day-to-day, the things we take for granted. So, here\u0026rsquo;s a snapshot of my typical Monday:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4:54 am: Wake up and realize it\u0026rsquo;s almost time to get up, but fall back asleep anyway, entering the depths of REM just in time for\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5am: Alarm goes off. Hit snooze bar for 9 minutes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5:06am: Inexplicably wake-up, turn off alarm and arise from bed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A typical Monday"},{"content":"(nerd factor 5: I see that title and think it\u0026rsquo;s a variable declaration\u0026hellip;yikes\u0026hellip;)\nTaking this test I found that I\u0026rsquo;m an now an ISTJ. What\u0026rsquo;s that mean?\nAs do other Introverted Thinkers, ISTJs often give the initial impression of being aloof and perhaps somewhat cold. Effusive expression of emotional warmth is not something that ISTJs do without considerable energy loss.\n\u0026hellip;\nISTJs are easily frustrated by the inconsistencies of others, especially when the second parties don\u0026rsquo;t keep their commitments. But they usually keep their feelings to themselves unless they are asked. And when asked, they don\u0026rsquo;t mince words. Truth wins out over tact. The grim determination of the ISTJ vindicates itself in officiation of sports events, judiciary functions, or an other situation which requires making tough calls and sticking to them.\nYep. As I was reading the full description to Whitney, she was saying alot of \u0026ldquo;yep\u0026rdquo;. \u0026ldquo;Yep\u0026rdquo;. \u0026ldquo;uh-huh\u0026rdquo;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/news-intj-no-more/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e(nerd factor 5: I see that title and think it\u0026rsquo;s a variable declaration\u0026hellip;yikes\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTaking \u003ca href=\"http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm\"\u003ethis test\u003c/a\u003e I found that I\u0026rsquo;m an now an ISTJ. What\u0026rsquo;s that mean?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs do other Introverted Thinkers, ISTJs often give the initial impression of being aloof and perhaps somewhat cold. Effusive expression of emotional warmth is not something that ISTJs do without considerable energy loss.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eISTJs are easily frustrated by the inconsistencies of others, especially when the second parties don\u0026rsquo;t keep their commitments. But they usually keep their feelings to themselves unless they are asked. And when asked, they don\u0026rsquo;t mince words. Truth wins out over tact. The grim determination of the ISTJ vindicates itself in officiation of sports events, judiciary functions, or an other situation which requires making tough calls and sticking to them.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"News: INTJ no more"},{"content":"5 hours sleep Sunday night.\nArose @ 5 for a 12 hour, stressful day at work.\nWhitney had some contractions, so we didn\u0026rsquo;t get to bed until after 11\nArose @ 5 for a 2 hour roundtrip to louisville to get Joe.\nTotally blitzed today.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/my-brain-is-mush/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e5 hours sleep Sunday night.\u003cbr\u003e\nArose @ 5 for a 12 hour, stressful day at work.\u003cbr\u003e\nWhitney had some contractions, so we didn\u0026rsquo;t get to bed until after 11\u003cbr\u003e\nArose @ 5 for a 2 hour roundtrip to louisville to get Joe.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTotally blitzed today.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My brain is mush"},{"content":"So, with a little help from my friends I finally got my cable-box open using a highly modified dinner fork. (Cue the MacGyver theme\u0026hellip;there\u0026rsquo;s duct tape and pliers next!)\nInside I found the line from the ground running into two 3-way splitters, swirling around inside this rather small gray box, with one splitter leading to another like this:\n|---\u0026gt; Line 1 |---\u0026gt; Line 2 \\----\u0026gt; | |-----\u0026gt; |--\u0026gt; Line 3 |--\u0026gt; Line 4 |--\u0026gt; Line 5 After some experimentation, I found out that I couldn\u0026rsquo;t make the cable and the antenna co-exist using a combiner. So, I segregated it in the box so that the living room and master ran off the antenna, and the upstairs ran off the cable. This meant I had to move my cable modem upstairs, but that\u0026rsquo;s no big deal.\nAnyway, nice little bonus: We now have great FM reception, as well. Lite 106.9 out of Louisville :D\nLiving right across the street from a cop, I kept wondering if I\u0026rsquo;d get arrested or something, but it was pretty obvious I was mucking around with an antenna, not stealing cable.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/cable-ready-sure...antenna-ready-nah.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, with a little help from my friends I finally got my cable-box open using a highly modified dinner fork. (Cue the \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088559/\"\u003eMacGyver\u003c/a\u003e theme\u0026hellip;there\u0026rsquo;s duct tape and pliers next!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInside I found the line from the ground running into two 3-way splitters, swirling around inside this rather small gray box, with one splitter leading to another like this:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\u003ccode\u003e  \n      |---\u0026gt; Line 1  \n      |---\u0026gt; Line 2  \n\\----\u0026gt; |  \n      |-----\u0026gt; |--\u0026gt; Line 3  \n              |--\u0026gt; Line 4  \n              |--\u0026gt; Line 5  \n\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter some experimentation, I found out that I couldn\u0026rsquo;t make the cable and the antenna co-exist using a combiner. So, I segregated it in the box so that the living room and master ran off the antenna, and the upstairs ran off the cable. This meant I had to move my cable modem upstairs, but that\u0026rsquo;s no big deal.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cable ready?  Sure...antenna-ready?  Nah..."},{"content":"Sunday I was all worked-up about Whitney\u0026rsquo;s car having a catastrophic oil leak somewhere behind the engine. So, this week, I monitored the oil level on the dipstick every morning before going to work, checking it at that time because all the oil drains back to the pan overnight.\nSurprise, surprise: No oil loss.\nOkay, going theory for now: When I poured-in the oil Sunday, the engine was tilted back at ~30 degree angle from vertical (the engine slants back towards the firewall, and I had the car up on jackstands), so my funnel allowed some oil to spill back off the valvecover.\n:-) So, woohoo!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/update--the-outlying-oil-theory/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSunday I was all worked-up about Whitney\u0026rsquo;s car having a catastrophic oil leak somewhere behind the engine. So, this week, I monitored the oil level on the dipstick every morning before going to work, checking it at that time because all the oil drains back to the pan overnight.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSurprise, surprise: No oil loss.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, going theory for now: When I poured-in the oil Sunday, the engine was tilted back at ~30 degree angle from vertical (the engine slants back towards the firewall, and I had the car up on jackstands), so my funnel allowed some oil to spill back off the valvecover.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Update--the outlying oil theory"},{"content":"Either:\na) One must be sarcastic to be a programmer.\nb) Programming makes one sarcastic.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;m really chasing my tail on this one. I\u0026rsquo;m going for (b).\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/thought-sarcasm/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEither:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ea) One must be sarcastic to be a programmer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eb) Programming makes one sarcastic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m really chasing my tail on this one. I\u0026rsquo;m going for (b).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thought: Sarcasm"},{"content":"I think sarcasm is the brain\u0026rsquo;s natural defense whe\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jan 4, 2007\nI think sarcasm is the brain\u0026rsquo;s natural defense when faced with data that doesn\u0026rsquo;t compute. It searches for humor in the situation with which it can entertain itself, if only briefly\u0026hellip;\nFunny stuff, by the way :-)\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been reading WAY too much Scott Adams lately.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/thought-sarcasm-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-think-sarcasm-is-the-brains-natural-defense-whe\"\u003eI think sarcasm is the brain\u0026rsquo;s natural defense whe\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 4, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think sarcasm is the brain\u0026rsquo;s natural defense when faced with data that doesn\u0026rsquo;t compute. It searches for humor in the situation with which it can entertain itself, if only briefly\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFunny stuff, by the way :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been reading WAY too much Scott Adams lately.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thought: Sarcasm (Comments)"},{"content":"If programmers dictated how software worked:\nEvery piece of software would be 100k on disk, execute at warp speed, run on everything from a stopwatch to a supercomputer.\nSaid program would take 10 years to develop, because \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m close to getting it finished.\u0026rdquo;\nSaid program would be so obscure and hard-to-use that even its author would create an script file to execute it\nIf managers dictated how software worked:\nEverything would be one big chart or powerpoint slide (less than 3 bullets!).\nIt would take 2 minutes to deliver, complete, from a napkin drawing that the managers had over their 5th power lunch in 1 week\nIt\u0026rsquo;d be programmed by pond scum from Rhodesia, which replaced the rodents from Norway, which replaced the too-expensive chimpanzees from Zanzibar\nThere\u0026rsquo;d be a rule that no bugs or customer complaints can be solved until after their next promotion\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/programmers-versus-managers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf programmers dictated how software worked:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEvery piece of software would be 100k on disk, execute at warp speed, run on everything from a stopwatch to a supercomputer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaid program would take 10 years to develop, because \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m close to getting it finished.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaid program would be so obscure and hard-to-use that even its author would create an script file to execute it\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf managers dictated how software worked:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEverything would be one big chart or powerpoint slide (less than 3 bullets!).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Programmers versus Managers"},{"content":"Jamie graciously floated me some $$$ to buy lunch (It\u0026rsquo;s payday, but I haven\u0026rsquo;t been to the bank yet\u0026hellip;)\nI selected the special: Chili Burrito + drink for $3.99\nThe guy in front of me in line, patiently waiting with his accounting book said, \u0026ldquo;Uh, you know you could\u0026rsquo;ve gotten that cheaper by not ordering the special.\u0026rdquo;\nWell-natured gal behind the counter: \u0026ldquo;No, the bean burrito is $3.19, and the drink is $1.25.\u0026rdquo;\nWhat followed was three minutes of an ACCOUNTING MAJOR who couldn\u0026rsquo;t add that up and see the difference.\nYep. The future looks bright.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/so-there-i-was-at-the-tico.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJamie graciously floated me some $$$ to buy lunch (It\u0026rsquo;s payday, but I haven\u0026rsquo;t been to the bank yet\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI selected the special: Chili Burrito + drink for $3.99\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe guy in front of me in line, patiently waiting with his accounting book said, \u0026ldquo;Uh, you know you could\u0026rsquo;ve gotten that cheaper by not ordering the special.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell-natured gal behind the counter: \u0026ldquo;No, the bean burrito is $3.19, and the drink is $1.25.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"So, there I was at the Tico..."},{"content":"On getting rid of cable:\nSo, are you guys gonna start using kerosene lanterns?\nYes, my next house will be made of sod, with a latrine (outhouses are so gentrified!), and a hand-dug well. We plan to make our own clothing. I\u0026rsquo;ll be riding a horse to work, stabling it in the 3rd floor NOC, although horses are notoriously difficult to get into elevators.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/quote-of-the-day-yesterday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn getting rid of cable:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, are you guys gonna start using kerosene lanterns?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, my next house will be made of sod, with a latrine (outhouses are so gentrified!), and a hand-dug well. We plan to make our own clothing. I\u0026rsquo;ll be riding a horse to work, stabling it in the 3rd floor NOC, although horses are notoriously difficult to get into elevators.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote of the day, yesterday"},{"content":"After jerry-rigging my 7 1/2 foot antenna atop my entertainment center, I watched the national title game last night.\nWow, did OSU look like a bad team: Flat, underprepared, with no answer to any of Florida\u0026rsquo;s plays. The game was pretty-much over when Tressel went for it on 4th \u0026amp; 1 FROM HIS OWN 30 YARD LINE! This is boneheaded along the lines of Rick Pitino not guarding Grant Hill\u0026rsquo;s inbound pass in 1992.\nWow, did Florida look like a great team\u0026ndash;poised, energetic.\nAfter this, I think the Big 10 may want to rethink ending its schedule before Thanksgiving. Both Michigan and OSU stank it up.\nLarger question\u0026ndash;who would\u0026rsquo;ve won between Florida and USC? In hindsight, that would\u0026rsquo;ve been a great game that USC probably would\u0026rsquo;ve won.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/boo-osu/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter jerry-rigging my 7 1/2 foot antenna atop my entertainment center, I watched the national title game last night.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWow, did OSU look like a bad team: Flat, underprepared, with no answer to any of Florida\u0026rsquo;s plays. The game was pretty-much over when Tressel went for it on 4th \u0026amp; 1 FROM HIS OWN 30 YARD LINE! This is boneheaded along the lines of Rick Pitino not guarding Grant Hill\u0026rsquo;s inbound pass in 1992.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"BOO OSU"},{"content":"WHEREAS Sunday is the LORD\u0026rsquo;s day, the Sabbath. (If you\u0026rsquo;re Christian\u0026hellip;If you\u0026rsquo;re a Jew, you wonder why Lazy people won\u0026rsquo;t work on the first day of the week)\nWHEREAS activity on the Sabbath not centered on God is cursed.\nWHEREAS I can foul-up any \u0026ldquo;30 minute job\u0026rdquo;.\nWHEREAS Whitney\u0026rsquo;s car hates me.\nRESOLVED by all members of the Sunday-is-for-football-and-naps club to cease any and all automotive repair activity on Sunday.\n* * *\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the long way of saying: Whitney\u0026rsquo;s car has a leak on the front of the engine, somewhere under the intake manifold, and it leaked out an annoying amount of oil right after I put on a fresh PureOne oil filter and 4 quarts of 5w30. Three big rainbow spots on the driveway (fresh oil + rainwater\u0026hellip;pretty colors!), and dollops of it on the garage floor.\nThe car\u0026rsquo;s currently sitting in the garage with a diaper: A makeshift pan using a doubled section of aluminum foil, filled with oil dry. Checking tomorrow to see how much leaked out overnight\u0026hellip;\nIn hindsight, maybe I should\u0026rsquo;ve selected a thicker stock than FIVE WEIGHT!\nYay.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/an-old-fashioned-automotive-resolution./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWHEREAS Sunday is the LORD\u0026rsquo;s day, the Sabbath. (If you\u0026rsquo;re Christian\u0026hellip;If you\u0026rsquo;re a Jew, you wonder why Lazy people won\u0026rsquo;t work on the first day of the week)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWHEREAS activity on the Sabbath not centered on God is cursed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWHEREAS I can foul-up any \u0026ldquo;30 minute job\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWHEREAS Whitney\u0026rsquo;s car hates me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRESOLVED by all members of the Sunday-is-for-football-and-naps club to cease any and all automotive repair activity on Sunday.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"An old fashioned automotive resolution."},{"content":"I can\u0026rsquo;t help but notice you\u0026rsquo;ve got \u0026ldquo;diaper\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;h\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jan 1, 2007\nI can\u0026rsquo;t help but notice you\u0026rsquo;ve got \u0026ldquo;diaper\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;hindsight\u0026rdquo; within a paragraph of each other\u0026hellip;\nStop being so \u0026ldquo;anal\u0026rdquo; :-)\nIt was the tavist D talking\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/an-old-fashioned-automotive-resolution.-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-cant-help-but-notice-youve-got-diaper-and-h\"\u003eI can\u0026rsquo;t help but notice you\u0026rsquo;ve got \u0026ldquo;diaper\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;h\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 1, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI can\u0026rsquo;t help but notice you\u0026rsquo;ve got \u0026ldquo;diaper\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;hindsight\u0026rdquo; within a paragraph of each other\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStop being so \u0026ldquo;anal\u0026rdquo; :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was the tavist D talking\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"An old fashioned automotive resolution. (Comments)"},{"content":"Our cable\u0026rsquo;s going off on Monday and we\u0026rsquo;re getting back with Netflix\nOur rabbit-ears receptions was awful, so I went to radio shack and brought home this bad boy:\n80\u0026quot; grandpa special antenna.\nTried it out today with a line of 75-ohm coax running directly to a single TV, and the reception was spectacular from all the Lexington stations. It\u0026rsquo;s a directional antenna, but I can point it directly South and get everything I need.\nNow the only hurdle is tying it into the house outlets. The house is wired for cable in every room; the obvious choice is through the Cable Box outside, but it\u0026rsquo;s inconveniently locked.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/sayonara-cable-welcome-back-netflix/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOur cable\u0026rsquo;s going off on Monday and we\u0026rsquo;re getting back with \u003ca href=\"http://www.netflix.com\"\u003eNetflix\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur rabbit-ears receptions was awful, so I went to radio shack and brought home this bad boy:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://rsk.imageg.net/graphics/product_images/pRS1C-2265528w345.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e80\u0026quot; grandpa special antenna.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTried it out today with a line of 75-ohm coax running directly to a single TV, and the reception was spectacular from all the Lexington stations. It\u0026rsquo;s a directional antenna, but I can point it directly South and get everything I need.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sayonara Cable, welcome back Netflix"},{"content":"4-doors, purring straight-6 with individual throttle bodies and a free-flow exhaust.\nThis is the e34 BMW M5.\nThere is one parked in our lot every morning.\nI lust after that car.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/the-tempermental-bimmer-of-my-dreams/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e4-doors, purring straight-6 with individual throttle bodies and a free-flow exhaust.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.bmwm5.com/models/e34/alper.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the e34 BMW M5.\u003cbr\u003e\nThere is one parked in our lot every morning.\u003cbr\u003e\nI lust after that car.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Tempermental Bimmer of my dreams"},{"content":"funny\u0026hellip;.you used to lust after the one you have :\u0026hellip; Whitney - Jan 4, 2007\nfunny\u0026hellip;.you used to lust after the one you have :)\nDoesn\u0026rsquo;t GH have an M5? I get the bling factor but someday you\u0026rsquo;ll have to sell me on rear wheel drive - I\u0026rsquo;ve only ever had it on the truck and it\u0026rsquo;s only impacted me in that I kept concrete blocks in the back in the winter back when it was a daily driver.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/the-tempermental-bimmer-of-my-dreams-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"funnyyou-used-to-lust-after-the-one-you-have-\"\u003efunny\u0026hellip;.you used to lust after the one you have :\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJan 4, 2007\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003efunny\u0026hellip;.you used to lust after the one you have :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDoesn\u0026rsquo;t GH have an M5? I get the bling factor but someday you\u0026rsquo;ll have to sell me on rear wheel drive - I\u0026rsquo;ve only ever had it on the truck and it\u0026rsquo;s only impacted me in that I kept concrete blocks in the back in the winter back when it was a daily driver.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Tempermental Bimmer of my dreams (Comments)"},{"content":"I had nearly two full weeks off, but it drove me rather batty just laying around the house. (Insert joke about weight, Christmas cookies, and \u0026ldquo;laying AROUND the house\u0026rdquo; here).\nI did do alot of fun things. Played a bazillion games of backgammon, and it was really enjoyable. Stu and Cathy bought Joey a very nice wood backgammon board for Christmas, and we played at least 1-2 games per day. It\u0026rsquo;s an ancient game, much more congenial and chance-based than chess or checkers\u0026hellip;some games you can\u0026rsquo;t win, others you totally destroy the opposition.\nJoey\u0026rsquo;s little Lego things aren\u0026rsquo;t working out so well. He\u0026rsquo;s a very active boy, and he likes to be very physical with his toys, meaning those two Lego towers lasted just long enough for The Hulk and The Thing to do battle. They survived; the towers didn\u0026rsquo;t.\nI dearly loved my presents this Christmas\u0026ndash;especially the two books, particularly the Peter Egan compillation:\nThe man\u0026rsquo;s a genius.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2007/01/back-to-work.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI had nearly two full weeks off, but it drove me rather batty just laying around the house. (Insert joke about weight, Christmas cookies, and \u0026ldquo;laying AROUND the house\u0026rdquo; here).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI did do alot of fun things. Played a bazillion games of backgammon, and it was really enjoyable. Stu and Cathy bought Joey a very nice wood backgammon board for Christmas, and we played at least 1-2 games per day. It\u0026rsquo;s an ancient game, much more congenial and chance-based than chess or checkers\u0026hellip;some games you can\u0026rsquo;t win, others you totally destroy the opposition.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back to work..."},{"content":"What American accent do you have?\nYour Result: The Midland\n\u0026ldquo;You have a Midland accent\u0026rdquo; is just another way of saying \u0026ldquo;you don\u0026rsquo;t have an accent.\u0026rdquo; You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.\nThe Inland North\nThe Northeast\nPhiladelphia\nThe South\nThe West\nBoston\nNorth Central\nWhat American accent do you have?\nQuiz Created on GoToQuiz\nMuhahahahaha\u0026hellip;.NO ACCENT!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/dumb-quiz-of-the-week--what-accent-do-i-have/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat American accent do you have?\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYour Result: \u003cstrong\u003eThe Midland\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You have a Midland accent\u0026rdquo; is just another way of saying \u0026ldquo;you don\u0026rsquo;t have an accent.\u0026rdquo; You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dumb quiz of the week--what accent do I have?"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m still shaking my head over this one. My quote at 11am today:\nMan, I just hope we don\u0026rsquo;t embarrass ourselves.\nAfter watching a well-coached, well-played game from the UK Wildcats, I still can\u0026rsquo;t believe that\u0026rsquo;s the same team that played LSU just a few months ago. They had a stellar opening drive, adjusted their game-plan against the Clemson pass-rush, then just lit-up the stadium for 21 unanswered points. As my pall Jeff says, the game really wasn\u0026rsquo;t as close as the 28-20 score would indictate\u0026ndash;we owned Clemson today.\nIt was a cool, professional game, with great intensity and drama. It was like watching any other SEC-powerhouse program play\u0026ndash;great athletes making great plays, with some coaching gambles and tricks thrown in (Fake punt from your own 20!?!)\nAwesome game, guys. Congratulations on a great year, and (hopefully) a turning point in UK football history.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/repent--kentucky-has-a-good-football-program/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m still shaking my head over this one. My quote at 11am today:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMan, I just hope we don\u0026rsquo;t embarrass ourselves.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter watching a well-coached, well-played game from the UK Wildcats, I still can\u0026rsquo;t believe that\u0026rsquo;s the same team that played LSU just a few months ago. They had a stellar opening drive, adjusted their game-plan against the Clemson pass-rush, then just lit-up the stadium for 21 unanswered points. As my pall \u003ca href=\"http://jeffingtown.blogspot.com/2006/12/uk-28-clemson-20.html\"\u003eJeff says\u003c/a\u003e, the game really wasn\u0026rsquo;t as close as the 28-20 score would indictate\u0026ndash;we owned Clemson today.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Repent--Kentucky has a GOOD football program!!"},{"content":"This shot says it all:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s 1966. Real Formula cars. Real formula one drivers (Brabham, Clarke, Rendt\u0026hellip;all legends). Filmed on 65mm Panavision at the real racetracks.\nIn my opinion, they should never make another racing flick. None could be better than John Frankenheimer\u0026rsquo;s 3-hour epic Grand Prix. I got the DVD for Christmas, putting it on my list purely by reputation\u0026ndash;this is the same instinct that I used in buying \u0026ldquo;Grand Turismo\u0026rdquo; for Playstation.\nI watched it over an afternoon and night on Tuesday, and was drooling\u0026ndash;ask Whitney\u0026ndash;from the first shot to the last. I actually don\u0026rsquo;t remember much about what was happening while I watched the film; I even forgot if I ate on Wednesday morning\u0026hellip;\nThe movie itself follows the 1966 season of Formula One, the pinnacle of open-wheeled racing, from the first Grand Prix, at Monaco, to the last at Monza in Italy. We find our larger-than-life heros in maverick American Pete Aron (James Garner), all penis-and-ego Nino Barlini, old salt Jean-Pierre Sarti, and the brilliant legacy driver Scott Stoddard. Initially, Aron and Stoddard are both BRM drivers, while Barlini and Sarti drive Ferraris.\nThis all changes after Stoddard has a crippling crash at Monaco, caused when he and Aron collide in the dogleg by the sea.\nThis is where the movie diverges from being a well-shot technicolor racing extravaganza like Steve McQueen\u0026rsquo;s Le Mans to being a great movie in general. All the characters presented\u0026ndash;the philandering wife, the doe-eyed groupie, the \u0026ldquo;other woman\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;transcend stereotypes to become likable heroes and anti-heroes.\nGrand Prix amazes on many levels: It\u0026rsquo;s not even car lust\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s car pornography. These were the most beautiful, well proportioned, best sounding race cars ever designed. Furthermore, it\u0026rsquo;s a snapshot of mid-1960\u0026rsquo;s culture that\u0026rsquo;s just weird to modern eyes\u0026ndash;the collapse of marriage and the rise of the sexual revolution.\nJust as The Godfather is an archetypal story of honor, loyalty, obligation, and unforgivable sins, Grand Prix evokes skill, bravery, and more than a little Nihilism: Skilled drivers tempt death, rationalizing it as a way to transcend the mundane. Yet, they ask throughout the movie, \u0026ldquo;Is this all that there is? What\u0026rsquo;s the point?\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/grand-prix-the-godfather-of-racing-movies/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis shot says it all:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.putgrandprixondvd.com/graphics/MonzaBankingSmall.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s 1966. Real Formula cars. Real formula one drivers (Brabham, Clarke, Rendt\u0026hellip;all legends). Filmed on 65mm Panavision at the real racetracks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn my opinion, they should never make another racing flick. None could be better than John Frankenheimer\u0026rsquo;s 3-hour epic \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0060472/\"\u003eGrand Prix\u003c/a\u003e. I got the DVD for Christmas, putting it on my list purely by reputation\u0026ndash;this is the same instinct that I used in buying \u0026ldquo;Grand Turismo\u0026rdquo; for Playstation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Grand Prix:  \"The Godfather\" of Racing movies"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/thats-just...wrong/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/caffeinegraph.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"That's just...wrong!"},{"content":"Totally contrary to the \u0026ldquo;Never make a dealer an offer\u0026rdquo; strategies of Dave Ramsey, This blog is an interesting (if slanted) view from a guy who\u0026rsquo;s been there, done that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/lovely-read-if-youre-looking-for-a-car/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTotally contrary to the \u0026ldquo;Never make a dealer an offer\u0026rdquo; strategies of Dave Ramsey, \u003ca href=\"http://excarsalesman.blogspot.com/\"\u003eThis blog\u003c/a\u003e is an interesting (if slanted) view from a guy who\u0026rsquo;s been there, done that.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lovely read, if you're looking for a car"},{"content":"Much like Sherman\u0026rsquo;s March to the Sea, Team Combs and I are engaged in a Christmas march to the mountains: Today, we\u0026rsquo;re sacking Louisville, tomorrow Georgetown, and Wednesday afternoon my Mom \u0026amp; Dad\u0026rsquo;s house. On Christmas today, Joey arrived from his dad\u0026rsquo;s as we gorged on Cathy\u0026rsquo;s wonderful breakfast casserole.\nWe\u0026rsquo;d already opened presents\u0026ndash;I got an assortment of Craftsman tools, Whitney received her Kenmore canister vacuum cleaner, and we opened most of Stu, Cathy, and Rachel\u0026rsquo;s gifts.\nOnce Joey arrived, we read the Christmas story from Luke 2 then he tore into his presents. He got some wonderful, durable presents from his grandparents, including an assortment of Legos, a great backgammon set, and his first Swiss Army Knife.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/the-march-to-the-mountains/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMuch like Sherman\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman's_March_to_the_Sea\"\u003eMarch to the Sea\u003c/a\u003e, Team Combs and I are engaged in a Christmas march to the mountains: Today, we\u0026rsquo;re sacking Louisville, tomorrow Georgetown, and Wednesday afternoon my Mom \u0026amp; Dad\u0026rsquo;s house. On Christmas today, Joey arrived from his dad\u0026rsquo;s as we gorged on Cathy\u0026rsquo;s wonderful breakfast casserole.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;d already opened presents\u0026ndash;I got an assortment of Craftsman tools, Whitney received her Kenmore canister vacuum cleaner, and we opened most of Stu, Cathy, and Rachel\u0026rsquo;s gifts.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The march to the mountains"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve spent the better part of three dull, lifeless days watching a marathon of Star Trek: Voyager and wanted to comment on it.\nLAME!\nI\u0026rsquo;ve listened to Jeff complain about the \u0026ldquo;venting plasma from the port nacelle\u0026rdquo; problem, and it seems every episode I\u0026rsquo;ve seen has something to do with time travel or the hollo-deck.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve commented several times watching these episodes how these idea were great\u0026ndash;the first time I saw them on \u0026ldquo;Next Generation\u0026rdquo;.\n:-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/on-voyager/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve spent the better part of three dull, lifeless days watching a marathon of \u003cem\u003eStar Trek: Voyager\u003c/em\u003e and wanted to comment on it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLAME!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve listened to Jeff complain about the \u0026ldquo;venting plasma from the port nacelle\u0026rdquo; problem, and it seems every episode I\u0026rsquo;ve seen has something to do with time travel or the hollo-deck.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve commented several times watching these episodes how these idea were great\u0026ndash;the first time I saw them on \u0026ldquo;Next Generation\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"Voyager\""},{"content":"Yeah, pretty lame. The first season, everyone was\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Dec 6, 2006\nYeah, pretty lame. The first season, everyone was especially two-dimensional, but then I thought that of TNG at first. For some reason the girls and I got hooked on Voyager, though and I\u0026rsquo;ve seen all but one episode\u0026hellip;and now that we have NetFlix I\u0026rsquo;ll have to check for it :-)\nI really wouldn\u0026rsquo;t mind it, except for the prevelance of time-travel eps later in the series. That seems like a very slippery slope for writers and story-arcs.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/on-voyager-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"yeah-pretty-lame-the-first-season-everyone-was\"\u003eYeah, pretty lame. The first season, everyone was\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 6, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, pretty lame. The first season, everyone was especially two-dimensional, but then I thought that of TNG at first. For some reason the girls and I got hooked on Voyager, though and I\u0026rsquo;ve seen all but one episode\u0026hellip;and now that we have NetFlix I\u0026rsquo;ll have to check for it :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"Voyager\" (Comments)"},{"content":"\nOkay, let me get this out of the way. I\u0026rsquo;m a heterosexual man, and Daniel Craig is damn sexy. And he can act. He plays Bond in the raw\u0026ndash;all power and ego, a \u0026ldquo;blunt instrument\u0026rdquo; of death. Marvelous!\nYet, we find Craig\u0026rsquo;s Bond compelling, even disturbingly human. He\u0026rsquo;s an orphan, sponsored through the best of Britain\u0026rsquo;s schools, fresh off his first two kills for MI-6. When we first meet him, he\u0026rsquo;s found a like for killing, but by the tragic ending of the movie two hours on, he knows how much of his soul he destroyed in acquiring that taste for blood.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s talk Bond for moment: Twenty pictures in, the franchise was dead, a caricature of itself. Mike Myers made a career out of spoofing it. Craig has brought it back, I applaud the accomplishment. In bringing the series back to the beginning (in the same Ubermenche way as Batman), they\u0026rsquo;ve revitalized a great character.\nRoyale has flaws: The aerial acrobatics in the first chase are a little too fanstastic, especially since the rest of the movie is honest in-your-face stuntwork. I smelled CGI. Next, a tighter reign on the editing would\u0026rsquo;ve cut 30 minutes\u0026ndash;I could\u0026rsquo;ve done without some of those 15-second Craig closeups, but I realize the ladies love it.\nIs this the best Bond movie ever? I still have a soft spot for You Only Live Twice, but Royale is certainly up there. My favorite moment was the tender shower scene between Vesper and Bond, dealing with the reality of killing someone. She\u0026rsquo;s freaking, and he helps her deal with it. No Bond\u0026ndash;Connery to Brosnan\u0026ndash;would\u0026rsquo;ve done that.\nIs Craig the best Bond? We\u0026rsquo;ll see\u0026ndash;he\u0026rsquo;s redefining the role, and this Bond was interesting and relevant.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/review-casino-royale/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0381061/\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/53/Casino_Royale_3.jpg/225px-Casino_Royale_3.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, let me get this out of the way. I\u0026rsquo;m a heterosexual man, and Daniel Craig is damn sexy. And he can act. He plays Bond in the raw\u0026ndash;all power and ego, a \u0026ldquo;blunt instrument\u0026rdquo; of death. Marvelous!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYet, we find Craig\u0026rsquo;s Bond compelling, even disturbingly human. He\u0026rsquo;s an orphan, sponsored through the best of Britain\u0026rsquo;s schools, fresh off his first two kills for MI-6. When we first meet him, he\u0026rsquo;s found a like for killing, but by the tragic ending of the movie two hours on, he knows how much of his soul he destroyed in acquiring that taste for blood.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Casino Royale"},{"content":"So\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m at home, totally stir-crazy.\nDo like like my couch though\u0026hellip;my I\u0026rsquo;ve been spending lots of quality time on it for the past day or so. Gloomy outside, with a steady rain.\nCurrently reading \u0026ldquo;Husband Coached Childbirth\u0026rdquo; by Dr. Bradley\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/listlessness/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m at home, totally stir-crazy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDo like like my couch though\u0026hellip;my I\u0026rsquo;ve been spending lots of quality time on it for the past day or so. Gloomy outside, with a steady rain.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCurrently reading \u0026ldquo;Husband Coached Childbirth\u0026rdquo; by Dr. Bradley\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0553375563.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Listlessness"},{"content":"So\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m at work, totally stir-crazy. Do like lik\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Dec 5, 2006\nSo\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m at work, totally stir-crazy.\nDo like like my Tempurpedic Seat Cushion though\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/listlessness-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"soim-at-work-totally-stir-crazy-do-like-lik\"\u003eSo\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m at work, totally stir-crazy. Do like lik\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m at work, totally stir-crazy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDo like like my Tempurpedic Seat Cushion though\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Listlessness (Comments)"},{"content":"Guess what my PE guy got me for Christmas?!\na Holiday Coffee sampler from Peet\u0026rsquo;s\nI thought I was gonna break-down in tears\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/w0000000000000000000t/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGuess what my PE guy got me for Christmas?!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.peets.com/images/billboards/bb_hdy_gifts01a.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ea Holiday Coffee sampler from Peet\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI thought I was gonna break-down in tears\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"w0000000000000000000t!"},{"content":"n. The spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time.\nThis time at LXK is weird, as it is every year\u0026hellip;there\u0026rsquo;s a combination of languor and pressure. Customers will be irate one minute, gone on vacation the next, and managers sway between micromanagement and \u0026ldquo;Have a Merry Christmas!\u0026rdquo;\nMaddening.\n* * *\nThoughts on the way into work:\nI love cars, but ultimately, they\u0026rsquo;re (very breakable) things that don\u0026rsquo;t last very long.\nOn buying new versus buying used\u0026ndash;ultimately, it\u0026rsquo;s a personal preference. There are arguments, intangibles, and assumptions on both sides, but there are two camps: Folks who buy new cars because they can\u0026rsquo;t imagine a car breaking, and folks who buy used cars who understand that cars break; theirs just break more often :D\nDecember 14th? Sixty-two degrees? Sure, why not?!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/zeitgeist/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003en. The spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis time at LXK is weird, as it is every year\u0026hellip;there\u0026rsquo;s a combination of languor and pressure. Customers will be irate one minute, gone on vacation the next, and managers sway between micromanagement and \u0026ldquo;Have a Merry Christmas!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaddening.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThoughts on the way into work:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI love cars, but ultimately, they\u0026rsquo;re (very breakable) things that don\u0026rsquo;t last very long.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Zeitgeist"},{"content":"Jeff\u0026rsquo;s in-law wedding adventure, with pics!\nJeff, knifing through the jungle, machete in one hand, blue-steel revolver in another\u0026hellip;ready for anything, even a UT-Martin fan!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/-p/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://jeffingtown.blogspot.com/2006/12/weekend-wedding.html\"\u003eJeff\u0026rsquo;s in-law wedding adventure\u003c/a\u003e, with pics!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/131/320459232_1ec1283f4b_o.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eJeff, knifing through the jungle, machete in one hand, blue-steel revolver in another\u0026hellip;ready for anything, even a UT-Martin fan!\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":":-P"},{"content":"If programming languages were women\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/ah-geeky-gold/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://just-humour.blogspot.com/2006/11/programming-languages-are-like-women-by.html\"\u003eIf programming languages were women\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ah, geeky gold"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Ouch!\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/posting-by-proxy.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Ouch!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/51223307@N00/317229660/\" title=\"Photo Sharing\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"xmas-lights\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/113/317229660_8e75330eb3.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"posting by proxy..."},{"content":"can we let all the morons who think they can do be\u0026hellip; Whitney - Dec 5, 2006\ncan we let all the morons who think they can do better have a go at it - and then make them sit through the call in shows where morons who can\u0026rsquo;t properly speak english slander them voraciously?\nIndeed!\nThere are a few thankless jobs in sports:\n- Notre Dame football coach\n- Kentucky Basketball coach\nIn either case, nothing short of national championship is acceptable.\nBut alas, I have had more fun cheering for worse UK teams. Maybe some of it is old-geezer-ism. I remember the good-old-days like they were yesterday and it\u0026rsquo;s starting to require effort to drag my butt up the stairs to my seat at the game.\nYou had to love the Pitino teams, particularly those of the early 90\u0026rsquo;s\u0026ndash;undermanned, outgunned, but they hustled, played as a team, and man could they SHOOT!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/posting-by-proxy...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"can-we-let-all-the-morons-who-think-they-can-do-be\"\u003ecan we let all the morons who think they can do be\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ecan we let all the morons who think they can do better have a go at it - and then make them sit through the call in shows where morons who can\u0026rsquo;t properly speak english slander them voraciously?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIndeed!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are a few thankless jobs in sports:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"posting by proxy... (Comments)"},{"content":"So, I get back from lunch, and someone\u0026rsquo;s brought an ice cream cake from DQ for the area.\nI go down and help myself to a slice, and I ask what the occasion is. Everyone looks around nervously.\n\u0026ldquo;Tell him, Sue.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You tell him, Gary\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;_____\u0026rsquo;s dad died.\u0026rdquo;\n????\n\u0026ldquo;Yeah, they weren\u0026rsquo;t close.\u0026rdquo;\nApparently.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/dont-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry-on-this-one.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I get back from lunch, and someone\u0026rsquo;s brought an ice cream cake from DQ for the area.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI go down and help myself to a slice, and I ask what the occasion is. Everyone looks around nervously.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Tell him, Sue.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You tell him, Gary\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;_____\u0026rsquo;s dad died.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e????\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Yeah, they weren\u0026rsquo;t close.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eApparently.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Don't know whether to laugh or cry on this one..."},{"content":"what\u0026hellip;.did it say \u0026ldquo;Congratulations!\u0026rdquo; or something\u0026hellip; Whitney - Dec 4, 2006\nwhat\u0026hellip;.did it say \u0026ldquo;Congratulations!\u0026rdquo; or something on it?\nNo, thankfully it was blank\u0026hellip;just an ice-cream cake.\nSaddens me, though\u0026hellip;estranged relationships father-to-son, estranged for eternity now, maybe.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/dont-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry-on-this-one...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"whatdid-it-say-congratulations-or-something\"\u003ewhat\u0026hellip;.did it say \u0026ldquo;Congratulations!\u0026rdquo; or something\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 4, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ewhat\u0026hellip;.did it say \u0026ldquo;Congratulations!\u0026rdquo; or something on it?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo, thankfully it was blank\u0026hellip;just an ice-cream cake.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaddens me, though\u0026hellip;estranged relationships father-to-son, estranged for eternity now, maybe.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Don't know whether to laugh or cry on this one... (Comments)"},{"content":":-) Check-out my pal Joe Guillory, the lawyer!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/go-joe-go-joe/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e:-) Check-out my pal Joe Guillory, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.alston.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=attorneydirectory\u0026amp;attyid=4678\"\u003elawyer\u003c/a\u003e!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Go Joe, go Joe!"},{"content":"I have certainly whipped out my credit card and ap\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Dec 2, 2006\nI have certainly whipped out my credit card and approached one before. But then sometimes I point my car key fob at my office door and press Unlock.\nsome around here take Gcards\u0026hellip;..but that\u0026rsquo;s mommy and daddy\u0026rsquo;s money so I guess it doesn\u0026rsquo;t really count\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/random-thought...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-have-certainly-whipped-out-my-credit-card-and-ap\"\u003eI have certainly whipped out my credit card and ap\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/05825734829025072898\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eDec 2, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have certainly whipped out my credit card and approached one before. But then sometimes I point my car key fob at my office door and press Unlock.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003esome around here take Gcards\u0026hellip;..but that\u0026rsquo;s mommy and daddy\u0026rsquo;s money so I guess it doesn\u0026rsquo;t really count\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Random thought... (Comments)"},{"content":"I will not eat popcorn before bed\nI will not eat popcorn before bed\nI will not eat popcorn before bed\nI will not eat popcorn before bed\nYeah\u0026hellip;nothing like being groggy and sick-as-a-dog at 4:30am.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/quick-hit-say-it-with-me-now.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI will not eat popcorn before bed\u003cbr\u003e\nI will not eat popcorn before bed\u003cbr\u003e\nI will not eat popcorn before bed\u003cbr\u003e\nI will not eat popcorn before bed\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah\u0026hellip;nothing like being groggy and sick-as-a-dog at 4:30am.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quick hit: Say it with me now..."},{"content":"As Bella was in Louisville today, nesting and going to a baby shower (not her own\u0026hellip;mmm\u0026hellip;pregnant women on parade!), I went to get my CD player installed at Car Stereo warehouse.\nThey thought they could run the outputs through the factory amp, but turns out the factory amp was dead. This took quite awhile.\nClick on this link for a map of my sojourn overf the next 5 hours. I went:\n- To Sam\u0026rsquo;s club, to loiter.\n- To McD\u0026rsquo;s to get some coffee\n- Back to CSW where they said \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s almost done\u0026rdquo;\n- I went outside and talked to my Mom for 45 mins\n- I walked up to Eastland bowling lanes, where it was league day and high-school day (!)\n- Went to harbor freight to touch all the tools. It\u0026rsquo;s a thing with me, okay?\n- Went to Hardees where I listened to KY lose to UNC while I was reading the paper.\n- Walked back to CSW, where they finally had my car done :-)\nSo, I got lots of time to be cold, walk around, and consider life. . .\n. . .no great epiphanies followed.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/getting-acquainted-with-east-lexington...for-about-5-hours/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs Bella was in Louisville today, nesting and going to a baby shower (not her own\u0026hellip;mmm\u0026hellip;pregnant women on parade!), I went to get my CD player installed at Car Stereo warehouse.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey thought they could run the outputs through the factory amp, but turns out the factory amp was dead. This took quite awhile.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClick on \u003ca href=\"http://tinyurl.com/ykbbqj\"\u003ethis link\u003c/a\u003e for a map of my sojourn overf the next 5 hours. I went:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Getting acquainted with east lexington...for about 5 hours"},{"content":"\nYeah, so I get my new radio, and I follow the easy-to-read step-by step instructions and I end-up with the mess you see above you.\nSeems that E30\u0026rsquo;s all have wonky common-ground stereos, and if you want any sort of quality, they have to be rewired. I\u0026rsquo;ll be getting this done tomorrow\u0026hellip;\nStill, it was a priceless moment when Whitney and Joey returned from church Wednesday night to find me wrestling with my car\u0026rsquo;s wiring in my pj\u0026rsquo;s :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/12/the-radio-saga/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/107/311247632_1445ee7bec.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, so I get my new radio, and I follow the easy-to-read step-by step instructions and I end-up with the mess you see above you.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeems that E30\u0026rsquo;s all have wonky common-ground stereos, and if you want any sort of quality, they have to be rewired. I\u0026rsquo;ll be getting this done tomorrow\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, it was a priceless moment when Whitney and Joey returned from church Wednesday night to find me wrestling with my car\u0026rsquo;s wiring in my pj\u0026rsquo;s :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The radio saga"},{"content":"I have a notebook. It\u0026rsquo;s spiral bound, college ruled paper, with 80 sheets.\nI notice others in meetings have graph-paper notebooks, so they can create cool engineering-y diagrams while they doodle.\nI envy those people.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/on-notebook-envy./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI have a notebook. It\u0026rsquo;s spiral bound, college ruled paper, with 80 sheets.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI notice others in meetings have graph-paper notebooks, so they can create cool engineering-y diagrams while they doodle.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI envy those people.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On notebook envy."},{"content":"Stumble in the dark\nEngineers search, people hate.\nSatisfying none\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/haiku/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStumble in the dark\u003cbr\u003e\nEngineers search, people hate.\u003cbr\u003e\nSatisfying none\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Haiku"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m drowning in baby gifts. My old church family was very generous, as were several members of mom\u0026rsquo;s family.\nGot to drive Cathy\u0026rsquo;s Mazda MPV today, and it handled very well at \u0026ldquo;interstate speeds\u0026rdquo; :-) More powerful than Yoda, in any case.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/baby-shower/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m drowning in baby gifts. My old church family was very generous, as were several members of mom\u0026rsquo;s family.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGot to drive Cathy\u0026rsquo;s Mazda MPV today, and it handled very well at \u0026ldquo;interstate speeds\u0026rdquo; :-) More powerful than Yoda, in any case.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Baby Shower"},{"content":"Tact: noun. a keen sense of what to say or do to avoid giving offense; skill in dealing with difficult or delicate situations.\nAfter attending the second of two Thankgsivings, I must say, Brentzels don\u0026rsquo;t have tact. The Combs clan doesn\u0026rsquo;t either.\n* * *\nScorecard\nAtmosphere: The Combs homestead (now Janie\u0026rsquo;s house) versus Papaw Brentzel\u0026rsquo;s ranch-on-a-basement. Includes creek and hide-and-go-seek.\nAdvantage: Combs\nAttendance: The Combs\u0026rsquo;s were missing a whole family, while the Brentzels were only missing one cousin (Alan).\nAdvantage: Brentzel\nBest after-dinner, catty comment: Combs. Hands down.\nBest nugget of wisdom:\n- \u0026ldquo;Hell, Harold, don\u0026rsquo;t pay any attention. They can hear a gnat fart from 5 blocks away.\u0026rdquo;\n- \u0026ldquo;You know how often I change the oil in my race engine? After EVERY race\u0026hellip;Yep\u0026hellip;used that special 50-weight stuff\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Well now, I wuz turning 4600 rpm down the back straight, and if I have my math right, using an overall tire diameter of _____ found by using PI times D, multiplied by an overall gear ratio of\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nAdvantage: Brentzel.\nDistance: Combs, in a come-from-behind surprise. I didn\u0026rsquo;t really enjoy driving through Frankfort, through a mountain, Frankfort again, and US 60 for TWO HOURS to get to da Ville. Blasted traffic.\nFood: Nanner Puddin\u0026rsquo; versus Pumpkin Cheesecake. No contest \u0026ndash; BRENTZEL!\nQuickest Exit after meal:\n- Vickie and Dani: 30 minutes\n- Travis and Cora: 25 minutes\nAdvantage: Combs\nStrangest Occurrence:\n- \u0026ldquo;Mom, one of the boys punched me on the trampoline, and the other one pushed me off the trampoline.\u0026rdquo;\n- Bark Bark. \u0026ldquo;No, you stop it!\u0026rdquo;.\nAdvantage: Combs\nin a 5-3 defeat, it\u0026rsquo;s the Combs Thanksgiving winning this year.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/thanksgiving-in-review/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTact: noun. \u003cem\u003ea keen sense of what to say or do to avoid giving offense; skill in dealing with difficult or delicate situations.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter attending the second of two Thankgsivings, I must say, Brentzels don\u0026rsquo;t have tact. The Combs clan doesn\u0026rsquo;t either.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eScorecard\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAtmosphere: The Combs homestead (now Janie\u0026rsquo;s house) versus Papaw Brentzel\u0026rsquo;s ranch-on-a-basement. Includes creek and hide-and-go-seek.\u003cbr\u003e\nAdvantage: Combs\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAttendance: The Combs\u0026rsquo;s were missing a whole family, while the Brentzels were only missing one cousin (Alan).\u003cbr\u003e\nAdvantage: Brentzel\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thanksgiving in review"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;smell a gnat fart\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;.and can it really be a\u0026hellip; Whitney - Nov 0, 2006\nIt\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;smell a gnat fart\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;.and can it really be a lack of tact if you know no one in present company will be offended with what you say?! :) Endearing qualities of my family\u0026hellip;.at least I get it honestly. lack of tact on both sides :)\nComing from someone with permanent OMIF (Open Mouth Insert Foot) syndrome, unless people are completely and utterly offended by the comment you just said out loud, then, no\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s not tactless\u0026hellip;I prefer BLUNT.\nI made dinner again this year\u0026hellip;there was much eating and little talking\u0026hellip;especially from me\u0026hellip;I temporarily dislocated my voice\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/thanksgiving-in-review-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"its-smell-a-gnat-fartand-can-it-really-be-a\"\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;smell a gnat fart\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;.and can it really be a\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 0, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;smell a gnat fart\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;.and can it really be a lack of tact if you know no one in present company will be offended with what you say?! :) Endearing qualities of my family\u0026hellip;.at least I get it honestly. lack of tact on both sides :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eComing from someone with permanent OMIF (Open Mouth Insert Foot) syndrome, unless people are completely and utterly offended by the comment you just said out loud, then, no\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s not tactless\u0026hellip;I prefer BLUNT.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thanksgiving in review (Comments)"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Camry\u0026rdquo; means \u0026lsquo;crown\u0026rsquo; in Japanese (\u0026ldquo;Cam-U-Ree\u0026rdquo;), so here\u0026rsquo;s my summation of our Crown so far:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s great so far; the only complaint I have is the engine\u0026ndash;with 3-4 people + stuff aboard, it can barely get out of its own way. In the flat, it\u0026rsquo;ll happily cruise at 80-90mph, as it\u0026rsquo;s geared very tall, but it\u0026rsquo;s hopeless in the mountains. We averaged 26 mpg on our trips in the past two days, which isn\u0026rsquo;t bad, but it isn\u0026rsquo;t the 30mpg I was hoping for. Some new tires and a tuneup should fix this.\n* * *\nChristmas presents\u0026hellip;mom \u0026amp; dad bought us a set of Goodyear Assurance TripleTreads:\nAnd\u0026hellip;a new stereo for my beamer:\ncool stuff! :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/the-cam-u-ry/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Camry\u0026rdquo; means \u0026lsquo;crown\u0026rsquo; in Japanese (\u0026ldquo;Cam-U-Ree\u0026rdquo;), so here\u0026rsquo;s my summation of our Crown so far:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s great so far; the only complaint I have is the engine\u0026ndash;with 3-4 people + stuff aboard, it can barely get out of its own way. In the flat, it\u0026rsquo;ll happily cruise at 80-90mph, as it\u0026rsquo;s geared very tall, but it\u0026rsquo;s hopeless in the mountains. We averaged 26 mpg on our trips in the past two days, which isn\u0026rsquo;t bad, but it isn\u0026rsquo;t the 30mpg I was hoping for. Some new tires and a tuneup should fix this.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Cam-U-Ry"},{"content":"God help me, I\u0026rsquo;m taking off this week.\nI expect to get the shakes sometime in the next couple days, as I really haven\u0026rsquo;t decompressed. I\u0026rsquo;m accustomed to the 7am video conference with India, and until that doesn\u0026rsquo;t happen, I\u0026rsquo;m not \u0026ldquo;on vacation\u0026rdquo;.\n* * *\nThis weekend was pretty neat\u0026ndash;did nothing on Saturday, and little to nothing today, aside from some shopping :-)\nIn other news, we\u0026rsquo;ve Christened the Camry \u0026ldquo;Yoda\u0026rdquo;, as it\u0026rsquo;s unattractive, old, and unexciting. Yet, it\u0026rsquo;s full of time tested wisdom.\nYeah, something like that. Anyway, Yoda rhymes with Toyota. Close enough, anyway. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/relaxation-day-zero/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGod help me, I\u0026rsquo;m taking off this week.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI expect to get the shakes sometime in the next couple days, as I really haven\u0026rsquo;t decompressed. I\u0026rsquo;m accustomed to the 7am video conference with India, and until that doesn\u0026rsquo;t happen, I\u0026rsquo;m not \u0026ldquo;on vacation\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis weekend was pretty neat\u0026ndash;did nothing on Saturday, and little to nothing today, aside from some \u003ca href=\"http://monkeysontheside.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html#3947366809341785058\"\u003eshopping\u003c/a\u003e :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn other news, we\u0026rsquo;ve Christened the Camry \u0026ldquo;Yoda\u0026rdquo;, as it\u0026rsquo;s unattractive, old, and unexciting. Yet, it\u0026rsquo;s full of time tested wisdom.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Relaxation, day Zero"},{"content":"Good old Michael K (aka \u0026ldquo;Gateway\u0026rdquo;) is back on the GTO\u0026rsquo;s are cheap, buy one bandwagon.\nApparently, they\u0026rsquo;ll be going for under $25k again, since the 06\u0026rsquo;s are the last year for them, and they\u0026rsquo;re still piled-up on dealer lots.\n400hp\nRWD\nClunky 6-speed\nno trunk\n:) no thanks. Do miss Thor occasionally, when those ever-so-rare patches of open interstate loom, and my 170hp just doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel adequate.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/its-starting-again.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGood old Michael K (aka \u0026ldquo;Gateway\u0026rdquo;) is back on the \u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zerothread?id=2922317\u0026amp;page=5\"\u003eGTO\u0026rsquo;s are cheap, buy one\u003c/a\u003e bandwagon.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eApparently, they\u0026rsquo;ll be going for under $25k again, since the 06\u0026rsquo;s are the last year for them, and they\u0026rsquo;re still piled-up on dealer lots.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e400hp\u003cbr\u003e\nRWD\u003cbr\u003e\nClunky 6-speed\u003cbr\u003e\nno trunk\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:) no thanks. Do miss Thor occasionally, when those ever-so-rare patches of open interstate loom, and my 170hp just doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel adequate.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"It's starting again..."},{"content":"So, I come downstairs from my 10am meeting, to see something very\u0026hellip;odd.\nA middle-aged lady from our facilities staff had her mop and bucket, much like other days, but she was MOPPING THE CARPET. Not the tile in front of the elevators, the CARPETING!\nClayton came by and we commiserated on this idea, and found it to be a metaphor for our whole frickin\u0026rsquo; company. We\u0026rsquo;re mopping the carpet. Working hard, but mopping the carpet nonetheless.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/new-inspirational-moment/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I come downstairs from my 10am meeting, to see something very\u0026hellip;odd.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA middle-aged lady from our facilities staff had her mop and bucket, much like other days, but she was MOPPING THE CARPET. Not the tile in front of the elevators, the CARPETING!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClayton came by and we commiserated on this idea, and found it to be a metaphor for our whole frickin\u0026rsquo; company. We\u0026rsquo;re mopping the carpet. Working hard, but mopping the carpet nonetheless.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New inspirational moment"},{"content":"Classic! Yeah, I don\u0026rsquo;t think they have any actual\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Nov 2, 2006\nClassic! Yeah, I don\u0026rsquo;t think they have any actual vacuum cleaners anymore, just one of those push sweeper things for the carpet, and I can\u0026rsquo;t see us shelling out to have the carpet cleaned.\nWas there a faint smell of cedar? Sounds like a scene from first grade where someone didn\u0026rsquo;t quite make it to the bathroom before hurling.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/new-inspirational-moment-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"classic-yeah-i-dont-think-they-have-any-actual\"\u003eClassic! Yeah, I don\u0026rsquo;t think they have any actual\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 2, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClassic! Yeah, I don\u0026rsquo;t think they have any actual vacuum cleaners anymore, just one of those push sweeper things for the carpet, and I can\u0026rsquo;t see us shelling out to have the carpet cleaned.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWas there a faint smell of cedar? Sounds like a scene from first grade where someone didn\u0026rsquo;t quite make it to the bathroom before hurling.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New inspirational moment (Comments)"},{"content":"subtitle: OWWWWWWWWW!\nSo, Whitney and I were hanging out last night, practicing some of her Bradly exercises, specifically Tailor Sitting. As we sat there, we were discussing flexibility and she said I should lean forward from my 90-degree position as far as I could.\nI leaned at about a 45 degree angle and finally felt a little stretch in my behind, so I kept going.\nTurns out, I could bend all the way forward, still in the seated position and touch my nose to the carpet. She was suitably impressed\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;Then I got up this morning, and every piece of connective tissue from my lower back to my knees hurt. =-) Seems I\u0026rsquo;m not that flexible, after all.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/no-i-dont-have-connective-tissue-disorder/","summary":"\u003cp\u003esubtitle: OWWWWWWWWW!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, Whitney and I were hanging out last night, practicing some of her Bradly exercises, specifically \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting#Tailor_or_Indian_style\"\u003eTailor Sitting\u003c/a\u003e. As we sat there, we were discussing flexibility and she said I should lean forward from my 90-degree position as far as I could.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI leaned at about a 45 degree angle and finally felt a \u003cem\u003elittle\u003c/em\u003e stretch in my behind, so I kept going.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTurns out, I could bend all the way forward, still in the seated position and touch my nose to the carpet. She was suitably impressed\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"No, I don't have Connective Tissue Disorder"},{"content":"Something about knowing I share a birthday with Nick Lachey isn\u0026rsquo;t terribly comforting.\nThough, the Berlin Wall did fall on my birthday, which is cool.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/fun-times.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSomething about knowing I share a birthday with \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_9#Births\"\u003eNick Lachey\u003c/a\u003e isn\u0026rsquo;t terribly comforting.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThough, the Berlin Wall did fall on my birthday, which is cool.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fun times..."},{"content":"\u0026hellip;sigh\u0026hellip;\nBeen a C\u0026amp;D subscriber for ~20 years, but it was time to vote with my feet\u0026ndash;their recent tests have been garbage, the redesign caused my eyes to hurt, and the editorial content has gotten more \u0026ldquo;frat-boy\u0026rdquo; by the issue.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s still a respectable magazine, and their technical skills are above reproach, but it\u0026rsquo;s not worth my money.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/cancelled-my-cd-subscription.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;sigh\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBeen a C\u0026amp;D subscriber for ~20 years, but it was time to vote with my feet\u0026ndash;their recent tests have been garbage, the redesign caused my eyes to hurt, and the editorial content has gotten more \u0026ldquo;frat-boy\u0026rdquo; by the issue.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s still a respectable magazine, and their technical skills are above reproach, but it\u0026rsquo;s not worth my money.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cancelled my C\u0026D subscription..."},{"content":"I love my wife even if she is a pharisee.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/-/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI love \u003ca href=\"http://monkeysontheside.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html#7078244112514861353\"\u003emy wife\u003c/a\u003e even if she is a pharisee.\u003c/p\u003e","title":":-)"},{"content":"I have to agree with her \u0026ldquo;line-moving\u0026rdquo; points - I\u0026rsquo;\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Nov 3, 2006\nI have to agree with her \u0026ldquo;line-moving\u0026rdquo; points - I\u0026rsquo;ve said for some time that all the pedophiles need is a photogenic activist/victim and some money and that\u0026rsquo;s the next domino to fall. The groundwork is already there with \u0026ldquo;child rights\u0026rdquo; crap like kids divorcing their parents. Not a big step to consensual.\nLeave it to Jeff to take the truth where I REALLY don\u0026rsquo;t want it to go\u0026hellip;.sigh\u0026hellip;.\nFunnily enough, I expected \u0026ldquo;I love my wife even if she is insane\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo; lol\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-have-to-agree-with-her-line-moving-points---i\"\u003eI have to agree with her \u0026ldquo;line-moving\u0026rdquo; points - I\u0026rsquo;\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 3, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have to agree with her \u0026ldquo;line-moving\u0026rdquo; points - I\u0026rsquo;ve said for some time that all the pedophiles need is a photogenic activist/victim and some money and that\u0026rsquo;s the next domino to fall. The groundwork is already there with \u0026ldquo;child rights\u0026rdquo; crap like kids divorcing their parents. Not a big step to consensual.\u003c/p\u003e","title":":-) (Comments)"},{"content":"Article\nPending a recount, looks like Varney is out and Tingle-Sames is in. Also, our guy Marvin Thompson is back in for city council.\nI would like them to change to a district-based council structure\u0026hellip;voting for 8 folks in the at-large is too hard!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/changes-in-gtown/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/15960525.htm\"\u003eArticle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePending a recount, looks like Varney is out and Tingle-Sames is in. Also, our guy Marvin Thompson is back in for city council.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would like them to change to a district-based council structure\u0026hellip;voting for 8 folks in the at-large is too hard!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Changes in G'town"},{"content":"\nToday\u0026rsquo;s the day\u0026hellip;\nCast my ballot at 6:15 this morning, and was glad to do so. With all but one exception, I voted Democratic (yes, Dad, you can rejoice.)\nYes, I\u0026rsquo;m naive. Yes, I\u0026rsquo;ve started to believe at least some of what I read with respect to Iraq, torture, foreign policy, and the covert operations of our current executive.\nYes, I believe in checks-and-balances, and the blank check Hastert and Frist gave Bush over the past 2-3 years is criminal.\nYes, I believe Carl Rove is Satan, a demagogue who sowed division in a country desperately needing togetherness, all for political gain.\nYes, I believe we\u0026rsquo;ve willfully exchanged freedom for safety.\n* * *\nOkay, the reality here\u0026ndash;our only national election was for the House of Representatives, in that race Ben Chandler ran without Republican opposition. Still, I hope enough Republicans get their butts kicked that SOME of the political structure changes\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/on-the-election/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://kyblogger.com/images/ivotedtoday.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s the day\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCast my ballot at 6:15 this morning, and was glad to do so. With all but one exception, I voted Democratic (yes, Dad, you can rejoice.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, I\u0026rsquo;m naive. Yes, I\u0026rsquo;ve started to believe at least some of what I read with respect to Iraq, torture, foreign policy, and the covert operations of our current executive.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, I believe in checks-and-balances, and the blank check Hastert and Frist gave Bush over the past 2-3 years is criminal.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the election"},{"content":"Away from me satan. Whitney - Nov 2, 2006\nAway from me satan.\nThis morning I voted for a Democratic senator, congressman, and governor. For today, at least, you could call me a Bush Democrat.\nRock on, Josh!\nLooks like the Dems may gain control of both houses, if the Senate races in Virginia and Montana hold out.\nPS You should have just hit the little button next to the rooster and saved some time.\n\u0026gt; PS You should have just hit the little button next to the rooster and saved some time.\nUmm\u0026hellip;no.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/on-the-election-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"away-from-me-satan\"\u003eAway from me satan.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 2, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAway from me satan.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis morning I voted for a Democratic senator, congressman, and governor. For today, at least, you could call me a Bush Democrat.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRock on, Josh!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLooks like the Dems may gain control of both houses, if the Senate races in Virginia and Montana hold out.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the election (Comments)"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;or \u0026ldquo;My Dad becomes a BMW brand Ho\u0026rdquo;\nSo, after haranguing Dad to be my wingman on the Desperate Friday Car-Search©, replacing my burned-out wife, I developed a list of 5 \u0026ldquo;likely\u0026rdquo; cars from the lists I could find online:\n- At World Class Autos in Nicholasville: an Infiniti I30, and \u0026lsquo;95 BMW 525i\n- At Big Blue Autos: The Camry, the Accord, and another I30.\nUpon arriving at World Class Autos (Home of \u0026ldquo;Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s largest used car showroom\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;yeah right, you could fit their building inside CarMax, but whatever\u0026hellip;), we scoured the frosty lot for the e34 I was so keen on.\nAside: An e34 is a 1989-1995 BMW 5-series. It\u0026rsquo;s like a bigger version of my car 325\nWe finally found the car, and it was a rough back-lot special: Filthy outside, with pitted paint, and 130k miles on the odo. The power/heated driver\u0026rsquo;s seat had burned-out its fore/aft adjustment motor. Oh, and the battery (located beneath the rear seats) was dead.\nBut how this thing drove!! Tight, great steering and plenty of power from the short gearing (good for only 21mpg highway). Plus, it was well within our budget, even at their asking price.\n(As Jamie said yesterday, \u0026ldquo;His \u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo; hers Beamers\u0026hellip;nice!\u0026rdquo;)\nThe coolest part about driving it was Dad\u0026rsquo;s reaction. Initially, he was really doubtful\u0026ndash;old, worn out car, what was I thinking? Then, on the test drive, he got interested. When I told him their asking price, he got VERY interested. Then he started looking at every other BMW on the lot\u0026ndash;a nice E46 coupe in the showroom, and E36 someone drove-up in, and a brand-new E90 that someone brought in for trade (!?!)\nGranted the car was a darkhorse candidate\u0026ndash;it needed work, and I had no idea if Whitney could fit in it. So, they promply did a Puppy Dog Close, \u0026ldquo;Whydoncha take it on up to \u0026rsquo;er, and let \u0026rsquo;er sit in it?\u0026rdquo; said Henry, the overbearing sell-it-sellit-SELLIT sales manager.\nSure, why not?\nSo, they took FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to clean-up the car, and Dad and I drove it back up to G\u0026rsquo;town for Whitney to examine. Of course, the battery had been jumped to get it started so I couldn\u0026rsquo;t turn it off\u0026hellip;\nWell, long story short\u0026ndash;no pun intended\u0026ndash;Whitney just didn\u0026rsquo;t fit. I was heartbroken for about 2 hours after that, but I moved on. Dropped Dad back at his truck, then made the long drive back to return the car.\n* * *\nWhenever the 325 gives up the ghost, I may just have to look for a cared-for e34 to bring home :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/weekend-in-reverse-the-e34-fiasco/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;or \u0026ldquo;My Dad becomes a BMW brand Ho\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, after haranguing Dad to be my wingman on the Desperate Friday Car-Search©, replacing my burned-out wife, I developed a list of 5 \u0026ldquo;likely\u0026rdquo; cars from the lists I could find online:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- At World Class Autos in Nicholasville: an Infiniti I30, and \u0026lsquo;95 BMW 525i\u003cbr\u003e\n- At Big Blue Autos: The Camry, the Accord, and another I30.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUpon arriving at World Class Autos (Home of \u0026ldquo;Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s largest used car showroom\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;yeah right, you could fit their building inside CarMax, but whatever\u0026hellip;), we scoured the frosty lot for the e34 I was so keen on.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"weekend in reverse: the e34 fiasco"},{"content":"After the e34 fiasco, buying the Camry was pretty easy: Drove over to Big Blue Autos, and they (conveniently) had the keys to EVERY CAR sticking OUT OF ITS DRIVER\u0026rsquo;S SIDE DOOR!\nSupposedly, this was to simply the detail-guys moving them around the lot. I personally think this was a giant sociological experiment to see who would be the first person to steal a car.\nI only did it halfway\u0026ndash;I got a dealer plate first.\nFirst up was a sad-looking Infiniti I30 that didn\u0026rsquo;t quite check-out\u0026hellip;so that was out. At this point, two cars remained: the Camry and a V-6 Accord.\nThe accord was kill-me-beige, and a real blast to drive. Great seats and tremendous power. Every stoplight/stop sign had me laying rubber as I booted the throttle. Controls were light, but TOO light. Driving up Bryan Station Road, the car was playful and engaging. Sadly, the inspection of the car didn\u0026rsquo;t add-up: It was missing a couple of VIN stickers, and had corrosion in odd places in the engine bay. Also, I didn\u0026rsquo;t relish paying for a timing belt replacement on a V-6. Also, it had a very bad air leak on the driver\u0026rsquo;s side above 25 mph. The real kicker was, the car was just TOO FAST. Power-to-weight felt 25% better than Sharkey, and frankly, that\u0026rsquo;s not what my lead-footed wife needs :-)\nThe Camry was, well, good enough to buy\u0026ndash;panels all checked out, minus the trunk. The engine ticked-over easily, and there was just a hint of sticky throttle, indicating a dirty intake manifold/throttle body.\nPlus, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t kill-me-beige.\nAs with Sharkey, negotiations were pretty brief, probably 20 minutes. I asked them to make their best deal, then made them a lowball counter-offer, and we met somewhere in the middle. Decent guys to deal with, but I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want to be some rube walking onto that lot\u0026ndash;have your NADA guides on #\u0026rsquo;s or they\u0026rsquo;ll rob you blind.\nOnly regret was it was so late in the day after the e34 stuff that I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get a Pre-purchase inspection. I hope my (meager) inspection skills will be enough to keep us away from a lemon\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/weekend-in-reverse-buying-the-blasted-car/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter the e34 fiasco, buying the Camry was pretty easy: Drove over to Big Blue Autos, and they (conveniently) had the keys to EVERY CAR sticking OUT OF ITS DRIVER\u0026rsquo;S SIDE DOOR!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSupposedly, this was to simply the detail-guys moving them around the lot. I personally think this was a giant sociological experiment to see who would be the first person to steal a car.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI only did it halfway\u0026ndash;I got a dealer plate first.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weekend in reverse: Buying the blasted car"},{"content":"So, having bought our new-to-us Camry on Friday, and brought it home Saturday, I noticed some interesting things about it Sunday.\nIt has THREE brands of tires on it. The front tires look new, but they\u0026rsquo;re called \u0026lsquo;Road King\u0026rsquo; or something like that. The passenger rear was a Dunlop P4000 touring tire, and the driver\u0026rsquo;s side rear was a BFGoodrich something-or-other.\nThe BFGoodrich tire was also backwards.\nSome tires, particularly rain tires, have V-shaped treads that dissipate water, IF THEY\u0026rsquo;RE MOUNTED CORRECTLY! If they\u0026rsquo;re not, they approximate the wet-road traction of a greased pig.\nNo problem, I thought\u0026hellip;I have all the tools necessary to jack the rear of the car, and flip the two rear tires. Ah yes, as with most of my \u0026ldquo;this will be easy\u0026rdquo; inclinations, I was wrong.\nJacking the car was easy: The rear subframe carrier has a nice flat spot where the suspension attaches, and with 60% of the weight on the front wheels, my 2 1/2 ton jack was well up to the task.\nThen, to my horror, while removing the wheels, 2 lugnuts on both wheels seemed to need a little\u0026hellip;persuasion. No problem, I have a 2-foot steel breaker-bar (Craftsman, natch!).\nSnap.\nSnap.\nSnap.\nSnap.\nThat was the sound of 4 rusty wheel studs giving way. Now, let me set the scene more fully: It\u0026rsquo;s 3pm. The car\u0026rsquo;s in the driveway, not the garage (hey, this is a 10 minute job,right?). The sky is overcast and looks like rain. My wife is asleep and has no idea I\u0026rsquo;ve just immobilized the only car she can drive up to Louisville to get Joey from his dad\u0026rsquo;s house.\nA trip she has to make in 3 hours.\nAnd, I\u0026rsquo;ve never so much as touched a drum brake in my life.\nSo, in the next 3 hours, I made a trip to Advance Auto, Autozone, then back to advance, to buy every single compatible lug stud in Georgetown (total of 6, between the two parts places), along with 6 lug nuts (again, the total supply our little berg had to offer). I found-out that the best way to separate a drum from the hub is to use the helpful 10mm screw holes to drive-in a WD40-soaked bolt, breaking the corrosion.\nI had it buttoned-up and test-driven with 2 minutes to spare.\nExcitement. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/weekend-in-reverse-camries-have-crappy-lug-studs./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, having bought our new-to-us Camry on Friday, and brought it home Saturday, I noticed some interesting things about it Sunday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt has THREE brands of tires on it. The front tires look new, but they\u0026rsquo;re called \u0026lsquo;Road King\u0026rsquo; or something like that. The passenger rear was a Dunlop P4000 touring tire, and the driver\u0026rsquo;s side rear was a BFGoodrich something-or-other.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe BFGoodrich tire was also backwards.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome tires, particularly rain tires, have V-shaped treads that dissipate water, IF THEY\u0026rsquo;RE MOUNTED CORRECTLY! If they\u0026rsquo;re not, they approximate the wet-road traction of a greased pig.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weekend in reverse: Camries have crappy lug studs."},{"content":"Yep\u0026hellip;this is the Quentin Tarantino version of my weekend\u0026hellip;\nSo, this morning, I arise at ye earlie momente of 5am, make coffee, scour the house for my badge, finally leaving with a backpack full of books, computer, power brick, passport, and other assorted goods.\n(And, I just remembered\u0026hellip;without lunch\u0026hellip;CRAP!)\nSo, I get to the security room, and notice that the interior of my car reeks of coffee. I unzip my backpack to find the thermos tipped over. Usually, this isn\u0026rsquo;t a problem, the thermos is watertight and double-sealed at the top\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;unless the idiot who washed it last (me) left out the rubber piece in the lid.\nInventory:\n- One ruined (borrowed) book\n- One passport that looks aged 100 years\n- One soaked backpack\nThankfully, the power brick and laptop seem to be fine. They live in their own cushioned area.\nAfter last night, thought all my bad luck was over. Nope.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/weekend-in-reverse-monday-morning/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYep\u0026hellip;this is the Quentin Tarantino version of my weekend\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, this morning, I arise at ye earlie momente of 5am, make coffee, scour the house for my badge, finally leaving with a backpack full of books, computer, power brick, passport, and other assorted goods.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(And, I just remembered\u0026hellip;without lunch\u0026hellip;CRAP!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.hypermicro.com/prod_img/ACDE125.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, I get to the security room, and notice that the interior of my car reeks of coffee. I unzip my backpack to find the thermos tipped over. Usually, this isn\u0026rsquo;t a problem, the thermos is watertight and double-sealed at the top\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weekend in reverse: Monday Morning"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/my-eyes....the-goggles-they-do-nothing/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.autoextremist.com/cars/november2006/slade.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MY EYES....the goggles, they do NOTHING!!!"},{"content":"there are no words\u0026hellip;.. big gaping hole gasping w\u0026hellip; Whitney - Nov 4, 2006\nthere are no words\u0026hellip;..\nbig\ngaping\nhole\ngasping\nwretch\nvomit\nno\u0026hellip;..none of them quite say it\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/my-eyes....the-goggles-they-do-nothing-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"there-are-no-words-big-gaping-hole-gasping-w\"\u003ethere are no words\u0026hellip;.. big gaping hole gasping w\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 4, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ethere are no words\u0026hellip;..\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ebig\u003cbr\u003e\ngaping\u003cbr\u003e\nhole\u003cbr\u003e\ngasping\u003cbr\u003e\nwretch\u003cbr\u003e\nvomit\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eno\u0026hellip;..none of them quite say it\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"MY EYES....the goggles, they do NOTHING!!! (Comments)"},{"content":"This doesn\u0026rsquo;t sound much like Lou:\nOnly 15 percent of eligible voters turned out to cast a ballot in this year\u0026rsquo;s primary elections, according to an American University study. Never before have so few of us bothered to vote in primary elections. And it\u0026rsquo;s no wonder. Our middle class is beginning to get the joke.\nMost Americans understand that all the major decisions have already been made.\nHis point on outsourcing is apt: No matter which party is in power, outsourcing manufacturing will continue unabated. The next congress and definitely the next presidency will see the utter collapse of Ford or Chrysler (possibly both), destroying the heart of the middle class.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/lou-dobbs-gives-em-heck.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/31/Dobbs.Nov1/index.html\"\u003eThis\u003c/a\u003e doesn\u0026rsquo;t sound much like Lou:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOnly 15 percent of eligible voters turned out to cast a ballot in this year\u0026rsquo;s primary elections, according to an American University study. Never before have so few of us bothered to vote in primary elections. And it\u0026rsquo;s no wonder. Our middle class is beginning to get the joke.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost Americans understand that all the major decisions have already been made.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHis point on outsourcing is apt: No matter which party is in power, outsourcing manufacturing will continue unabated. The next congress and definitely the next presidency will see the utter collapse of Ford or Chrysler (possibly both), destroying the heart of the middle class.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lou Dobbs gives 'em heck..."},{"content":"Actually I think that started when it became cheap\u0026hellip; Whitney - Nov 3, 2006\nActually I think that started when it became cheaper to import steal from China than manufacture it domestically - and thus 98% of the steel industry was outsourced to China. America is so stupid in terms of self-sufficiency. And yes, btw, the whole PC global economy, era of the world is a load of crap.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/11/lou-dobbs-gives-em-heck...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"actually-i-think-that-started-when-it-became-cheap\"\u003eActually I think that started when it became cheap\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eNov 3, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eActually I think that started when it became cheaper to import steal from China than manufacture it domestically - and thus 98% of the steel industry was outsourced to China. America is so stupid in terms of self-sufficiency. And yes, btw, the whole PC global economy, era of the world is a load of crap.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lou Dobbs gives 'em heck... (Comments)"},{"content":"We spent 12 hours yesterday and ~2 hours today looking over cars, and we found-out several things:\n* Old Buicks. Wow\u0026hellip;no one can amortize production costs like General Motors. The Buick Century we looked at definitely felt like a quality buick from 1985, manufactured in 2002, right down to the front bench, column shifter, and coarse, powerless engine.\n* Mazda 626, a very surprising, well-handling machine, but too small for our needs, we think. Whitney had a ball driving it, but it felt like a \u0026rsquo;tween\u0026rsquo; car\u0026hellip;between a civic/corolla and a decent family sedan. Also, CR doesn\u0026rsquo;t like them too much\n* Salespeople are highly variable in the used-car trade, and we saw the full gamut, from \u0026ldquo;Big John\u0026rdquo; at Swope (lied to us about everything\u0026hellip;I barely believe \u0026lsquo;John\u0026rsquo; was his real name..) to Danielle, the waif who looked 12-years-old. It think Whitney and I freaked-out Danielle.\n* The Toyota Camry really is that good. It\u0026rsquo;s like, they took everything that makes sense about having an internal combustion conveyance for a family and put it into one car\u0026ndash;good ergonomics, features, driveability, frugality, and ruggedness. I drove one for 15 minutes this evening\u0026ndash;once around G\u0026rsquo;town, and LOVED it\u0026hellip;\nSo, at this point, we\u0026rsquo;re on the look out for a 4-cylinder camry, with under 100k miles. We have a strong contender in the one we drove tonight, but it\u0026rsquo;d need a seat-swap with one having an adjustable seat (either power or manual).\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/the-weekend-of-car-shopping.-.-.no-luck-yet./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe spent 12 hours yesterday and ~2 hours today looking over cars, and we found-out several things:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Old Buicks. Wow\u0026hellip;no one can amortize production costs like General Motors. The Buick Century we looked at definitely felt like a quality buick from 1985, manufactured in 2002, right down to the front bench, column shifter, and coarse, powerless engine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Mazda 626, a very surprising, well-handling machine, but too small for our needs, we think. Whitney had a ball driving it, but it felt like a \u0026rsquo;tween\u0026rsquo; car\u0026hellip;between a civic/corolla and a decent family sedan. Also, CR doesn\u0026rsquo;t like them too much\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The weekend of car shopping. . .no luck yet."},{"content":"Well, if you run out of rental coverage, you can b\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Oct 1, 2006\nWell, if you run out of rental coverage, you can borrow the Elantra for a couple of days. I don\u0026rsquo;t mind driving the truck (no A/C) in this nice, cool weather.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/the-weekend-of-car-shopping.-.-.no-luck-yet.-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"well-if-you-run-out-of-rental-coverage-you-can-b\"\u003eWell, if you run out of rental coverage, you can b\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if you run out of rental coverage, you can borrow the Elantra for a couple of days. I don\u0026rsquo;t mind driving the truck (no A/C) in this nice, cool weather.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"The weekend of car shopping. . .no luck yet. (Comments)"},{"content":"Link\nStill, I don’t really care. I want my ER doctor to understand anatomy, even if all she has to do is put the computerized defibrillator nodes on my chest and push the big red button, and I want programmers to know programming down to the CPU level, even if Ruby on Rails does read your mind and build a complete Web 2.0 social collaborative networking site for you with three clicks of the mouse.\nDang straight!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/interviewing...3.0/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, I don’t really care. I want my ER doctor to understand anatomy, even if all she has to do is put the computerized defibrillator nodes on my chest and push the big red button, and I want programmers to know programming down to the CPU level, even if Ruby on Rails does read your mind and build a complete Web 2.0 social collaborative networking site for you with three clicks of the mouse.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Interviewing...3.0"},{"content":"Good article, the site\u0026rsquo;s now in my at-work RSS fee\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Oct 5, 2006\nGood article, the site\u0026rsquo;s now in my at-work RSS feed list.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/interviewing...3.0-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"good-article-the-sites-now-in-my-at-work-rss-fee\"\u003eGood article, the site\u0026rsquo;s now in my at-work RSS fee\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGood article, the site\u0026rsquo;s now in my at-work RSS feed list.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Interviewing...3.0 (Comments)"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s not final yet, but our Intrigue is junkyard bound. Whitney got a call from the \u0026lsquo;State Farm Total Loss\u0026rsquo; department, which we assume implies it\u0026rsquo;s totaled.\nI went by this morning, and collected what few things I\u0026rsquo;d left last week\u0026ndash;garage door opener, some CDs, lotion, hair brads/clips/scrunchees. The poor car looked so sad\u0026hellip;one year, 25k relatively trouble-free miles, we\u0026rsquo;re moving on.\nLast night was narrowing the list\u0026hellip;our requirements:\n* Must be \u0026lt; 200\u0026quot; long (has to fit in our garage like Sharkey did).\n* Within our budget\n* Whitney must be able to drive it\n* 4 doors\n* Big enough to be a \u0026lsquo;family car\u0026rsquo;\u0026ndash;stroller, car seat, etc.\n* Safe\n* Reliable\n* Low operating costs\u0026ndash;regular gas, good mileage, cheap/easy to repair.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s what we have:\nBuick Century\nAnother Intrigue (01 or 02 model)\nMazda 626\nHonda Accord\nToyota Camry\nOnly downside to the Intrigue are the known mechanical/body issues\u0026ndash;steering rack, strut tower bearings, window regulators (dumbest design I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen\u0026hellip;!), and so-so mileage.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/the-end-of-sharkey/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s not final yet, but our Intrigue is junkyard bound. Whitney got a call from the \u0026lsquo;State Farm Total Loss\u0026rsquo; department, which we assume implies it\u0026rsquo;s totaled.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI went by this morning, and collected what few things I\u0026rsquo;d left last week\u0026ndash;garage door opener, some CDs, lotion, hair brads/clips/scrunchees. The poor car looked so sad\u0026hellip;one year, 25k relatively trouble-free miles, we\u0026rsquo;re moving on.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast night was narrowing the list\u0026hellip;our requirements:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Must be \u0026lt; 200\u0026quot; long (has to fit in our garage like Sharkey did).\u003cbr\u003e\n* Within our budget\u003cbr\u003e\n* Whitney must be able to drive it\u003cbr\u003e\n* 4 doors\u003cbr\u003e\n* Big enough to be a \u0026lsquo;family car\u0026rsquo;\u0026ndash;stroller, car seat, etc.\u003cbr\u003e\n* Safe\u003cbr\u003e\n* Reliable\u003cbr\u003e\n* Low operating costs\u0026ndash;regular gas, good mileage, cheap/easy to repair.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The end of 'Sharkey'"},{"content":"Erik suckered me into reading another of his slightly-off books: Gil\u0026rsquo;s All-Fright Diner\nPretty neat, little book, read over 2 hours in 2 days. The premise is essentially a folksy, redneck buddy tale, but these two buddys Duke and Earl (yeah, ask Erik says, \u0026ldquo;You gotta know something\u0026rsquo;s up when the two main characters are named Duke and Earl\u0026rdquo;), they happen to be a Werewolf and a Vampire. Redneck Werewolf and Vamipire\u0026hellip;\nSo, the story starts with their old pickup truck (naturally\u0026hellip;) running out of gas in front of Gil\u0026rsquo;s All Night Diner. Gil skipped town a few years ago, under mysterious circumstances, and the proprietress, Loretta, has two problems\u0026ndash;she needs to run a new gas line, and she keeps getting attacked by Zombies from yon graveyard.\nThe premise holds-up pretty well, and the book is full of quotable quotes\u0026hellip;overall, it was good to read ANYTHING. Distraction is good for one, it would seem\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/finished-a-weird-paperback.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eErik suckered me into reading another of his slightly-off books: \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Gils-Fright-Diner-Alex-Awards/dp/0765314711/\"\u003eGil\u0026rsquo;s All-Fright Diner\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0765314711.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePretty neat, little book, read over 2 hours in 2 days. The premise is essentially a folksy, redneck buddy tale, but these two buddys Duke and Earl (yeah, ask Erik says, \u0026ldquo;You gotta know something\u0026rsquo;s up when the two main characters are named Duke and Earl\u0026rdquo;), they happen to be a Werewolf and a Vampire. \u003cem\u003eRedneck\u003c/em\u003e Werewolf and Vamipire\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Finished a weird paperback..."},{"content":"Further on the I need a small digicam front:\nDriving home Monday, what should appear in my rear view mirror\u0026hellip;silver with two blue-ish stripes?\nYep. Ford GT, Tailed by a bellicose Fox-bodied mustang with an exhaust, this guy wasn\u0026rsquo;t having any of it. Right at the Northern I-64/I-75 split the GT driver put his foot down and it was like the Stang had thrown out an anchor. He was GONE, all this on a roll from about 85mph (at which point, the GT was probably only at the top of 2nd gear!)\n* * *\nAt the other end of the spectrum, I saw one of these:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a Smart ForTwo, the smallest car on sale in the world (I think\u0026hellip;) Tiny 1.0L engine, tucked underneath the floor. You \u0026lsquo;parallel park\u0026rsquo; one by nosing it perpendicular to the curb.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/arrrgh-and-me-without-a-camera.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFurther on the I need a small digicam front:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDriving home Monday, what should appear in my rear view mirror\u0026hellip;silver with two blue-ish stripes?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.thecarblog.com/images/2006-ford-gt.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep. Ford GT, Tailed by a bellicose Fox-bodied mustang with an exhaust, this guy wasn\u0026rsquo;t having any of it. Right at the Northern I-64/I-75 split the GT driver put his foot down and it was like the Stang had thrown out an anchor. He was GONE, all this on a roll from about 85mph (at which point, the GT was probably only at the top of 2nd gear!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ARRRGH!!!  And me without a camera..."},{"content":"Haven\u0026rsquo;t slept very well since the excitement last week, and it\u0026rsquo;s wearing on me\u0026hellip;my routine is off and I\u0026rsquo;m suddenly a very light sleeper. I still go to sleep easily, but I wake up very easily, too, and I\u0026rsquo;m having bad dreams.\nAnd boy, have I just been a joy to be around\u0026ndash;moody, sleepy, and quick tempered.\nEverything\u0026rsquo;s just in limbo at the moment\u0026ndash;all 3 projects I\u0026rsquo;m on, my car\u0026rsquo;s in the shop, Whitney\u0026rsquo;s car. Total state of suspended animation.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/blah.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHaven\u0026rsquo;t slept very well since the excitement last week, and it\u0026rsquo;s wearing on me\u0026hellip;my routine is off and I\u0026rsquo;m suddenly a very light sleeper. I still go to sleep easily, but I wake up very easily, too, and I\u0026rsquo;m having bad dreams.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd boy, have I just been a joy to be around\u0026ndash;moody, sleepy, and quick tempered.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEverything\u0026rsquo;s just in limbo at the moment\u0026ndash;all 3 projects I\u0026rsquo;m on, my car\u0026rsquo;s in the shop, Whitney\u0026rsquo;s car. Total state of suspended animation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Blah..."},{"content":"So, we picked Joey Actually-My-Name-is-Simon, and headed Team Combs over to McDonald\u0026rsquo;s in Shelbyville. While in McD\u0026rsquo;s, I noticed the fry assembly line: At one end, close to the drive-thru window is the holding area, where crisp, deep fried potatoes sit under a heat lamp in red McDonald\u0026rsquo;s packages awaiting customers.\nTo the right of that is the deep fryer, the heart of America\u0026rsquo;s burgeoning atherosclerotic crisis, where hyrdogenated vegetable oil at God-knows-how-hot fries the rather-uniform Taters as they sit in baskets. The fryer\u0026rsquo;s apparently run by a digital timer, set each time a basket lowers into the oil.\nAll pretty mundane, the height of Fast food efficiency\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;and then, we see that efficiency, amp\u0026rsquo;d-up to eleven\nTo the right of the fryer was a machine that had a hopper at the top, a diagonal line of the fryer baskets below the hopper, and a mysterious empty space below the line above, perpendicular to the top. To my horror, I saw a girl dump 5 bags of frozen fries into the hopper, and then the machine proceeded to make its purpose known\u0026hellip;\nIT LOADED THE FRIES INTO THE BASKETS.\nYep, McD\u0026rsquo;s built an entire machine to homogenize pouring frozen fries into wire baskets.\nWow.\nThis one of many times i\u0026rsquo;ve felt bad about getting rid of my camera-phone. Couldn\u0026rsquo;t believe this thing.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/disturbing-sign-of-the-apocalypse-%23437/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, we picked Joey Actually-My-Name-is-Simon, and headed Team Combs over to McDonald\u0026rsquo;s in Shelbyville. While in McD\u0026rsquo;s, I noticed the fry assembly line: At one end, close to the drive-thru window is the holding area, where crisp, deep fried potatoes sit under a heat lamp in red McDonald\u0026rsquo;s packages awaiting customers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo the right of that is the deep fryer, the heart of America\u0026rsquo;s burgeoning atherosclerotic crisis, where hyrdogenated vegetable oil at God-knows-how-hot fries the rather-uniform Taters as they sit in baskets. The fryer\u0026rsquo;s apparently run by a digital timer, set each time a basket lowers into the oil.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Disturbing sign of the apocalypse #437"},{"content":"Gotta love a good mechanic\u0026rsquo;s vise:\nInstalled my birthday present from Stu on the orkbench today\u0026hellip;felt like a crime drilling those 4 half-inch holes in that beautiful workbench, but it went pretty well.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s an awesome vise: Two positions, two work anvils, and it swivels through 360 degrees.\nOther random photos:\nTeam Combs will be riding in style, yo\nJoey, da ninja!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/wow-/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGotta love a good mechanic\u0026rsquo;s vise:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/109/275404334_89cedceff0.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInstalled my birthday present from Stu on the orkbench today\u0026hellip;felt like a crime drilling those 4 half-inch holes in that beautiful workbench, but it went pretty well.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/121/275404358_75e9ac690f.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s an awesome vise: Two positions, two work anvils, and it swivels through 360 degrees.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOther random photos:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeam Combs will be riding in style, yo\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/112/275404245_0fa3d94bb5.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoey, da ninja!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/79/275404216_1e2d6fff82.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wow :-)"},{"content":"Nice vise. What I can see of the bench looks great\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Oct 6, 2006\nNice vise. What I can see of the bench looks great, too. And the kid ain\u0026rsquo;t too shabby either :-)\nUnless it turns out to be one of those suddenly-it\u0026rsquo;s-70-degrees-on-Halloween sort of years, he\u0026rsquo;s gonna need some lil\u0026rsquo; ninja shoes!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/wow-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"nice-vise-what-i-can-see-of-the-bench-looks-great\"\u003eNice vise. What I can see of the bench looks great\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 6, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNice vise. What I can see of the bench looks great, too. And the kid ain\u0026rsquo;t too shabby either :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnless it turns out to be one of those suddenly-it\u0026rsquo;s-70-degrees-on-Halloween sort of years, he\u0026rsquo;s gonna need some lil\u0026rsquo; ninja shoes!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wow :-) (Comments)"},{"content":"Not much funny about this one.\nWhitney\u0026rsquo;s fine, the baby\u0026rsquo;s fine, and the car (at first blush) looks repairable. Joey\u0026rsquo;s up with his dad in Louisville, so he\u0026rsquo;s good too.\nWhitney was pulling across North Broadway in front of our church, from the Buzz Cafe to the church, and ran the right front of the car into the left side of a northbound Lexus GX470\nThey bumped at about a 45 degree angle.\n* * *\nState Farm had everything in hand, and Collision Care in Lexington has the car, so all seems to be okay\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/whitneys-accident/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNot much funny about this one.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney\u0026rsquo;s fine, the baby\u0026rsquo;s fine, and the car (at first blush) looks repairable. Joey\u0026rsquo;s up with his dad in Louisville, so he\u0026rsquo;s good too.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney was pulling across North Broadway in front of our church, from the Buzz Cafe to the church, and ran the right front of the car into the left side of a northbound Lexus GX470\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2004/04/16/189740.5-lg.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey bumped at about a 45 degree angle.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Whitney's accident"},{"content":"Went to warn Sandra but remembered she had her fen\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Oct 5, 2006\nWent to warn Sandra but remembered she had her fender bender already. So I guess things DO come in threes!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/whitneys-accident-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"went-to-warn-sandra-but-remembered-she-had-her-fen\"\u003eWent to warn Sandra but remembered she had her fen\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWent to warn Sandra but remembered she had her fender bender already. So I guess things DO come in threes!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Whitney's accident (Comments)"},{"content":"Fall is often the time I turn over a new leaf. Surmounting my annual September insanity, October and November are often times of rededication and renewal. Weird, I know, because for everything else in the Northern Hemisphere, these are times of dormancy and decay.\nSo, yesterday, I did it again: For personal reasons, and after much consideration, I gave-up unbounded use of the internet at home. My wife is my accountability partner, guardian of the (changed) passwords to all accounts on our computer. It\u0026rsquo;s a pretty drastic step, but the last 10 years of so of my life have left me with little other choice.\nSo, this morning, I was irritable and almost had the shakes\u0026ndash;I couldn\u0026rsquo;t check my gmail, news.google.com, or look at headlines. I don\u0026rsquo;t know how long \u0026lsquo;detox\u0026rsquo; will last, but I hope it inspires other, positive things in my life.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/new-leaves-in-the-fall/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFall is often the time I turn over a new leaf. Surmounting my annual September insanity, October and November are often times of rededication and renewal. Weird, I know, because for everything else in the Northern Hemisphere, these are times of dormancy and decay.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, yesterday, I did it again: For personal reasons, and after much consideration, I gave-up unbounded use of the internet at home. My wife is my accountability partner, guardian of the (changed) passwords to all accounts on our computer. It\u0026rsquo;s a pretty drastic step, but the last 10 years of so of my life have left me with little other choice.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New leaves in the fall"},{"content":"I like the password idea - Katie\u0026rsquo;s been having tro\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Oct 4, 2006\nI like the password idea - Katie\u0026rsquo;s been having trouble getting homework done with the internet within reach and we\u0026rsquo;re about at that point.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/new-leaves-in-the-fall-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-like-the-password-idea---katies-been-having-tro\"\u003eI like the password idea - Katie\u0026rsquo;s been having tro\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 4, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI like the password idea - Katie\u0026rsquo;s been having trouble getting homework done with the internet within reach and we\u0026rsquo;re about at that point.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"New leaves in the fall (Comments)"},{"content":"This guy came and spoke at Georgetown College when I was taking religion classes there.\nSad, sad story, if it\u0026rsquo;s true.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/sad-weak-people/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/15785011.htm\"\u003eThis guy\u003c/a\u003e came and spoke at Georgetown College when I was taking religion classes there.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSad, sad story, if it\u0026rsquo;s true.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sad,  weak people"},{"content":"How does a former gambling-addicted-embezzler beco\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Oct 3, 2006\nHow does a former gambling-addicted-embezzler become a pastor in the first place? One of the key requirements is \u0026ldquo;not greedy of filthy lucre\u0026rdquo;. I understand the forgiveness angle, but certain actions should disqualify you for certain roles.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/sad-weak-people-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"how-does-a-former-gambling-addicted-embezzler-beco\"\u003eHow does a former gambling-addicted-embezzler beco\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 3, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow does a former gambling-addicted-embezzler become a pastor in the first place? One of the key requirements is \u0026ldquo;not greedy of filthy lucre\u0026rdquo;. I understand the forgiveness angle, but certain actions should disqualify you for certain roles.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Sad,  weak people (Comments)"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/eye-candy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/06/sci_nat_enl_1161076580/img/1.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Eye candy"},{"content":"? Whitney - Oct 2, 2006\n?\nThis is a radio-telescope image of the gas/plasma emmisions of a supermassive blackhole.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/eye-candy-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"heading\"\u003e?\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 2, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a radio-telescope image of the gas/plasma emmisions of a supermassive blackhole.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Eye candy (Comments)"},{"content":":-) Making things is fun.\nMy father-in-law, Stu, is a former shop teacher. He likes making things, and probably likes teaching others how to make things even more. He\u0026rsquo;s made me a fabulous workbench, and decided it was high time I learned about power tools.\nNow, I\u0026rsquo;ve spent years watching Norm Abrams\u0026rsquo;s New Yankee Workhop, marveling at the things Norm can do with his keen eye, instincts, and\u0026hellip;uh\u0026hellip;$100k of power tools.\nSo, Stu had a project for us: Build some peg-boards to mount tools on. Sounds simple enough, but for a guy who\u0026rsquo;s never used a table saw, it was pretty neat!\nFirst, we ripped 4 pine two-by-fours on the table saw to make eight 1.5\u0026quot; pieces, then we ran the milled edges across a joiner to even-up the edges. If you\u0026rsquo;ve never seen a joiner, imagine a steel \u0026lsquo;L\u0026rsquo;, only the L is 3D and about 2.5 feet long with a steel blade in the middle at the bottom of the L. The whole works reminded me of an angry beaver, trying to rip off my fingers as we used it :-)\nBut hey, that\u0026rsquo;s half the fun.\nthen lowered the blade to cut a 1/2 groove in each to hold the peg-board. We then used the radial arm to cut each piece to length\nAside: Proper use \u0026amp; employment of a radial arm:\nPlace your right hand firmly on the handle controlling the blade assembly\nWith your left hand unlock the blade assembly\nWith your left hand, turn on the saw.\nBrace the wood with your left hand firmly against the fence, AWAY FROM THE BLADE\nWith your right hand, guide the blade assembly out the arm and through the piece and back, completing the cut.\nTurn it off with your left hand\nLock it back in place with your left hand\nONLY then, remove your right hand.\nTip: DON\u0026rsquo;T TAKE YOUR RIGHT HAND OFF THE BLADE ASSEMBLY. Stu, in his quiet, instructive way, drilled that in my head. :-)\nRadial arm:\n* * *\nThen we learned how to make a lap joint. I was a bit ahead of the game here, having used a carpenter\u0026rsquo;s square + pencil before. Gotta get one of those myself soon. Had a few \u0026rsquo;light bulb\u0026rsquo; moments there. :-)\nSo, after everything was joined, screwed, and glued, I thought it was downhill from there. Then Stu mentioned we\u0026rsquo;d be trying out his new belt sander. Here\u0026rsquo;s one exactly like what he has\u0026ndash;3\u0026quot;x21\u0026quot;:\nThings I learned about belt sanders:\n1. They\u0026rsquo;re evil\n2. They\u0026rsquo;re hard to use\n3. Don\u0026rsquo;t ever just sit one on a worksurface with 80 GRIT SANDPAPER :-(\n4. They work much better when you put them on the work, then turn them on, so you don\u0026rsquo;t rock back-and-forth.\nI got much better with it as I progressed through the piece, but there is a nice dip on one corner.\n* * *\nOverall, how AWESOME it was\u0026hellip;reminded me very much of building things with dad, though we mostly did rough construction around the farm.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/the-new-cardinal-workshop/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e:-) Making things is fun.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy father-in-law, Stu, is a former shop teacher. He likes making things, and probably likes teaching others how to make things even more. He\u0026rsquo;s made me a fabulous workbench, and decided it was high time I learned about power tools.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow, I\u0026rsquo;ve spent years watching Norm Abrams\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyankee.com/index.shtml\"\u003eNew Yankee Workhop\u003c/a\u003e, marveling at the things Norm can do with his keen eye, instincts, and\u0026hellip;uh\u0026hellip;$100k of power tools.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The New Cardinal workshop"},{"content":"Cool - you should post a \u0026ldquo;measured drawring\u0026rdquo; :-) \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Oct 1, 2006\nCool - you should post a \u0026ldquo;measured drawring\u0026rdquo; :-) Makes me want to get out in the shop and make some sawdust!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/the-new-cardinal-workshop-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"cool---you-should-post-a-measured-drawring---\"\u003eCool - you should post a \u0026ldquo;measured drawring\u0026rdquo; :-) \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCool - you should post a \u0026ldquo;measured drawring\u0026rdquo; :-) Makes me want to get out in the shop and make some sawdust!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"The New Cardinal workshop (Comments)"},{"content":"Let\u0026rsquo;s see\u0026hellip;\nword-processor: Check.\nspreadsheet: Check.\nGoogle\u0026rsquo;s edging closer to having an Online office suite\nNeat, go-anywhere technology.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/cool/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s see\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eword-processor: Check.\u003cbr\u003e\nspreadsheet: Check.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGoogle\u0026rsquo;s edging closer to having an \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/google-d-s/whatsnew.html\"\u003eOnline office suite\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNeat, go-anywhere technology.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cool!!!"},{"content":"Me: Man, I wish they\u0026rsquo;d create invisible fence for PEOPLE to keep them out of your dang yard!\nE: They have.\nMe: Really?\nE: It\u0026rsquo;s just so hard getting people to wear the collars!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/dialog/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMe: Man, I wish they\u0026rsquo;d create invisible fence for PEOPLE to keep them out of your dang yard!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eE: They have.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: Really?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eE: It\u0026rsquo;s just so hard getting people to wear the collars!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dialog"},{"content":"I am so glad you didn\u0026rsquo;t say \u0026ldquo;office\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;y\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Oct 2, 2006\nI am so glad you didn\u0026rsquo;t say \u0026ldquo;office\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;yard\u0026rdquo; :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/dialog-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-am-so-glad-you-didnt-say-office-instead-of-y\"\u003eI am so glad you didn\u0026rsquo;t say \u0026ldquo;office\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;y\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 2, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am so glad you didn\u0026rsquo;t say \u0026ldquo;office\u0026rdquo; instead of \u0026ldquo;yard\u0026rdquo; :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Dialog (Comments)"},{"content":"Yep. It\u0026rsquo;s Columbus Day\nCelebrate the greatest conquest \u0026amp; associated genocide in recorded history? No thanks.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/happy-unnecessary-decried-holiday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYep. It\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day\"\u003eColumbus Day\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCelebrate the greatest conquest \u0026amp; associated genocide in recorded history? No thanks.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Happy unnecessary, decried holiday!"},{"content":"Apparently this holiday is for the overtaxed gover\u0026hellip; Whitney - Oct 1, 2006\nApparently this holiday is for the overtaxed government workers\u0026hellip;not for actually celebrating. I was told tonight that a certain Goble gets at least three government holidays per month. Egads.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/happy-unnecessary-decried-holiday-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"apparently-this-holiday-is-for-the-overtaxed-gover\"\u003eApparently this holiday is for the overtaxed gover\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eApparently this holiday is for the overtaxed government workers\u0026hellip;not for actually celebrating. I was told tonight that a certain Goble gets at least three government holidays per month. Egads.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Happy unnecessary, decried holiday! (Comments)"},{"content":"This was a waste of time: A premise that can\u0026rsquo;t sustain a feature-film, combined with Jim Carrey\u0026rsquo;s hammy performance had Whitney and I surfing the web during the DVD.\nLone bright spot: David Duchovny is one VERY lucky man. Tea Leoni, as in \u0026ldquo;Spanglish,\u0026rdquo; was a lift to every scene she was in.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/fun-with-dick-and-jane/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis was a waste of time: A premise that can\u0026rsquo;t sustain a feature-film, combined with Jim Carrey\u0026rsquo;s hammy performance had Whitney and I surfing the web during the DVD.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLone bright spot: David Duchovny is one VERY lucky man. Tea Leoni, as in \u0026ldquo;Spanglish,\u0026rdquo; was a lift to every scene she was in.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://leonionline.com/gallery/data/media/154/trust-prem17.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Fun with Dick and Jane\""},{"content":"So I get an email from Wal-Mart with \u0026ldquo;This weeks deals\u0026rdquo; or whatever.\nInside was a little pink doll.\nand I\u0026rsquo;m like, \u0026ldquo;AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! Maria would love that!\u0026rdquo;\nYikes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/im-gonna-be-one-of-those-dads..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo I get an email from Wal-Mart with \u0026ldquo;This weeks deals\u0026rdquo; or whatever.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInside was a little pink doll.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eand I\u0026rsquo;m like, \u0026ldquo;AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! Maria would love that!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYikes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I'm gonna be one of THOSE dads...."},{"content":"ugh. Whitney - Oct 3, 2006\nugh.\nThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.\nNah, it\u0026rsquo;s a good thing. Much better than my neighbor who thinks his mission in life is to train his sons like attack dogs. \u0026ldquo;What are you cryin\u0026rsquo; about? I don\u0026rsquo;t see no blood!\u0026rdquo;\nWith a daughter there\u0026rsquo;s no constant fear that something you do might turn her into a sissy. So you can lavish all the love and affection on her you want and it\u0026rsquo;s OK.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s too bad my parents never had a girl. My dad\u0026rsquo;s SOOO different around Katie.\n\u0026hellip;of course you can ALSO turn your daughter into a Star Wars geek, turn her onto all the Hornblower books, teach her to use the power tools, etc. It\u0026rsquo;s all good!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/im-gonna-be-one-of-those-dads....-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"ugh\"\u003eugh.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 3, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eugh.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNah, it\u0026rsquo;s a good thing. Much better than my neighbor who thinks his mission in life is to train his sons like attack dogs. \u0026ldquo;What are you cryin\u0026rsquo; about? I don\u0026rsquo;t see no blood!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith a daughter there\u0026rsquo;s no constant fear that something you do might turn her into a sissy. So you can lavish all the love and affection on her you want and it\u0026rsquo;s OK.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I'm gonna be one of THOSE dads.... (Comments)"},{"content":"Got to be really good friends with vimdiff today as I tried to kick-start the build for our \u0026ldquo;End of Lifed, never need anything else but a plugin\u0026rdquo; product.\nYeah, well. We need it again, and she\u0026rsquo;s not so happy to build this time. We played with the build significantly for the last product, pseudo-integrating Ant, while leaving around lots of makefiles, an arcane language of rules, predicates and suffixes\n\u0026hellip;and, it\u0026rsquo;s still not working. I\u0026rsquo;m most of the way there, but its bailing-wire-and-twine at best.\nMoment of clarity of the day: The Byzantine build scripts (the PERL scripts that wrap our hellacious make/ant/maven/thingamagigger files) started to make tremendous sense. Trad is the man. Trust in the Trad. Trad is good. Love is war. Peace is\u0026hellip;\nokay, I\u0026rsquo;m going home.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/build.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGot to be really good friends with vimdiff today as I tried to kick-start the build for our \u0026ldquo;End of Lifed, never need anything else but a plugin\u0026rdquo; product.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, well. We need it again, and she\u0026rsquo;s not so happy to build this time. We played with the build significantly for the last product, pseudo-integrating \u003ca href=\"http://ant.apache.org/\"\u003eAnt\u003c/a\u003e, while leaving around lots of makefiles, an arcane language of rules, predicates and suffixes\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0937175900.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Build..."},{"content":"So, I had a dream last night that I was having an operation on my bad knee, but I was under local anesthesia (or else, I just couldn\u0026rsquo;t feel the pain\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s a DREAM!).\nSo, the docs get in there and I have not one but TWO ligaments on the right side of my knee. One\u0026rsquo;s cut and the other is so badly cut the doctors cut it and repair it, rather like a Symphysiotomy (in my head thanks to Whitney\u0026rsquo;s midwife\u0026hellip;ugh!)\nSo, anyway, the docs repair the ligaments with what looks like a cross between bubble-gum and ear wax.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/freaky-dreams/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I had a dream last night that I was having an operation on my bad knee, but I was under local anesthesia (or else, I just couldn\u0026rsquo;t feel the pain\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s a DREAM!).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, the docs get in there and I have not one but TWO ligaments on the right side of my knee. One\u0026rsquo;s cut and the other is so badly cut the doctors cut it and repair it, rather like a \u003ca href=\"http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1382.htm\"\u003eSymphysiotomy\u003c/a\u003e (in my head thanks to Whitney\u0026rsquo;s midwife\u0026hellip;ugh!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"freaky dreams"},{"content":"By any chance was MacGyver the surgeon? I know se\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Oct 2, 2006\nBy any chance was MacGyver the surgeon?\nI know several people who injured their hands and had to have the surgery with just a local, so that the doctor could ask them to move individual fingers to make sure they were hooking everything up right.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/freaky-dreams-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"by-any-chance-was-macgyver-the-surgeon-i-know-se\"\u003eBy any chance was MacGyver the surgeon? I know se\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 2, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy any chance was MacGyver the surgeon?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI know several people who injured their hands and had to have the surgery with just a local, so that the doctor could ask them to move individual fingers to make sure they were hooking everything up right.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"freaky dreams (Comments)"},{"content":"\nTold ya\u0026hellip;look at that cute nose!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/as-promised...ultrasound/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/93/258510904_3a92d33596.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTold ya\u0026hellip;look at that cute nose!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"As promised...ultrasound!"},{"content":"I am so happy for you guys. A little girl. Hope ev\u0026hellip; Susan - Oct 1, 2006\nI am so happy for you guys. A little girl. Hope everything is going well. Cute pic!!!!\nOMG\u0026ndash;just found out! Congratulations. I am so happy for you guys. I hope she isn\u0026rsquo;t half the handfull that mine is! I have been so busy that I haven\u0026rsquo;t slept in about a year! It is still worth every minute!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/10/as-promised...ultrasound-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-am-so-happy-for-you-guys-a-little-girl-hope-ev\"\u003eI am so happy for you guys. A little girl. Hope ev\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/13445065166929979522\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eSusan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eOct 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am so happy for you guys. A little girl. Hope everything is going well. Cute pic!!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOMG\u0026ndash;just found out! Congratulations. I am so happy for you guys. I hope she isn\u0026rsquo;t half the handfull that mine is! I have been so busy that I haven\u0026rsquo;t slept in about a year! It is still worth every minute!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"As promised...ultrasound! (Comments)"},{"content":" These walls are kind of funny. First you hate \u0026rsquo;em, then you get used to \u0026rsquo;em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That\u0026rsquo;s institutionalized. They send you here for life, that\u0026rsquo;s exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyways.\n:-) Yeah, yeah\u0026hellip;dramatic. Erik and I discussed why people stay here\u0026hellip;We\u0026rsquo;re a mediocre company (\u0026ldquo;Our goal is to be the clear #2\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;), and our specific group is a study in \u0026ldquo;too many generals, not enough troops\u0026rdquo;.\nSo, why do people stay, not just in tech, but in any industry or line of work?\n* I joked, \u0026ldquo;Well, I\u0026rsquo;ll soon have two reasons that need food, clothing, college funds, and orthodontics\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; Lot of truth there, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think that\u0026rsquo;s the whole story.\n* It is harder when you\u0026rsquo;re the only breadwinner. People with dual incomes have a lot more \u0026ldquo;F You!\u0026rdquo; power than people who need to make mortgage and put food on the table.\n* Speaking of mortgage\u0026hellip;This is a house-owning area. Unlike the coasts, housing is reasonable enough for someone out-of-college to get a 30-year-fixed mortgage. Thing is\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s a 30-year-fixed mortgage. When you own a house, you\u0026rsquo;ve (by definition) put down roots in a place.\n* The Shawshank Syndrome (see quote, above). After long enough just about anywhere, you\u0026rsquo;re institutionalized. You\u0026rsquo;ve altered yourself around the job slightly\u0026ndash;schedules, patterns of thinking, idioms, dress. Moving from that is, well, hard. You stop being an entrepreneur and become a civil service worker\u0026ndash;stability and continuity are more important than anything else.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/on-why-people-stay-at-bad-jobs/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese walls are kind of funny. First you hate \u0026rsquo;em, then you get used to \u0026rsquo;em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That\u0026rsquo;s institutionalized. They send you here for life, that\u0026rsquo;s exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyways.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) Yeah, yeah\u0026hellip;dramatic. Erik and I discussed why people stay here\u0026hellip;We\u0026rsquo;re a mediocre company (\u0026ldquo;Our goal is to be the clear #2\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;), and our specific group is a study in \u0026ldquo;too many generals, not enough troops\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On why people stay at bad jobs"},{"content":"And unless you\u0026rsquo;re in the group of 5-10 people who \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Sep 5, 2006\nAnd unless you\u0026rsquo;re in the group of 5-10 people who anyone actually listens to, you start finding fulfillment outside of work, so you\u0026rsquo;re happy to settle into a routine that allows you to pay the bills and pursue those other interests. It becomes a J.O.B.\n:) very, very good point.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/on-why-people-stay-at-bad-jobs-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"and-unless-youre-in-the-group-of-5-10-people-who-\"\u003eAnd unless you\u0026rsquo;re in the group of 5-10 people who \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd unless you\u0026rsquo;re in the group of 5-10 people who anyone actually listens to, you start finding fulfillment outside of work, so you\u0026rsquo;re happy to settle into a routine that allows you to pay the bills and pursue those other interests. It becomes a J.O.B.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On why people stay at bad jobs (Comments)"},{"content":"About 18 weeks from now (\u0026hellip;ish), I\u0026rsquo;ll be the proud father of a baby girl. Found-out yesterday.\nI\u0026rsquo;m still sort of in shock; I was honestly steeling myself for the prospect of having a boy. . .the demands of being a father, of moulding a young man, Boy Scouts, etc. Joey\u0026rsquo;s a joy, and I was looking forard to having another.\nStill, Maria shows every sign of being a vigorous Combs gal, hopefully in line of her cousins\u0026ndash;brunette, brilliant eyes (hope she gets her Mom\u0026rsquo;s eyes!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/its-a-girl/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAbout 18 weeks from now (\u0026hellip;ish), I\u0026rsquo;ll be the proud father of a baby girl. Found-out yesterday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m still sort of in shock; I was honestly steeling myself for the prospect of having a boy. . .the demands of being a father, of moulding a young man, Boy Scouts, etc. Joey\u0026rsquo;s a joy, and I was looking forard to having another.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, Maria shows every sign of being a vigorous Combs gal, hopefully in line of her cousins\u0026ndash;brunette, brilliant eyes (hope she gets her Mom\u0026rsquo;s eyes!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"It's a girl!!"},{"content":"I still wish I were a man. Yes, this \u0026ldquo;vigorous C\u0026hellip; Whitney - Sep 6, 2006\nI still wish I were a man. Yes, this \u0026ldquo;vigorous Combs gal\u0026rdquo; hasn\u0026rsquo;t stopped KICKING MOMMY IN THE BLADDER for a freakin weak, thank you very much. And in other news, stock in Kimberly-Clark went up recently as pregnant women everywhere empty grocery shelves of Depends.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/its-a-girl-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-still-wish-i-were-a-man-yes-this-vigorous-c\"\u003eI still wish I were a man. Yes, this \u0026ldquo;vigorous C\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/08121628145613532693\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 6, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI still wish I were a man. Yes, this \u0026ldquo;vigorous Combs gal\u0026rdquo; hasn\u0026rsquo;t stopped KICKING MOMMY IN THE BLADDER for a freakin weak, thank you very much. And in other news, stock in Kimberly-Clark went up recently as pregnant women everywhere empty grocery shelves of Depends.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"It's a girl!! (Comments)"},{"content":"When is someone (a-hem) going to actualy do the ma\u0026hellip; Whitney - Sep 1, 2006\nWhen is someone (a-hem) going to actualy do the math problem and see if it works?!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/oh-my...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"when-is-someone-a-hem-going-to-actualy-do-the-ma\"\u003eWhen is someone (a-hem) going to actualy do the ma\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/11862853724624621414\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen is someone (a-hem) going to actualy do the math problem and see if it works?!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Oh my...:-) (Comments)"},{"content":"So, amid the monsoon we\u0026rsquo;ve had today, one block over from the (possibly cancelled) Festival of the Horse, Georgetown College hosted a Quick-Recall tournament.\nIt was a fun day; I moderated in my old computer science room (131 in Asher Science Center) for 6 rounds. Top question of the day was:\nQ: Doug Stanhope and Snoop Dogg are among the celebrity guest hosts of this video series, whose various titles include America Uncovered, Endless Spring Break, and Sexy Sorority Sweethearts. Name this video series that exchanges tshirts for flashes from young women.\nA: GIRLS GONE WILD\nYikes.\nGeorgetown hasn\u0026rsquo;t changed a bit since my graduation in 01, it seems.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/kcqrl-tourney-@-georgetown-college/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, amid the monsoon we\u0026rsquo;ve had today, one block over from the (possibly cancelled) \u003ca href=\"http://www.festivalofthehorse.info/\"\u003eFestival of the Horse\u003c/a\u003e, Georgetown College hosted a Quick-Recall tournament.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a fun day; I moderated in my old computer science room (131 in Asher Science Center) for 6 rounds. Top question of the day was:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQ: Doug Stanhope and Snoop Dogg are among the celebrity guest hosts of this video series, whose various titles include America Uncovered, Endless Spring Break, and Sexy Sorority Sweethearts. Name this video series that exchanges tshirts for flashes from young women.\u003cbr\u003e\nA: GIRLS GONE WILD\u003c/p\u003e","title":"KCQRL tourney @ Georgetown College"},{"content":" Today\u0026rsquo;s UV index forcast is\u0026hellip;one. One is in the low category.\nYa think? Actually, I\u0026rsquo;d say outside is somewhere between Transylvania and English Moors.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/from-the-weatherband-this-morning/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s UV index forcast is\u0026hellip;one. One is in the low category.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYa think? Actually, I\u0026rsquo;d say outside is somewhere between Transylvania and English Moors.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"From the weatherband this morning"},{"content":"\nThis book bothers me, but it\u0026rsquo;s not book\u0026rsquo;s fault. Yes, like most self-help books, it\u0026rsquo;s overwritten and it restates the obvious \u0026ndash; you have to learn to say \u0026lsquo;No\u0026rsquo;, even if you\u0026rsquo;re a Christian. This is similar to other self-help genres: You must live within your means to stay solvent, and eat less while exercising to lose weight.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not like these things are rocket science.\nThing is, I have boundary issues, but for a weird reason: I\u0026rsquo;m very, very selfish. For most of my life until I became a Christian, if something benefitted me or made my life easier, even if it was WRONG, I could rationalize it. This lead to me being a friendless, fat, whiny, sociopathic, self-righteous sot. Envision Comic book guy, and you\u0026rsquo;d have me, circa 14 years old:\nSo, as I grew up and found God, I went back the other way: Wanted to please everyone, serve everyone\u0026ndash;do pennance for how much I\u0026rsquo;d taken from people emotionally my whole life.\nAnyway, so this book\u0026hellip;.Not so much the book, the CLASS surrounding the book. It\u0026rsquo;s your standard \u0026ldquo;watch a short video, then have a discussion\u0026rdquo; class. Here\u0026rsquo;s where things go wrong. The authors of the book are presenters in the video series, and they ick-me-out, and they\u0026rsquo;re repeating what they said in the book, almost verbatim.\nAnyway, I don\u0026rsquo;t like the facilitators, either. There, I said it, and I\u0026rsquo;m ashamed to say it. There are just times they peg my BS meter, and for the life of me, I don\u0026rsquo;t know why. I\u0026rsquo;ve been praying about that, and I really don\u0026rsquo;t have an answer\u0026hellip;\nMight just boil-down to personality, preference, etc. Dunno\u0026hellip;\n* * *\nBut anyway, \u0026ldquo;Boundaries\u0026rdquo; is a valueable book if you\u0026rsquo;ve forgotten how to say \u0026lsquo;No\u0026rsquo;, or you believe that a Christian can never say \u0026lsquo;No\u0026rsquo;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/on-boundaries/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Boundaries-Dr-Henry-Cloud/dp/0310247454/\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0310247454.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_V64255931_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis book bothers me, but it\u0026rsquo;s not book\u0026rsquo;s fault. Yes, like most self-help books, it\u0026rsquo;s overwritten and it restates the obvious \u0026ndash; you have to learn to say \u0026lsquo;No\u0026rsquo;, even if you\u0026rsquo;re a Christian. This is similar to other self-help genres: You must live within your means to stay solvent, and eat less while exercising to lose weight.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s not like these things are rocket science.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThing is, I have boundary issues, but for a weird reason: I\u0026rsquo;m very, very selfish. For most of my life until I became a Christian, if something benefitted me or made my life easier, even if it was WRONG, I could rationalize it. This lead to me being a friendless, fat, whiny, sociopathic, self-righteous sot. Envision Comic book guy, and you\u0026rsquo;d have me, circa 14 years old:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"Boundaries\""},{"content":"Sounds interesting and I\u0026rsquo;ve definitely had to conf\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Sep 4, 2006\nSounds interesting and I\u0026rsquo;ve definitely had to confront that. I went through a long period of doing things that \u0026ldquo;had to be done\u0026rdquo; at church but had been dropped by people who left. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t even saying \u0026ldquo;no\u0026rdquo; to myself :-) I let them drop, one by one, and I\u0026rsquo;ll be danged if the world ain\u0026rsquo;t still turnin'!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/on-boundaries-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"sounds-interesting-and-ive-definitely-had-to-conf\"\u003eSounds interesting and I\u0026rsquo;ve definitely had to conf\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 4, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSounds interesting and I\u0026rsquo;ve definitely had to confront that. I went through a long period of doing things that \u0026ldquo;had to be done\u0026rdquo; at church but had been dropped by people who left. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t even saying \u0026ldquo;no\u0026rdquo; to myself :-) I let them drop, one by one, and I\u0026rsquo;ll be danged if the world ain\u0026rsquo;t still turnin'!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"Boundaries\" (Comments)"},{"content":"Funny stuff! I say all sorts of nutty stuff in my\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Sep 3, 2006\nFunny stuff! I say all sorts of nutty stuff in my sleep. My brothers, who shared a room, used to argue in their sleep.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/sings-sleeptalker...im-a-sleeptalker...sings-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"funny-stuff-i-say-all-sorts-of-nutty-stuff-in-my\"\u003eFunny stuff! I say all sorts of nutty stuff in my\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 3, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFunny stuff! I say all sorts of nutty stuff in my sleep. My brothers, who shared a room, used to argue in their sleep.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"[sings] Sleeptalker...I'm a sleeptalker...[sings] (Comments)"},{"content":"Hey, if Barbara Bush\u0026rsquo;s dog can have a book, I think I could collect enough Joey quotes to fill a paperback, at least.\nJoey: You guys don\u0026rsquo;t have to buy me anything for Christmas\u0026hellip;\nMe (to self): Awww\u0026hellip;.\nJoey: \u0026hellip;As long as you buy me EVERYTHING.\n* * *\nAll quotes copyright JoeyCo, Inc. All rights reserved.\n:-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/more-joey-quotes.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHey, if Barbara Bush\u0026rsquo;s dog can have a book, I think I could collect enough Joey quotes to fill a paperback, at least.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoey: You guys don\u0026rsquo;t have to buy me anything for Christmas\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe (to self): Awww\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoey: \u0026hellip;As long as you buy me EVERYTHING.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll quotes copyright JoeyCo, Inc. All rights reserved.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More Joey quotes..."},{"content":"2007 Mazdaspeed3 - The Car Connection: \u0026ldquo;They could ship it over here available only in taupe paint and genuine rust and it would still be one of the most exhilarating cars Mazda has ever sold in the United States . In the history of sport compacts, this car is an immediate icon.\u0026rdquo;\nLooks like the Mini Cooper \u0026lsquo;S\u0026rsquo; finally has some competition, though it\u0026rsquo;s sorta like the Corvette -v- Porsche comparison: Interesting on paper, but few people will cross-shop both brands.\nI sure would, though. :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/2007-mazdaspeed3/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.thecarconnection.com/index.asp?DID=RSS\u0026amp;n=184\u0026amp;sid=184\u0026amp;article=10865\"\u003e2007 Mazdaspeed3 - The Car Connection\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;They could ship it over here available only in taupe paint and genuine rust and it would still be one of the most exhilarating cars Mazda has ever sold in the United States . In the history of sport compacts, this car is an immediate icon.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLooks like the Mini Cooper \u0026lsquo;S\u0026rsquo; finally has some competition, though it\u0026rsquo;s sorta like the Corvette -v- Porsche comparison: Interesting on paper, but few people will cross-shop both brands.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2007 Mazdaspeed3"},{"content":"Not to fuel the lust or anything but (depending on\u0026hellip; Whitney - Sep 1, 2006\nNot to fuel the lust or anything but (depending on the interior size) I could def see me driving that\u0026hellip;.does it come in a 5 body instead of the 3?\nNope\u0026hellip;Mazda3 only. The Mazda5 is based off the same platform, but makes-do with the 2.3 Naturally-aspirated motor.\nThis is the same engine that Mazda puts in the Mazdaspeed 6 and the atrocious CX-7 (or whatever the no-selling waste of sheetmetal is called)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/2007-mazdaspeed3-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"not-to-fuel-the-lust-or-anything-but-depending-on\"\u003eNot to fuel the lust or anything but (depending on\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/11862853724624621414\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot to fuel the lust or anything but (depending on the interior size) I could def see me driving that\u0026hellip;.does it come in a 5 body instead of the 3?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNope\u0026hellip;Mazda3 only. The Mazda5 is based off the same platform, but makes-do with the 2.3 Naturally-aspirated motor.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2007 Mazdaspeed3 (Comments)"},{"content":" Friday, I had S\u0026amp;S rebalance all the tires on the BMW, hopefully ending that particular lesson in trying to save a coupla bucks.\nI overseeded the lawn Friday, cutting the lawn down to stubble, seeding, rolling (thanks Jeff!) and watering. My water bill this month should be interesting :-)\nSaturday, Whitney and I slept-in late and went to the Spoonbread festival in Berea. Whitney was very impressed with the town. I was not very impressed with the spoonbread.\nThe weather\u0026rsquo;s been unreal for the past few days\u0026ndash;no humidity, highs in the 70\u0026rsquo;s-80\u0026rsquo;s. Hope to get a little rain on my lawn the the next few days.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/weekend-ruminations.../","summary":"\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFriday, I had S\u0026amp;S rebalance all the tires on the BMW, hopefully ending that particular lesson in trying to save a coupla bucks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI overseeded the lawn Friday, cutting the lawn down to stubble, seeding, rolling (thanks Jeff!) and watering. My water bill this month should be interesting :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaturday, Whitney and I slept-in late and went to the Spoonbread festival in Berea. Whitney was very impressed with the town. I was not very impressed with the spoonbread.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weekend ruminations..."},{"content":"\nSo, Whitney ordered this bizarre (yet very comfy) pillow last month. Just thought I\u0026rsquo;d post-up a pic to show the scale of the thing.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/body-pillow-airbag-harold-defense-mechanism/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/82/246006526_28058b52cf.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, Whitney ordered this bizarre (yet very comfy) pillow last month. Just thought I\u0026rsquo;d post-up a pic to show the scale of the thing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Body pillow, airbag, Harold-defense mechanism"},{"content":"Joey got to be the star (or super-star, or all-star, or something), so Whitney and I helped him create this neat poster. (Okay\u0026hellip;I helped joey paste-up everything onto the poster-board\u0026hellip;)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/news...joey-was-star-of-the-week-in-his-class/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJoey got to be the star (or super-star, or all-star, or something), so Whitney and I helped him create this neat poster. (Okay\u0026hellip;I helped joey paste-up everything onto the poster-board\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/90/246006539_37d3349d1e.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"News...Joey was 'star of the week' in his class!"},{"content":"Today, I surprised Bella with flowers and a card, and we ate the topper from our wedding cake last year. Hard to believe a full year has gone by, but it sure has \u0026ndash; we\u0026rsquo;re established in our new church, Joey\u0026rsquo;s in school, and we have another baby on the way :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/happy-anniversary/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday, I surprised Bella with flowers and a card, and we ate the topper from our wedding cake last year. Hard to believe a full year has gone by, but it sure has \u0026ndash; we\u0026rsquo;re established in our new church, Joey\u0026rsquo;s in school, and we have another baby on the way :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/92/246006555_d5016f546f.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Happy Anniversary!"},{"content":"Many happy returns! I\u0026rsquo;m diggin\u0026rsquo; the photography -\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Sep 1, 2006\nMany happy returns! I\u0026rsquo;m diggin\u0026rsquo; the photography - did someone get a new camera?\nNah, that\u0026rsquo;s the same Fuji 4MP I got\u0026hellip; HarryC - Sep 1, 2006\nThanks!\nNah, that\u0026rsquo;s the same Fuji 4MP I got for my b-day last year.\nI just decided to whip-out the Bogen tripod that I\u0026rsquo;ve had since my \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m a photographer\u0026rdquo; phase back in HS to take the family portrait.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/happy-anniversary-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"many-happy-returns-im-diggin-the-photography--\"\u003eMany happy returns! I\u0026rsquo;m diggin\u0026rsquo; the photography -\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMany happy returns! I\u0026rsquo;m diggin\u0026rsquo; the photography - did someone get a new camera?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNah, that\u0026rsquo;s the same Fuji 4MP I got\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThanks!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNah, that\u0026rsquo;s the same Fuji 4MP I got for my b-day last year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Happy Anniversary! (Comments)"},{"content":"Bella: Why are you tiptoeing through the house with your shoes on?\nMe: I don\u0026rsquo;t want to get the carpet dirty\nBella: So, you want to look ridiculous AND get smaller footprints on the carpet?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/quoted-from-my-household/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBella: Why are you tiptoeing through the house with your shoes on?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: I don\u0026rsquo;t want to get the carpet dirty\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBella: So, you want to look ridiculous AND get smaller footprints on the carpet?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quoted from my household"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m sports-obsessed this weekend\u0026hellip;namely because football\u0026rsquo;s back!! Yep, the 22-man skirmish played out on an artificial battlefield is back, and it\u0026rsquo;s great.\nSo, some predictions:\nEli\u0026rsquo;s Giants will beat Peyton\u0026rsquo;s Colts. On the Giants\u0026rsquo; home field, they\u0026rsquo;re showing defense and a RUNNING GAME. Is Peyton the better QB? Yes. Does it matter? No.\nKentucky football sucks. What else is new?\nBrett Favre will be benched by midseason. Home opener shutout? Yikes. Retire and let us remember your 90\u0026rsquo;s glory!\nThe Breathitt Bobcats will have a losing season. Tough schedule and few athletes.\nThis will be the best year ever for the Arizona Cardinals\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/as-the-thunder-rolls...sports-predictions/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m sports-obsessed this weekend\u0026hellip;namely because football\u0026rsquo;s back!! Yep, the 22-man skirmish played out on an artificial battlefield is back, and it\u0026rsquo;s great.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, some predictions:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEli\u0026rsquo;s Giants will beat Peyton\u0026rsquo;s Colts. On the Giants\u0026rsquo; home field, they\u0026rsquo;re showing defense and a RUNNING GAME. Is Peyton the better QB? Yes. Does it matter? No.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKentucky football sucks. What else is new?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBrett Favre will be benched by midseason. Home opener shutout? Yikes. Retire and let us remember your 90\u0026rsquo;s glory!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"As the thunder rolls...SPORTS predictions!!"},{"content":"Friday was the annual area picnic, and for once, I had a total blast\u0026ndash;10:30am to 4pm, including a great disc golf game, horse shoes, football, and some cool manager-sponsored games: Slingshot paintball (!) and Charlie\u0026rsquo;s Left/Center/Right.\nI\u0026rsquo;m sore, sunburnt and dehydrated. Loved it!\n* * *\nBonus, headed to Wally-World and got my tires mounted, no waiting (!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/enjoyable-surprise-picnic/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFriday was the annual area picnic, and for once, I had a total blast\u0026ndash;10:30am to 4pm, including a great disc golf game, horse shoes, football, and some cool manager-sponsored games: Slingshot paintball (!) and Charlie\u0026rsquo;s Left/Center/Right.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m sore, sunburnt and dehydrated. Loved it!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBonus, headed to Wally-World and got my tires mounted, no waiting (!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Enjoyable (surprise!) picnic"},{"content":"Alas, I succumbed to the temptation to make an ear\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Sep 6, 2006\nAlas, I succumbed to the temptation to make an early exit and start on the yard. As a result I got the weedy patch all filled in with topsoil and seeded. One of these picnics I\u0026rsquo;m going to stay and have fun. The food was good anyway :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/enjoyable-surprise-picnic-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"alas-i-succumbed-to-the-temptation-to-make-an-ear\"\u003eAlas, I succumbed to the temptation to make an ear\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 6, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlas, I succumbed to the temptation to make an early exit and start on the yard. As a result I got the weedy patch all filled in with topsoil and seeded. One of these picnics I\u0026rsquo;m going to stay and have fun. The food was good anyway :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Enjoyable (surprise!) picnic (Comments)"},{"content":"TypingMaster Online Test, Desktop Educational Application\n82 WPM\u0026hellip;w00t!\nDad says he\u0026rsquo;s never seen anyone type as fast as me. I told him he\u0026rsquo;s seen very few typists, then.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/typingmaster-online-test-desktop-educational-application/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://java.com/en/desktop/typingmasteronlinetest.jsp\"\u003eTypingMaster Online Test, Desktop Educational Application\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e82 WPM\u0026hellip;w00t!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDad says he\u0026rsquo;s never seen anyone type as fast as me. I told him he\u0026rsquo;s seen very few typists, then.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"TypingMaster Online Test, Desktop Educational Application"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m a full-time regular developer that the company flew to Switzerland. I\u0026rsquo;ve been onsite at a large banking firm for 3 days. Things are not going well. Our \u0026ldquo;solution\u0026rdquo; is as bad or worse than the original problem, and the $90 million PER YEAR customer is frustrated. I\u0026rsquo;ve provided one substantial update in three days, and have followed no reproducible baseline procedures.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s my natural next email?\nBTW, tomorrow is my last day here on official business. I\u0026rsquo;ll be sightseeing Friday and Saturday.\nWow. Just\u0026hellip;wow.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/rant/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m a full-time regular developer that the company flew to Switzerland. I\u0026rsquo;ve been onsite at a large banking firm for 3 days. Things are not going well. Our \u0026ldquo;solution\u0026rdquo; is as bad or worse than the original problem, and the $90 million PER YEAR customer is frustrated. I\u0026rsquo;ve provided one substantial update in three days, and have followed no reproducible baseline procedures.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s my natural next email?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBTW, tomorrow is my last day here on official business. I\u0026rsquo;ll be sightseeing Friday and Saturday.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rant"},{"content":"BTW, I decided I don\u0026rsquo;t want a job\u0026hellip;but I\u0026rsquo;m gonna \u0026hellip; Whitney - Sep 3, 2006\nBTW, I decided I don\u0026rsquo;t want a job\u0026hellip;but I\u0026rsquo;m gonna screw you while I can - on your dime.\nOK, you win. Much worse than badly-parked Camrys :-)\nMaybe he\u0026rsquo;s actually Jason Bourne?\nSad \u0026hellip; dark pain \u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/rant-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"btw-i-decided-i-dont-want-a-jobbut-im-gonna-\"\u003eBTW, I decided I don\u0026rsquo;t want a job\u0026hellip;but I\u0026rsquo;m gonna \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/11862853724624621414\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 3, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBTW, I decided I don\u0026rsquo;t want a job\u0026hellip;but I\u0026rsquo;m gonna screw you while I can - on your dime.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOK, you win. Much worse than badly-parked Camrys :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaybe he\u0026rsquo;s actually Jason Bourne?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSad \u0026hellip; dark pain \u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rant (Comments)"},{"content":"I think this post by Delerium sums it up pretty well\nI\u0026rsquo;m in the top 10%, but not by much and I DEFY you to find anyone near this point who can:\nAfford to send 2 kids to a decent college\nTake expensive vacations\nPay the mortgage, car loan and credit card loans\nMaintain cars and house\nHeat, electric for house and gas for cars\nFeed the family well\nPay for your multiple insurances\nand even if you budget, scrimp and save\u0026hellip;\nYou are left with SQUAT!\nI think we\u0026rsquo;re on course to spawn another generation like Japan: Expensive land prevents owning a home, along with high living expenses preventing long-term savings (retirement, insurance). Thus, we\u0026rsquo;re left with a group immune to the \u0026ldquo;but things always get better\u0026rdquo; mantra of their parents. Difference, of course, is that this gen expects things to get better.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/class-warfare-inflation/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI think this post by \u003cstrong\u003eDelerium\u003c/strong\u003e sums it up pretty well\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m in the top 10%, but not by much and I DEFY you to find anyone near this point who can:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfford to send 2 kids to a decent college\u003cbr\u003e\nTake expensive vacations\u003cbr\u003e\nPay the mortgage, car loan and credit card loans\u003cbr\u003e\nMaintain cars and house\u003cbr\u003e\nHeat, electric for house and gas for cars\u003cbr\u003e\nFeed the family well\u003cbr\u003e\nPay for your multiple insurances\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Class warfare? Inflation?"},{"content":"That \u0026ldquo;maintain cars and house\u0026rdquo; is a big one. Ther\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Sep 2, 2006\nThat \u0026ldquo;maintain cars and house\u0026rdquo; is a big one. There\u0026rsquo;s always something falling apart. Not only are you left with squat financially, your time gets frittered away fighting back moth and rust.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a lot of truth in it. Esp. with the outrageous cost of not just health insurance but health costs (Sidebar: I went to the doctor for an exam today and spent $80. $30 copay and two prescriptions at $25 each. And that\u0026rsquo;s WITH insurance?? at least I got a laugh when my doctor, after I told him my company had switched us to Humana, said, \u0026ldquo;Sorry about your luck.\u0026rdquo;).\nHowever, I have to say I think we do it to ourselves a little bit. Is cable TV really a necessity at $50/month? Or cellphones at $70 or more a month? I have many friends whose kids have expensive cellphones. Is that necessary? I think there\u0026rsquo;s probably some room there where we could save if we really wanted to.\nHey, no flaming allowed here, right? :)\nWhile in curmudgeon mode I should have admitted that I have most of that junk myself. I\u0026rsquo;m just saying THEORETICALLY you could do without it and save a few bucks\u0026hellip; :)\nOh \u0026hellip; I meant to curmudge on putting 2 kids thru college, too. At the risk of inflaming people, I don\u0026rsquo;t think it makes sense to go into debt to send your kids to college. Admittedly, so far I\u0026rsquo;ve been able to avoid it but the 1st one had heaps \u0026lsquo;o scholarships and the 2nd one flunked out, making it somewhat (for now) easily avoidable. The rule of thumb I\u0026rsquo;ve heard and subscribe to is, pay for a third of your kids\u0026rsquo; college, let them earn a third as they go, and let them borrow the remaining third and pay it back when they\u0026rsquo;re making big bucks (they\u0026rsquo;re going to make big bucks, right?).\nYeah, most people h\u0026hellip; HarryC - Sep 4, 2006\nLOL @ \u0026ldquo;Curmudgeon Mode\u0026rdquo;\nYeah, most people have lots of levers to pull for reducing expenses. Going through Dave Ramsey\u0026rsquo;s Financial Peace stuff taught us all about that.\nMost of my (age group) peers think I\u0026rsquo;m nuts. And most of them don\u0026rsquo;t have a pot to pee in, as Mountain Folk like to say :-)\nFrustrates me, though\u0026ndash;I bought 2 cars I didn\u0026rsquo;t need, and wasted lots of time renting and buying gadget after gadget.\nI got a pretty good start on saving and investing, but got very lax when I discovered autocross.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/class-warfare-inflation-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"that-maintain-cars-and-house-is-a-big-one-ther\"\u003eThat \u0026ldquo;maintain cars and house\u0026rdquo; is a big one. Ther\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 2, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat \u0026ldquo;maintain cars and house\u0026rdquo; is a big one. There\u0026rsquo;s always something falling apart. Not only are you left with squat financially, your time gets frittered away fighting back moth and rust.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a lot of truth in it. Esp. with the outrageous cost of not just health insurance but health costs (Sidebar: I went to the doctor for an exam today and spent $80. $30 copay and two prescriptions at $25 each. And that\u0026rsquo;s WITH insurance?? at least I got a laugh when my doctor, after I told him my company had switched us to Humana, said, \u0026ldquo;Sorry about your luck.\u0026rdquo;).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Class warfare? Inflation? (Comments)"},{"content":"Yeah, I can just see pulling-out THIS picture whenever joey brings home a gal, gets married, etc.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/yeah-hell-regret-this-later/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYeah, I can just see pulling-out THIS picture whenever joey brings home a gal, gets married, etc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/97/233086652_194f9b6a2f.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Yeah, he'll regret this later"},{"content":"Well, you\u0026rsquo;ve taken one step to prepare him for Bet\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Sep 1, 2006\nWell, you\u0026rsquo;ve taken one step to prepare him for Beta Club. At least that\u0026rsquo;s what they did to us at our initiation. I never quite got that one - let\u0026rsquo;s humiliate the kids getting good grades!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/yeah-hell-regret-this-later-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"well-youve-taken-one-step-to-prepare-him-for-bet\"\u003eWell, you\u0026rsquo;ve taken one step to prepare him for Bet\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, you\u0026rsquo;ve taken one step to prepare him for Beta Club. At least that\u0026rsquo;s what they did to us at our initiation. I never quite got that one - let\u0026rsquo;s humiliate the kids getting good grades!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Yeah, he'll regret this later (Comments)"},{"content":"LOVE this:\nThis mini-movie is the #1 reason I continue to lust after an E39 M5\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/oldie-but-a-goodie/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLOVE this:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis mini-movie is the #1 reason I continue to lust after an E39 M5\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Oldie but a goodie"},{"content":"That\u0026rsquo;s too funny. Gotta love that last slide. Jeff Roberts - Sep 6, 2006\nThat\u0026rsquo;s too funny. Gotta love that last slide.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/oldie-but-a-goodie-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"thats-too-funny-gotta-love-that-last-slide\"\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s too funny. Gotta love that last slide.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 6, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s too funny. Gotta love that last slide.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Oldie but a goodie (Comments)"},{"content":"\nYeah, we get a rather stodgy, jellybean corolla, and the rest of the world gets this nice, useful 4-door hatch.\nLike the treatment on the grille/hood better, as well.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/so...why-cant-we-get-a-cool-corolla-in-this-country/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.automotoportal.com/media/images/vijesti/060901002.1_mn.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, we get a rather stodgy, jellybean corolla, and the rest of the world gets this nice, useful 4-door hatch.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLike the treatment on the grille/hood better, as well.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"So...why can't we get a cool Corolla in this country?"},{"content":"it looks like an overgrown plymouth omni. Whitney - Sep 5, 2006\nit looks like an overgrown plymouth omni.\nYou say that like it\u0026rsquo;s a bad thing =)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/09/so...why-cant-we-get-a-cool-corolla-in-this-country-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"it-looks-like-an-overgrown-plymouth-omni\"\u003eit looks like an overgrown plymouth omni.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/11862853724624621414\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eit looks like an overgrown plymouth omni.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou say that like it\u0026rsquo;s a bad thing =)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"So...why can't we get a cool Corolla in this country? (Comments)"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m hopped-up on a combination of butter-cream, butter-mints, and mixed nuts\u0026hellip;that\u0026rsquo;s right kids\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s Baby Shower time.\nWait a tick\u0026hellip;no, not a shower for OUR forthcoming baby, one for someone ELSE. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s coordinated the whole thing, and it\u0026rsquo;s (hopefully) winding down as I write this.\nFrom the sound of the games\u0026ndash;something about clothespins \u0026amp; toilet paper\u0026ndash;I didn\u0026rsquo;t want anything to do with it. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/sore-on-saturday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m hopped-up on a combination of butter-cream, butter-mints, and mixed nuts\u0026hellip;that\u0026rsquo;s right kids\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s Baby Shower time.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWait a tick\u0026hellip;no, not a shower for OUR forthcoming baby, one for someone ELSE. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s coordinated the whole thing, and it\u0026rsquo;s (hopefully) winding down as I write this.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the sound of the games\u0026ndash;something about clothespins \u0026amp; toilet paper\u0026ndash;I didn\u0026rsquo;t want anything to do with it. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sore on Saturday"},{"content":"Ever have a day where you woke-up and just wished you weren\u0026rsquo;t yourself? That\u0026rsquo;s pretty-much me today.\nFell off the wagon this morning, very hard. I won\u0026rsquo;t go into the details, but there\u0026rsquo;s at least one person who reads this blog knows what I\u0026rsquo;m talking about. No rhyme or reason to it, just happened. I\u0026rsquo;ve had a very good week, and last night visiting with some of our Church friends was awesome, but for some reason, I took a step I shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have taken and only a few minutes later jumped right off the wagon.\nSo, today begins another \u0026ldquo;first\u0026rdquo; day.\n* * *\nWork\u0026rsquo;s been stinking of late; I won\u0026rsquo;t bore you with the details. If it was fun all the time, they\u0026rsquo;d call it \u0026ldquo;play\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;fun\u0026rdquo;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/fear-and-self-loathing-in-la-bluegrass/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEver have a day where you woke-up and just wished you weren\u0026rsquo;t yourself? That\u0026rsquo;s pretty-much me today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFell off the wagon this morning, very hard. I won\u0026rsquo;t go into the details, but there\u0026rsquo;s at least one person who reads this blog knows what I\u0026rsquo;m talking about. No rhyme or reason to it, just happened. I\u0026rsquo;ve had a very good week, and last night visiting with some of our Church friends was awesome, but for some reason, I took a step I shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have taken and only a few minutes later jumped right off the wagon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fear and self-loathing in La Bluegrass"},{"content":"Software by Rob : Personality Traits of the Best Software Developers: \u0026ldquo;I have never, ever, ever seen a great software developer who does not have amazing attention to detail.\u0026rdquo;\nLet me just say it: I\u0026rsquo;m screwed.\nAnyone know of a remedial course for Type-B programmers?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/software-by-rob-personality-traits-of-the-best-software-developers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.softwarebyrob.com/articles/Personality_Traits_of_the_Best_Software_Developers.aspx\"\u003eSoftware by Rob : Personality Traits of the Best Software Developers\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;I have never, ever, ever seen a great software developer who does not have amazing attention to detail.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet me just say it: I\u0026rsquo;m screwed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyone know of a remedial course for Type-B programmers?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Software by Rob : Personality Traits of the Best Software Developers"},{"content":"Tony Robbins - reservation for one. Whitney - Aug 1, 2006\nTony Robbins - reservation for one.\nSee, I\u0026rsquo;ve done that\u0026ndash;7 habits of hi\u0026hellip; HarryC - Aug 1, 2006\n@Bella:\nSee, I\u0026rsquo;ve done that\u0026ndash;7 habits of highly effective people, etc.\u0026ndash;and still I have to make lists in order to stay on task. :-)\nI get distracted too\u0026hellip;wow, it\u0026rsquo;s nice outside.\nSaying 100 times a da\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Aug 1, 2006\nMaking lists = good.\nSaying 100 times a day \u0026ldquo;I probably should write this down\u0026rdquo; = bad.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s OK to *have* a bad memory, it\u0026rsquo;s just criminally insane to walk around thinking it\u0026rsquo;s funny and not compensating in some way (DayTimer, PDA, etc). That\u0026rsquo;s like having no parking brake and doing your shopping in Frisco.\nOops, sorry - pet peeve. I apologize for all the singed eyebrows.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/software-by-rob-personality-traits-of-the-best-software-developers-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"tony-robbins---reservation-for-one\"\u003eTony Robbins - reservation for one.\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/11862853724624621414\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTony Robbins - reservation for one.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSee, I\u0026rsquo;ve done that\u0026ndash;7 habits of hi\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e@Bella:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSee, I\u0026rsquo;ve done that\u0026ndash;7 habits of highly effective people, etc.\u0026ndash;and still I have to make lists in order to stay on task. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Software by Rob : Personality Traits of the Best Software Developers (Comments)"},{"content":"RELEASE: Ford Cutting N.A. Production - The Car Connection: \u0026ldquo;The new production plan will result in downtime at several assembly plants between now and the end of the year, including: \u0026hellip;Louisville, Ky. (Ford Explorer and Mercury Mountaineer)\u0026hellip;and all F-Series truck plants (Kansas City, Mo.; Norfolk, Va., Dearborn and Kentucky Truck in Louisville).\u0026rdquo;\nLooks like a rough Christmas in Da Ville. :(\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/ford-cutting-n.a.-production/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.thecarconnection.com/index.asp?DID=RSS\u0026amp;n=175\u0026amp;sid=175\u0026amp;article=10768\"\u003eRELEASE: Ford Cutting N.A. Production - The Car Connection\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;The new production plan will result in downtime at several assembly plants between now and the end of the year, including: \u0026hellip;Louisville, Ky. (Ford Explorer and Mercury Mountaineer)\u0026hellip;and all F-Series truck plants (Kansas City, Mo.; Norfolk, Va., Dearborn and Kentucky Truck in Louisville).\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLooks like a rough Christmas in Da Ville. :(\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ford Cutting N.A. Production"},{"content":"From a conversation I had with my pastor:\nSo, in explaining the concept of Jesus and God being one in the same, and Jesus being a \u0026ldquo;manifestation\u0026rdquo; of God. God is the \u0026ldquo;author of the universe\u0026rdquo; and Jesus is his embodiment. One of my fellow parishoners said to Scott:\nSo, it\u0026rsquo;s kinda like Stephen King doing a cameo in movies based on his book?\nYep.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/so-this-whole-god-is-jesus-jesus-is-god-concept/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom a conversation I had with my pastor:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, in explaining the concept of Jesus and God being one in the same, and Jesus being a \u0026ldquo;manifestation\u0026rdquo; of God. God is the \u0026ldquo;author of the universe\u0026rdquo; and Jesus is his embodiment. One of my fellow parishoners said to Scott:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, it\u0026rsquo;s kinda like Stephen King doing a cameo in movies based on his book?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"So, this whole \"God is Jesus, Jesus is God\" concept"},{"content":"Stephen King actually shows up as a character in t\u0026hellip; Bryan - Aug 5, 2006\nStephen King actually shows up as a character in the last two books of \u0026lsquo;The Dark Tower\u0026rsquo; Series. (If you haven’t read these you should, they are really good!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/so-this-whole-god-is-jesus-jesus-is-god-concept-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"stephen-king-actually-shows-up-as-a-character-in-t\"\u003eStephen King actually shows up as a character in t\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/06943264340415790446\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eBryan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStephen King actually shows up as a character in the last two books of \u0026lsquo;The Dark Tower\u0026rsquo; Series. (If you haven’t read these you should, they are really good!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"So, this whole \"God is Jesus, Jesus is God\" concept (Comments)"},{"content":"The Age of the Essay: \u0026ldquo;You don\u0026rsquo;t know yet. And so you can\u0026rsquo;t begin with a thesis, because you don\u0026rsquo;t have one, and may never have one. An essay doesn\u0026rsquo;t begin with a statement, but with a question. In a real essay, you don\u0026rsquo;t take a position and defend it. You notice a door that\u0026rsquo;s ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what\u0026rsquo;s inside.\u0026rdquo;\nPaul Graham is a hero of mine, not for his hacker-hero-worship, but because he\u0026rsquo;s a THINKER first, and a programmer second. His \u0026ldquo;essay on essays\u0026rdquo; should be given to every freshman in college.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/the-age-of-the-essay/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html\"\u003eThe Age of the Essay\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;You don\u0026rsquo;t know yet. And so you can\u0026rsquo;t begin with a thesis, because you don\u0026rsquo;t have one, and may never have one. An essay doesn\u0026rsquo;t begin with a statement, but with a question. In a real essay, you don\u0026rsquo;t take a position and defend it. You notice a door that\u0026rsquo;s ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what\u0026rsquo;s inside.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePaul Graham is a hero of mine, not for his hacker-hero-worship, but because he\u0026rsquo;s a THINKER first, and a programmer second. His \u0026ldquo;essay on essays\u0026rdquo; should be given to every freshman in college.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Age of the Essay"},{"content":"Prediction for the day: Lots of people driving convertibles, motorcycles, etc. It\u0026rsquo;s BEAUTIFUL outside\u0026hellip;65 degrees, no humidity. Really feels like Fall.\n* * *\nOne cup of coffee, and I\u0026rsquo;m still totally zonked. I know I slept, but it feels like I didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep at all.\nBummed that Katerina is leaving the company, but I\u0026rsquo;m kinda glad for her, too.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/zonked.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePrediction for the day: Lots of people driving convertibles, motorcycles, etc. It\u0026rsquo;s BEAUTIFUL outside\u0026hellip;65 degrees, no humidity. Really feels like Fall.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne cup of coffee, and I\u0026rsquo;m still totally zonked. I know I slept, but it feels like I didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep at all.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBummed that Katerina is leaving the company, but I\u0026rsquo;m kinda glad for her, too.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Zonked..."},{"content":" I guess my point is that I don\u0026rsquo;t like suburbia. I want to move back to a town where everybody has at least an acre or two of land. Good fences don\u0026rsquo;t make good neighbors. Good acreage makes good neighbors. And beer. Beer always helps.\nAgreed, on both counts.\nlink\nYep\u0026hellip;this guy\u0026rsquo;s going on the RSS reader\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/suburbia/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI guess my point is that I don\u0026rsquo;t like suburbia. I want to move back to a town where everybody has at least an acre or two of land. Good fences don\u0026rsquo;t make good neighbors. Good acreage makes good neighbors. And beer. Beer always helps.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAgreed, on both counts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://skiverdon.blogspot.com/2006/08/im-not-diggin-suburbia.html\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep\u0026hellip;this guy\u0026rsquo;s going on the RSS reader\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Suburbia\""},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m jealous. Straight-up, seeing red jealous. There was something that was mine that someone else is doing a bang-up job on after it got taken away from me. So, hard thing is, are my misgivings about it real, or are they just a manifestation of that jealousy?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/on-being-jealous/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m jealous. Straight-up, seeing red jealous. There was something that was mine that someone else is doing a bang-up job on after it got taken away from me. So, hard thing is, are my misgivings about it real, or are they just a manifestation of that jealousy?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On being jealous"},{"content":"I thought jealousy was the green-eyed monster\u0026hellip;.n\u0026hellip; Whitney - Aug 1, 2006\nI thought jealousy was the green-eyed monster\u0026hellip;.not the red-eyed\u0026hellip;..unless he\u0026rsquo;s jealous about all the ppl out there who DON\u0026rsquo;T have allergies - while clawing his own eyes out\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/on-being-jealous-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-thought-jealousy-was-the-green-eyed-monstern\"\u003eI thought jealousy was the green-eyed monster\u0026hellip;.n\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/11862853724624621414\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI thought jealousy was the green-eyed monster\u0026hellip;.not the red-eyed\u0026hellip;..unless he\u0026rsquo;s jealous about all the ppl out there who DON\u0026rsquo;T have allergies - while clawing his own eyes out\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"On being jealous (Comments)"},{"content":"The Bag of Holding: \u0026ldquo;Got your top 5? Good. Now find out who made each of them. Send the creator a letter of thanks, and make it sincere. If appropriate, send a small cash donation, anything you can afford.\u0026rdquo;\nMy list:\nBMW\nTimex\nSage\nFirefox\nRuby\nYup\u0026hellip;nothing like the proper tool.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/the-bag-of-holding/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/mod/journal/journal.asp?jn=345337\u0026amp;reply_id=2725029\"\u003eThe Bag of Holding\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;Got your top 5? Good. Now find out who made each of them. Send the creator a letter of thanks, and make it sincere. If appropriate, send a small cash donation, anything you can afford.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy list:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBMW\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTimex\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://sage.mozdev.org/\"\u003eSage\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirefox\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRuby\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYup\u0026hellip;nothing like the proper tool.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Bag of Holding"},{"content":"Bella\u0026rsquo;s car won\u0026rsquo;t last forever, and I keep wondering what we\u0026rsquo;ll look at next. Things that matter to me:\nSmall-sized person compatibility: Some cars (including my E30!), Bella just can\u0026rsquo;t drive. She needs power-adjusting seats (and pedals, preferably!) and a tilt/telescoping steering column.\nSafety: I don\u0026rsquo;t want my family in a death trap. In this I include active safety: A vehicle must be stable and maneuverable enough to avoid problems, with positive driver feedback. It must also have enough power to get out of its own way.\nEconomy: This is not just pure fuel economy, but also operation, maintenance, and repair. Preferably, this would be something that runs on regular gas (or diesel), with cheap parts, that\u0026rsquo;s designed with maintenance in mind. E85 or biodiesel compatibility\u0026rsquo;s a plus. Fuel economy \u0026gt; 30mpg on the highway is almost mandatory here.\nReliability. This is a given; this will be the car for family trips, and which must get the family to/from school and taking Joey to Louisville 2-3 times per month. Things I\u0026rsquo;d prefer here: Timing chain instead of timing belt, self-adjusting valves, 4-wheel disc brakes with semi-metallic pads, non-interference engine, Dexcool or other long-lasting coolant.\nComfort: This is the Queen Mary, not the speedboat. I want long-distance comfort for 2 adults and 3 kids, and their stuff.\nAffordability: Oh yeah, and\u0026hellip;I have to be able to pay for it in cash, so no $20k monsters allowed.\nIt can\u0026rsquo;t be a Ford or Ford-owned (Read: Mazda) product. It CAN be any GM except Chevrolet. Sorry, I know my wife.\nIt can\u0026rsquo;t be a Volkswagen. Sorry, I know myself.\nAlot of these are contractictory\u0026hellip;I realize that. A comfortable vehicle, large enough for all of our stuff, that gets 30mpg while being powerful enough to accellerate in traffic.\nAs far as vehicle TYPES, this implies either a sedan, wagon, or minivan. I\u0026rsquo;d prefer something with a hatch for utility.\nActual VEHICLES that fit this bill? Yikes\u0026hellip;\nPontiac Montana (only 26mpg hwy, tho):\nVolvo V70 wagon ($$$, plus expensive parts):\nWhat does Bella want? Same old, same old: Corolla S!\n38mpg highway! Regular gas! Only 4 cylinders to cause problems! Cheap-to-replace 15\u0026quot; tires!\n(bear with me folks, this is as much car fever as I\u0026rsquo;m allowed to get\u0026hellip;.)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/the-next-family-truckster..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBella\u0026rsquo;s car won\u0026rsquo;t last forever, and I keep wondering what we\u0026rsquo;ll look at next. Things that matter to me:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSmall-sized person compatibility: Some cars (including my E30!), Bella just can\u0026rsquo;t drive. She needs power-adjusting seats (and pedals, preferably!) and a tilt/telescoping steering column.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSafety: I don\u0026rsquo;t want my family in a death trap. In this I include active safety: A vehicle must be stable and maneuverable enough to avoid problems, with positive driver feedback. It must also have enough power to get out of its own way.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The next family truckster...."},{"content":"It CANT be any GM?! I LOVE BUICK!! I LOVE OLDS!!\u0026hellip; Whitney - Aug 5, 2006\nIt CANT be any GM?! I LOVE BUICK!! I LOVE OLDS!!! WHY CANT IT BE A FREAKIN GM??? except chevy? Kick me in the crotch and spit on my neck - UGH!! We are SOOOOOOOOOO not having a chevy. ugh.\nMy bad: Typo\u0026hellip;should\u0026rsquo;ve said it CAN be any GM except Chevy.\nMy brother (the comedian) just crossed the 300,000 boundary on his Corrola. Can\u0026rsquo;t go wrong there, although once you have the second kid it\u0026rsquo;ll get tougher to pack\u0026hellip;one kid and his stuff fill up the back seat pretty easily. Add another and diaper bags, etc., and you\u0026rsquo;re pulling over to get things out of the trunk\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/the-next-family-truckster....-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"it-cant-be-any-gm-i-love-buick-i-love-olds\"\u003eIt CANT be any GM?! I LOVE BUICK!! I LOVE OLDS!!\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/11862853724624621414\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eWhitney\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt CANT be any GM?! I LOVE BUICK!! I LOVE OLDS!!! WHY CANT IT BE A FREAKIN GM??? except chevy? Kick me in the crotch and spit on my neck - UGH!! We are SOOOOOOOOOO not having a chevy. ugh.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy bad: Typo\u0026hellip;should\u0026rsquo;ve said it CAN be any GM except Chevy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The next family truckster.... (Comments)"},{"content":"\nJoey passes into an icing-induced sugar coma.\n* * *\nAfter the non-practice Soccer practice (lightning, thunder, oh my!), we were able to make it to David\u0026rsquo;s surprise party, which was awesome for me in many ways:\n- Got to introduce Whitney + Joey to most of my \u0026lsquo;work family\u0026rsquo;\n- Took whitney to a GOOD thai restaurant, for a change.\n- It counted as date night. (j/k, dear!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/mooching-pics-from-others.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/754/1380/1600/10.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/754/1380/320/10.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nJoey passes into an icing-induced sugar coma.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter the non-practice Soccer practice (lightning, thunder, oh my!), we were able to make it to \u003ca href=\"http://jeffingtown.blogspot.com/2006/08/que-surprise.html\"\u003eDavid\u0026rsquo;s surprise party\u003c/a\u003e, which was awesome for me in many ways:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Got to introduce Whitney + Joey to most of my \u0026lsquo;work family\u0026rsquo;\u003cbr\u003e\n- Took whitney to a GOOD thai restaurant, for a change.\u003cbr\u003e\n- It counted as date night. (j/k, dear!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mooching pics from others..."},{"content":"At Bella\u0026rsquo;s request, I removed all geographic and visual references to where I now abide.\nFor all those crazies out there on the \u0026rsquo;net: I live alone atop a high, craggy mountain surrounded by piles of gas-inducing bean burritos and buckets of ammunition for my many sub-machine guns. The approximate location of my hermitage is East of Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark, and north of Shangri-La.\nPlease feel free to not drop by.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/keeping-a-lower-profile/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt Bella\u0026rsquo;s request, I removed all geographic and visual references to where I now abide.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor all those crazies out there on the \u0026rsquo;net: I live alone atop a high, craggy mountain surrounded by piles of gas-inducing bean burritos and buckets of ammunition for my many sub-machine guns. The approximate location of my hermitage is East of Noah\u0026rsquo;s Ark, and north of Shangri-La.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePlease feel free to not drop by.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Keeping a lower profile"},{"content":"Would you say you have a plethora of gas-inducing \u0026hellip; JarvoSpeaks - Aug 4, 2006\nWould you say you have a plethora of gas-inducing bean burritos?\nFunny, that sounds like the town where I grew up!\nNice try, but STILL I will hunt you down and force you to accept a baby gift!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/keeping-a-lower-profile-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"would-you-say-you-have-a-plethora-of-gas-inducing-\"\u003eWould you say you have a plethora of gas-inducing \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/01705426928526831426\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJarvoSpeaks\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 4, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWould you say you have a plethora of gas-inducing bean burritos?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFunny, that sounds like the town where I grew up!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNice try, but STILL I will hunt you down and force you to accept a baby gift!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Keeping a lower profile (Comments)"},{"content":"So, on the news today this story:\nBP said that it would have to shut down a segment of the pipeline for a period of up to six months to replace 16 miles of the structure.\nOkay, why does BRITISH PETROLEUM own the Alaska pipeline? Why doesn\u0026rsquo;t an American company (or better yet, the federal gov\u0026rsquo;t!) own it?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/biggest-duh-thought.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, on the news today this story:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBP said that it would have to shut down a segment of the pipeline for a period of up to six months to replace 16 miles of the structure.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, why does BRITISH PETROLEUM own the Alaska pipeline? Why doesn\u0026rsquo;t an American company (or better yet, the federal gov\u0026rsquo;t!) own it?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Biggest \"duh\" thought..."},{"content":"Shhhh\u0026hellip;.Mayor Isaacs may be listening\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Aug 2, 2006\nShhhh\u0026hellip;.Mayor Isaacs may be listening\u0026hellip;\nMaybe it\u0026rsquo;s part of a plot to take back the colonies?\nI also heard that they hadn\u0026rsquo;t run the \u0026ldquo;pig\u0026rdquo; (not Arnold, some kind of device) through the pipeline to do routine testing for over a decade. (And here\u0026rsquo;s a prediction the pundits will seize \u0026ldquo;pig\u0026rdquo; as a metaphor soon.)\nI think Congress should open more areas to drilling. But clearly we have to find a way to stop sending boatloads of money to people who want to kill us. (And I\u0026rsquo;m not talking about the Democratic Party.)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/biggest-duh-thought...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"shhhhmayor-isaacs-may-be-listening\"\u003eShhhh\u0026hellip;.Mayor Isaacs may be listening\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 2, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShhhh\u0026hellip;.Mayor Isaacs may be listening\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaybe it\u0026rsquo;s part of a plot to take back the colonies?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI also heard that they hadn\u0026rsquo;t run the \u0026ldquo;pig\u0026rdquo; (not Arnold, some kind of device) through the pipeline to do routine testing for over a decade. (And here\u0026rsquo;s a prediction the pundits will seize \u0026ldquo;pig\u0026rdquo; as a metaphor soon.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Biggest \"duh\" thought... (Comments)"},{"content":"7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable: \u0026ldquo;It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter what you tell yourself, or what slogans you memorize about how everyone is special. You\u0026rsquo;ll think of yourself as special when you do something special. If you think of yourself as special prior to actually doing something special, you\u0026rsquo;re not healthy and well-balanced. You\u0026rsquo;re a narcissist, disconnected from reality. \u0026quot;\nOkay, this is a LITTLE over the top, but taken as a whole, this article describes why post-modernist Cyberspace and human beings don\u0026rsquo;t mesh, past a point. We need people. (By extension, I\u0026rsquo;d assert we need God, too!)\nFulfilling every need for communication without real community leaves us empty. I didn\u0026rsquo;t realize how empty my life was until I had a relationship with God, my church family, my small town, and Whitney and Joey.\nAs an aside, this is also why working at a tech company is impossible some days \u0026ndash; people have no people skills, and they never learned to \u0026ldquo;get along\u0026rdquo; with people they hate. They just sit, nursing grudges and hangups, asserting that\u0026rsquo;s just \u0026ldquo;who they are\u0026rdquo;.\nYike.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/7-reasons-the-21st-century-is-making-you-miserable/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/misery.html\"\u003e7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter what you tell yourself, or what slogans you memorize about how everyone is special. You\u0026rsquo;ll think of yourself as special when you do something special. If you think of yourself as special prior to actually doing something special, you\u0026rsquo;re not healthy and well-balanced. You\u0026rsquo;re a narcissist, disconnected from reality. \u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, this is a LITTLE over the top, but taken as a whole, this article describes why post-modernist Cyberspace and human beings don\u0026rsquo;t mesh, past a point. We need people. (By extension, I\u0026rsquo;d assert we need God, too!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;No, thank you.\u0026rdquo; (Kidding.) Interesting sit\u0026hellip; JarvoSpeaks - Aug 4, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;No, thank you.\u0026rdquo; (Kidding.)\nInteresting site. I always enjoy reading others who are saying what I have since I was, oh, 10: that our society is going to Dante\u0026rsquo;s favorite vacation spot, in a small purse.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/7-reasons-the-21st-century-is-making-you-miserable-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"no-thank-you-kidding\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;No, thank you.\u0026rdquo; (Kidding.)\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInteresting sit\u0026hellip;\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/01705426928526831426\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJarvoSpeaks\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 4, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;No, thank you.\u0026rdquo; (Kidding.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInteresting site. I always enjoy reading others who are saying what I have since I was, oh, 10: that our society is going to Dante\u0026rsquo;s favorite vacation spot, in a small purse.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable (Comments)"},{"content":"Yeah, so this was supposed to be the weekend where I relaxed all Saturday, staying in bed all day if I wished\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;so, naturally, we reorganized the house and Rug Doctor\u0026rsquo;d the carpets. In between doing that, I found time to change the oil in the Beamer. All this, while Joey lived la dolce vita down at Dale Hollow Lake.\nThe lowpoint was probably when the Purolator filter in the E30 decided to get stuck, at the same time my left shoulder had a heat cramp. I finally crawled under the car and got it unstuck with my StrapWrench from beneath.\nThen today, we had a luau with the church, and our Sunday school class had to coordinate the event and put up everything from food, to Tiki torches, to games for the kids. It turned into a 3pm -\u0026gt; 8pm afternoon for me, down by the river.\nBut there were lots of good moment: Powerslides in the Beamer on the gravel road from the by-pass to the property, teaching some kids the simple joy of skipping rocks in the creek, and playing beach-ball volleyball in the bottom.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/the-exhausting-weekend-that-was.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYeah, so this was supposed to be the weekend where I relaxed all Saturday, staying in bed all day if I wished\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;so, naturally, we reorganized the house and Rug Doctor\u0026rsquo;d the carpets. In between doing that, I found time to change the oil in the Beamer. All this, while Joey lived la dolce vita down at Dale Hollow Lake.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe lowpoint was probably when the Purolator filter in the E30 decided to get stuck, at the same time my left shoulder had a heat cramp. I finally crawled under the car and got it unstuck with my StrapWrench from beneath.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The (exhausting) weekend that was..."},{"content":"Washington Post Article\nRarely has our system produced a more naked exercise in opportunism than this measure. Most conservatives oppose the minimum wage on principle as a form of government meddling in the marketplace. But moderate Republicans in jeopardy this fall desperately wanted an increase in the minimum wage.\nSo the seemingly ingenious Republican leadership, which dearly wants deep cuts in the estate tax, proposed offering nickels and dimes to the working class to secure billions for the rich. Fortunately, though not surprisingly, the bill failed.\nHeard about this this morning on the way in\u0026hellip;and it just didn\u0026rsquo;t make sense\u0026ndash;an increase in the minimum wage AND cuts in the Estate tax?\nHuh? What sort of game are these guys in the House running?\n* * *\nI don\u0026rsquo;t particularly agree with Dionne\u0026rsquo;s article, but I do see the current situation as untennable\u0026ndash;Ammericans en masse cannot support our current lifestyles given $3.00+ gasoline. Somethings got to give. Here in Lexington, we\u0026rsquo;re close to civil unrest as people witnessed a 30-cent rise in gas prices overnight, without a coincident rise in wholesale prices. In short, we all got gouged, and the airwaves were alight today with complaints.\nThis situation would be bad enough if we were a nation of fiscal conservatives, living well below their means. We\u0026rsquo;re not. Taken together, we max-out credit, overbuy houses, finance cars on 6-year notes. We lived right to the razor\u0026rsquo;s edge, and that was when gas was $1.20.\nI know one thing, I\u0026rsquo;d not mind converting my car to E85, or swapping-in a VW diesel. Yeah, blasphemy I know, but like I said: Interesting times. . .\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/may-you-be-cursed-to-live-in-interesting-times.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080301259.html\"\u003eWashington Post Article\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRarely has our system produced a more naked exercise in opportunism than this measure. Most conservatives oppose the minimum wage on principle as a form of government meddling in the marketplace. But moderate Republicans in jeopardy this fall desperately wanted an increase in the minimum wage.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the seemingly ingenious Republican leadership, which dearly wants deep cuts in the estate tax, proposed offering nickels and dimes to the working class to secure billions for the rich. Fortunately, though not surprisingly, the bill failed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"May you be cursed to live in interesting times..."},{"content":"The Republicans in congress don’t feel that it is \u0026hellip; Bryan - Aug 5, 2006\nThe Republicans in congress don’t feel that it is necessary to raise minimum wage, however they do feel it’s OK to give themselves a $30,000 a year “cost of living” raise. What a joke!\nThe Republicans in congress don’t feel that it is necessary to raise minimum wage, however they do feel it’s OK to give themselves a $30,000 a year “cost of living” raise. What a joke!\nWell, don\u0026rsquo;t get me started on politics. (Too late) But this Republican has watched a storybook set of majorities (could have come outta some Tom Clancy escapist plot) end up as the most depressing disappointment since I\u0026rsquo;ve been watching politics in 30+ years.\nEach party motivates its base with minimal progress on hot-button issues. (Parental notification for an abortion. DUH! It took 33 years to get that approved?!) Meanwhile the rapid transformation of the greatest country in the world to a big sludge-pile of fat socialists continues unabated, no matter which party is in power.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/may-you-be-cursed-to-live-in-interesting-times...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"the-republicans-in-congress-dont-feel-that-it-is-\"\u003eThe Republicans in congress don’t feel that it is \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/06943264340415790446\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eBryan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Republicans in congress don’t feel that it is necessary to raise minimum wage, however they do feel it’s OK to give themselves a $30,000 a year “cost of living” raise. What a joke!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Republicans in congress don’t feel that it is necessary to raise minimum wage, however they do feel it’s OK to give themselves a $30,000 a year “cost of living” raise. What a joke!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"May you be cursed to live in interesting times... (Comments)"},{"content":"Caterpillars run amok\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/dagen-d%C3%A5-larverna-kom-till-flogsta/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://user.it.uu.se/~svens/larverna/normal.html\"\u003eCaterpillars run amok\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://user.it.uu.se/~svens/larverna/35-cykel_med_korg-normal.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dagen då larverna kom till Flogsta"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;HEEELLLP \u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;. MMMMMEEEEEEEEE\u0026rdquo; JarvoSpeaks - Aug 4, 2006\n\u0026ldquo;HEEELLLP \u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;. MMMMMEEEEEEEEE\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/dagen-d%C3%A5-larverna-kom-till-flogsta-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"heeelllp--mmmmmeeeeeeeee\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;HEEELLLP \u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;. MMMMMEEEEEEEEE\u0026rdquo;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/01705426928526831426\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJarvoSpeaks\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 4, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;HEEELLLP \u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;. MMMMMEEEEEEEEE\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Dagen då larverna kom till Flogsta (Comments)"},{"content":"[Interior: Postmodern tech-company building with central spiral staircase]\nHarold, our intrepid protagonist walks down one flight of stairs, three individual 90-degree spiralled segments, to the floor below. He carries a sheet of paper containing the candidate\u0026rsquo;s resumé in one hand, a water-filled tupperware cup in the other. He looks off the the right, then suddenly finds himself falling down the stairs, landing on his left side, most of the impact on his left shin \u0026amp; ankle. His left hand is numb.\nWater spills everywhere on the stairs.\nThe foyer of the building is full of people\nHarold: \u0026ldquo;S$^t!\u0026rdquo;\nGirl: \u0026ldquo;Are you okay man\u0026rdquo;\nHarold: [shakes left hand]. \u0026ldquo;murmph\u0026rdquo;\nLisa: \u0026ldquo;Are you okay, Harold?\u0026rdquo;\nHarold: \u0026ldquo;Yeah\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nMy pride is bruised, and I\u0026rsquo;m sure my ankle will be tomorrow. You\u0026rsquo;d think I\u0026rsquo;d WATCH WHERE I WAS GOING!!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/there-are-bad-days-then-there-are-days-when-you-fall-down-the-stairs/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e[Interior: Postmodern tech-company building with central spiral staircase]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold, our intrepid protagonist walks down one flight of stairs, three individual 90-degree spiralled segments, to the floor below. He carries a sheet of paper containing the candidate\u0026rsquo;s resumé in one hand, a water-filled tupperware cup in the other. He looks off the the right, then suddenly finds himself falling down the stairs, landing on his left side, most of the impact on his left shin \u0026amp; ankle. His left hand is numb.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"There are bad days, then there are days when you fall down the stairs"},{"content":"Owwwwwwww! Is there somewhere I can vote for \u0026ldquo;Fun\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Aug 2, 2006\nOwwwwwwww! Is there somewhere I can vote for \u0026ldquo;Funniest 2 blog items I\u0026rsquo;ve seen in a while?\u0026rdquo;\n(The string I have to type in to verify that I\u0026rsquo;m not an ad-spam-bot is \u0026ldquo;shjss\u0026rdquo;, which might be close to what you said as you fell.)\nWell, I seriously began to wonder if blogspot.com was sending me coded messages in the verification words, because mine earlier today was something like \u0026ldquo;websxy\u0026rdquo;. (And the letters were slanted in a very suggestive way.)\nGlad you were okay. I have nearly done about the same thing several times because I was dialing my cell phone while walking down the same hallway.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/there-are-bad-days-then-there-are-days-when-you-fall-down-the-stairs-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"owwwwwwww-is-there-somewhere-i-can-vote-for-fun\"\u003eOwwwwwwww! Is there somewhere I can vote for \u0026ldquo;Fun\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eAug 2, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOwwwwwwww! Is there somewhere I can vote for \u0026ldquo;Funniest 2 blog items I\u0026rsquo;ve seen in a while?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(The string I have to type in to verify that I\u0026rsquo;m not an ad-spam-bot is \u0026ldquo;shjss\u0026rdquo;, which might be close to what you said as you fell.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, I seriously began to wonder if blogspot.com was sending me coded messages in the verification words, because mine earlier today was something like \u0026ldquo;websxy\u0026rdquo;. (And the letters were slanted in a very suggestive way.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"There are bad days, then there are days when you fall down the stairs (Comments)"},{"content":"As a growing Ubuntu acolyte, this is just hilarious:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/08/mac-ad-spoof/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs a growing \u003ca href=\"http://www.ubuntu.com/\"\u003eUbuntu\u003c/a\u003e acolyte, this is just hilarious:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Mac Ad spoof\""},{"content":"After a morning of sleeping-in, procuring some coffee at Kroger, and gassing-up the Intrigue, we headed to Beattyville, leaving at 2 and arriving around 5 (!)\nThe news:\n- Dad bought a truck. It\u0026rsquo;s the same truck as his last truck, but it has the advantage of 97k fewer miles and a higher differential ratio (3.43 v 3.73)\n- Used the air tools to rotate the tires on the intrigue.\n- Dad tried to use the same technique to teach Joey to catch a baseball that he used with me. With similar results\u0026ndash;Joey ran into the house. Was alot of fun, though, being an objective observer.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re spending the night, and Bella thought she felt the baby kick for the first time! :D\n* * *\nWork was pretty fun the remainder of Friday\u0026ndash;sat at home trying to figure out an XSLT stylesheet on an XML document, basically to automatically generate the settings documentation for our new system.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/reports-from-the-frontlines--dateline-beattyville/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter a morning of sleeping-in, procuring some coffee at Kroger, and gassing-up the Intrigue, we headed to Beattyville, leaving at 2 and arriving around 5 (!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe news:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Dad bought a truck. It\u0026rsquo;s the same truck as his last truck, but it has the advantage of 97k fewer miles and a higher differential ratio (3.43 v 3.73)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Used the air tools to rotate the tires on the intrigue.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reports from the frontlines--DATELINE BEATTYVILLE"},{"content":"Nothing like having the Hershey Squirts all morning combined with too little sleep to make one perky on a Friday.\n* * *\nThought: I must stop caring what people at work think of me. I\u0026rsquo;ve got folks like David, Jeff, and Patrick, who are just awesome, supportive, and real. And, they\u0026rsquo;re all alot older than me. Then, I have people my own age who are just not nice. Ugh.\n* * *\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/not-entirely-booted-today.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNothing like having the Hershey Squirts all morning combined with too little sleep to make one perky on a Friday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThought: I must stop caring what people at work think of me. I\u0026rsquo;ve got folks like David, Jeff, and Patrick, who are just awesome, supportive, and real. And, they\u0026rsquo;re all alot older than me. Then, I have people my own age who are just not nice. Ugh.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Not entirely booted today..."},{"content":"(On exiting the tennis court this morning)\nMe: Man, you were hittin\u0026rsquo; that ball pretty well? Your dad been workin\u0026rsquo; with you?\nJoey: No. I\u0026rsquo;m just good!\nhehe\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/in-case-we-doubted-joeys-self-image.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e(On exiting the tennis court this morning)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: Man, you were hittin\u0026rsquo; that ball pretty well? Your dad been workin\u0026rsquo; with you?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoey: No. I\u0026rsquo;m just good!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ehehe\u003c/p\u003e","title":"In case we doubted Joey's self-image..."},{"content":"Annoyances.org - Top 10 things likely to be overheard from a Klingon Programmer\nOH YEAH!!!!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/annoyances.org-top-10-things-likely-to-be-overheard-from-a-klingon-programmer/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article09-205\"\u003eAnnoyances.org - Top 10 things likely to be overheard from a Klingon Programmer\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOH YEAH!!!!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Annoyances.org - Top 10 things likely to be overheard from a Klingon Programmer"},{"content":"Wow, and I thought Scott Adams worked in the next \u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jul 5, 2006\nWow, and I thought Scott Adams worked in the next cubicle. Little did I know Warf was on the other side!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/annoyances.org-top-10-things-likely-to-be-overheard-from-a-klingon-programmer-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"wow-and-i-thought-scott-adams-worked-in-the-next-\"\u003eWow, and I thought Scott Adams worked in the next \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWow, and I thought Scott Adams worked in the next cubicle. Little did I know Warf was on the other side!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Annoyances.org - Top 10 things likely to be overheard from a Klingon Programmer (Comments)"},{"content":"Pardon my interrupting your prayer and feel free n\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jul 3, 2006\nPardon my interrupting your prayer and feel free not to accept this comment but \u0026ldquo;despair\u0026rdquo; ? I\u0026rsquo;m sure my \u0026ldquo;don\u0026rsquo;t sweat the small stuff\u0026hellip;or even the medium-sized stuff\u0026rdquo; attitude of late isn\u0026rsquo;t optimal (although it aligns pretty well with my raise amount!) but don\u0026rsquo;t let stuff get to ya dude. Wife, kid, another kid on the way\u0026hellip;life is *good*.\n:-) Yeah, this was me being melodramatic, as usual I guess. Intended to make this a \u0026lsquo;save as draft\u0026rsquo;, but it got published.\nAppreciate it very much, and yep, life is VERY good! I\u0026rsquo;m totally blessed\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/a-morning-prayer...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"pardon-my-interrupting-your-prayer-and-feel-free-n\"\u003ePardon my interrupting your prayer and feel free n\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 3, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePardon my interrupting your prayer and feel free not to accept this comment but \u0026ldquo;despair\u0026rdquo; ? I\u0026rsquo;m sure my \u0026ldquo;don\u0026rsquo;t sweat the small stuff\u0026hellip;or even the medium-sized stuff\u0026rdquo; attitude of late isn\u0026rsquo;t optimal (although it aligns pretty well with my raise amount!) but don\u0026rsquo;t let stuff get to ya dude. Wife, kid, another kid on the way\u0026hellip;life is *good*.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A morning prayer... (Comments)"},{"content":"\nSpent Friday night and Saturday up in Columbus, Ohio at a Promise Keepers event, held at the 20,000-seat Nationwide arena.\nIt was a great experience, as 7 of us from Northside Christian Church (Pastor Scott, Ryan, Me, Rick, Chuck, Tim, and Jason) headed out at 2:30pm in the rental 15-passenger van. On the whole, it was great to just be myself, not worried about talking sports, or computers, or whatever else. I could be comfortable and enjoy just laughing and being myself.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/promise-keepers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.pk7db.com/temp/PK7_Worship.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpent Friday night and Saturday up in Columbus, Ohio at a \u003ca href=\"http://www.promisekeepers.org/\"\u003ePromise Keepers\u003c/a\u003e event, held at the 20,000-seat \u003ca href=\"http://www.nationwidearena.com/\"\u003eNationwide arena\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a great experience, as 7 of us from Northside Christian Church (Pastor Scott, Ryan, Me, Rick, Chuck, Tim, and Jason) headed out at 2:30pm in the rental 15-passenger van. On the whole, it was great to just be myself, not worried about talking sports, or computers, or whatever else. I could be comfortable and enjoy just laughing and being myself.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Promise Keepers"},{"content":"We\u0026rsquo;re looking forward to Atlanta this weekend Kerry Woo - Jul 2, 2006\nWe\u0026rsquo;re looking forward to Atlanta this weekend\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/promise-keepers-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"were-looking-forward-to-atlanta-this-weekend\"\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re looking forward to Atlanta this weekend\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/15020966742435764510\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eKerry Woo\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 2, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re looking forward to Atlanta this weekend\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Promise Keepers (Comments)"},{"content":"Intel to ax 1,000 managers | CNET News.com\nAh, if only\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/intel-to-ax-1000-managers-cnet-news.com/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://news.com.com/Intel+axes+1,000+managers/2100-1014_3-6093843.html\"\u003eIntel to ax 1,000 managers | CNET News.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAh, if only\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Intel to ax 1,000 managers | CNET News.com"},{"content":"I sit basking in the glow of my citronella candle as the last pink of day turns to gray. Relaxed. Sated.\nToday was a study in contrasts\u0026ndash;my relaxation now versus me taking a DeWalt cordless drill to the remains of my powerbook as I salvaged the Hard Drive. Bella wanted the pictures off it. I got through 16 little screws, but the final two holding the hard drive to the case itself stripped out. I was a little frustrated and thought \u0026ldquo;Well, if this were a car, I\u0026rsquo;d just grab a metal bit and drill-out the screws.\u0026rdquo;\nTurns out, this is a perfectly serviceable option for laptops, too.\n* * *\nLater, we washed both cars and gave the Bimmer a nice-smelling coat of carnuba. Noticed more nicks-and-scratches than when I bought it a few months ago. Must\u0026hellip;.get\u0026hellip;touchup\u0026hellip;paint!!\nKinda wish today wouldn\u0026rsquo;t end, as up-and-down as it\u0026rsquo;s been.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/a-wonderful-day.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI sit basking in the glow of my citronella candle as the last pink of day turns to gray. Relaxed. Sated.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday was a study in contrasts\u0026ndash;my relaxation now versus me taking a DeWalt cordless drill to the remains of my powerbook as I salvaged the Hard Drive. Bella wanted the pictures off it. I got through 16 little screws, but the final two holding the hard drive to the case itself stripped out. I was a little frustrated and thought \u0026ldquo;Well, if this were a car, I\u0026rsquo;d just grab a metal bit and drill-out the screws.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A wonderful day..."},{"content":"I hear you on the touch-up paint. I washed the El\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jul 1, 2006\nI hear you on the touch-up paint. I washed the Elantra and there\u0026rsquo;s a pea-sized chip along the outside of one of the wheel wells. I also need a big can of TRUCK-nuba for the green machine. And a chamois. And a hydraulic lift.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/a-wonderful-day...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-hear-you-on-the-touch-up-paint-i-washed-the-el\"\u003eI hear you on the touch-up paint. I washed the El\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJul 1, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI hear you on the touch-up paint. I washed the Elantra and there\u0026rsquo;s a pea-sized chip along the outside of one of the wheel wells. I also need a big can of TRUCK-nuba for the green machine. And a chamois. And a hydraulic lift.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"A wonderful day... (Comments)"},{"content":" Um\u0026hellip;mommy\u0026hellip;\nI wanna wear spidey and my football pijamas, but I can\u0026rsquo;t \u0026lsquo;cuz they don\u0026rsquo;t match\nYike.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/just-overheard-at-our-house/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUm\u0026hellip;mommy\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI wanna wear spidey and my football pijamas, but I can\u0026rsquo;t \u0026lsquo;cuz they don\u0026rsquo;t match\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYike.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Just overheard at our house"},{"content":"Ruby is an awesome, powerful little language.\nI needed a \u0026rsquo;time\u0026rsquo; command for windows to measure the execution time (in seconds) of a command. Should be trivial, but I\u0026rsquo;m not Windows API savvy. Here\u0026rsquo;s the full script in Ruby:\nt1 = Time.new IO.popen(ARGV.join(\u0026#39; \u0026#39;)) { |pipe| puts pipe.gets } t2 = Time.new puts \u0026#34;Execution time: #{t2 - t1} seconds\u0026#34; Simple, direct, and obvious. LOVE IT!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/gotta-love-ruby/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://ruby-lang.org/en/\"\u003eRuby\u003c/a\u003e is an awesome, powerful little language.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI needed a \u0026rsquo;time\u0026rsquo; command for windows to measure the execution time (in seconds) of a command. Should be trivial, but I\u0026rsquo;m not Windows API savvy. Here\u0026rsquo;s the full script in Ruby:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"highlight\"\u003e\u003cpre tabindex=\"0\" style=\"color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;-webkit-text-size-adjust:none;\"\u003e\u003ccode class=\"language-Ruby\" data-lang=\"Ruby\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display:flex;\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\n\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display:flex;\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003et1 \u003cspan style=\"color:#f92672\"\u003e=\u003c/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"color:#66d9ef\"\u003eTime\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#f92672\"\u003e.\u003c/span\u003enew  \n\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display:flex;\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#66d9ef\"\u003eIO\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#f92672\"\u003e.\u003c/span\u003epopen(\u003cspan style=\"color:#66d9ef\"\u003eARGV\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#f92672\"\u003e.\u003c/span\u003ejoin(\u003cspan style=\"color:#e6db74\"\u003e\u0026#39; \u0026#39;\u003c/span\u003e)) { \u003cspan style=\"color:#f92672\"\u003e|\u003c/span\u003epipe\u003cspan style=\"color:#f92672\"\u003e|\u003c/span\u003e puts pipe\u003cspan style=\"color:#f92672\"\u003e.\u003c/span\u003egets }  \n\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display:flex;\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003et2 \u003cspan style=\"color:#f92672\"\u003e=\u003c/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"color:#66d9ef\"\u003eTime\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#f92672\"\u003e.\u003c/span\u003enew  \n\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display:flex;\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\n\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display:flex;\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eputs \u003cspan style=\"color:#e6db74\"\u003e\u0026#34;Execution time: \u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#e6db74\"\u003e#{\u003c/span\u003et2 \u003cspan style=\"color:#f92672\"\u003e-\u003c/span\u003e t1\u003cspan style=\"color:#e6db74\"\u003e}\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color:#e6db74\"\u003e seconds\u0026#34;\u003c/span\u003e  \n\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eSimple, direct, and obvious. LOVE IT!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gotta love Ruby!"},{"content":"The Lord granted us a respite last night just long enough for a clear sky for the awesome Scott County fireworks show, but this morning has been a steady, slow rain, up to 1\u0026quot; on my rain gauge.\nWe need it desperately.\n* * *\nIn other news, the new baby Combs is actually at 10 weeks instead of 9, putting his or her delivery date at February 5th. New ultrasound scans coming soon.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/let-it-rain/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Lord granted us a respite last night just long enough for a clear sky for the awesome Scott County fireworks show, but this morning has been a steady, slow rain, up to 1\u0026quot; on my rain gauge.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe need it desperately.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn other news, the new baby Combs is actually at 10 weeks instead of 9, putting his or her delivery date at February 5th. New ultrasound scans coming soon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Let it rain!!"},{"content":"In church yesterday, out of the blue, my inclination was \u0026ldquo;You need to go visit your parents.\u0026rdquo; Sans Joey this weekend, I told Whitney we needed to go and she thought it was a great idea.\nHad a wonderful time with Mom, Dad, Norie, and Mike getting in about 248 bales of hay off some land just around-the-corner from their farm. Hot, dry day in the 90\u0026rsquo;s, but it turned out for the best: I helped with the hay, got some exercise, and got some \u0026ldquo;quality time\u0026rdquo; with Dad. Whitney was bored to tears, but at least she got to stay cool.\nWe all miss Joey and look forward to having him for the 4th of July.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/making-hay-on-independence-day.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn church yesterday, out of the blue, my inclination was \u0026ldquo;You need to go visit your parents.\u0026rdquo; Sans Joey this weekend, I told Whitney we needed to go and she thought it was a great idea.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHad a wonderful time with Mom, Dad, Norie, and Mike getting in about 248 bales of hay off some land just around-the-corner from their farm. Hot, dry day in the 90\u0026rsquo;s, but it turned out for the best: I helped with the hay, got some exercise, and got some \u0026ldquo;quality time\u0026rdquo; with Dad. Whitney was bored to tears, but at least she got to stay cool.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Making Hay on Independence Day..."},{"content":"The powers that be bought the whole regular employee cadre tix to the matinee of Superman Returns. I hated it, but then I didn\u0026rsquo;t care for the first 4.\nThe movie comes (in the dc comics reality) after the events in Superman II, but prior to those of Superman III. Superman left 5 years ago to investigate the last-known position of Krypton, his homeworld, only to find the world has all but forgotten him and that his former love has a new live-in man and a 5-year old kid.\nThis expensive, Bryan Singer-directed film was all the superlatives\u0026ndash;stunning visuals, sweeping story, well-developed characters.\nBut I didn\u0026rsquo;t like it\u0026hellip;Kate Bosworth was the same icky, unattractive Lois Lane as Margot Kidder, and Brandon Routh was the same smirking Superman as Chris Reeve. However, Routh is somehow less emotionally engaging.\nThere are many bright moments: The film lapses into comedy (maybe even camp) once we\u0026rsquo;ve hit the rising action. One precious scene has Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor chewing the scenery as he rejoins with Lois. And, for once, someone FINALLY typecasts Parker Posey as the screeching bimbo she showed us in Best In Show\nIn summary, the defining thought I had going home was \u0026ldquo;How many starving people could\u0026rsquo;ve been feed for this film\u0026rsquo;s budget?\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/07/superman-returns-review/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe powers that be bought the whole regular employee cadre tix to the matinee of \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0348150/\"\u003eSuperman Returns\u003c/a\u003e. I hated it, but then I didn\u0026rsquo;t care for the first 4.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe movie comes (in the dc comics reality) after the events in Superman II, but prior to those of Superman III. Superman left 5 years ago to investigate the last-known position of Krypton, his homeworld, only to find the world has all but forgotten him and that his former love has a new live-in man and a 5-year old kid.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Superman Returns Review"},{"content":"Okay, my brain is off-the-wall sometimes. I was watching some sort a show about Bradd Pitt and Angelina Jolie and thought. \u0026ldquo;Dang, guys are just pigs. All we think about is sex. Our nature is to be promiscuous.\u0026rdquo; Brad had left Jennifer Aniston to be with a \u0026ldquo;better\u0026rdquo; (?) woman, Angelina.\nSomething, though, made me think that wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite right: WOMEN should tend to be more promiscuous than men. Here\u0026rsquo;s my thoughts, ignorning the obvious moral concerns and thinking anthropologically:\nConsider a society of people. That society will have a bell-curve distribution of traits, with some butt-ugly morons and some beautiful geniuses. To maintain social cohesion, as well as to provide for the best environment to rear children, that society arranges itself as mating pairs, as we would say, husband and wife. The husband provides protection and livelihood for the family, and the wife bears and rears the children.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the catch, though\u0026ndash;the wife needs the husband to provide the environment to rear the children, but it\u0026rsquo;s to her advantage to mate with the best male possible to produce the strongest offspring. Once that secret tryst has her pregnant, she can go back to her husband, who will raise that child as his own.\nThis has some practical problems\u0026ndash;if the local gene pool isn\u0026rsquo;t homogenous, you could have troubles with eye color, hair color, or even racial features that would be a dead giveaway. However, some cultures (particularly some African tribes) the above scenario does occur.\n\u0026hellip;and I\u0026rsquo;ve watched enough Jerry Springer to know that it happens in our society too.\n* * *\nAnyway, just an interesting thought in terms of how bad human nature can be.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/on-the-logic-of-female-promiscuity/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, my brain is off-the-wall sometimes. I was watching some sort a show about Bradd Pitt and Angelina Jolie and thought. \u0026ldquo;Dang, guys are just pigs. All we think about is sex. Our nature is to be promiscuous.\u0026rdquo; Brad had left Jennifer Aniston to be with a \u0026ldquo;better\u0026rdquo; (?) woman, Angelina.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething, though, made me think that wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite right: WOMEN should tend to be more promiscuous than men. Here\u0026rsquo;s my thoughts, ignorning the obvious moral concerns and thinking anthropologically:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the logic of female promiscuity"},{"content":"Mechanic’s Tale: Junkyard Dogs - The Car Connection: \u0026ldquo;In the crazy Jac Nasser years at Ford I kept hearing rumors of Ford attempting to buy up large numbers of junkyards. He chased every unprofitable business strategy that came down the pike, so I guess he could have taken the profit out of junkyards too.\u0026rdquo;\n(to the tune of \u0026ldquo;Oh, how I love Jesus\u0026rdquo;)\n_\nOh, how I hate Fo-ords,\nOh, how I hate Fo-ords,\nYes, Oh, how I hate Fo-ords,\nBecause they first hated me.\n_\nPeople speculated that Ford wanted cradle-to-grave control of their product. I have a different theory. He probably figured that by delivering the new Ford products directly to the junkyard, they cut out the costly dealer network and distribution system. He could also avoid dealing with those pain-in-the-neck old guys who actually bought Ford products and complained when they didn\u0026rsquo;t perform right.\u0026quot;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/mechanics-tale-junkyard-dogs-the-car-connection/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.thecarconnection.com/Enthusiasts/Mechanics_Tale/Mechanics_Tale_Junkyard_Dogs.S281.A10471.html\"\u003eMechanic’s Tale: Junkyard Dogs - The Car Connection\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;In the crazy Jac Nasser years at Ford I kept hearing rumors of Ford attempting to buy up large numbers of junkyards. He chased every unprofitable business strategy that came down the pike, so I guess he could have taken the profit out of junkyards too.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(to the tune of \u0026ldquo;Oh, how I love Jesus\u0026rdquo;)\u003cbr\u003e\n_\u003cbr\u003e\nOh, how I hate Fo-ords,\u003cbr\u003e\nOh, how I hate Fo-ords,\u003cbr\u003e\nYes, Oh, how I hate Fo-ords,\u003cbr\u003e\nBecause they first hated me.\u003cbr\u003e\n_\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mechanic’s Tale: Junkyard Dogs - The Car Connection"},{"content":":-) Can\u0026rsquo;t believe I have 700 posts on here\u0026hellip;wow.\n* * *\nAh, the weekend: Joey, Whitney, and I went up to da Ville to attend a wedding. Small, neat affair off Peterson St in the Highlands. For a simple wedding-on-the-porch, it had lots of mishaps\u0026ndash;Firetruck went by during the special music, flower-girl pancaked on the dancefloor (with exciting bleeding!), and the photographer\u0026rsquo;s assistant passed-out.\nWhitney felt faint and my persistent hamstring injury kept us off the dancefloor :-(\nWe spent the night w/Stu and Rachel.\n* * *\nWe spent all of Saturday at the Louisville Science Center. Awesome place; pricey, but worth it.\n* * *\nSunday was pretty awful\u0026hellip;I was cranky and tired, and didn\u0026rsquo;t really \u0026ldquo;wake up\u0026rdquo; until after 3pm.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/700-posts--the-weekend/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e:-) Can\u0026rsquo;t believe I have 700 posts on here\u0026hellip;wow.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAh, the weekend: Joey, Whitney, and I went up to da Ville to attend a wedding. Small, neat affair off Peterson St in the Highlands. For a simple wedding-on-the-porch, it had lots of mishaps\u0026ndash;Firetruck went by during the special music, flower-girl pancaked on the dancefloor (with exciting bleeding!), and the photographer\u0026rsquo;s assistant passed-out.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney felt faint and my persistent hamstring injury kept us off the dancefloor :-(\u003c/p\u003e","title":"700 posts + the weekend"},{"content":"Republicans: People who will stay out of your business, but dictate your personal life\nDemocrats: People who will dictate your business, but stay out of your personal life.\nWoohoo!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/quote-from-sue/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRepublicans: People who will stay out of your business, but dictate your personal life\u003cbr\u003e\nDemocrats: People who will dictate your business, but stay out of your personal life.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWoohoo!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote from Sue"},{"content":"Whitney: [describing the our if-then chart from Doorposts]\nPastor: That sounds great could you bring those in?\nW: Sure.\nPastor (joking): Bring in the one for Harold as well.\nMe: That one takes up the whole outside wall of the house.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/gag-from-last-nights-parenting-class.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhitney: [describing the our if-then chart from \u003ca href=\"http://www.doorposts.net/if_then.asp\"\u003eDoorposts\u003c/a\u003e]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePastor: That sounds great could you bring those in?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eW: Sure.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePastor (joking): Bring in the one for Harold as well.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: That one takes up the whole outside wall of the house.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gag from last night's parenting class..."},{"content":"I am SOOOOO happy today: Whitney is 7 weeks along with our first child!!!\nShe gave me the news only a few weeks ago, and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t be happier. Her first OB appointment was today, and they did bloodwork and gave her brand-name neo-natal vitamins to take.\nI thank God for blessing us with a new soul to bring into this world, and pray that he give us the guidance in raising him or her. (Whitney think\u0026rsquo;s it\u0026rsquo;s a girl, BTW\u0026hellip;terrible morning sickness!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/happy-fathers-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI am SOOOOO happy today: Whitney is 7 weeks along with our first child!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/5126/baby7weeksthumb3rs.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe gave me the news only a few weeks ago, and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t be happier. Her first OB appointment was today, and they did bloodwork and gave her brand-name neo-natal vitamins to take.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI thank God for blessing us with a new soul to bring into this world, and pray that he give us the guidance in raising him or her. (Whitney think\u0026rsquo;s it\u0026rsquo;s a girl, BTW\u0026hellip;terrible morning sickness!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Happy Father's Day!"},{"content":"Awesome! Congratulations! Let the name games begi\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - Jun 4, 2006\nAwesome! Congratulations! Let the name games begin\u0026hellip;\nCat A. Combs\nFine Toothed Combs\nHoney Combs\nHmm, not quite as fun as when my friend, Mr. Bean, had his first kid.\nCongrats :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/happy-fathers-day-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"awesome-congratulations-let-the-name-games-begi\"\u003eAwesome! Congratulations! Let the name games begi\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 4, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAwesome! Congratulations! Let the name games begin\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCat A. Combs\u003cbr\u003e\nFine Toothed Combs\u003cbr\u003e\nHoney Combs\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHmm, not quite as fun as when my friend, Mr. Bean, had his first kid.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCongrats :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Happy Father's Day! (Comments)"},{"content":"Hardik Tank\u0026rsquo;s Weblog : Weblog\nThat\u0026rsquo;s just bizarre\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/hardik-tanks-weblog-weblog/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://jroller.com/page/hardik_tank?entry=issue_with_windows_notepad\"\u003eHardik Tank\u0026rsquo;s Weblog : Weblog\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s just bizarre\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hardik Tank's Weblog : Weblog"},{"content":"Neat \u0026ldquo;Battle of the Bands\u0026rdquo; type thing tomorrow night, courtesy of Sam Rhodus, my former team lead and all-around cool guy:\nThis Wednesday night (6/21/06) my band D-Sul will be competing in WKQQ\u0026rsquo;s Decent Exposure at the Blue Moon. This contest is based entirely on fan votes so I\u0026rsquo;d love for you guys to get out and vote for D-Sul. The prize money would be enough to get our EP out the door. We\u0026rsquo;re on late (Midnight), but you don\u0026rsquo;t have to stick around late to vote for us. You can come, hangout with us, vote (as often as you\u0026rsquo;d like for $5 each) and leave. I would encourage you all to watch the show as it\u0026rsquo;s pretty good, but your vote really counts here and it IS a school night : )\nShow starts at 9pm, we\u0026rsquo;re on at 12.\nThis is in Lexington, KY, if you\u0026rsquo;re interested\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ll be doing bible study that night, but hey\u0026hellip;:-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/announcement-ppl-@-lxk-do-stuff-besides-code/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNeat \u0026ldquo;Battle of the Bands\u0026rdquo; type thing tomorrow night, courtesy of Sam Rhodus, my former team lead and all-around cool guy:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis Wednesday night (6/21/06) my band D-Sul will be competing in WKQQ\u0026rsquo;s Decent Exposure at the Blue Moon. This contest is based entirely on fan votes so I\u0026rsquo;d love for you guys to get out and vote for D-Sul. The prize money would be enough to get our EP out the door. We\u0026rsquo;re on late (Midnight), but you don\u0026rsquo;t have to stick around late to vote for us. You can come, hangout with us, vote (as often as you\u0026rsquo;d like for $5 each) and leave. I would encourage you all to watch the show as it\u0026rsquo;s pretty good, but your vote really counts here and it IS a school night : )\u003cbr\u003e\nShow starts at 9pm, we\u0026rsquo;re on at 12.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Announcement: Ppl @ LXK do stuff besides code"},{"content":"Just read Nehemiah this morning, the account of the Persian governor of Judah, rebuilder of Jerusalem\u0026rsquo;s walls after the Chaldeans destroyed them under Nebuchadnezzar.\nAlright, from Joshua through Nehemiah, I can pretty much boil it down to this:\nNation israel = new Nation(); for ( ;; ) { israel.forgetAbout( GOD ); israel.getPunishedBy( GOD ); israel = new Nation( israel.getRemnant() ) } GOD, of course, is a global constant, visible to everyone.\n* * *\nI mean, granted, just look how much Americans have screwed-up our own society in only 200+ years, which is a mere drop-in-the bucket compared to Moses-\u0026gt;David-\u0026gt;Jesus, but could these people NOT understand what was going to happen?\nUltimately, Israel (and then Israel + Judah) was a peon little nation at the crossroads between one big hairy power to the South (Egypt) and a REALLY bad set of guys to the northeast ( take your pick\u0026ndash;Assyria, Neo-Babylon, Persia, Alexander the Great, the Selucids ). God (YHWH) was pretty much their only chance, walled cities or not.\n[Stewie]\u0026ldquo;Hey, pass the Asherath pole, I\u0026rsquo;m feeling sinful!\u0026rdquo;[/Stewie]\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/quickie-israeli-history-explained./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust read Nehemiah this morning, the account of the Persian governor of Judah, rebuilder of Jerusalem\u0026rsquo;s walls after the Chaldeans destroyed them under Nebuchadnezzar.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlright, from Joshua through Nehemiah, I can pretty much boil it down to this:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\u003ccode\u003e\n\nNation israel = new Nation();  \nfor ( ;; )  \n{  \n  israel.forgetAbout( GOD );  \n  israel.getPunishedBy( GOD );  \n  israel = new Nation( israel.getRemnant() )  \n}  \n\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e\u003cp\u003eGOD, of course, is a global constant, visible to everyone.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quickie:   Israeli history explained."},{"content":"Dropped the beamer at Paul\u0026rsquo;s foreign auto (2nd street \u0026amp; MLK ) and then walked the 2.5 miles back to Lexmark in about 30 minutes. Good exercise for my pulled hamstring and just good \u0026ldquo;me\u0026rdquo; time.\nRead John Eldridge\u0026rsquo;s Wild At Heart over the weekend\nI must say, REALLY challenging book, written like a bad Freshman Composition paper. How shall we convince our audience to get off the couch and be real men? Let\u0026rsquo;s quote a bazillion \u0026ldquo;Real men\u0026rdquo; and make constant appeals to emotion. Let\u0026rsquo;s move from that to some Dave Ramsey-esque personal anecdotes that (obviously) apply to everyone out there. Let\u0026rsquo;s speak of broad vistas, of mountain climbing, kayaking, and other rather extreme sports. Did some of John\u0026rsquo;s buddies die doing those sports? Yep\u0026hellip;but hey, that\u0026rsquo;s the point right? Life\u0026rsquo;s an adventure, not a burden.\nMarvelous message, muddied by subpar, overwritten prose. This is a 200 page diatribe that could be a 100 page booklet. \u0026ldquo;Elements of Style\u0026rdquo; is 97 pages, and I\u0026rsquo;d say it gets its points across.\nAnyway, I think the best message of the book, in summary, is that every man\u0026rsquo;s been wounded by his father \u0026amp; the world, resulting in poseur men, guys who put forth a false self, robbing them of any true connection to God, their family, and their life\u0026rsquo;s work. This false self, initially a defense mechanism, becomes a tool of Satan to anesthetize and emasculate the man. At best, this keeps him from his potential; at worst, it damns him.\nEldridge encourages us to move past this falseness to become genuine men. Not jerks, but not passive, bored couch potatoes, either. Men able to fight against injustice, who see not one battle but a constant war against a lost world. Men ready to mentor and train the next generation of men, giving them the reassurance their own workaholic, irresponsible, or addicted fathers denied them.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a rousing message\u0026ndash;again, if you can just get past the way he says it.\nThanks for the father\u0026rsquo;s day gift, baby!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/a-nice-walk-from-the-mechanics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDropped the beamer at Paul\u0026rsquo;s foreign auto (2nd street \u0026amp; MLK ) and then walked the 2.5 miles back to Lexmark in about 30 minutes. Good exercise for my pulled hamstring and just good \u0026ldquo;me\u0026rdquo; time.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRead John Eldridge\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0785287965/sr=8-2/qid=1150723473\"\u003eWild At Heart\u003c/a\u003e over the weekend\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0785287965.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI must say, REALLY challenging book, written like a bad Freshman Composition paper. How shall we convince our audience to get off the couch and be real men? Let\u0026rsquo;s quote a bazillion \u0026ldquo;Real men\u0026rdquo; and make constant appeals to emotion. Let\u0026rsquo;s move from that to some Dave Ramsey-esque personal anecdotes that (obviously) apply to everyone out there. Let\u0026rsquo;s speak of broad vistas, of mountain climbing, kayaking, and other rather extreme sports. Did some of John\u0026rsquo;s buddies die doing those sports? Yep\u0026hellip;but hey, that\u0026rsquo;s the point right? Life\u0026rsquo;s an adventure, not a burden.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A nice walk from the mechanic's"},{"content":"_\nYooooooooooooooooooooo\u0026hellip;tengo un amigo que me ama\nme ama\nme ama\nYo tengo un amigo que me ama\nsu nombre es Jesus! :clap: :clap: :clap:\n_\nWelcome to VBS at Northside Christian church. We\u0026rsquo;ll happily take your kids off your hands, 2 hrs/day for 5 nights (6-8 pm).\nWe had a class of up to to 7: Drew, Jamie, Faith, Brooklyn, Shelby, Sierra, and that gal I can\u0026rsquo;t remember. From the 2nd night on, we were lucky to have 5. Pretty awesome week, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t too spiritual, just rather practical. Really liked all the yummy snacks we had had from the Church women, and interacting with the kids was neat.\nDrew\u0026rsquo;s a blast. He knows about Charlotte. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/vbs--a-retrospective/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e_\u003cbr\u003e\nYooooooooooooooooooooo\u0026hellip;tengo un amigo que me ama\u003cbr\u003e\nme ama\u003cbr\u003e\nme ama\u003cbr\u003e\nYo tengo un amigo que me ama\u003cbr\u003e\nsu nombre es Jesus! :clap: :clap: :clap:\u003cbr\u003e\n_\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWelcome to VBS at Northside Christian church. We\u0026rsquo;ll happily take your kids off your hands, 2 hrs/day for 5 nights (6-8 pm).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a class of up to to 7: Drew, Jamie, Faith, Brooklyn, Shelby, Sierra, and that gal I can\u0026rsquo;t remember. From the 2nd night on, we were lucky to have 5. Pretty awesome week, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t too spiritual, just rather practical. Really liked all the yummy snacks we had had from the Church women, and interacting with the kids was neat.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"VBS -- a retrospective"},{"content":"Cars\nCars is, possibly, the best pure movie about cars ever made: It celebrates all that is wonderful about automobiles\u0026ndash;freedom, exploration, and competition, all the while ignoring environmentalism, urban sprawl, and the disconnectedness that the automobile has imbued.\nCars is the latest effort from John Lassiter, renegade 3D animation pioneer and partner of Steve Jobs in Pixar. It follows 3D monuments like Toy Story, a Bugs Life, Monsters Inc., Nemo, and the Incredibles, and like them it\u0026rsquo;s a character-driven story. This time the protagonist is Lightning McQueen, a \u0026ldquo;Piston Cup\u0026rdquo; (wink, NASCAR!) rookie car who ditches his team in his quest to win the title himself. Surprise, he blows a tire on the last lap, forcing him into a 3-way runoff with King, played by Richard Petty, and Chick Hicks, the antagonist.\nMcQueen gets lost (literally!) half-way across Arizona and ends-up in Radiator Springs, a fictional town patterned after Winslow, Arizona. What follows is \u0026ldquo;Doc Hollywoood\u0026rdquo;, with cars instead of people. McQueen runs afowl of the local authority, is sentenced to menial labor, and through the course of his duties, finds his purpose and helps the town rediscover its own.\nThing is, the movie\u0026rsquo;s BETTER then that. Doc Hollywood\u0026rsquo;s a solid \u0026lsquo;B\u0026rsquo; movie. Cars is spectacular, especially in digital projection on the big screen, in surround sound. Colors pop, sounds zoom, and the detail on the cars is impeccable, down to wheel detail, transmission whine, and (of course!) engine note. This is the car-nerd / americana overload, and I LOVED IT!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/cars-review/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0317219/\"\u003eCars\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/44/28/10/10m.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCars is, possibly, the best pure movie about cars ever made: It celebrates all that is wonderful about automobiles\u0026ndash;freedom, exploration, and competition, all the while ignoring environmentalism, urban sprawl, and the disconnectedness that the automobile has imbued.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCars\u003c/em\u003e is the latest effort from John Lassiter, renegade 3D animation pioneer and partner of Steve Jobs in Pixar. It follows 3D monuments like Toy Story, a Bugs Life, Monsters Inc., Nemo, and the Incredibles, and like them it\u0026rsquo;s a character-driven story. This time the protagonist is Lightning McQueen, a \u0026ldquo;Piston Cup\u0026rdquo; (wink, NASCAR!) rookie car who ditches his team in his quest to win the title himself. Surprise, he blows a tire on the last lap, forcing him into a 3-way runoff with King, played by Richard Petty, and Chick Hicks, the antagonist.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Cars\" review"},{"content":"Article\nOverall it looks like Amazon Groceries may earn a few pennies of some family dollars, and it does make a never-outdoors life slightly easier to achieve. If the feature finds some traction in the market, it\u0026rsquo;s not hard to imagine a nationwide Webvan 2.0 operation in the future, riding on Amazon\u0026rsquo;s infrastructure and pushing the old-fashioned country store concept further into Hades.\nGreaaaaaaaaat.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/amazon-groceries-wtf/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060615-7068.html\"\u003eArticle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOverall it looks like Amazon Groceries may earn a few pennies of some family dollars, and it does make a never-outdoors life slightly easier to achieve. If the feature finds some traction in the market, it\u0026rsquo;s not hard to imagine a nationwide Webvan 2.0 operation in the future, riding on Amazon\u0026rsquo;s infrastructure and pushing the old-fashioned country store concept further into Hades.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGreaaaaaaaaat.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Amazon Groceries!?  WTF?"},{"content":"On Father\u0026rsquo;s Day. This is a new \u0026ldquo;day\u0026rdquo; for me, and I must say, I like it. I got some cools gifts and Joey, Whitney, and I really liked it.\nWhitney got me some neat cologne + aftershave (\u0026ldquo;Truth\u0026rdquo; from Calvin Klein), which I\u0026rsquo;ve been wearing for the past week, and Joey got me a baseball glove.\nJoe-man and I played catch for the first time, and it was AWESOME! :-)\n* * *\nAnyway, watched Bob Roberts on VHS last night, a long-term loan from Erik. Awesome, yet horrifying flick: A divisive, anti-intellectual demagogue arises and manipulates the Pennsylvania populace. An ensemble mockumentary, this movie skewers most of Washington, and it still seems current \u0026amp; appropriate.\nHow much of our national budget goes to defense? How much needs to? How do you \u0026ldquo;win\u0026rdquo; a war on terror?\nMy biggest regret from watching this film is noticing how different Congress is today from how it was in 1990. There are no moderates, only radicals on both sides.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/on-random-things/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn Father\u0026rsquo;s Day. This is a new \u0026ldquo;day\u0026rdquo; for me, and I must say, I like it. I got some cools gifts and Joey, Whitney, and I really liked it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney got me some neat cologne + aftershave (\u0026ldquo;Truth\u0026rdquo; from Calvin Klein), which I\u0026rsquo;ve been wearing for the past week, and Joey got me a baseball glove.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://dsp.imageg.net/graphics/product_images/p1678753dt.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoe-man and I played catch for the first time, and it was AWESOME! :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On random things"},{"content":"Bob Roberts is a favorite of mine. It ranks right \u0026hellip; Bryan - Jun 5, 2006\nBob Roberts is a favorite of mine. It ranks right up there with Bulworth and Wag the Dog, as far as political satires go.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/on-random-things-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"bob-roberts-is-a-favorite-of-mine-it-ranks-right-\"\u003eBob Roberts is a favorite of mine. It ranks right \u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/06943264340415790446\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eBryan\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBob Roberts is a favorite of mine. It ranks right up there with Bulworth and Wag the Dog, as far as political satires go.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"On random things (Comments)"},{"content":"Bud\nThe third stage is when things get a little difficult. There are too many new cars out, too many magazine covers taunting you with \u0026ldquo;NEW!\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;BEST EVER!\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;THE NEW BENCHMARK!\u0026rdquo; Too many cool cars coming out and showing up in your town, on your streets, and all of a sudden, you\u0026rsquo;re drivin\u0026rsquo; yesterday\u0026rsquo;s news. At this point, you either stay the course and don\u0026rsquo;t waver from your original plan, or you start to get edgy and you start distancing yourself from your choice. You like it okay and all, but you\u0026rsquo;re looking around and starting to spend far too much time reading car reviews again. You don\u0026rsquo;t quite have The Fever, but you can feel it coming in about six months or so.\nStop the train, I wanna get off. I want a car so old it\u0026rsquo;s not even yesterday\u0026rsquo;s news. Oh wait. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/dr.-buds-latest-column/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.autoextremist.com/page5.shtml#RoadKill\"\u003eBud\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe third stage is when things get a little difficult. There are too many new cars out, too many magazine covers taunting you with \u0026ldquo;NEW!\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;BEST EVER!\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;THE NEW BENCHMARK!\u0026rdquo; Too many cool cars coming out and showing up in your town, on your streets, and all of a sudden, you\u0026rsquo;re drivin\u0026rsquo; yesterday\u0026rsquo;s news. At this point, you either stay the course and don\u0026rsquo;t waver from your original plan, or you start to get edgy and you start distancing yourself from your choice. You like it okay and all, but you\u0026rsquo;re looking around and starting to spend far too much time reading car reviews again. You don\u0026rsquo;t quite have The Fever, but you can feel it coming in about six months or so.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dr. Bud's latest column"},{"content":"My old \u0026ldquo;private\u0026rdquo; blog is no more. It went to the scary delete button purgatory of Blogger, complete with its so-not-me-anymore sentiments.\nIn its place, I have a new public blog: Bimmer Whoa\u0026rsquo;s, to document my time with my 1990 325iS.\nShould be interesting.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/a-blog-for-my-car/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy old \u0026ldquo;private\u0026rdquo; blog is no more. It went to the scary delete button purgatory of Blogger, complete with its so-not-me-anymore sentiments.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn its place, I have a new public blog: \u003ca href=\"http://bimmerwhoas.blogspot.com/\"\u003eBimmer Whoa\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e, to document my time with my 1990 325iS.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShould be interesting.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A blog for my car"},{"content":"TCL thread\nOkay, I take several things from this thread:\nJust as cars used to be designed to rust/break, they\u0026rsquo;re now designed to run forever, but require dealer visits for all maintenance.\nOld cars rock. Engineered by rules-of-thumb and experience, not by CAD tolerances down to 1 mm / part. Understressed, overbuilt engines that were evolutionary.\nWow, I don\u0026rsquo;t want to own a new VW. Oh yeah, I knew that already.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/modern-cars-or-why-im-glad-i-have-an-e30/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zerothread?id=2648823\"\u003eTCL thread\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, I take several things from this thread:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as cars used to be designed to rust/break, they\u0026rsquo;re now designed to run forever, but require dealer visits for all maintenance.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOld cars rock. Engineered by rules-of-thumb and experience, not by CAD tolerances down to 1 mm / part. Understressed, overbuilt engines that were evolutionary.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWow, I don\u0026rsquo;t want to own a new VW. Oh yeah, I knew that already.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Modern cars\" or \"Why I'm glad I have an E30\""},{"content":"Haven\u0026rsquo;t been under 200lbs since I was in like 6th-7th grade.\nBut that\u0026rsquo;s where I need to be, BMI-wise.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/220...need-to-lose-~20-lbs.-yike.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHaven\u0026rsquo;t been under 200lbs since I was in like 6th-7th grade.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut that\u0026rsquo;s where I need to be, BMI-wise.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"220...need to lose ~20 lbs.  Yike..."},{"content":"Car lounge link\nCoupla thoughts here:\nSince cars have more computers, does this imply they\u0026rsquo;ll have bugs, by definition?\nWill any inside engineer even admit to \u0026ldquo;defective\u0026rdquo; products, especially given the legal ramifications?\nInterested to see where my CL thread goes, if it goes anywhere.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/bugs-in-the-auto-world/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zerothread?id=2645657\"\u003eCar lounge link\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCoupla thoughts here:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince cars have more computers, does this imply they\u0026rsquo;ll have bugs, by definition?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWill any inside engineer even admit to \u0026ldquo;defective\u0026rdquo; products, especially given the legal ramifications?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInterested to see where my CL thread goes, if it goes anywhere.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Bugs\" in the auto world"},{"content":"One ride.\nYep, one trip from the park entrance directly to The Beast killed our day. Me with a bruised ribcage, Whitney with debilitating feminine issues. Tip for those headed to PKI: Put your arms DOWN if you\u0026rsquo;re a big guy through the turns, I got racked back-and-forth between the 1st hill \u0026amp; the helix (after the braking run) and seriously couldn\u0026rsquo;t breathe for the rest of the ride. They\u0026rsquo;ve built the seat bolsters up so much that it\u0026rsquo;s just PAINFUL.\nSo, we left church, drove 92 miles to PKI, stayed for 3 hours, then drove back. Thank goodness it was on LXK\u0026rsquo;s dime, minus the 1/4 tank of gas.\nIn other news, if you go to PKI\u0026rsquo;s first aid stations, they\u0026rsquo;ll give you free over-the-counter medication, no-questions-asked. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/the-shortest-pki-trip-ever/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne ride.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.coasters.net/pictures/PKI/beaspov2.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYep, one trip from the park entrance directly to The Beast killed our day. Me with a bruised ribcage, Whitney with debilitating feminine issues. Tip for those headed to PKI: Put your arms DOWN if you\u0026rsquo;re a big guy through the turns, I got racked back-and-forth between the 1st hill \u0026amp; the helix (after the braking run) and seriously couldn\u0026rsquo;t breathe for the rest of the ride. They\u0026rsquo;ve built the seat bolsters up so much that it\u0026rsquo;s just PAINFUL.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The shortest PKI trip ever"},{"content":"_I been up, I been down.\nTake my word, my way around.\nI ain\u0026rsquo;t askin\u0026rsquo; for much.\nI said, lord, take me downtown,\nI\u0026rsquo;m just lookin\u0026rsquo; for some tush._\n* * *\nYike, it\u0026rsquo;s been an uneven few days. I\u0026rsquo;m totally pumped today, and I was a wreck yesterday. I\u0026rsquo;m having some integrity questions, and I don\u0026rsquo;t think this next management cycle\u0026rsquo;s going to be very good for me or my team.\n:-) But, it\u0026rsquo;s Friday.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/on-being-a-moody-s.o.b./","summary":"\u003cp\u003e_I been up, I been down.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTake my word, my way around.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI ain\u0026rsquo;t askin\u0026rsquo; for much.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said, lord, take me downtown,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m just lookin\u0026rsquo; for some tush._\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYike, it\u0026rsquo;s been an uneven few days. I\u0026rsquo;m totally pumped today, and I was a wreck yesterday. I\u0026rsquo;m having some integrity questions, and I don\u0026rsquo;t think this next management cycle\u0026rsquo;s going to be very good for me or my team.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On being a moody S.O.B."},{"content":"I recommend some amusement park therapy! Jeff Roberts - Jun 5, 2006\nI recommend some amusement park therapy!\nHey, Ray. I finally found your blog! Hope all is well in G-town.\nAmusement parks\u0026hellip;PAH! :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/on-being-a-moody-s.o.b.-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-recommend-some-amusement-park-therapy\"\u003eI recommend some amusement park therapy!\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eJun 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI recommend some amusement park therapy!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHey, Ray. I finally found your blog! Hope all is well in G-town.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmusement parks\u0026hellip;PAH! :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"On being a moody S.O.B. (Comments)"},{"content":"Beat all 8 levels on Tower blaster, with a score of 40523.\nfun times!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/06/good-start-to-the-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBeat all 8 levels on \u003ca href=\"http://www.scenicreflections.com/games/tower_blaster.html\"\u003eTower blaster\u003c/a\u003e, with a score of 40523.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003efun times!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Good start to the day"},{"content":"link\nYou can go far just by being nice.\nNot at this company, bub. But then again, reading through the top section, looks like we\u0026rsquo;re on our way out, anyway.\nGreat article by a great engineer. If his code\u0026rsquo;s half as good as his insightful blogs, he\u0026rsquo;s awesome.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/steveys-my-hero/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/05/not-managing-software-developers.html\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou can go far just by being nice.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot at this company, bub. But then again, reading through the top section, looks like we\u0026rsquo;re on our way out, anyway.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGreat article by a great engineer. If his code\u0026rsquo;s half as good as his insightful blogs, he\u0026rsquo;s awesome.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Stevey's my hero"},{"content":"Ars Technica Article\nStill, as occasional hobby photographer myself, I find myself wistful in saying goodbye to the film era. I won\u0026rsquo;t miss the lousy enlargements I get when I break down and go to the drug store for processing, but film has a feel, or maybe a look, that I still can\u0026rsquo;t quite capture with a digital camera. There\u0026rsquo;s also something to be said for the beginner who learns to carefully compose a quality shot, knowing he can\u0026rsquo;t just take a dozen photos, throw ten away, and fix the remaining two in Photoshop.\nThis one\u0026rsquo;s tough, because I cut my teeth on non-AF, black \u0026amp; white photography with a Cannon AE Super. As a Junior in HS, mom \u0026amp; dad bought me an awesome Pentax PZ-1 with full AF features and tons of lenses (40-80mm zoom, 70-210, 28mm f/2.8, 50 f/1.7). I LOVED photography. Yes, it was a bit of a phase, but I still treasure the shots I took with that camera, especially my pics of the Hale-Bopp comet ( ISO 800 50mm @ f1.7 for 15s, tripod mount)\nI guess that was the appeal for me\u0026ndash;the technical side. I liked understanding optics, film advances, shutter speeds, and film emulsion characteristics. At this point, those things are pretty antiquated. Nowadays, it\u0026rsquo;s take a bazillion pictures, throw away 90% of them, and fix the rest in photoshop. Blech.\n\u0026hellip;In other news, I\u0026rsquo;m picking-up a set of 24 exposures I took on my voigtlander Bessa-R last weekend today @ Wally world. :-) I\u0026rsquo;ll take my buggy whip in black, please.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/the-film-camera-is-dead/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060525-6920.html\"\u003eArs Technica Article\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, as occasional hobby photographer myself, I find myself wistful in saying goodbye to the film era. I won\u0026rsquo;t miss the lousy enlargements I get when I break down and go to the drug store for processing, but film has a feel, or maybe a look, that I still can\u0026rsquo;t quite capture with a digital camera. There\u0026rsquo;s also something to be said for the beginner who learns to carefully compose a quality shot, knowing he can\u0026rsquo;t just take a dozen photos, throw ten away, and fix the remaining two in Photoshop.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The film camera is dead?"},{"content":"article\nMy fav quote in the trackback:\nI read an article before about a guy who worked when he felt like it, e.g. if its raining outside then he\u0026rsquo;d stay at work longer and get some more stuff done, but if the next afternoon as sunny, he\u0026rsquo;d take off knowing that it would be a waste trying to write code when his head wasn\u0026rsquo;t in it.\nHmm\u0026hellip;Microsoft is in Washington\u0026hellip;it rains ALOT in Washington. M$ churns-out lots of code\u0026hellip;connection? :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/on-programmer-productivity.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=40648\"\u003earticle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy fav quote in the trackback:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI read an article before about a guy who worked when he felt like it, e.g. if its raining outside then he\u0026rsquo;d stay at work longer and get some more stuff done, but if the next afternoon as sunny, he\u0026rsquo;d take off knowing that it would be a waste trying to write code when his head wasn\u0026rsquo;t in it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHmm\u0026hellip;Microsoft is in Washington\u0026hellip;it rains ALOT in Washington. M$ churns-out lots of code\u0026hellip;connection? :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On programmer productivity..."},{"content":"Q: What\u0026rsquo;s the shortest distance between two jokes?\nA: A straight line.\n* * *\nSigns that you\u0026rsquo;ve been programming too long\u0026hellip;\nJamie walks in and remarks that one of our compadres just got promoted, saying \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;d Tom do, port the \u0026lsquo;C\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;\nMe: \u0026ldquo;Yeah, I think he\u0026rsquo;s done alot of stuff with 64-bit drivers and stuff like that. He\u0026rsquo;s an awesome coder.\u0026rdquo;\nJamie: \u0026ldquo;No, man, I said, \u0026lsquo;Did he part the sea?\u0026rsquo; You know, like Moses.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/coupla-gags-from-today/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eQ: What\u0026rsquo;s the shortest distance between two jokes?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA: A straight line.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSigns that you\u0026rsquo;ve been programming too long\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJamie walks in and remarks that one of our compadres just got promoted, saying \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;d Tom do, port the \u0026lsquo;C\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: \u0026ldquo;Yeah, I think he\u0026rsquo;s done alot of stuff with 64-bit drivers and stuff like that. He\u0026rsquo;s an awesome coder.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJamie: \u0026ldquo;No, man, I said, \u0026lsquo;Did he part the sea?\u0026rsquo; You know, like Moses.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Coupla gags from today"},{"content":"Now that I\u0026rsquo;m a whole month removed from having one of the coolest cars of the last decade, I have some downsides for all those of you considering a MINI purchase.\nThe 02-04\u0026rsquo;s are garbage. BMW came to Oxford, England and converted a plant with\u0026hellip;ahem\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;sufficient\u0026rdquo; build quality to build a 21st century automobile. They simplified the mechanicals and did constant improvements, even amid model years. Get an 05 or 06, especially if you\u0026rsquo;re getting an \u0026lsquo;S\u0026rsquo;.\nYeah, the trunk *is* that useless. It\u0026rsquo;s a hatchback, but you\u0026rsquo;ll need to tumble the rear seats forward to haul anything.\nFrameless windows. Ugh\u0026hellip;what a dumb idea. They\u0026rsquo;re fragile, they flutter, and they don\u0026rsquo;t seal very well.\nBackseat. Yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s too small\nThe hatch leaked. For 10 months and 3 trips to the dealer.\nEngine. Okay, iron block, undersquare, 115hp out of 1.6L. It\u0026rsquo;s a turd, in true English tradition. \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve got a tractor engine, but good handling.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/what-stank-about-having-a-mini/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow that I\u0026rsquo;m a whole month removed from having one of the coolest cars of the last decade, I have some downsides for all those of you considering a MINI purchase.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe 02-04\u0026rsquo;s are garbage\u003c/em\u003e. BMW came to Oxford, England and converted a plant with\u0026hellip;ahem\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;sufficient\u0026rdquo; build quality to build a 21st century automobile. They simplified the mechanicals and did constant improvements, even amid model years. Get an 05 or 06, especially if you\u0026rsquo;re getting an \u0026lsquo;S\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What stank about having a MINI"},{"content":"Herald-Leader\nHarvey Jason Richardson stunned Breathitt County political observers by beating veteran incumbent Judge-Executive Lewis Warrix by 666 votes in the Democratic primary. Richardson has no fall opponent, so at age 27 will become what is thought to be the youngest judge-executive in Kentucky, though not the youngest ever elected.\nSo, the punk defeated the decent, honest fellow by 666 votes? Coincidence? And it gets BETTER!\nBut in Breathitt County, former Sheriff Ray Clemons, removed from office in 1997 after being convicted of failing to report drug activity within his family, defeated incumbent Sheriff John L. Turner in the Democratic primary.\nOkay, Ray lied for his daughter, I get that. But GEEZE, was John L that BAD of a sherrif?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/local-political-commentary/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/14606555.htm\"\u003eHerald-Leader\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarvey Jason Richardson stunned Breathitt County political observers by beating veteran incumbent Judge-Executive Lewis Warrix by 666 votes in the Democratic primary. Richardson has no fall opponent, so at age 27 will become what is thought to be the youngest judge-executive in Kentucky, though not the youngest ever elected.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, the punk defeated the decent, honest fellow by 666 votes? Coincidence? And it gets BETTER!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut in Breathitt County, former Sheriff Ray Clemons, removed from office in 1997 after being convicted of failing to report drug activity within his family, defeated incumbent Sheriff John L. Turner in the Democratic primary.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Local Political commentary"},{"content":"I cannot believe that they elected Harvy Richardso\u0026hellip; Elesha - May 0, 2006\nI cannot believe that they elected Harvy Richardson to hold any sort of office in Jackson\u0026ndash;makes me glad that I don\u0026rsquo;t live there anymore.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/local-political-commentary-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-cannot-believe-that-they-elected-harvy-richardso\"\u003eI cannot believe that they elected Harvy Richardso\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16456306661734447202\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eElesha\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 0, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI cannot believe that they elected Harvy Richardson to hold any sort of office in Jackson\u0026ndash;makes me glad that I don\u0026rsquo;t live there anymore.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Local Political commentary (Comments)"},{"content":"Article\nInteresting statistic: Georgetown has grown 20% since 2000.\nOther interesting thought: No new homes for awhile == \u0026ldquo;WOOHOO! Property values skyrocket\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/shutting-down-development-in-gtown/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/14606545.htm\"\u003eArticle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInteresting statistic: Georgetown has grown 20% since 2000.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOther interesting thought: No new homes for awhile == \u0026ldquo;WOOHOO! Property values skyrocket\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Shutting down development in G'town"},{"content":"I have too many friends in the new home industry t\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 4, 2006\nI have too many friends in the new home industry to wish for that, but I do wonder how long before Newtown gets its first strip mall.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/shutting-down-development-in-gtown-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-have-too-many-friends-in-the-new-home-industry-t\"\u003eI have too many friends in the new home industry t\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 4, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have too many friends in the new home industry to wish for that, but I do wonder how long before Newtown gets its first strip mall.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Shutting down development in G'town (Comments)"},{"content":"Remember these things?\nYou know, those quirk handheld personal digital assistants from the late 90\u0026rsquo;s that EVERYONE had to have to keep their lives in order. More memory, power, and capability than a full desktop computer of 5 years earlier, but ultra-portable.\nSounds killer, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it? So\u0026hellip;where are they now? The PDA market is ever-shrinking, and I think I know why:\nFirst, they evolved. Like most scientists believed dinosaurs evolved into birds, these single-trick PDAs evolved into today\u0026rsquo;s smartphones.\nThese things are Phones, cameras, MP3 players, organizers, and Java Micro-Edition hosts. Don\u0026rsquo;t know if they\u0026rsquo;re GOOD AT being any of those things, but que sera sera.\nSecond, they\u0026rsquo;re not necessary. With ultra-portable laptops (my dell M410 is ~2 lbs), you have that paper-notebook formfactor with the full power of a computer, a real keyboard, and a hard drive.\nFinally, we don\u0026rsquo;t work that way anymore. In the middle 90\u0026rsquo;s, you needed to \u0026lsquo;have\u0026rsquo; all your info with you all the time, sync\u0026rsquo;ing it between PDA \u0026amp; desktop These days, with the omnipresence of the internet, I can remote desktop into my work computer and \u0026ldquo;be there\u0026rdquo; without any sacrifices.\nDo I have a PDA? Sure, in a drawer somewhere. Great idea, great implementation (particularly the old Handspring ones\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re TANKS!), but it\u0026rsquo;s time has come and gone.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/why-the-pda-is-dead/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRemember these things?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e7/PalmPilot5000.jpg/180px-PalmPilot5000.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know, those quirk handheld personal digital assistants from the late 90\u0026rsquo;s that EVERYONE had to have to keep their lives in order. More memory, power, and capability than a full desktop computer of 5 years earlier, but ultra-portable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSounds killer, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it? So\u0026hellip;where are they now? The PDA market is ever-shrinking, and I think I know why:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, they evolved. Like most scientists believed dinosaurs evolved into birds, these single-trick PDAs evolved into today\u0026rsquo;s smartphones.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why the PDA is dead"},{"content":"Smartphones are a godsend for anyone who used to c\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 3, 2006\nSmartphones are a godsend for anyone who used to carry/wear a PDA and a phone.\nNow if the phone companies would loosen up and allow wireless support on more devices - they order phones without it so you have to use their data plans, but I drool a little when D.T. remotes in to his desktop at work with his Dell Axiom.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/why-the-pda-is-dead-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"smartphones-are-a-godsend-for-anyone-who-used-to-c\"\u003eSmartphones are a godsend for anyone who used to c\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 3, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSmartphones are a godsend for anyone who used to carry/wear a PDA \u003cem\u003eand\u003c/em\u003e a phone.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow if the phone companies would loosen up and allow wireless support on more devices - they order phones without it so you have to use their data plans, but I drool a little when D.T. remotes in to his desktop at work with his Dell Axiom.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why the PDA is dead (Comments)"},{"content":"Happy Mother\u0026rsquo;s Day to all\u0026hellip;yes, my 2nd favorite made-up gifting opportunity holiday (after V-is-for-Vendetta Valentine\u0026rsquo;s Day Chocolate Massacre) is Mother\u0026rsquo;s Day. This one\u0026rsquo;s actually nice, and it makes one feel good to treat the mom\u0026rsquo;s of the world special today.\nWhitney thought Joey and I had nothing up our sleeves, but was she wrong. She got THREE DAYS of gifts \u0026ndash; Flowers and a locket on Friday, a \u0026ldquo;Son in Law\u0026rdquo; DVD on Saturday, and some pearl earrings \u0026amp; cards on the day itself. We love her dearly and it made us happy to surprise her 3 times over.\nSaturday was the Mayfest at Gratz park down by Transy\u0026rsquo;s campus in OLD (1780\u0026rsquo;s) Lexington. Brick Buildings, free carriage rides, and \u0026ldquo;Mommy! A viking ship!\u0026rdquo; Joey got to do all that, and also made some sand art. A nice outing before the cold \u0026amp; rain set-in for the rest of the weekend.\nHad a bit of a scare Sunday with Whitney\u0026rsquo;s reflux acting up in\u0026hellip;uh\u0026hellip;exciting ways, so we hit the G\u0026rsquo;town emergency room (she\u0026rsquo;s fine!) before making it to a very-empty Frisch\u0026rsquo;s Big Boy around 3. I mowed the yard at a trot/jog/run to stay ahead of the oncoming rain; I mowed the backyard wet :(\nHad family movie night with Racing Stripes a sweet if implausible B-movie. The voice acting was good, and Wendy Mallick\u0026rsquo;s never looked more like Cruella DeVille. :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/weekend-in-review/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHappy Mother\u0026rsquo;s Day to all\u0026hellip;yes, my 2nd favorite made-up gifting opportunity holiday (after V-is-for-Vendetta Valentine\u0026rsquo;s Day Chocolate Massacre) is Mother\u0026rsquo;s Day. This one\u0026rsquo;s actually nice, and it makes one feel good to treat the mom\u0026rsquo;s of the world special today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney thought Joey and I had nothing up our sleeves, but was she wrong. She got THREE DAYS of gifts \u0026ndash; Flowers and a locket on Friday, a \u0026ldquo;Son in Law\u0026rdquo; DVD on Saturday, and some pearl earrings \u0026amp; cards on the day itself. We love her dearly and it made us happy to surprise her 3 times over.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weekend in review"},{"content":"Okay, so you know you\u0026rsquo;re on the wagon when you\u0026rsquo;re considering swapping out your 3.73 Limited-slip differential ( 3k RPM @ 70 mph ) for a 2.93 diff from a 325e. If my autocross days are over, then switching-over to a diff less mechanical advantage would cause immediate gains in fuel economy.\n*** nerd factor 4 time ***\nUsing the calculator found Here\ngear\nrpm\n3.73 (stock)\n3025\n3.25\n2636\n2.93\n2376.965\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/the-anti-enthusiast-pimp-my-ride-thread/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, so you know you\u0026rsquo;re on the wagon when you\u0026rsquo;re considering swapping out your 3.73 Limited-slip differential ( 3k RPM @ 70 mph ) for a 2.93 diff from a 325e. If my autocross days are over, then switching-over to a diff less mechanical advantage would cause immediate gains in fuel economy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e*** nerd factor 4 time ***\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUsing the calculator found \u003ca href=\"http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/revs.html\"\u003eHere\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003egear\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003erpm\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3.73 (stock)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3025\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3.25\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2636\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2.93\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The anti-enthusiast, pimp-my-ride thread"},{"content":"I know, I know\u0026hellip;hypocrite! Still, I have some readers, and you never know who might drop-in.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/comments-are-enabled./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI know, I know\u0026hellip;hypocrite! Still, I have some readers, and you never know who might drop-in.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Comments *are* enabled."},{"content":"Cool! We\u0026rsquo;ll try to keep the comments G-rated. At\u0026hellip; Jeff Roberts - May 5, 2006\nCool! We\u0026rsquo;ll try to keep the comments G-rated. At least, we\u0026rsquo;ll try our !@#$%^-est\nso is this an invitation to spam?\nspam\nspam\nspam\nfunny. kinda sounds like ranch.\nranch\nranch\nranch\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/comments-are-enabled.-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"cool-well-try-to-keep-the-comments-g-rated-at\"\u003eCool! We\u0026rsquo;ll try to keep the comments G-rated. At\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/10789701887567325806\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eJeff Roberts\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 5, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCool! We\u0026rsquo;ll try to keep the comments G-rated. At least, we\u0026rsquo;ll try our !@#$%^-est\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eso is this an invitation to spam?\u003cbr\u003e\nspam\u003cbr\u003e\nspam\u003cbr\u003e\nspam\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003efunny. kinda sounds like ranch.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eranch\u003cbr\u003e\nranch\u003cbr\u003e\nranch\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Comments *are* enabled. (Comments)"},{"content":"Out of Office anecdote\nI used to do that very thing, but I took it a step further: When I first hired on full-time, I\u0026rsquo;d put a \u0026ldquo;be right back\u0026rdquo; sticker on my door when I went to the bathroom.\nAh yes, in those heady times, I thought as a junior, java-ignorant programmer working in a group of hardcore Java developers, that I\u0026rsquo;d better let everyone know every SECOND just where I was.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/oof-to-the-door.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/05/11/595351.aspx\"\u003eOut of Office anecdote\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to do that very thing, but I took it a step further: When I first hired on full-time, I\u0026rsquo;d put a \u0026ldquo;be right back\u0026rdquo; sticker on my door when I went to the bathroom.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAh yes, in those heady times, I thought as a junior, java-ignorant programmer working in a group of hardcore Java developers, that I\u0026rsquo;d better let everyone know every SECOND just where I was.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"OOF to the door..."},{"content":"testing the comments HarryC - May 4, 2006\ntesting the comments\nI think HC has heard this one, but I once asked a mailing list whether there was a version of their product that fixed a particular bug which was KILLING our product.\nI received one answer, in Polish, containing a string of digits that I HOPED and PRAYED was a version number.\nI ran it through BabelFish and got:\n\u0026ldquo;I am out of the office until 31.12.04\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/oof-to-the-door...-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"testing-the-comments\"\u003etesting the comments\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/16871606587106108959\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eHarryC\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eMay 4, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003etesting the comments\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think HC has heard this one, but I once asked a mailing list whether there was a version of their product that fixed a particular bug which was KILLING our product.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI received one answer, in Polish, containing a string of digits that I HOPED and PRAYED was a version number.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"OOF to the door... (Comments)"},{"content":"A: Cold turkey.\nFirst you realize that you have no spiritual, familial, or financial ability to do said hobby. Realize that it\u0026rsquo;s costing you money you don\u0026rsquo;t have, destroying the only car you have to get your butt to work. Moreover, understand that you don\u0026rsquo;t have the time or funds to compete at the (obsessive) level to which you\u0026rsquo;re accustomed. Realize there are more important things in this life and what comes after it to occupy your (limited) time. You have a son to raise and food to put on the table, and the coming years will likely be harder than even your history-savvy brain can imagine.\nSo, that\u0026rsquo;s it. Time to move on, cash in my chips, put away my glasses and plaques, and stop fooling with autocross \u0026amp; SCCA altogether. Honestly, going to the meetings and talking to the guys while NOT doing any of the activities is too painful. Even going to lexistreets.com\u0026rsquo;s SCCA board feels like peeking through the fence at the Burlesque show\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s a place I don\u0026rsquo;t belong.\nSo, the events are off Airset, my Sunday\u0026rsquo;s are free again for their intended purpose, and I\u0026rsquo;m searching for a new hobby.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/q-how-to-kill-a-hobby/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA: Cold turkey.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.goenglish.com/GoEnglish_com_ColdTurkey.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst you realize that you have no spiritual, familial, or financial ability to do said hobby. Realize that it\u0026rsquo;s costing you money you don\u0026rsquo;t have, destroying the only car you have to get your butt to work. Moreover, understand that you don\u0026rsquo;t have the time or funds to compete at the (obsessive) level to which you\u0026rsquo;re accustomed. Realize there are more important things in this life and what comes after it to occupy your (limited) time. You have a son to raise and food to put on the table, and the coming years will likely be harder than even your history-savvy brain can imagine.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Q: How to kill a hobby??"},{"content":"We have a Product Engineer (1 step above a Technical Support guy) in the field today in San Diego, so I get to be the on-call guy here in Lexington for any problems he encounters. Given that I got here at 7, looks like 13 hours today, minimum. Ahh\u0026hellip;timezones.\nS\u0026rsquo;ok\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m feeling creative.\n* * *\nI got scared last night, mainly because I had double-strength coffee around 4ish and couldn\u0026rsquo;t sleep, my mind racing to every corner of the house (literally) thinking of what needs to be done and what could be fixed.\nWhile buzzing inside, I thought of the Grey\u0026rsquo;s Anatomy episode last night, about a family enjoying their eccentric Southern in-laws hit head-on by an overworked intern who fell asleep at the wheel, killing the \u0026ldquo;big haired southern girl\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;a wife, mother, and daughter. I don\u0026rsquo;t know why, but my mind swam to a simple, morbid calculus: Unless we die together, there\u0026rsquo;s a 50-50 shot that\u0026rsquo;ll be me watching Whitney die, whatever the reason\u0026ndash;disease, accident, or crime.\nAt that moment, I realized one reason I\u0026rsquo;m not type-A: I\u0026rsquo;m afraid. Afraid of losing those I love. You have to ponder these sorts of things when you\u0026rsquo;re type-A, planning for them just like a trip to the grocery. You don\u0026rsquo;t CHOOSE to plan, you have to, compulsively. You experience the pain of loss little by little, working the odds, preparing. How does one live that way?!\nI\u0026rsquo;ve wondered at Whitney\u0026rsquo;s fascination with death, but in that instant, I wondered that she could think of anything else. I love her and I pray we have a long, happy life together. That TV show (of all things!) reminded me of how precious that time can be. Amen.\n* * *\nI think I\u0026rsquo;ll take Joey to the Legends game next Monday night. Hey, Type-A does have a _few_ advantages.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/stuck-@-work-musings.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe have a Product Engineer (1 step above a Technical Support guy) in the field today in San Diego, so I get to be the on-call guy here in Lexington for any problems he encounters. Given that I got here at 7, looks like 13 hours today, minimum. Ahh\u0026hellip;timezones.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eS\u0026rsquo;ok\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m feeling creative.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI got scared last night, mainly because I had double-strength coffee around 4ish and couldn\u0026rsquo;t sleep, my mind racing to every corner of the house (literally) thinking of what needs to be done and what could be fixed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Stuck @ work musings..."},{"content":"Long time, no blog. Well, for me in any case\nTook two Benadryl last night and it had me glued to the mattress until 7:30 this morning (I\u0026rsquo;m usually at work before 8), and I didn\u0026rsquo;t get to work til after 9.\nLots of changes and rearranges on my team as we try to get a new project started: New manager, new (old) second line, a new contractor, and a guy from Kolkata bowing out.\nSave Serge and Jamie, my whole team from last year has evaporated. In some cases, that\u0026rsquo;s a good thing, but the crushing changes of having new people looking at the same old code are, well, different.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;m doing better with the whole work/life balance thing, though that workaholic in me keeps yelling at me to work harder, that I\u0026rsquo;ll lose the respect of my team and/or get fired if I don\u0026rsquo;t work crazy hours. I finally have some ammunition for that one: 1) Yep, probably going to lose the respect of my team. If you\u0026rsquo;re a hardcore programmer and you deal with a non-wonk, you patronize them. At best, you tolerate them. Most of my team knows me as a non-coder at this point, so I\u0026rsquo;m kind of over that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/05/lethargy-and-friday.-.-./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLong time, no blog. Well, for me in any case\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTook two Benadryl last night and it had me glued to the mattress until 7:30 this morning (I\u0026rsquo;m usually at work before 8), and I didn\u0026rsquo;t get to work til after 9.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLots of changes and rearranges on my team as we try to get a new project started: New manager, new (old) second line, a new contractor, and a guy from Kolkata bowing out.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lethargy and Friday. . ."},{"content":"It felt so weird not typing \u0026lsquo;\u0026hellip;in the MINI\u0026rsquo; just now. My old car\u0026rsquo;s gone, and my old ways of autocross are gone.\nWell, 55 more horsepower and rear wheel drive do NOT make for a faster car, at least not without magical, R-compound race tires. There were some great moments though:\n- Being second in class, despite having 100 fewer hp than one of the cars (Mazadaspeed 6) and no race tires (E36 323i w/Kumho Victoracers)\n- two words: Throttle steering.\n- finally having the option for understeer, oversteer, or 4 wheel drift at will\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/first-autocross-in-the-bmw/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt felt so weird not typing \u0026lsquo;\u0026hellip;in the MINI\u0026rsquo; just now. My old car\u0026rsquo;s gone, and my old ways of autocross are gone.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, 55 more horsepower and rear wheel drive do NOT make for a faster car, at least not without magical, R-compound race tires. There were some great moments though:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Being second in class, despite having 100 fewer hp than one of the cars (Mazadaspeed 6) and no race tires (E36 323i w/Kumho Victoracers)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"first autocross in the BMW"},{"content":"The Bimmer just turned-over 137,000 miles on my way to work this morning, and it\u0026rsquo;s running just like a top. I\u0026rsquo;d put up some pictures, but I lack a camera-phone anymore (sold on Ebay 6 months ago) and my powerbook\u0026rsquo;s dead and we haven\u0026rsquo;t figured-out how to do pics via PC.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/137k-miles-and-still-ticking.-.-./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Bimmer just turned-over 137,000 miles on my way to work this morning, and it\u0026rsquo;s running just like a top. I\u0026rsquo;d put up some pictures, but I lack a camera-phone anymore (sold on Ebay 6 months ago) and my powerbook\u0026rsquo;s dead and we haven\u0026rsquo;t figured-out how to do pics via PC.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"137k miles and still ticking. . ."},{"content":"Well, the Frickin\u0026rsquo; Dandelion exists, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it?\nI\u0026rsquo;ve seen these things grow into SOLID ROCK at Natural Bridge State Park. They grow overnight. They reproduce without having to be fertilized. They exist in all temperate zones on the planet.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve pulled at least a bucket of thistle and dandelion from the lawn for the last 4 days. Joy!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/proof-there-are-flowers-in-hell.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, the Frickin\u0026rsquo; Dandelion exists, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Dandelion_Blackwell_0136.jpg/396px-Dandelion_Blackwell_0136.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve seen these things grow into SOLID ROCK at Natural Bridge State Park. They grow overnight. They reproduce without having to be fertilized. They exist in all temperate zones on the planet.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve pulled at least a bucket of thistle and dandelion from the lawn for the last 4 days. Joy!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Proof there are flowers in hell..."},{"content":"Post over at The Car Lounge asks how many cars you\u0026rsquo;ve owned since you started reading TCL. My count:\n1995 200SX SE-R - gone\n2001 VW Jetta Wolfsburg - gone\n2003 MINI Cooper - gone\n2001 Chevy Silverado 4.8L - gone\n2004 Pontiac GTO - gone\n2001 Olds intrigue\n1990 BMW 325is\n7 cars\u0026hellip;geeze.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/ive-had-too-many-frickin-cars.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePost over at \u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zerothread?id=2573123\"\u003eThe Car Lounge\u003c/a\u003e asks how many cars you\u0026rsquo;ve owned since you started reading TCL. My count:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1995 200SX SE-R - gone\u003cbr\u003e\n2001 VW Jetta Wolfsburg - gone\u003cbr\u003e\n2003 MINI Cooper - gone\u003cbr\u003e\n2001 Chevy Silverado 4.8L - gone\u003cbr\u003e\n2004 Pontiac GTO - gone\u003cbr\u003e\n2001 Olds intrigue\u003cbr\u003e\n1990 BMW 325is\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e7 cars\u0026hellip;geeze.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I've had too many frickin' cars..."},{"content":"So, I\u0026rsquo;m in chruch today and the sermon is on achieving a personal relationship with Christ\u0026hellip;then it hits me.\nGod made people.\nWHY!? I mean, think about it. . .You\u0026rsquo;re the most powerful being in the universe. Omnipotent, omniscient, everywhere simultaneously. You ARE reality. You DEFINE everything we only have equations and intuition for\u0026ndash;time, space, probability.\nWhat do you need people for?\nYou\u0026rsquo;re lonely.\nI used to ask myself if God was bored. After all omniscent \u0026amp; omnipotent means you know all that\u0026rsquo;s going to happen, right? Also, I used to get hung-up on the whole \u0026lsquo;can God make an object that even he can\u0026rsquo;t move?\u0026rsquo;\nYes he can: The human soul. He was powerful enough to create a being with free will, and when we worship him, it\u0026rsquo;s a CHOICE, not a compulsion.\nWe exist, so I finally believe that free will exists.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/kinda-profound/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;m in chruch today and the sermon is on achieving a personal relationship with Christ\u0026hellip;then it hits me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGod made people.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWHY!? I mean, think about it. . .You\u0026rsquo;re the most powerful being in the universe. Omnipotent, omniscient, everywhere simultaneously. You ARE reality. You DEFINE everything we only have equations and intuition for\u0026ndash;time, space, probability.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat do you need people for?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re lonely.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to ask myself if God was bored. After all omniscent \u0026amp; omnipotent means you know all that\u0026rsquo;s going to happen, right? Also, I used to get hung-up on the whole \u0026lsquo;can God make an object that even he can\u0026rsquo;t move?\u0026rsquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kinda profound"},{"content":"A few key phrases that I\u0026rsquo;ve heard regarding software development:\n\u0026ldquo;Ring\u0026rdquo; code: Software so bad that if you even LOOK at the code, you\u0026rsquo;re dead, like with that darn video in The Ring\nCoyote project: A project so bad, you\u0026rsquo;d gnaw through your own leg to escape.\nGuy1: \u0026ldquo;Bob is so bad, whenever he\u0026rsquo;s informed he\u0026rsquo;s wrong, he complains that they changed it from the way it used to work without telling him. \u0026quot;\nGuy2: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve had days like that\u0026rdquo;\nGuy1: \u0026ldquo;Bob\u0026rsquo;s had a life like that.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/from-the-frontlines.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA few key phrases that I\u0026rsquo;ve heard regarding software development:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Ring\u0026rdquo; code: Software so bad that if you even LOOK at the code, you\u0026rsquo;re dead, like with that darn video in \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ring_%282002_film%29\"\u003eThe Ring\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCoyote project: A project so bad, you\u0026rsquo;d gnaw through your own leg to escape.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGuy1: \u0026ldquo;Bob is so bad, whenever he\u0026rsquo;s informed he\u0026rsquo;s wrong, he complains that they changed it from the way it used to work without telling him. \u0026quot;\u003cbr\u003e\nGuy2: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve had days like that\u0026rdquo;\u003cbr\u003e\nGuy1: \u0026ldquo;Bob\u0026rsquo;s had a life like that.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"From the frontlines..."},{"content":"Yep\u0026hellip;just got the call from the fellow down @ CompUSA: More than $850 just to replace the logic board on the powerbook, and that\u0026rsquo;s just for parts. Yikes.\nWell, I guess I\u0026rsquo;m back in the Windows world for the forseeable future.\n:: sigh ::\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/update...rip-one-powerbook/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYep\u0026hellip;just got the call from the fellow down @ CompUSA: More than $850 just to replace the logic board on the powerbook, and that\u0026rsquo;s just for parts. Yikes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, I guess I\u0026rsquo;m back in the Windows world for the forseeable future.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:: sigh ::\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Update...RIP one powerbook"},{"content":"Up at 0-dark-thirty: check\nLong breakfast with Joey: check\nBeautiful, cool ride to work in the Bimmer: Check\nDead Powerbook: check\n* * *\n:: sigh :: Well, my beloved laptop is in for repairs after 2 great years of service. Tea and laptops apparently don\u0026rsquo;t go well together. Paid the (up front) $140 labor cost for diagnosis, but if it\u0026rsquo;s overcostly to repair, I\u0026rsquo;ll just suck it up and use Whitney\u0026rsquo;s trusty (if slightly bruised) Thinkpad R40.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not upset about it, just sad, really. I liked that Powerbook G4 quite a bit. Just hoping I can recover the data off it after CompUseless (Eric\u0026rsquo;s term) is through with it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/just-a-standard-thursday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUp at 0-dark-thirty: check\u003cbr\u003e\nLong breakfast with Joey: check\u003cbr\u003e\nBeautiful, cool ride to work in the Bimmer: Check\u003cbr\u003e\nDead Powerbook: check\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:: sigh :: Well, my beloved laptop is in for repairs after 2 great years of service. Tea and laptops apparently don\u0026rsquo;t go well together. Paid the (up front) $140 labor cost for diagnosis, but if it\u0026rsquo;s overcostly to repair, I\u0026rsquo;ll just suck it up and use Whitney\u0026rsquo;s trusty (if slightly bruised) Thinkpad R40.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Just a standard Thursday"},{"content":"If you need: Todo lists, calendars, collaboration, or just to view the state-of-the-art in Web 2.0 apps, look no further: AirSet. This is the first calendaring app that\u0026rsquo;s a pleasure to use, and I\u0026rsquo;ve been there/done that: Outlook, Lotus Notes 4/5/6, iCal, Thunderbird, Palm Desktop.\nThing is, I HATE schedules and being scheduled and scheduling, mainly because it turns me into an asshole, and I don\u0026rsquo;t like being an asshole. I don\u0026rsquo;t like being disappointed in myself, my teammates, and the people I love because they didn\u0026rsquo;t fulfill some arbitrary schedule.\nHowever, the above is a problematic attitude if you want to get anywhere in life. I\u0026rsquo;ve a sieve-like memory for the minutiae of life.\nExample:\n-What\u0026rsquo;s the engine code for my 325\u0026rsquo;s engine: M20B25.\n-What\u0026rsquo;s the bore x stroke of a Nissan SR20DE 2.0L motor? 86mm x 86mm\n-What am I s\u0026rsquo;posed to be doing today? Uhh\u0026hellip;.\nI need HELP, people!\nSo, airset is nice. It\u0026rsquo; easy\u0026ndash;dare I say fun?\u0026ndash;to use, it\u0026rsquo;s available anywhere I have an internet connection, and there\u0026rsquo;s no synchronization problem\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t need to synch a palm pilot, lotus notes, and iCal to find out that Joey has swimming lessons next week.\nOnly thing is, it\u0026rsquo;s doomed. Google has moved into this space with its substandard Google Calendar offering, garnering 10x the attention in 1 week as airset has in a year. Also, airset has no discernable business model\u0026ndash;the pages have no ads, and there\u0026rsquo;s no subscriber fee. I\u0026rsquo;m no MBA, but that says \u0026rsquo;no way\u0026rsquo; to me.\nBut, I\u0026rsquo;ll use it while I can, certainly!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/airset--the-greatest-software-that-no-one-will-use./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you need: Todo lists, calendars, collaboration, or just to view the state-of-the-art in Web 2.0 apps, look no further: \u003ca href=\"http://www.airset.com\"\u003eAirSet\u003c/a\u003e. This is the first calendaring app that\u0026rsquo;s a pleasure to use, and I\u0026rsquo;ve been there/done that: Outlook, Lotus Notes 4/5/6, iCal, Thunderbird, Palm Desktop.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThing is, I HATE schedules and being scheduled and scheduling, mainly because it turns me into an asshole, and I don\u0026rsquo;t like being an asshole. I don\u0026rsquo;t like being disappointed in myself, my teammates, and the people I love because they didn\u0026rsquo;t fulfill some arbitrary schedule.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Airset -- the greatest software that no one will use."},{"content":" At my second startup we had to keep track of how many hours we worked each week. The justification was vague: something to do with a client contract. The numbers each week were public so things got competitive. Developers began working even crazier hours \u0026ndash; noone wanted to be thought of as a slacker. As anyone who has tried to sustain ultra-long work hours knows, things got bad over time: more mistakes were made, people lived in their offices, the place started to smell, external relationships were strained, people got sick easily and still came into the office infecting co-workers, etc. The sad thing was that management didn\u0026rsquo;t recognize that there was a problem. People wanted someone to say \u0026ldquo;hey, it\u0026rsquo;s okay, you can ease up!\u0026rdquo; but they didn\u0026rsquo;t. By the time burn-out set in, the level of resentment of the managment team was huge.\nAlso read Damien Katz\u0026rsquo;s excellent blog about slack\nSometimes I\u0026rsquo;m hyper focused on code, sometimes I\u0026rsquo;m not. When I\u0026rsquo;m not, I try to enjoy the things that actually do interest me and exhaust those interests. So during this period I focused on:\n-Cooking\n-Exercise\n-Sex\n-Reading\n-Writing\n-Outdoors\n-Sex\n-Video Games\n-Sex\n:-) Now, there\u0026rsquo;s a man with his priorities straight. I\u0026rsquo;d put \u0026lsquo;God\u0026rsquo; in there on mine, but that\u0026rsquo;s pretty close.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/scary-stuff/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt my second startup we had to keep track of how many hours we worked each week. The justification was vague: something to do with a client contract. The numbers each week were public so things got competitive. Developers began working even crazier hours \u0026ndash; noone wanted to be thought of as a slacker. As anyone who has tried to sustain ultra-long work hours knows, things got bad over time: more mistakes were made, people lived in their offices, the place started to smell, external relationships were strained, people got sick easily and still came into the office infecting co-workers, etc. The sad thing was that management didn\u0026rsquo;t recognize that there was a problem. People wanted someone to say \u0026ldquo;hey, it\u0026rsquo;s okay, you can ease up!\u0026rdquo; but they didn\u0026rsquo;t. By the time burn-out set in, the level of resentment of the managment team was huge.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scary Stuff"},{"content":"Once there was a Cat.\nShe was an old, wise Cat.\nCat came to the department.\nThe programmers didn\u0026rsquo;t like Cat.\nCat made them work and be honest.\n\u0026ldquo;Tell me the Truth!\u0026rdquo; said Cat.\nSo they told her the truth.\nThe managers didn\u0026rsquo;t like Cat, either.\n\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t tell us the truth!\u0026rdquo; said the managers.\nThe managers were sad.\nThey needed to be done.\n\u0026ldquo;Done, done, done by Christmas!\u0026rdquo; they said.\nCat was very cross with the managers.\n\u0026ldquo;You may be done by May, but not one day before that day!\u0026rdquo; said Cat.\nAnd then the managers still said,\n\u0026ldquo;No, no! This will not do, this will not do at all, little Cat!\u0026rdquo;\nAnd then they sent Cat away.\n* * *\nWell, folks, it\u0026rsquo;s April 13th, and they sent Cat away, and looks like she was right. It might be done by May. Of course, by this point, it was the manager\u0026rsquo;s idea all along. Naturally.\nMiss ya, Cat. You were good\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;people.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/the-cat-in-the-programmers-hat/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOnce there was a Cat.\u003cbr\u003e\nShe was an old, wise Cat.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCat came to the department.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe programmers didn\u0026rsquo;t like Cat.\u003cbr\u003e\nCat made them work and be honest.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Tell me the Truth!\u0026rdquo; said Cat.\u003cbr\u003e\nSo they told her the truth.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe managers didn\u0026rsquo;t like Cat, either.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t tell us the truth!\u0026rdquo; said the managers.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe managers were sad.\u003cbr\u003e\nThey needed to be done.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u0026ldquo;Done, done, done by Christmas!\u0026rdquo; they said.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Cat in the Programmer's Hat"},{"content":"Talked to Phil last night about that 1990 325is\u0026hellip;got within $150 of buying the car, but I\u0026rsquo;m at the high end of my price range. After Tax, Title, License, and the \u0026ldquo;VIN Inspection\u0026rdquo; at the sheriff\u0026rsquo;s ofice, it\u0026rsquo;ll be an extra $350.\nMore bad news: Insurance on E30\u0026rsquo;s is just as bad as the MINI, while insuring a vehicle for a whopping $2500. Yike.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/negotiations/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTalked to Phil last night about that 1990 325is\u0026hellip;got within $150 of buying the car, but I\u0026rsquo;m at the high end of my price range. After Tax, Title, License, and the \u0026ldquo;VIN Inspection\u0026rdquo; at the sheriff\u0026rsquo;s ofice, it\u0026rsquo;ll be an extra $350.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMore bad news: Insurance on E30\u0026rsquo;s is just as bad as the MINI, while insuring a vehicle for a whopping $2500. Yike.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Negotiations"},{"content":"Didn\u0026rsquo;t get the Knoxville E30, but the Lord had pretty much prep\u0026rsquo;d me for that\u0026hellip;had a strong feeling in church that wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to fly. Feeling a VERY strong tug towards the 325is up in Cincy; I called the local BMW experts here in Lex and they said they\u0026rsquo;d never heard of 1990 M20 needed a headgasket repair.\nTaking a hard look at the car budget and trying to figure out what I could offer the guy / what I could afford.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/bummed-excited/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDidn\u0026rsquo;t get the Knoxville E30, but the Lord had pretty much prep\u0026rsquo;d me for that\u0026hellip;had a strong feeling in church that wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to fly. Feeling a VERY strong tug towards the 325is up in Cincy; I called the local BMW experts here in Lex and they said they\u0026rsquo;d never heard of 1990 M20 needed a headgasket repair.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTaking a hard look at the car budget and trying to figure out what I could offer the guy / what I could afford.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bummed \u0026 excited"},{"content":"With only hours until the end of our Ebay auction, Bella and I went up to look at a BMW in Cincy:\nAwesome little car\u0026hellip;mint condition (almost), owned by a former autocrosser + racer. It\u0026rsquo;s his wife\u0026rsquo;s car, and you can tell she really doesn\u0026rsquo;t want to part with it.\nNegatives:\n- Hasn\u0026rsquo;t had the head-gasket done, though I\u0026rsquo;m researching prices on it right now\u0026hellip;\n- \u0026ldquo;smells like an old car\u0026rdquo;\n- wheel + tire combo isn\u0026rsquo;t as nice as the one in Knoxville.\n- price is pretty high for what it is.\nStill, this one has great exterior, no rust, no leaks, and a FULL maintenance history.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/sweet-e30-in-cincy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWith only hours until the end of our Ebay auction, Bella and I went up to look at a BMW in Cincy:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/54/126062603_3356cb2661.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/1/126062554_96461da11c.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://static.flickr.com/49/126062519_9bfc6e8b81.jpg?v=0\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAwesome little car\u0026hellip;mint condition (almost), owned by a former autocrosser + racer. It\u0026rsquo;s his wife\u0026rsquo;s car, and you can tell she really doesn\u0026rsquo;t want to part with it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNegatives:\u003cbr\u003e\n- Hasn\u0026rsquo;t had the head-gasket done, though I\u0026rsquo;m researching prices on it right now\u0026hellip;\u003cbr\u003e\n- \u0026ldquo;smells like an old car\u0026rdquo;\u003cbr\u003e\n- wheel + tire combo isn\u0026rsquo;t as nice as the one in Knoxville.\u003cbr\u003e\n- price is pretty high for what it is.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sweet E30 in Cincy"},{"content":"Today was the first big milestone on our path to being debt free: We paid off all our credit cards, and we paid-off the Olds Intrigue. Our 5-year-old car is now officially paid for!\nW0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000T!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/getting-out-of-debt.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday was the first big milestone on our path to being debt free: We paid off all our credit cards, and we paid-off the Olds Intrigue. Our 5-year-old car is now officially paid for!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eW0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000T!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Getting out of debt..."},{"content":":-) I\u0026rsquo;m currently the highest bidder on a 1990 325is down in Maryville, TN (outside Knoxville).\nWhitney and I have been drooling over this car for days now, and we finally decided to bid on it this morning. I bid it up enough to get rid of the \u0026ldquo;Buy it now,\u0026rdquo; so it\u0026rsquo;s just a waiting game at this point. I think we\u0026rsquo;ll head down there and inspect it Saturday.\nI\u0026rsquo;m excited, and a bit frightened. This is what I\u0026rsquo;ve wanted, but the price is rather high.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/excitement.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e:-) I\u0026rsquo;m currently the highest bidder on a \u003ca href=\"http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem\u0026amp;rd=1,1\u0026amp;item=4627348550\"\u003e1990 325is\u003c/a\u003e down in Maryville, TN (outside Knoxville).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney and I have been drooling over this car for days now, and we finally decided to bid on it this morning. I bid it up enough to get rid of the \u0026ldquo;Buy it now,\u0026rdquo; so it\u0026rsquo;s just a waiting game at this point. I think we\u0026rsquo;ll head down there and inspect it Saturday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m excited, and a bit frightened. This is what I\u0026rsquo;ve wanted, but the price is rather high.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Excitement..."},{"content":"Hmm\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ve been to a German-speaking country, I\u0026rsquo;d like to learn a bit of the language, and there\u0026rsquo;s a Free German language series on the internet.\nNiiiice.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/04/serendipity.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHmm\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ve been to a German-speaking country, I\u0026rsquo;d like to learn a bit of the language, and there\u0026rsquo;s a \u003ca href=\"http://www.dw-world.com/dw/0,2142,2548,00.html\"\u003eFree German language series\u003c/a\u003e on the internet.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNiiiice.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Serendipity..."},{"content":"Just in case you wanted another gander:\nHere it is..\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/map-from-lost-last-night/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust in case you wanted another gander:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://lost.cubit.net/pics/2x17/blastDoorMapOverlay.jpg\"\u003eHere it is..\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Map from LOST last night"},{"content":"Typically, when you see a title like that, I\u0026rsquo;m being sarcastic. Not today\u0026hellip;yesterday was tiring but awesome with me spending two hours splashing around in the pool w/Joey, then enjoying a great dinner casserole from Whitney, then getting TWO people very interested in buying the MINI!\nThen this morning\u0026hellip;crisp and beautiful, with the rising sun lighting the drowsy world, and AirOne on 95.3 blasting dcTalk\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Jesusfreak\u0026rdquo; on the radio. Ah, to feel alive again!\nIf you live in the Lexington area, tune over to 95.3 and enjoy!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/such-a-blessed-morning/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTypically, when you see a title like that, I\u0026rsquo;m being sarcastic. Not today\u0026hellip;yesterday was tiring but awesome with me spending two hours splashing around in the pool w/Joey, then enjoying a great dinner casserole from Whitney, then getting TWO people very interested in buying the MINI!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen this morning\u0026hellip;crisp and beautiful, with the rising sun lighting the drowsy world, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.air1.com/\"\u003eAirOne\u003c/a\u003e on 95.3 blasting dcTalk\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Jesusfreak\u0026rdquo; on the radio. Ah, to feel alive again!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Such a blessed morning!"},{"content":"at least two more interested parties in the MINI. :-) Should have it sold by the weekend, hopefully! One guy\u0026rsquo;s from Louisville, the other from Williamson, WV.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/more-offers-on-the-mini/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eat least two more interested parties in the MINI.  :-) Should have it sold by the weekend, hopefully!  One guy\u0026rsquo;s from Louisville, the other from Williamson, WV.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"more offers on the MINI"},{"content":"So, around 4:30 Friday, busily trying to make the UBS server work as advertised, I heard something go \u0026rsquo;tink-tink'.\nNow, UBS\u0026rsquo;s tech building is a huge cube-farm, arrayed around a central stack of elevators. \u0026ldquo;Conference rooms\u0026rdquo; in such an environment are just a big cube with a conference table. So, I swivelled my head left and saw the WHOLE AREA around a table, two cubes over.\nOkay, I figured\u0026hellip;birthday party or something.\ntink-tink\nLooking again, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t believe my eyes. I looked over at Charlie and said, \u0026ldquo;Charlie, they\u0026rsquo;re having a KEGGER in the next cube!\u0026rdquo;\nSo, I look over at Yvonne\u0026rsquo;s desk, thinking it\u0026rsquo;s something special. \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s up, Yvonne? Birthday?\u0026rdquo; She formed the english and then said, \u0026ldquo;Ja. Das is just Friday. This happens every week.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/work-habits-in-zurich/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, around 4:30 Friday, busily trying to make the UBS server work as advertised, I heard something go \u0026rsquo;tink-tink'.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow, UBS\u0026rsquo;s tech building is a huge cube-farm, arrayed around a central stack of elevators.  \u0026ldquo;Conference rooms\u0026rdquo; in such an environment are just a big cube with a conference table.  So, I swivelled my head left and saw the WHOLE AREA around a table, two cubes over.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, I figured\u0026hellip;birthday party or something.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Work habits in Zurich"},{"content":"Were the last few days a dream? I collapsed last night at 9:45 and woke-up 12 hours later sore everywhere and feeling hung-over. Charlie and I calculated that we got 7 hours of sleep in 3 days, and I think it just caught up with me. Had some awful dreams, too: Something about Whitney \u0026amp; I owning one of those 100-year-old turret houses downtown G\u0026rsquo;town, and then 25 or so kids coming to stay with us from Hurricane Katrina, then her spending all our money while I was in Zurich on a new refridgerator.?.?\nPlus other dreams I couldn\u0026rsquo;t quite remember. . .\nApparently, we got our federal tax refund while I was away. (Yay!)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/sunday-march-26th-948-am-est/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWere the last few days a dream? I collapsed last night at 9:45 and woke-up 12 hours later sore everywhere and feeling hung-over. Charlie and I calculated that we got 7 hours of sleep in 3 days, and I think it just caught up with me. Had some awful dreams, too: Something about Whitney \u0026amp; I owning one of those 100-year-old turret houses downtown G\u0026rsquo;town, and then 25 or so kids coming to stay with us from Hurricane Katrina, then her spending all our money while I was in Zurich on a new refridgerator.?.?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sunday March 26th, 9:48 am EST"},{"content":"Mushing along at only 486 MPH, headwinds blocking us all the way. As restful and serene as our last trip was, this is a cattle-car. Seems like every coach seat is taken, and I\u0026rsquo;m seated in the middle of the 767 off the left Aisle. Turbulence has people getting airsick and the \u0026lsquo;fasten seatbelts sign\u0026rsquo; constantly illuminated. Ugh.\nAt least we ARE going home today. For most of yesterday\u0026rsquo;s marathon, 8am to 1:30am session, it looked like we hade no end of problems and that we\u0026rsquo;d have to stay through monday or deep into next week to solve their problems. However, we caught some breaks in the afternoon, and again in the evening, culminating in a successful test at 1:30. If we did the same procedures 10 times, probably 9 out of those 10 times, UBS would\u0026rsquo;ve demanded us to stay.\nI prayed so hard to get to come home. . .just homesick and fed-up.\nDidn\u0026rsquo;t see much of the land of banks and Chocolates, but I did experience some fine chocolates, coffee, and (of course) the banking world. Surprise\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re business-casual IT folks. I expected 3-piece suits everywhere, but no! I learned some of their ticks, as well\u0026hellip;Kurt couldn\u0026rsquo;t speak english too well, but had piercing blue eyes; Yvonne would make a weird sound whenever she decided the product was broken; and William had the best tick of all \u0026ndash; he had Restless Eyebrows Syndrom. He would stand around raising and lowering his eyebrows, just a tick\nSnapped a few photos while waiting for the shuttle to the airport, but that\u0026rsquo;s about it. The bill for the hotel room was truly spectacular\u0026ndash; 988 Swiss Francs (\u0026ldquo;We do not use the Euro, damnit!\u0026rdquo;), including two calls home from me that were 180 and 280 francs apiece. Given that it\u0026rsquo;s abotu 1.2 francs / dollar, that\u0026rsquo;s UNREAL.\nThe Zurich airport was a mess\u0026ndash;we arrived 2 hours before departure and only JUST made it to the plane before they closed boarding. 1:40 of processing, including an hour for check\u0026ndash;in.\n* * *\nDid learn some interesting things about European culture while I was there: They have very good table manners. Tip for everything (having no cash on me, this was a problem). The Swiss (at least) seem to work very hard. Nothing is complimentary (yuck). The Swiss DO wear deodorant, and are very conservative. Everyone seems to be an environmentallist, and Cars are looked down upon.\nOkay, digression: THE CARS WERE AWESOME. I turned around every 5 minutes on the street and saw some neat European model \u0026ndash; Citroen, Renault, various Italian and off-make vechicles \u0026ndash; not offered in the States. Charlie and I thought we could bluff our way into a test-drive at the Citroen dealer across the street from the Hotel Continental, but we spent barely 6 hours at the hotel in 2 days, so no chance there. In particluar classic german hardware \u0026ndash; E30 BMW\u0026rsquo;s, Audi\u0026rsquo;s, porsches\u0026ndash;were everywhere. Oh, and the standard Taxi is a Mercedes. :-)\nDon\u0026rsquo;t know why I\u0026rsquo;d ever visit Zurich on vacation\u0026ndash;I don\u0026rsquo;t ski, and the city doesn\u0026rsquo;t appeal to me, being super-expensive.\n* * *\nSo, what does this trip mean in the grander scheme of things? I have no idea. . .C\u0026rsquo;s been talking to me much more about the company, and I like his perspective on things. But then again, the guy\u0026rsquo;s a workaholic.\n* * *\nMovie reviews: We\u0026rsquo;ve seen two movies so far during the flight, \u0026ldquo;Chicken Litte\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Aeon Flux\u0026rdquo;. \u0026ldquo;Chicken Little\u0026rdquo; was derivative of almost every other kids movie, most notably \u0026ldquo;Shrek\u0026rdquo; (Lots of sing-along songs) and \u0026ldquo;Finding Nemo\u0026rdquo; (Message about father letting his ungifted son achieve and grow)\n\u0026ldquo;Aeon Flux\u0026rdquo; was\u0026hellip;umm\u0026hellip;.bad. Not worth Netflix\u0026rsquo;ing, even. My recommendation is grab the animated featurettes that MTV ran in the 90\u0026rsquo;s. Much more enjoyable\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/1030-am-est-34000-feet-above-newfoundland.-delta-flight-67-departed-zurich-10-am-local-time./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMushing along at only 486 MPH, headwinds blocking us all the way. As restful and serene as our last trip was, this is a cattle-car. Seems like every coach seat is taken, and I\u0026rsquo;m seated in the middle of the 767 off the left Aisle. Turbulence has people getting airsick and the \u0026lsquo;fasten seatbelts sign\u0026rsquo; constantly illuminated. Ugh.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt least we ARE going home today. For most of yesterday\u0026rsquo;s marathon, 8am to 1:30am session, it looked like we hade no end of problems and that we\u0026rsquo;d have to stay through monday or deep into next week to solve their problems. However, we caught some breaks in the afternoon, and again in the evening, culminating in a successful test at 1:30. If we did the same procedures 10 times, probably 9 out of those 10 times, UBS would\u0026rsquo;ve demanded us to stay.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"10:30 am, EST 34,000 feet above Newfoundland.  Delta Flight 67, departed Zurich 10 am local time."},{"content":"Hungry and frustrated. The bed was comfortable (it was a BED, not an airplane seat\u0026hellip;yay!), but Im still jet-lagged. Need\u0026hellip;coffee\u0026hellip;\nIndia didn\u0026rsquo;t come through for me (at least, not yet). We\u0026rsquo;re due @ UBS around 8am, and we haven\u0026rsquo;t eaten yet.\nMet some interesting people yesterday\u0026hellip;Kurt, the guy w/cool blue eyes and a quick smile who seems to be under a great deal of pressure, Yvonne the 6-foot-tall middle aged gal who\u0026rsquo;s our main contact. All were nice, and UBS seems much like any other large corporation, when you get down to it\u0026ndash;cubes and politics and processes to follow for everything.\nSaw nothing of Zurich except for my hotel \u0026amp; UBS, aside from our 1km walk back from UBS last night. Have seen more fine German automobiles than ever in my life\u0026hellip;mmm\u0026hellip;.:)\n* * *\nAll I\u0026rsquo;m left with today is hope\u0026ndash;hope that we\u0026rsquo;ll somehow figure out why the databases won\u0026rsquo;t let us write as expected, hope that I don\u0026rsquo;t have to spend the weekend in this foreign place away from all I know, hope that I don\u0026rsquo;t look like a fool for not being well enough prepared. . .\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/715-am-friday-march-24/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHungry and frustrated. The bed was comfortable (it was a BED, not an airplane seat\u0026hellip;yay!), but Im still jet-lagged. Need\u0026hellip;coffee\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIndia didn\u0026rsquo;t come through for me (at least, not yet). We\u0026rsquo;re due @ UBS around 8am, and we haven\u0026rsquo;t eaten yet.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMet some interesting people yesterday\u0026hellip;Kurt, the guy w/cool blue eyes and a quick smile who seems to be under a great deal of pressure, Yvonne the 6-foot-tall middle aged gal who\u0026rsquo;s our main contact. All were nice, and UBS seems much like any other large corporation, when you get down to it\u0026ndash;cubes and politics and processes to follow for everything.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"7:15 am, Friday March 24"},{"content":"Midnight Thursday, Zurich time, 30k feet above the earth, in a 767 going 500 mph\n6400 miles\u0026hellip;that\u0026rsquo;s what it is roughly from Atlanta to Zurich, and this ultra-mobile cylinder is eating them up smothly so far. They\u0026rsquo;ve just done first food service, announcing we\u0026rsquo;re to be in the air long enough (8+ hours) that we\u0026rsquo;ll be having dinner AND breakfast on this flight. Yikes.\nWhat has me here? Stupidity, mostly\u0026hellip;the customer saved their mission-critical issues for last, and their rollout of Lexmark printers is due Friday, one way or another. So, $6k worth of last-minute tickets has C and I headed over to Switzerland.\nC\u0026rsquo;s a great guy, 40+ salt-and-pepper hair, sporty and affable, with 6 kids. He\u0026rsquo;s manager of our Product Support team, and I like his focused take on life\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been more melodramatic than usual on this trip, telling everyone I\u0026rsquo;ve met (especially Whitney) goodbye like it\u0026rsquo;s the last time I\u0026rsquo;ll ever see them alive. Maybe Bella\u0026rsquo;s fear of flying has spooked me.\n* * *\nIn any case, I have plenty of reading material, plus I need a nap to stave off jetlag\u0026hellip;\n-\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\n7:50 am Thursday 31k feet over Eastern France\nGood MORNING! After ~5 hours of fitful sleep in my coach class seat, I enjoyed breakfast of a croissant, granola bar, and coffee. My feet are swollen from hours in the footwell, and my contacts didn\u0026rsquo;t enjoy going back into my eyes, but otherwise, I\u0026rsquo;m no worse for wear. I feel like I\u0026rsquo;ve slept, and I\u0026rsquo;m excited to tackle the problems on the ground\nI realized just after takeoff that I haven\u0026rsquo;t spent a night away from Bella since we married. Wherever we were\u0026ndash;her parents, our honeymoon, my folks\u0026rsquo; place\u0026ndash;we always slept together. I think I may have a feeling not felt since high school\u0026ndash;homesickness. :-) Means I have a home to go back to, I guess.\n-\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\u0026mdash;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/travelogue-switzerland-ubs/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMidnight Thursday, Zurich time, 30k feet above the earth, in a 767 going 500 mph\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e6400 miles\u0026hellip;that\u0026rsquo;s what it is roughly from Atlanta to Zurich, and this ultra-mobile cylinder is eating them up smothly so far. They\u0026rsquo;ve just done first food service, announcing we\u0026rsquo;re to be in the air long enough (8+ hours) that we\u0026rsquo;ll be having dinner AND breakfast on this flight. Yikes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat has me here? Stupidity, mostly\u0026hellip;the customer saved their mission-critical issues for last, and their rollout of Lexmark printers is due Friday, one way or another. So, $6k worth of last-minute tickets has C and I headed over to Switzerland.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Travelogue: Switzerland-\u003e UBS"},{"content":"Guy1: Hey, I\u0026rsquo;m buying an engagement ring! I just paid cash for a Mazda Miata, and I won\u0026rsquo;t be able to do all the car stuff I want to do in the coming year, but at least I will be getting laid more often, for a while anyway.\nGuy2: Do you have that in writing?\n* * *\n:-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/quoted-from-the-car-lounge/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGuy1: Hey, I\u0026rsquo;m buying an engagement ring!  I just paid cash for a Mazda Miata, and I won\u0026rsquo;t be able to do all the car stuff I want to do in the coming year, but at least I will be getting laid more often, for a while anyway.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGuy2: Do you have that in writing?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quoted from The Car Lounge"},{"content":"Randomness:\n- Kentucky lost in a worthy effort. Joey woke-up from his nap in time to half-watch the game w/10 mins to go in the 2nd. Not a great game, but a great performance from a mediocre team. Once Morris fouled-out, I knew we were done, but Sparks almost pulled it out.\n- Yesterday was yard-work day, as Joey and I went out and honey-did: Put down pre-emergent, fertilizer, covered Whitney\u0026rsquo;s flowers against the frost, pruned the rat\u0026rsquo;s-nest of our pear trees, and swept the front porch. Not warm enough to do much else, but Spring is a-coming.\n- Got my lawnmower blades hollow-ground for $4 Saturday. FOUR DOLLARS! W00t\u0026hellip;sadly the shop in G\u0026rsquo;town (Lindsey\u0026rsquo;s Outdoor Equipment) is up for sale as the owner (the eponymous Lindsey) is wanting to retire. The place was a treasure-trove of nice out door equipment\u0026ndash;Stihl chainsaws, trimmers, bait, tackle, hardware, knives, etc. Yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s a Harold candy-store.\n- Missed my first autocross yesterday. It was hard, but I\u0026rsquo;m managaing.\n- Check out this beauty that sold on Ebay just yesterday. It\u0026rsquo;s like 50 miles from G\u0026rsquo;town. Just a bit overtuned to be streetable, but I wanted it so badly I could taste it.\n- Latest E30 hunt I\u0026rsquo;m on:\n1984 Model with the indestructible M10 engine. Didn\u0026rsquo;t sell on ebay, so I sent a mail to the folks @ the Porsche dealership to see if they\u0026rsquo;re willing to deal. Only a brisk 8 hour drive (one way!) from G\u0026rsquo;town\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/quick-hits..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRandomness:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Kentucky \u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/sports/colleges/university_of_kentucky/14140624.htm\"\u003elost\u003c/a\u003e in a worthy effort. Joey woke-up from his nap in time to half-watch the game w/10 mins to go in the 2nd. Not a great game, but a great performance from a mediocre team. Once Morris fouled-out, I knew we were done, but Sparks almost pulled it out.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Yesterday was yard-work day, as Joey and I went out and honey-did: Put down pre-emergent, fertilizer, covered Whitney\u0026rsquo;s flowers against the frost, pruned the rat\u0026rsquo;s-nest of our pear trees, and swept the front porch. Not warm enough to do much else, but Spring is a-coming.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quick hits...."},{"content":"One of the hallmarks of my experience in Christianity is my response to the \u0026lsquo;Peace be with you\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;How you doing\u0026rsquo; moment. In the Catholic mass, there\u0026rsquo;s a portion where you turn to your neighbor(s) and say \u0026lsquo;Peace be with you\u0026rsquo;. In many Protestant services (such as ours at Northside Christian), we have a \u0026lsquo;Greet your neighbor\u0026rsquo; portion of the service.\nUntil very recently, these moments scared the hell out of me.\nI\u0026rsquo;m a sinner, and I stem from the great \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not okay, you\u0026rsquo;re okay\u0026rdquo; tradition. It\u0026rsquo;s hard to look someone in the eye and shake their hand when you\u0026rsquo;re thinking they have holy insight into the blackness of your soul.\nOf course, that\u0026rsquo;s all bunk. We\u0026rsquo;re all sinners, and saying \u0026lsquo;hi\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;peace be with you\u0026rsquo; is just our way of reassuring our fellow man that he does indeed belong in the church, and we\u0026rsquo;re happy he\u0026rsquo;s here.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/why-i-hated-shaking-hands-in-church.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the hallmarks of my experience in Christianity is my response to the \u0026lsquo;Peace be with you\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;How you doing\u0026rsquo; moment. In the Catholic mass, there\u0026rsquo;s a portion where you turn to your neighbor(s) and say \u0026lsquo;Peace be with you\u0026rsquo;. In many Protestant services (such as ours at Northside Christian), we have a \u0026lsquo;Greet your neighbor\u0026rsquo; portion of the service.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil very recently, these moments scared the hell out of me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why I hated shaking hands in church..."},{"content":"Read this thread and then tell me you want to finance a car ever again\u0026hellip;\n* * *\nThere are more things in MarkVision than are dreamed of in your philosophy\n-- David Jarvis\nWell, fewer things in 11.0 than in 10.2 ::grin::, but still a bazillion neat little features.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/various-and-sundry-things/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRead \u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zerothread?id=2504465\"\u003ethis thread\u003c/a\u003e and then tell me you want to finance a car ever again\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are more things in \u003ca href=\"http://www.markvisionprofessional.com\"\u003eMarkVision\u003c/a\u003e than are dreamed of in your philosophy\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-- David Jarvis\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, fewer things in 11.0 than in 10.2 ::grin::, but still a bazillion neat little features.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Various and sundry things"},{"content":"I feel like death today\u0026hellip;exhausted, used-up, and I have meetings and interviews all day from 9-4 (minus lunch @ 12)\nSomebody kill me.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/death-dying-and-interviews.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI feel like death today\u0026hellip;exhausted, used-up, and I have meetings and interviews all day from 9-4 (minus lunch @ 12)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomebody kill me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Death, dying, and interviews..."},{"content":"\u0026hellip;when people pass you in the hallway and they don\u0026rsquo;t ask you \u0026ldquo;how are you\u0026rdquo; because you look so frigging miserable that they\u0026rsquo;re afraid of your answer.\n\u0026hellip;when you have the guy whose job\u0026rsquo;s on the line look at you and say \u0026ldquo;has anything NOT gone wrong when you\u0026rsquo;re a team lead?\u0026rdquo;\nYes, actually, one thing hasn\u0026rsquo;t gone wrong: My project hasn\u0026rsquo;t gotten cancelled.\nToday, in true LXK fashion, it did.\n* * *\nOh, we\u0026rsquo;re just reallocating test resource away from project X so that we can focus on project \u0026lsquo;Y\u0026rsquo;, which is customer-critical. We\u0026rsquo;re going to recapture these goals and requirements in phase 2 of the current product.\nOkay, let me get real for you right here. The internal \u0026ldquo;Customer\u0026rdquo; that asked for my product asked for it TWO YEARS AGO. By the time I get them something that meeting expectations, it will be THREE YEARS since they asked for the product. I\u0026rsquo;ve lost friends, teammates, family relations, and sleep for shelfware. I\u0026rsquo;ll deliver this project and there\u0026rsquo;s no chance in hell of anyone using it.\nThis sickens me because it\u0026rsquo;s the mess I made. It\u0026rsquo;s the mess I was thrown into\u0026hellip;no blame to go around except upon my shoulders. There were times I could\u0026rsquo;ve guided the architecture away from the dumbass decisions we made, and I didn\u0026rsquo;t do it. I coddled under-producing team-members in hopes they\u0026rsquo;d rise to the occasion, and they didn\u0026rsquo;t. I took, took, and took from the customer, the PMs, and the managers to generate\u0026hellip;nothing. No tangible benefit for anyone, aside from my salary + benefits.\n* * *\nAll I can think of is the quote: \u0026ldquo;Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency for me.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/you-know-its-bad-when.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;when people pass you in the hallway and they don\u0026rsquo;t ask you \u0026ldquo;how are you\u0026rdquo; because you look so frigging miserable that they\u0026rsquo;re afraid of your answer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;when you have the guy whose job\u0026rsquo;s on the line look at you and say \u0026ldquo;has anything NOT gone wrong when you\u0026rsquo;re a team lead?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, actually, one thing hasn\u0026rsquo;t gone wrong: My project hasn\u0026rsquo;t gotten cancelled.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, in true LXK fashion, it did.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"You know it's bad when..."},{"content":"It occurred to me yesterday that there are way too many automobile brands and companies, relative to other industries. Cars are bucking the trend, and I predict the comind 5 years will see them fall back in line:\nCases in point:\nThere are only TWO major commerical airline manufacturers\u0026ndash;Boeing and Airbus. The banking/financials industry is clumping together like bad gravy We have only 3 telcos left in this country\u0026hellip; Honestly, there\u0026rsquo;s not enough room in the market for all the sucky cars made on the periphery of the industry. Ford, GM, Chrysler, I\u0026rsquo;m talking to you.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/on-automotive-consolidation/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt occurred to me yesterday that there are way too many automobile brands and companies, relative to other industries.  Cars are bucking the trend, and I predict the comind 5 years will see them fall back in line:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCases in point:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThere are only TWO major commerical airline manufacturers\u0026ndash;Boeing and Airbus.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe banking/financials industry is clumping together like bad gravy\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe have only 3 telcos left in this country\u0026hellip;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHonestly, there\u0026rsquo;s not enough room in the market for all the sucky cars made on the periphery of the industry.  Ford, GM, Chrysler, I\u0026rsquo;m talking to you.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On automotive consolidation"},{"content":"I think this pissed-off malaise I\u0026rsquo;m in boils down to being antsy. Whitney, Joey, and I weathered the non-winter, and now things are beginning that I can\u0026rsquo;t do to my satisfaction\u0026ndash;work outside on the house, go autocrossing, be home to play with Joey.\nDoesn\u0026rsquo;t help that our church didn\u0026rsquo;t make its goal for paying off debt on the new property, despite all our efforts. Very frustrating, though Scott did a great job of playing-it-off last night at our \u0026ldquo;celebration\u0026rdquo; dessert social. Kinda thought it was a bad sign when only ~45 ppl showed at the 6pm service.\n* * *\nI miss autocross. I miss the dirty, smelly world of racing, the camaraderie of other car-nuts, the neat people I met on the periphery. I miss just being outside doing something, mostly. Again\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m antsy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/the-weekend.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI think this pissed-off malaise I\u0026rsquo;m in boils down to being antsy. Whitney, Joey, and I weathered the non-winter, and now things are beginning that I can\u0026rsquo;t do to my satisfaction\u0026ndash;work outside on the house, go autocrossing, be home to play with Joey.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDoesn\u0026rsquo;t help that our church didn\u0026rsquo;t make its goal for paying off debt on the new property, despite all our efforts. Very frustrating, though Scott did a great job of playing-it-off last night at our \u0026ldquo;celebration\u0026rdquo; dessert social. Kinda thought it was a bad sign when only ~45 ppl showed at the 6pm service.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The weekend..."},{"content":"Still sitting here in the kitchen, committing most of the EB White decries in \u0026ldquo;Elements of Style\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;Omit needless words\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;have something to say\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;make definite assertions\u0026rdquo;), I thought about how much of a wonderful help-mate my wife has become for me.\nI thought I functioned rather well as a bachelor. Minus cars, I was financially conservative, ate well, cleaned\u0026hellip;umm\u0026hellip;occasionally. However, with the new eyes of a husband and dad, I realize how much I was missing.\nIt begins, for me with the small things: I haven\u0026rsquo;t been to the grocery store or walmart for any substantial purchase in months. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s taken complete charge of the kitchen, minus some dabblings on my part every so often. My diet has improved from rice\u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo;beans and beans\u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo;rice to amazing dinners of fettucine, chicken marsala, spinach-stuffed steak, and all sorts of other dishes that she enjoys cooking. She believes in balancing meals with breads, meats, and vegetables, and everything is flavorful.\nShe considers the house her job, her place of work, and she strives there like a person bucking for a promotion. Things are clean and efficient, but still warm and lived-in: Clothes, dishes, furniture, dusting, bed linens, all done with the vigor of 6-foot-tall Brunhilda in a 4'10\u0026quot; body. Honey, if you ever doubt I appreciate those things, trust me I do!\nShe\u0026rsquo;s also brought me back into church, for which I owe her eternal (literally!) debt. Her Christianity is different than mine\u0026ndash;she\u0026rsquo;s a legalist, I\u0026rsquo;m a golden-rule guy\u0026ndash;but we have encouraged one another and our activities with our local church are awesome.\nShe\u0026rsquo;s good with money. You might say, she\u0026rsquo;s *perfect* with it\u0026ndash;not a tightwad, but not a huge spender either. She has definite goals for money, and sees what it can do for her, which encourages me (the hoarding saver) to think in the same way. I\u0026rsquo;m sitting in the best example of that: Our kitchen is a warm blue that really like.\nI\u0026rsquo;m a lucky, blessed man, and I thank God every day that He brought the two of us back together. Amen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/why-my-wife-rocks/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStill sitting here in the kitchen, committing most of the EB White decries in \u0026ldquo;Elements of Style\u0026rdquo; (\u0026ldquo;Omit needless words\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;have something to say\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;make definite assertions\u0026rdquo;), I thought about how much of a wonderful help-mate my wife has become for me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI thought I functioned rather well as a bachelor. Minus cars, I was financially conservative, ate well, cleaned\u0026hellip;umm\u0026hellip;occasionally. However, with the new eyes of a husband and dad, I realize how much I was missing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why my wife rocks"},{"content":"Stark awake at 5 this morning, as though it were a normal weekday, sitting here sipping coffee.\nI love coffee. I grew up with two Folgers addicts and never could stomach the stuff, for a couple of reasons\u0026ndash;Folgers is made from high caffeine, low-flavor Robusta beans and they make WEAK coffee. Not to rant or anything, but I can almost look at a cup and watch the darkness and opacity of the liquid and tell how the coffee will taste. Down at their house last weekend, I could SEE THROUGH THE WHOLE POT!\nMeasuring and grinding my own beans for my manual drip brewing system produces variable results: Too finely ground, the coffee is too strong and bitter. Too coarse, and the coffee is weak. However, I see this as a rewarding, involving challenge each day.\n* * *\nA warm day dawns, with cotton-ball clouds lit warm pink atop Georgetown today. Spring is nearly here, and my house needs tending.\n* * *\nStill feeling that awkward, listlessness. Selling the car (or, at least, coming to terms on it) has me excited, scared, and mildly depressed, if only because the car is my last tie to who I was\u0026ndash;broke but happy in a materialistic sort of way. I was a car Epicurean, sampling and resampling autos all the time.\nSoon, I\u0026rsquo;ll be just another fart, bench racing and lusting after fine horses I can\u0026rsquo;t have. I smile at that, because I know IT\u0026rsquo;LL BE OKAY :-) Good things come to those who wait, save, invest and plan. Which is what I plan on doing today.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/morning-randomness/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStark awake at 5 this morning, as though it were a normal weekday, sitting here sipping coffee.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI love coffee. I grew up with two Folgers addicts and never could stomach the stuff, for a couple of reasons\u0026ndash;Folgers is made from high caffeine, low-flavor Robusta beans and they make WEAK coffee. Not to rant or anything, but I can almost look at a cup and watch the darkness and opacity of the liquid and tell how the coffee will taste. Down at their house last weekend, I could SEE THROUGH THE WHOLE POT!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Morning randomness"},{"content":"Couple from Jackson, Tennessee (Irony\u0026hellip;) have an offer in on the mini @ $15k. I\u0026rsquo;ve accepted, but they\u0026rsquo;ve yet to provide cash.\nKind of an interesting story. Gal named Tina calls-up around 4pm EST and says she wants to buy the MINI for her birthday on Monday, and asks if we\u0026rsquo;ll take a personal check.\n\u0026hellip;umm, no.\nSo then her HUSBAND calls and says they have the loan and everything, they just can\u0026rsquo;t get a certified check by close of business friday\u0026hellip;\nSo, I have a verbal agreement on the car\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/we-may-have-a-deal.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCouple from Jackson, Tennessee (Irony\u0026hellip;) have an offer in on the mini @ $15k. I\u0026rsquo;ve accepted, but they\u0026rsquo;ve yet to provide cash.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKind of an interesting story. Gal named Tina calls-up around 4pm EST and says she wants to buy the MINI for her birthday on Monday, and asks if we\u0026rsquo;ll take a personal check.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;umm, no.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo then her HUSBAND calls and says they have the loan and everything, they just can\u0026rsquo;t get a certified check by close of business friday\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"We may have a deal..."},{"content":"Why can\u0026rsquo;t I be like the guy I interviewed today? He\u0026rsquo;s a super-well-spoken tech head, 35, great personality and technical aptitudes, with a mind for design and a jones to learn new things. I felt smarter just being in the room with the guy. I wanted to hire him on the spot.\nEDIT: The big thing is, here was a guy who was 35, been through the .com boom/bust worked crazy hours cranking out code, and he\u0026rsquo;s NOT BURNED OUT.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/self-flaggelation/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhy can\u0026rsquo;t I be like the guy I interviewed today? He\u0026rsquo;s a super-well-spoken tech head, 35, great personality and technical aptitudes, with a mind for design and a jones to learn new things. I felt smarter just being in the room with the guy. I wanted to hire him on the spot.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEDIT: The big thing is, here was a guy who was 35, been through the .com boom/bust worked crazy hours cranking out code, and he\u0026rsquo;s NOT BURNED OUT.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Self flaggelation"},{"content":"Interesting article on Scott Adams\u0026rsquo;s rare condition that makes him unable to speak.\nPretty cool, affirming story, actually.\n* * *\nKentucky is presently down 31-26 to Mississippi in the 2nd, and the office is a ghosttown.\nHaven\u0026rsquo;t been moved to blog much lately. MINI still sits unsold, after offers from Carmax ($13k) and Frank Shoop ($12.5k), Whitney and I are trying to be patient. Seen some E30\u0026rsquo;s that\u0026rsquo;ve caught my eye, as well as some Chevy Prizms (don\u0026rsquo;t laugh\u0026hellip;)\nOnly thing on the E30\u0026rsquo;s is their age. I\u0026rsquo;ve narrowed to either a 1987-1991 325is or 318is as my target vehicle, but neither will be as practical, reliable, or fuel efficient as a prizm. From what I hear, a prizm will get 38+ mpg on the highway w/a 5spd, and last forever. Not a rewarding drive, but that\u0026rsquo;s okay.\nStrong storms headed our way in KY tonight and through the weekend\u0026hellip;hope all goes well.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/lots-of-exciting-stuff-today.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eInteresting article on \u003ca href=\"http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/03/can_you_hear_me.html\"\u003eScott Adams\u0026rsquo;s rare condition\u003c/a\u003e that makes him unable to speak.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePretty cool, affirming story, actually.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKentucky is presently down 31-26 to Mississippi in the 2nd, and the office is a ghosttown.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHaven\u0026rsquo;t been moved to blog much lately. MINI still sits unsold, after offers from Carmax ($13k) and Frank Shoop ($12.5k), Whitney and I are trying to be patient. Seen some E30\u0026rsquo;s that\u0026rsquo;ve caught my eye, as well as some Chevy Prizms (don\u0026rsquo;t laugh\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lots of exciting stuff today..."},{"content":"Whitney and I took a big step on the Dave Ramsey bandwagon last night: We cut up and then shredded our Credit Cards. We had everything from Shell, to discover, to MasterCard, to JC Penny\u0026rsquo;s. All gone :-)\nI\u0026rsquo;ve never been more proud of her.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re looking for a new (used) couch, so we\u0026rsquo;re heading up to a furniture store liquidation auction tomorrow morning in Cynthiana. The stars have perfectly aligned: We just got a windfall from my huge LXK bonus ( coupla hundred $$), and Jeff\u0026rsquo;s graciously allowed us to drive his newly tuned-up truck up there (for the price of a tank of gas). Awesomeness.\nNow, if I can just find a decent couch for not too much dough\u0026hellip;:-)\n* * *\nBut who says \u0026lsquo;dough\u0026rsquo; these days?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/happiness-is-the-sound-of-your-ccs-being-shredded.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhitney and I took a big step on the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Ramsey\"\u003eDave Ramsey\u003c/a\u003e bandwagon last night: We cut up and then shredded our Credit Cards. We had everything from Shell, to discover, to MasterCard, to JC Penny\u0026rsquo;s. All gone :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve never been more proud of her.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re looking for a new (used) couch, so we\u0026rsquo;re heading up to a furniture store liquidation auction tomorrow morning in Cynthiana. The stars have perfectly aligned: We just got a windfall from my huge LXK bonus ( coupla hundred $$), and Jeff\u0026rsquo;s graciously allowed us to drive his newly tuned-up truck up there (for the price of a tank of gas). Awesomeness.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Happiness is the sound of your CC's being shredded..."},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m typing this on my new, ultra-portable 3.8lb Dell D410. The company isn\u0026rsquo;t shy about providing us with computers, particularly those from our closest parter.\nI like it so far; it has no drive bays, but a full compliment of ports and the biggest battery I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen\u0026hellip;9-cell lithium-ION.\nBasically, this is the machine that\u0026rsquo;s to replace all my paper, etc. Probably the best thing is it has integrated 802.11g wireless, freeing me from popping a PCMCIA card in and out of the chassis to put it in the bag.\nAlso, they got me a snazzy backpack for the machine.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/03/new-schwag-at-office.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m typing this on my new, ultra-portable 3.8lb Dell D410. The company isn\u0026rsquo;t shy about providing us with computers, particularly those from our closest parter.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/9/0,1425,i=97255,00.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI like it so far; it has no drive bays, but a full compliment of ports and the biggest battery I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen\u0026hellip;9-cell lithium-ION.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, this is the machine that\u0026rsquo;s to replace all my paper, etc. Probably the best thing is it has integrated 802.11g wireless, freeing me from popping a PCMCIA card in and out of the chassis to put it in the bag.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Schwag at office..."},{"content":"\nFruit Loops are an uber-filling, puffed-sugar time bomb. I can eat bowl after bowl of \u0026lsquo;Total\u0026rsquo;, but what has me utterly full 3 hours later? Fruit Loops. Perhaps its the coffee I layerd atop it, but I\u0026rsquo;m not too hungry even going into lunchtime.\n* * *\nAh, snuggling with my darling with this morning was awesome! :-)\n* * *\nJust to show you how much poison is going on at work: A guy quit BEFORE they could reassign him to my team.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/02/some-things-just-make-the-day-brighter/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://flakmag.com/misc/images/frootloops.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFruit Loops are an uber-filling, puffed-sugar time bomb. I can eat bowl after bowl of \u0026lsquo;Total\u0026rsquo;, but what has me utterly full 3 hours later? Fruit Loops. Perhaps its the coffee I layerd atop it, but I\u0026rsquo;m not too hungry even going into lunchtime.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAh, snuggling with my darling with this morning was awesome! :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust to show you how much poison is going on at work: A guy quit BEFORE they could reassign him to my team.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some things just make the day brighter"},{"content":" Character is doing the right thing when nobody is watching.\n-- Stu Brentzel\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/02/quote-of-the-year/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCharacter is doing the right thing when nobody is watching.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-- Stu Brentzel\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote of the year"},{"content":"Lindsey Jacobellis\u0026rsquo; fall\nYes, it was risky. Yes, it was youthful exhuberance. Yes, she fell within walking distance of the finish witha 140 foot lead on her nearest competitor.\nBut FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT\u0026rsquo;S HOLY, she didn\u0026rsquo;t deserve the vitriolic montage on NBC\u0026rsquo;s coverage after her fall. \u0026ldquo;Dewey defeats Truman\u0026rdquo;? It\u0026rsquo;s a sport, and a new one at that! Sport is about competition, yes, but when it comes right down to it, it\u0026rsquo;s about showing that you\u0026rsquo;re better than someone at something, for your own glory.\nIn essence, sport *is* that showboating that Lindsey Jacobellis perpetrated, and for Bob Costas and his pasty-faced sportswriter crony to rake this gal over the coals for \u0026ldquo;One of the all-time biggest gaffes in sports\u0026rdquo; just confirms one thing: The Olympics are dead. They need to villanize a mistake to take advantage of the ratings coup for the girl who screwed-up.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re watching the olympics for the same reason we watch NASCAR: The carnage, the screw-ups, the blown tempers, and the blown opportunities. This is our collective schadenfreude, served-up in high-def.\n* * *\nMost delicious thing about it? This gal will survive this. Unlike the 1919 White Sox, Pete Rose\u0026rsquo;s gambling addiction, or even Tonya Harding, she can\u0026rsquo;t be constrained by any one sanctioning body. She\u0026rsquo;ll be back on the world stage, at the X-Games, and in competition in defiance of conventional wisdom.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s what I kind of relish about my generation. We\u0026rsquo;re handed a world that pretty-much sucks (thanks, Boomers!), and we give it the finger and get on with our lives.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/02/on-why-the-olympics-is-dead/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/olympics/2006/02/17/bc.oly.sno.women.ssnowb.ap/index.html\"\u003eLindsey Jacobellis\u0026rsquo; fall\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, it was risky. Yes, it was youthful exhuberance. Yes, she fell within walking distance of the finish witha 140 foot lead on her nearest competitor.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT\u0026rsquo;S HOLY, she didn\u0026rsquo;t deserve the vitriolic montage on NBC\u0026rsquo;s coverage after her fall. \u0026ldquo;Dewey defeats Truman\u0026rdquo;? It\u0026rsquo;s a sport, and a new one at that! Sport is about competition, yes, but when it comes right down to it, it\u0026rsquo;s about showing that you\u0026rsquo;re better than someone at something, for your own glory.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On why the Olympics is dead"},{"content":"Joey\u0026rsquo;s new wheedling technique is \u0026ldquo;I NEVER get to ______\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I never get to watch a movie anymore\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I never get to go outside!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Why won\u0026rsquo;t you play with me\u0026hellip;you never play with me anymore!\u0026rdquo; or the corollary, \u0026ldquo;My Daddy plays with me all the time.\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nScene: Interior, our house. Harold sits int the kitchen eating breakfast, Joey\u0026rsquo;s wrapped up in his blanket on the living room floor in the Anne Geddes position:\nJoey (Rolls over): Harold, will you put on a movie for me?\nHarold (looks up from cereal): No; I\u0026rsquo;ll turn-on Dragon Tales if you like.\n[Joey sits up on haunches, makes cry face]\nJoey: I NEVER get to watch a movie!!!\nInsert, we took him to the theatre to watch \u0026ldquo;Curious George\u0026rdquo; yesterday\n[Joey buries head in hands once more and starts to whimper]\nHarold: Are ya done?\n[Joey whimpers louder]\nHarold: Come on, louder! Joe, you\u0026rsquo;re going to need to develop a new game, \u0026lsquo;cuz this one doesn\u0026rsquo;t work on me OR mommy. Now, I\u0026rsquo;ll turn on PBS but that\u0026rsquo;s it.\n[Harold goes into living room, turns on tube and ensures the V-chip is set for \u0026lsquo;child\u0026rsquo;]\n* * *\nYeah, harsh. Joey\u0026rsquo;s a smart kid, and the only reason he\u0026rsquo;ll persist with a behavior is if it works. I wanted to establish with him that I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t play his game and try to \u0026lsquo;reason with him\u0026rsquo; that, yes, we did indeed let him do stuff.\nI was the same way (well, lots worse) as a child. I don\u0026rsquo;t hold it against him; in a way, it\u0026rsquo;s just like a chick in a nest chirping louder to get more of the food mommy brings back\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s natural. Still yet, this kind of behavior is maddening if left unchecked.\nGoogled on this today and came up with this advice:\nParenting Tip. Either refuse to argue, or assume the broken-record stance. I did the former today, but I\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to trying the latter. However, as Whitney advised me long ago, never involve yourself in a battle of wills with a child. They have plenty of time on their hands, and even beginning to play that game empowers them.\n* * *\nThing about this whole thing is, I love Joey to death! I don\u0026rsquo;t hold any of this against him, and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t even make me angry. It\u0026rsquo;s cool, in an odd kind of way. I\u0026rsquo;m his parent now. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/02/on-i-never-get-to/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJoey\u0026rsquo;s new wheedling technique is \u0026ldquo;I NEVER get to ______\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;I never get to watch a movie anymore\u0026rdquo;\u003cbr\u003e\n\u0026ldquo;I never get to go outside!\u0026rdquo;\u003cbr\u003e\n\u0026ldquo;Why won\u0026rsquo;t you play with me\u0026hellip;you never play with me anymore!\u0026rdquo; or the corollary, \u0026ldquo;My Daddy plays with me all the time.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eScene: Interior, our house. Harold sits int the kitchen eating breakfast, Joey\u0026rsquo;s wrapped up in his blanket on the living room floor in the Anne Geddes position:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"I never get to!\""},{"content":"Link\nPretty straightforward:\nGet a $1000 emergency fund saved up\nPay-off debts from smallest to largest (Debt snowball principle)\nSave 3-6 months of expenses\nSave for college\nPay-off house early\nBuild wealth\nHe has co-opted good ideas from others (the envelope system, etc.), but I like the focus on intensity.\nSee more progress on: get out of debt\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/02/working-through-the-dave-ramsey-plan/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.daveramsey.com\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePretty straightforward:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGet a $1000 emergency fund saved up\u003cbr\u003e\nPay-off debts from smallest to largest (Debt snowball principle)\u003cbr\u003e\nSave 3-6 months of expenses\u003cbr\u003e\nSave for college\u003cbr\u003e\nPay-off house early\u003cbr\u003e\nBuild wealth\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe has co-opted good ideas from others (the envelope system, etc.), but I like the focus on intensity.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSee more progress on: \u003ca href=\"http://www.43things.com/people/progress/miniharryc1978?on=1972067\"\u003eget out of debt\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Working through the Dave Ramsey plan"},{"content":"The Pup\u0026rsquo;s down to $16,500 and that\u0026rsquo;s about where I\u0026rsquo;m willing to go on the price. Hopefully, that\u0026rsquo;ll get us some hits in the next month.\nOther than that, I\u0026rsquo;m taking her to the slaughterhouse (i.e. Carmax). We have things we need to do with this money.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/02/bottom-of-the-barrel/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Pup\u0026rsquo;s down to $16,500 and that\u0026rsquo;s about where I\u0026rsquo;m willing to go on the price. Hopefully, that\u0026rsquo;ll get us some hits in the next month.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOther than that, I\u0026rsquo;m taking her to the slaughterhouse (i.e. Carmax). We have things we need to do with this money.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bottom-of-the-barrel $$$"},{"content":"Whitney and I are back to having 2 cars, as the MINI hasn\u0026rsquo;t sold yet and we got it dirty the other day during the snow we had.\nRan an ad in the Lex Herald-Leader last week and got no nibbles except from a fella wanting a good $500-$600 car. Uhh\u0026hellip;\nLooks like the resale on these is waning quickly, and we may have to look at dropping the price again.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/02/back-to-two-cars...for-now.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhitney and I are back to having 2 cars, as the MINI hasn\u0026rsquo;t sold yet and we got it dirty the other day during the snow we had.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRan an ad in the Lex Herald-Leader last week and got no nibbles except from a fella wanting a good $500-$600 car. Uhh\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLooks like the resale on these is waning quickly, and we may have to look at dropping the price again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"back to two cars...for now..."},{"content":"So, on last night\u0026rsquo;s Monday Night Football\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;Superbowl telecast we saw:\nA boring 1st half\nA broadcast team who phoned-in their performance\nA sectegenarian rock band who phoned-in their performance\nA network so scared of controversy it rejected any commercial hinting at sex (i.e. the good ones\nJust on the football, we saw a game that Seattle lost more than Pittsburgh won. If they hadn\u0026rsquo;t mismanaged the clock, Seattle could\u0026rsquo;ve easily had 14 more points. The Steelers weren\u0026rsquo;t THAT stellar, especially with Big Ben was nervous in the 1st half.\nI mean, it was really a crime\u0026hellip;this was just like any other mediocre set of two teams on a midseason night of MNF. Fox and CBS do a much better job of this; hope that ratings and the associated fallout reflect it.\nBOOOOOOOOO!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/02/superbowl...yawn/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, on last night\u0026rsquo;s Monday Night Football\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;Superbowl telecast we saw:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA boring 1st half\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA broadcast team who phoned-in their performance\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA sectegenarian rock band who phoned-in their performance\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA network so scared of controversy it rejected any commercial hinting at sex (i.e. the good ones\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust on the football, we saw a game that Seattle lost more than Pittsburgh won. If they hadn\u0026rsquo;t mismanaged the clock, Seattle could\u0026rsquo;ve easily had 14 more points. The Steelers weren\u0026rsquo;t THAT stellar, especially with Big Ben was nervous in the 1st half.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Superbowl...::yawn::"},{"content":"Read This thread and you\u0026rsquo;ll get it.\nGuy streeted his girl for a GTO.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/why-women-hate-men-who-love-cars./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRead \u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zerothread?id=2421373\"\u003eThis thread\u003c/a\u003e and you\u0026rsquo;ll get it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGuy streeted his girl for a GTO.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why women hate men who love cars."},{"content":"\u0026hellip;you look down at work two days in a row and notice that your pants aren\u0026rsquo;t zipped.\n* * *\nDrove the MINI to work today; I\u0026rsquo;m rather tired of having only one car, and certain expediencies require separate vehicles. So, what did I notice about my garage queen (king?) when I got out to put the floormats in it?\nTwo burned-out bulbs in the front lights: one lowbeam headlight (driver\u0026rsquo;s side), and one driving light on the passenger side. My baby misses me. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/proof-that-youre-having-a-bad-coupla-days.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;you look down at work two days in a row and notice that your pants aren\u0026rsquo;t zipped.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDrove the MINI to work today; I\u0026rsquo;m rather tired of having only one car, and certain expediencies require separate vehicles. So, what did I notice about my garage queen (king?) when I got out to put the floormats in it?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo burned-out bulbs in the front lights: one lowbeam headlight (driver\u0026rsquo;s side), and one driving light on the passenger side. My baby misses me. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Proof that you're having a bad coupla days..."},{"content":"Is the car dying?\nIs the automobile, the symbol of American freedom and excess ceasing to be an object of status \u0026amp; lust for the populace?\nI\u0026rsquo;m not writing to persuade you of this fact, but rather to pose the question that occurs to me. Are cars just necessary appliances that no longer inspire their owners? After 4 generations of automobilers (Great Generation, Boomers, Gen X, and the latest unnamed gaggle), is the automobile so taken for granted?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/is-the-car-dying-along-with-the-baby-boomers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIs the car dying?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIs the automobile, the symbol of American freedom and excess ceasing to be an object of status \u0026amp; lust for the populace?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not writing to persuade you of this fact, but rather to pose the question that occurs to me. Are cars just necessary appliances that no longer inspire their owners? After 4 generations of automobilers (Great Generation, Boomers, Gen X, and the latest unnamed gaggle), is the automobile so taken for granted?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Is the car dying along with the baby boomers?"},{"content":"May Zep forgive me for a pun\u0026hellip;\n* * *\nThe Pup\u0026rsquo;s still glorying as our garage queen of January, awaiting his next playful buyer with more money, affection, and less debt. We\u0026rsquo;ve lowered the price from our original $18,500 to $17,500 and we\u0026rsquo;ve yet to have one serious interested buyer. We\u0026rsquo;ve advertised on autotrader, cars.com, roadfly.org, NorthAmericanMotoring.com (MINI club site), and in the Lexington Herald-Leader (regular classified ad), but no bites yet.\nTo keep the fluids and seals fresh, we drove him around Saturday down to Sam\u0026rsquo;s and recalled how harsh the ride is, but how sweet the handling, steering, and shifter are.\nSo, this puts us at a crossroads\u0026hellip;wait it out, lower the price, or forget it altogether. I don\u0026rsquo;t really see the latter as an option\u0026ndash;we need out of debt, and we\u0026rsquo;re doing all we can to achieve that. Hopefully, with selling the mini and our forthcoming tax return (no whammies, no whammies, STOP!!), we\u0026rsquo;ll be much closer than we are right now.\nIn any case, we\u0026rsquo;ve hit an inflection point, and I\u0026rsquo;m very pleased by that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/the-mini-remains-the-same.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMay Zep forgive me for a pun\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Pup\u0026rsquo;s still glorying as our garage queen of January, awaiting his next playful buyer with more money, affection, and less debt. We\u0026rsquo;ve lowered the price from our original $18,500 to $17,500 and we\u0026rsquo;ve yet to have one serious interested buyer. We\u0026rsquo;ve advertised on autotrader, cars.com, roadfly.org, NorthAmericanMotoring.com (MINI club site), and in the Lexington Herald-Leader (regular classified ad), but no bites yet.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The MINI remains the same..."},{"content":"I had an out-of-body experience at church last night, right in the middle of \u0026ldquo;Shout to the Lord\u0026rdquo;. I was happy, sad, sweaty, crying and not-quite-there all at the same time. I lost all consciousness of my surroundings and the other people singing, as though the sound enveloped me with waves of tactile velvet.\nMy senses lost all meaning, much like that passage in \u0026ldquo;A Wrinkle in Time\u0026rdquo; where they land on the planet whose inhabitants have no eyes: \u0026ldquo;No, don\u0026rsquo;t describe what it looks like, dear. Describe what it *is*.\u0026rdquo;\nIt was joy, and peace, like my soul existed on its own in that moment, no longer contained within my body, and that it resisted getting shoved back in my body. Didn\u0026rsquo;t see any lights or tunnels or hear voices or see dead people or anything like that. I was just \u0026ldquo;in thrall\u0026rdquo;. :-)\nVery cool stuff.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/on-out-of-body/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI had an out-of-body experience at church last night, right in the middle of \u0026ldquo;Shout to the Lord\u0026rdquo;. I was happy, sad, sweaty, crying and not-quite-there all at the same time. I lost all consciousness of my surroundings and the other people singing, as though the sound enveloped me with waves of tactile velvet.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy senses lost all meaning, much like that passage in \u0026ldquo;A Wrinkle in Time\u0026rdquo; where they land on the planet whose inhabitants have no eyes: \u0026ldquo;No, don\u0026rsquo;t describe what it looks like, dear. Describe what it *is*.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"out of body\""},{"content":"\u0026hellip;men who wear ballcaps indoors\u0026hellip;\nI agree hathead sucks, but it\u0026rsquo;s just\u0026hellip;disrespectful.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/what-really-annoys-me.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;men who wear ballcaps indoors\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI agree hathead sucks, but it\u0026rsquo;s just\u0026hellip;disrespectful.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What really annoys me..."},{"content":" Quality must be considered as embracing all factors which contribute to reliable and safe operation. What is needed is an atmosphere, a subtle attitude, an uncompromising insistence on excellence, as well as a healthy pessimism in technical matters, a pessimism which offsets the normal human tendency to expect that everything will come out right and that no accident can be foreseen \u0026ndash; and forestalled \u0026ndash; before it happens.\n-- Hyman Rickover, founder of the US Navy Nuclear fleet.\n* * *\nThank the LORD that guy was in charge.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/quality/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQuality must be considered as embracing all factors which contribute to reliable and safe operation. What is needed is an atmosphere, a subtle attitude, an uncompromising insistence on excellence, as well as a healthy pessimism in technical matters, a pessimism which offsets the normal human tendency to expect that everything will come out right and that no accident can be foreseen \u0026ndash; and forestalled \u0026ndash; before it happens.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-- Hyman Rickover, founder of the US Navy Nuclear fleet.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quality"},{"content":"I WANT THIS CAR\n- under 200k miles\n- it\u0026rsquo;s an iS model with all the sport goodies (Limited Slip Diff, etc.)\n- it\u0026rsquo;s from Napierville, Illinois, which is the ultra-posh part of chicago (A BMW is like a Honda Accord there\u0026hellip;)\nOnly thing would be underbody rust. Thing should sell for ~$5k in that condition.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/found-the-perfect-e30.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem\u0026amp;item=4607621514\"\u003eI WANT THIS CAR\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- under 200k miles\u003cbr\u003e\n- it\u0026rsquo;s an iS model with all the sport goodies (Limited Slip Diff, etc.)\u003cbr\u003e\n- it\u0026rsquo;s from Napierville, Illinois, which is the ultra-posh part of chicago (A BMW is like a Honda Accord there\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOnly thing would be underbody rust. Thing should sell for ~$5k in that condition.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Found the perfect E30..."},{"content":"Okay, so I decried myspace and Hi5, but 43Things is just, well\u0026hellip;neat.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s my page\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/cool-site../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, so I decried myspace and Hi5, but \u003ca href=\"http://www.43things.com\"\u003e43Things\u003c/a\u003e is just, well\u0026hellip;neat.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.43things.com/person/miniharryc1978\"\u003emy page\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cool site.."},{"content":"Okay, here\u0026rsquo;s the scary reality of writing software: It\u0026rsquo;s like building a railroad from Chicago to Los Angeles. Everything\u0026rsquo;s hunkey-dorey until you get to Denver and go: \u0026ldquo;Who put a MOUNTAIN RANGE here?\u0026rdquo;.\nSad part: A project manager would look at the above and say, \u0026lsquo;well, we\u0026rsquo;re halfway there, and it only took us 6 months so far, so you should be able to surmount\u0026hellip;um\u0026hellip;whatever\u0026rsquo;s in the way from here on out\u0026hellip;in 8 months. Work overtime. Think outside the box.\u0026rsquo;\nThe mountain remains unimpressed.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/software-introspection-part-deux/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, here\u0026rsquo;s the scary reality of writing software: It\u0026rsquo;s like building a railroad from Chicago to Los Angeles. Everything\u0026rsquo;s hunkey-dorey until you get to Denver and go: \u0026ldquo;Who put a MOUNTAIN RANGE here?\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSad part: A project manager would look at the above and say, \u0026lsquo;well, we\u0026rsquo;re halfway there, and it only took us 6 months so far, so you should be able to surmount\u0026hellip;um\u0026hellip;whatever\u0026rsquo;s in the way from here on out\u0026hellip;in 8 months. Work overtime. Think outside the box.\u0026rsquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Software introspection, Part Deux"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m not much for prophesy, but I believe we\u0026rsquo;ll see the death of the personal computer in the next 5 years, at least in its current form. Reason? Virtualization, the ability to be at one terminal, but feel like you\u0026rsquo;re on a completely different machine.\nCase in point: Here at LXK, we go to meetings. Alot. However, in each of those over-attended, useless meetings, 80% of the people have some form of laptop open multitasking\u0026ndash;IM to their team or answering email. This \u0026rsquo;laptop\u0026rsquo; culture has gone through several distinct phases:\nNobody has a laptop. Ah, the days of the short, focused meeting.\nPeople replace their desktops with laptops. Yeah, carry-around your office. Thing is, the laptops have slow, small hard disks and weak processors, and really powerful ones are heavy, so what\u0026rsquo;s the point\nToday: People go back to the super-fast desktop machine, and use Windows XP\u0026rsquo;s Remote Desktop to be back \u0026ldquo;at\u0026rdquo; that machine via their laptops + wireless internet.\nCritical mass occurred when we combined site-wide WiFi and Windows XP installations with Remote Desktop. Thinking about this, I figure the next logical step is replace the honking desktop machine again, but this time replace it with time-sliced \u0026ldquo;virtual\u0026rdquo; desktops on some grid machine with a bazillion CPU cycles/second and unlimited storage. Yes, we\u0026rsquo;ve come full-circle. What I\u0026rsquo;m talking about is a next-generation mainframe.\nThis sort of system would have many advantages:\nRemote desktop portals need little horsepower. I was driving my quad-processor 2.6Ghz dual screen machine from an ancient, 400Mhz Pentium II laptop yesterday, and I got the response time of the desktop machine. Extending this, you could remove all local storage from the laptops and just make them dumb terminals that hook into the grid. Think $50-$100 / unit, compared to $1500-$2000 today.\nCentral admins for the grid mainframe. Forget managing a fleet of PCs on desktops corporate-wide; your \u0026ldquo;fleet\u0026rdquo; is in physically secure server room, admin\u0026rsquo;d by a smaller group of professionals. You\u0026rsquo;d need 2-3 of these centers as mirrors of one another for failover scenarios (9/11, natural disasters), but relative costs would be smaller than a fleet of Dells or IBMs\nGreater control. Everyone\u0026rsquo;s on the same system, so you control what\u0026rsquo;s installed, run, virus scanned, etc. This hearkens back to the salad days of Unix, when \u0026lsquo;root\u0026rsquo; was god of the machine.\nThe only downside here is creating this data edifice would lead to the irresistable hacker target. Instead of coding a worm to look through everyone\u0026rsquo;s HD for confidentials, I know where your data is, and can concentrate all my efforts on cracking it. Side-channel attacks (sneaking passwords, compromising physical security) or social engineering (turning your own employees against you) become much bigger threats in this environment.\nBut anyway, I had a moment of clarity and thought I\u0026rsquo;d share :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/computers-as-applicances-reaching-critical-mass/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not much for prophesy, but I believe we\u0026rsquo;ll see the death of the personal computer in the next 5 years, at least in its current form. Reason? Virtualization, the ability to be at one terminal, but feel like you\u0026rsquo;re on a completely different machine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCase in point: Here at LXK, we go to meetings. Alot. However, in each of those over-attended, useless meetings, 80% of the people have some form of laptop open multitasking\u0026ndash;IM to their team or answering email. This \u0026rsquo;laptop\u0026rsquo; culture has gone through several distinct phases:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Computers as 'applicances' reaching critical mass"},{"content":"Place\nScore\nDriver \u0026amp; Navigator\nClub\n1\n211\nGinny Eager \u0026amp; Robin Murphey\nSCCA\n2\n240\nLo Arnold \u0026amp; Phil Schneider\nSCCA\n3\n495\nKen Partymiller \u0026amp; Lee Wegner\nPCA\n4\n690\nWhitney \u0026amp; Harold Combs\nSCCA\n5\n801\nGeorge \u0026amp; Deanne Luxbacher\nPCA\nNot DFL, but pretty close. However, the more I think about it, this was my first \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; TSD rally as a navigator, and Whitney was driving an unfamiliar, non-performance car (hard to make turns on a dime, plus you can\u0026rsquo;t maintain speed in an automatic as easily)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/rally-results/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePlace\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eScore\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDriver \u0026amp; Navigator\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClub\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e211\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGinny Eager \u0026amp; Robin Murphey\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSCCA\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e240\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLo Arnold \u0026amp; Phil Schneider\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSCCA\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e495\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKen Partymiller \u0026amp; Lee Wegner\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePCA\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e690\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney \u0026amp; Harold Combs\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSCCA\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e801\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGeorge \u0026amp; Deanne Luxbacher\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePCA\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot DFL, but pretty close. However, the more I think about it, this was my first \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; TSD rally as a navigator, and Whitney was driving an unfamiliar, non-performance car (hard to make turns on a dime, plus you can\u0026rsquo;t maintain speed in an automatic as easily)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rally results"},{"content":"Church was amazing today, with the music, atmosphere, message, and Sunday school coming together perfectly. I was very glad to be there.\nGary had a rally today, and I stank it up horribly. It was a straight TSD, without all mileages, so I had to navigate using mileages and times AFTER each offset. I was irritable, intense, and it turned out, I did it for nothing\u0026ndash;we came in 4th out of 5 cars, beaten by two novices. Along the way, I managed to act like a baby, screw-up my calculations, and forget to feed Whitney the next instruction (we got lost in Stamping Ground\u0026hellip;)\nTo survive heads-down navigation with my incredible motion-sickness, I have to pop a Dramamine before the rally, and it caused me to zonk a around 5:30, sleeping until 10:30.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/church-a-bad-rally-and-a-long-winters-nap/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChurch was amazing today, with the music, atmosphere, message, and Sunday school coming together perfectly. I was very glad to be there.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGary had a rally today, and I stank it up horribly. It was a straight TSD, without all mileages, so I had to navigate using mileages and times AFTER each offset. I was irritable, intense, and it turned out, I did it for nothing\u0026ndash;we came in 4th out of 5 cars, beaten by two novices. Along the way, I managed to act like a baby, screw-up my calculations, and forget to feed Whitney the next instruction (we got lost in Stamping Ground\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Church, a bad rally, and a long winter's nap"},{"content":"Glorious rant by my pal Josh\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/read-the-last-two-sentences-as-al-sharpton/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://joshsheffel.blogspot.com/2006_01_08_joshsheffel_archive.html#113722209798835305\"\u003eGlorious rant by my pal Josh\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":":) read the last two sentences as Al Sharpton"},{"content":"Shameless Ebay link\n:) I\u0026rsquo;m selling everything that\u0026rsquo;s not nailed down.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/know-any-big-guys-that-want-a-leather-jacket/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem\u0026amp;item=8373854375\"\u003eShameless Ebay link\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:) I\u0026rsquo;m selling everything that\u0026rsquo;s not nailed down.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Know any big guys that want a leather jacket?"},{"content":"\nThis godawful tripe, shot in location in Ireland, is slow, pointless, and invents ways to make love, battle, and death boring. Don\u0026rsquo;t see it, even on netflix. You\u0026rsquo;ve been warned.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/bad-movie-tristan-and-isolde/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/26/76/99m.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis godawful tripe, shot in location in Ireland, is slow, pointless, and invents ways to make love, battle, and death boring. Don\u0026rsquo;t see it, even on netflix. You\u0026rsquo;ve been warned.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bad movie: Tristan and Isolde"},{"content":"This isn\u0026rsquo;t normally a tech blog because:\nthere are enough of those\nI generally don\u0026rsquo;t think about computers outside of work\nHowever, I wanted to write a quick blurb about subversion. Subversion is a \u0026ldquo;version control system\u0026rdquo;, which is a computer program that lets you store incremental versions of things. Back in the old days, when computer programs were on punch cards or tape, there were jobs for people who kept the cards or tapes, catalogued them, and lent them out to programmers who were working on them. Today, that job is fully automated by systems like RCS, CVS, subversion, Clear CASE, PVCS, etc.\nVersion control is not a self-evident concept, until you screw something up. Why would I want every single change stored away on a separate machine? Well, imagine this scenario: You\u0026rsquo;re coding, it\u0026rsquo;s 2 days to release, and it\u0026rsquo;s late. You make a fairly boneheaded change (*cough*hack*cough*), and you put it into the product. Let\u0026rsquo;s say your change touched 14 files in 10 different directories. It\u0026rsquo;s 10 pm, so you just pray the thing will work and then you head home.\nCome morning, it\u0026rsquo;s broken, and you\u0026rsquo;ve got 1 day to back out the change and put the real fix in. Without version control, that\u0026rsquo;s an ardous manual process\u0026ndash;and God help you if you didn\u0026rsquo;t write down which files changed! However, with a system like subversion, you can request the version of the code BEFORE your change went in with a single command.\n* * *\nHere at LXK, we\u0026rsquo;ve been using an ancient system called PVCS, written for Windows NT 3.51 that was a disaster. No one we hired knew how to use it, and learning the system was a waste because no other version control system worked like PVCS. For our latest project, we switched to Subversion, and it\u0026rsquo;s been like a night/day difference.\nCheckouts are simple, commits are simple, branches and tags are not only possible\u0026ndash;they\u0026rsquo;re easy! Trying new things is now safe\u0026hellip;\nGood, solid tool that I recommend, along with the excellent book Pragmatic version control using Subversion by Mike Mason. It\u0026rsquo;s been right at my fingertips for the last 3 months, and I find something neat every time I open it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/ode-to-subversion/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis isn\u0026rsquo;t normally a tech blog because:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ethere are enough of those\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI generally don\u0026rsquo;t think about computers outside of work\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, I wanted to write a quick blurb about \u003ca href=\"http://subversion.tigris.org\"\u003esubversion\u003c/a\u003e. Subversion is a \u0026ldquo;version control system\u0026rdquo;, which is a computer program that lets you store incremental versions of things. Back in the old days, when computer programs were on punch cards or tape, there were jobs for people who kept the cards or tapes, catalogued them, and lent them out to programmers who were working on them. Today, that job is fully automated by systems like RCS, CVS, subversion, Clear CASE, PVCS, etc.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ode to subversion"},{"content":"Today\u0026rsquo;s wonderful Joel Spolsky article.\nMy comments: Amen. I was taught CS at a very small, liberal arts college, but it was REAL Computer Science, damnit, including sections on Data Structures, pointers, linked lists, compiler design, operating systems concepts, etc. This was from 1997-2001, and even then the shift from \u0026ldquo;harder languages\u0026rdquo; and platforms like C, LISP, and pascal to java was already underway.\nIn essence, Joel\u0026rsquo;s argument in the article is that some people just won\u0026rsquo;t \u0026lsquo;get it\u0026rsquo; enough to survive interesting computer applications in the hardest areas. That is, you can be pretty dim\u0026ndash;and I\u0026rsquo;ve had such people on my team\u0026ndash;and stil get by in the Java/J2EE world. Java hides enough ugliness from you that you can be mediocre and get by.\nThe quandry here is you don\u0026rsquo;t WANT to use the older languages in production\u0026hellip;you want the productivity gains and cross-platform compatibility of Java, VB, C#, or even scripting languages like Python or Ruby. HOWEVER, good programmers can exist at either level (high or low level), but mediocre programmers couldn\u0026rsquo;t write a C program to save their lives.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/hardcore-programming-topic-of-the-day-java-sucks/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s wonderful \u003ca href=\"http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html\"\u003eJoel Spolsky\u003c/a\u003e article.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy comments: Amen. I was taught CS at a very small, liberal arts college, but it was REAL Computer Science, damnit, including sections on Data Structures, pointers, linked lists, compiler design, operating systems concepts, etc. This was from 1997-2001, and even then the shift from \u0026ldquo;harder languages\u0026rdquo; and platforms like C, LISP, and pascal to java was already underway.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn essence, Joel\u0026rsquo;s argument in the article is that some people just won\u0026rsquo;t \u0026lsquo;get it\u0026rsquo; enough to survive interesting computer applications in the hardest areas. That is, you can be pretty dim\u0026ndash;and I\u0026rsquo;ve had such people on my team\u0026ndash;and stil get by in the Java/J2EE world. Java hides enough ugliness from you that you can be mediocre and get by.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hardcore programming topic of the day: Java sucks"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/its-me/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert20061831720112.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"It's ME!"},{"content":"Not only did I get this, I converted the hex in my head and almost had the ASCII offsets memorized.\nThank you, Bryan Crawley.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/nerd-factor-6...engage/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNot only did I get \u003ca href=\"http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/2006/01/11/\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e, I converted the hex in my head and almost had the ASCII offsets memorized.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThank you, Bryan Crawley.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nerd factor 6...engage"},{"content":"Daddy wants one of THESE BABIES\nDual-core intel chips, 4x faster than my powerbook\u0026hellip;.15.4\u0026quot; high-contrast display\u0026hellip;YEAH!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/no-more-excuses-you-want-an-apple/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDaddy wants one of \u003ca href=\"http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/\"\u003eTHESE BABIES\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDual-core intel chips, 4x faster than my powerbook\u0026hellip;.15.4\u0026quot; high-contrast display\u0026hellip;YEAH!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"No more excuses, you want an Apple"},{"content":"Starbucks info\nYeah, if you ask for a \u0026ldquo;regular,\u0026rdquo; you\u0026rsquo;re nuts, but if you ask for a \u0026ldquo;short\u0026rdquo; they have to stand and deliver.\nGrand!\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;Grande!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/next-time-ask-for-a-short/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2133754/?nav=ais\"\u003eStarbucks info\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, if you ask for a \u0026ldquo;regular,\u0026rdquo; you\u0026rsquo;re nuts, but if you ask for a \u0026ldquo;short\u0026rdquo; they have to stand and deliver.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGrand!\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;Grande!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Next time, ask for a \"Short\""},{"content":"March of the Pengins does many things for you:\nMakes you thankful for being human\nImpresses you with the stark beauty of Antarctica\nReminds you how fragile life is\nThis is a wonderful film to share with the family, and became the centerpiece of a warm evening with Whitney, Joey, and I in front of the fire.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/on-march-of-the-penguins/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0428803/\"\u003eMarch of the Pengins\u003c/a\u003e does many things for you:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMakes you thankful for being human\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eImpresses you with the stark beauty of Antarctica\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReminds you how fragile life is\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a wonderful film to share with the family, and became the centerpiece of a warm evening with Whitney, Joey, and I in front of the fire.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On \"March of the Penguins\""},{"content":"As I sit at my desk on a sunny day, I\u0026rsquo;m contemplating Murphy\u0026rsquo;s law, which states that whatever can go wrong will, at the worst possible time. :-) today, would seem like that day.\nI came in this morning to merge and commit some changes to the library, and then do about 3 hours of administrative/clerical stuff that needed to be done, helping out my programmers as needed.\nYeah, about that\u0026hellip;\nFor some reason my subversion client decided to stop talking to the server. Is anyone else having this problem? no. Also, I.T. ran their checks on our mail files today, so I can\u0026rsquo;t send or receive any email until I get rid of 200MB of backlog on my notes file.\nAnd I broke the build, and I was a complete asshole to Joey earlier. Kid just wants someone to PLAY with him, for goodness\u0026rsquo; sake.\n* * *\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s really eating me is this book I\u0026rsquo;ve been reading, called Microserfs It\u0026rsquo;s supposed to be a hilarious look at the whacked out lives of geeks in Silicon Valley during the 1990\u0026rsquo;s, but instead, but I see no humor in it. It\u0026rsquo;s MY LIFE on those pages, and it scares the hell out of me. It\u0026rsquo;s about nerd stereotypes\u0026ndash;poseur, uber-smart waif, flaky tech evangelist, oversensitive genius, cynic, burnout slut-fem\u0026ndash;trying to find their way, knocked around in the corporate world from the pinnacle of tech\u0026ndash;Microsoft\u0026ndash;to the slums of Silicon Valley Venture Capital.\nIt gets to me because the things that are supposed to be funny\u0026ndash;OCD programmers working insane hours, forgetting what sunlight looks like, nerd culture decoupled from realty, inability to deal with life\u0026ndash;are part of MY life sometimes, particularly right now. These are pitiful situations, but in each moment I have to re-examine how MY JOB is just like them.\nI rarely stop reading a book, though there was one\u0026ndash;\u0026ldquo;Year Zero\u0026rdquo;\u0026ndash;that I really should have, but I\u0026rsquo;m stopping this one. It\u0026rsquo;s spiralling me into depression, basically, right when I\u0026rsquo;m at my moodiest.\n* * *\nParting shot: Part of me is just a selfish asshole only-child, lacking the consideration of others in the least. Sadly, it\u0026rsquo;s the part of me that gets things done and makes us money, so it must be tolerated\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/on-cascading-failure...or-murphys-law/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs I sit at my desk on a sunny day, I\u0026rsquo;m contemplating Murphy\u0026rsquo;s law, which states that whatever can go wrong will, at the worst possible time. :-) today, would seem like that day.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI came in this morning to merge and commit some changes to the library, and then do about 3 hours of administrative/clerical stuff that needed to be done, helping out my programmers as needed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, about that\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On cascading failure...(or murphy's law)"},{"content":"I talk in my sleep. I didn\u0026rsquo;t know this until I went to college \u0026amp; I got a roommate. Up to this point, I didn\u0026rsquo;t think Whitney did, until\u0026hellip;\n[interior]\n[my bedroom, 6am]\nBella: mphrfhfhfhfhfh\u0026hellip;chicken\nMe: Huh?\nB [mumbly]: did you take the chicken out of the oven?\nMe: Huh?\nB [annoyed, distinct]: Did you take the chicken out of the OVEN?! It\u0026rsquo;ll burn..\n[I go to the kitchen and verify that the only think in the cold oven is the breadstone, then return]\nMe: Honey, there\u0026rsquo;s no chicken in the oven\u0026hellip;\nB: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ\u0026hellip;.[snore]\n* * *\nAh, good to see sleeptalking is catching.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/bella-pulls-a-me/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI talk in my sleep. I didn\u0026rsquo;t know this until I went to college \u0026amp; I got a roommate. Up to this point, I didn\u0026rsquo;t think Whitney did, until\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[interior]\u003cbr\u003e\n[my bedroom, 6am]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBella: mphrfhfhfhfhfh\u0026hellip;\u003cem\u003echicken\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: Huh?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eB [mumbly]: did you take the chicken out of the oven?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: Huh?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eB [annoyed, distinct]: Did you take the chicken out of the OVEN?! It\u0026rsquo;ll burn..\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[I go to the kitchen and verify that the only think in the cold oven is the breadstone, then return]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bella pulls a \"me\""},{"content":"With the MINI washed, detailed and snug in the garage, we\u0026rsquo;re now a one car family, and I can tell this is going to be fun :-) Getting me to work involves getting everyone out of bed, loading the car, driving me to work and them going back home. And, I\u0026rsquo;m not the best passenger in traffic. (Sorry, honey!)\nBut the day did start off very well (); let\u0026rsquo;s hope it\u0026rsquo;s better than yesterday. I was in a real funk yesterday, thanks to my Mom, who\u0026rsquo;s convinced a used car is always \u0026ldquo;somebody else\u0026rsquo;s problem\u0026rdquo; in all circumstances. Since every car on the road is a \u0026ldquo;used\u0026rdquo; car, I disagree. Granted, some people take care of their cars, and some don\u0026rsquo;t but keeping things in perspective, no one needs more than a $4k-$8k car. Our Intrigue was in that range, and it\u0026rsquo;s a marvelous car so far. I\u0026rsquo;ve had AAA for three years now through work and it works.\nEverything breaks; you just need a well-manufactured car (no Chryslers!) that\u0026rsquo;s easy to repair and relatively simple. And no rust, if possible.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/-marital-bliss./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWith the MINI washed, detailed and snug in the garage, we\u0026rsquo;re now a one car family, and I can tell this is going to be fun :-) Getting me to work involves getting everyone out of bed, loading the car, driving me to work and them going back home. And, I\u0026rsquo;m not the best passenger in traffic. (Sorry, honey!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the day did start off very well (); let\u0026rsquo;s hope it\u0026rsquo;s better than yesterday. I was in a real funk yesterday, thanks to my Mom, who\u0026rsquo;s convinced a used car is always \u0026ldquo;somebody else\u0026rsquo;s problem\u0026rdquo; in all circumstances. Since every car on the road is a \u0026ldquo;used\u0026rdquo; car, I disagree. Granted, some people take care of their cars, and some don\u0026rsquo;t but keeping things in perspective, no one needs more than a $4k-$8k car. Our Intrigue was in that range, and it\u0026rsquo;s a marvelous car so far. I\u0026rsquo;ve had AAA for three years now through work and it works.\u003c/p\u003e","title":":-) Marital bliss."},{"content":"Fark Link\nIn 1984, the savings rate in this country was 10.9%, but last year that declined to just %0.9. If/when the economy hits the skids\u0026hellip;yikes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/heres-what-im-talking-about/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1836773\"\u003eFark Link\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1984, the savings rate in this country was 10.9%, but last year that declined to just %0.9. If/when the economy hits the skids\u0026hellip;yikes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"here's what I'm talking about"},{"content":"The rather depressing link\nThe Pup, my one and only, my truest automotive love, my daily driver, my autocross mount, my introduction to all things BMW, is up for sale.\nRationale\nI\u0026rsquo;m trying to cash-out the equity I have in it, pay off CC\u0026rsquo;s and Whitney\u0026rsquo;s Intrigue (\u0026ldquo;Sharkey\u0026rdquo;) and get something fun, but lots less pricey. Full coverage insurance + $600/year in property taxes suck. I really don\u0026rsquo;t want to begin the new year living AT my means the way I have been. When you\u0026rsquo;re a Dave Ramsey follower, and a Christian in general, there comes a time where you have to make hard decisions\u0026ndash;decisions about following God and securing the lives of your family.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s face it\u0026hellip;I don\u0026rsquo;t know where my job\u0026rsquo;s going overall, and this moves us from making 2 big payments / month to being able to save, both long-, intermediate-, and short-term.\nDoes it hurt? Damn straight it does. I ordered that car to my exact specifications, waited for 6 months for its arrival, and have enjoyed driving it from the first 2000+ mile month (1200 miles in 10 days!), through two ice storms, blizzards, and innumerable autocrosses. Its introduced me to the world of SCCA, and wondrous people both rich and not-so-rich. Throughout it all, it\u0026rsquo;s taken all I could dish out, and asked for more.\nShe groans and creaks a bit here and there, but after a nice detail, she shines up nicely:\nso, we\u0026rsquo;ll see. I have it listed at a fairly high price, but I believe its worth it given the condition and extras I\u0026rsquo;ve included\u0026ndash;tint, tires, new brakes, interior upgrades, rear foglights, etc.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2006/01/its-a-fur-suhl/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.autotrader.com/fyc/vdp.jsp?car_id=194636336\"\u003eThe rather depressing link\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Pup, my one and only, my truest automotive love, my daily driver, my autocross mount, my introduction to all things BMW, is up for sale.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eRationale\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nI\u0026rsquo;m trying to cash-out the equity I have in it, pay off CC\u0026rsquo;s and Whitney\u0026rsquo;s Intrigue (\u0026ldquo;Sharkey\u0026rdquo;) and get something fun, but lots less pricey. Full coverage insurance + $600/year in property taxes suck. I really don\u0026rsquo;t want to begin the new year living AT my means the way I have been. When you\u0026rsquo;re a \u003ca href=\"http://www.daveramsey.com/\"\u003eDave Ramsey\u003c/a\u003e follower, and a Christian in general, there comes a time where you have to make hard decisions\u0026ndash;decisions about following God and securing the lives of your family.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"It's a fur suhl"},{"content":"On the block today:\nOne set of Mini wheels + race tires\nOne highly over-functional cell phone\n:-) The race tires got interest within 10 minutes of being posted\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/everything-must-go...im-crazy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn the block today:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne set of \u003ca href=\"http://www.northamericanmotoring.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58027\"\u003eMini wheels + race tires\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne highly over-functional \u003ca href=\"http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem\u0026amp;item=5849007091\"\u003ecell phone\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) The race tires got interest within 10 minutes of being posted\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Everything must go...I'm CRAZY!!!!\""},{"content":"As I look out towards the new year, I just want to vent. I want to give voice to the few doubts and fears I have\u0026hellip;\nI\u0026rsquo;m working at a company that doesn\u0026rsquo;t have much of a reason to exist, making mediocre products that my customers dislike more with each passing iteration, working on a new product that will either fail outright or never be used.\nDespite the above, I have a rough time relaxing this week\u0026hellip;this car fever has me in its grip for two reasons\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve always wanted a BMW, but I love my MINI. I don\u0026rsquo;t love it more than I\u0026rsquo;d love being out of debt and in secure financial shape.\nI\u0026rsquo;m beating-up myself for not doing things..things I promised myself I\u0026rsquo;d do this time off: selling some stuff on ebay, organizing my finances, exercising, relaxing, reading. I\u0026rsquo;ve pretty much done none of it.\n:-) Every vacation is like this\u0026hellip;it takes me until a certain day to \u0026lsquo;detox\u0026rsquo; from my workaholism, and then I can finally relax.\nThanks for listening\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/vent-chapter-1/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs I look out towards the new year, I just want to vent. I want to give voice to the few doubts and fears I have\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m working at a company that doesn\u0026rsquo;t have much of a reason to exist, making mediocre products that my customers dislike more with each passing iteration, working on a new product that will either fail outright or never be used.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDespite the above, I have a rough time relaxing this week\u0026hellip;this car fever has me in its grip for two reasons\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;ve always wanted a BMW, but I love my MINI. I don\u0026rsquo;t love it more than I\u0026rsquo;d love being out of debt and in secure financial shape.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Vent, Chapter 1"},{"content":"At my darling\u0026rsquo;s insistence, I went over to our doctor today to get my toe looked at; over Christmas, I noticed my middle toe on my left foot was ingrown on the right side. Today I got it removed, feeling very little pain thanks to some lidocaine.\nThe rest of the day, I convalesced watching season 5 of \u0026ldquo;Buffy the Vampire Slayer,\u0026rdquo; my most excellent Christmas gift from Bella:\nAlso, I have a new cellphone\u0026hellip;Decided that I wasn\u0026rsquo;t using the 450 anytime + 5000 night/weekend package I had from Cingular, so I went the same route Bella did with Virgin Mobile. $20 for a phone, then prepaid increments as needed. :-) It\u0026rsquo;ll be nice to not have that $50 each month.\n* * *\nNo news on an E30 BMW\u0026hellip;looking at this one. Got some pics from the owner and seems nice..\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/buffy-tonails-a-new-cell-phone/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt my darling\u0026rsquo;s insistence, I went over to our doctor today to get my toe looked at; over Christmas, I noticed my middle toe on my left foot was ingrown on the right side. Today I got it removed, feeling very little pain thanks to some lidocaine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe rest of the day, I convalesced watching season 5 of \u0026ldquo;Buffy the Vampire Slayer,\u0026rdquo; my most excellent Christmas gift from Bella:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000AQS18.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Buffy, tonails, a new cell phone"},{"content":"So, 9am this morning found me at Beechmont Toyota, looking at a 1984 318i with 173,000 miles on it. Yes, this car was made when I was in Kindergarten, here I was, trying to decide how much rust was acceptable on my new \u0026ldquo;project car\u0026rdquo; / Daily driver.\nAnswer: Not this much. No way.\nThe 1984/1985 318i has the same engine (BMW\u0026rsquo;s M10) as the previous 3-series and the 1970\u0026rsquo;s BMW 2002 (yes, it\u0026rsquo;s alot of numerical designations\u0026hellip;please try to keep up). Anyway, this lump of iron produces a bulletproof 101 hp and likes to rev, despite its lumpy cam.\nSurprisingly, giving the age of the car, it fired-up smartly and settled into a thrumming idle, and the transmission was still buttery smooth, but the rest was a raft of problems\u0026ndash;rust throughout (more on that later), questionable electics, musty smell in the cabin, bad seats, cracked dash, and missing surrounds behind the lights in the engine bay.\nAfter a 30 minute test drive (yep\u0026hellip;the suspension is shot\u0026hellip;oh, why is the temperature gone stone COLD?!) I came back to the dealership not totally turned-off, but not liking everything. The rear of the car seemed sound, and all the suspension mounting points had no rust, and the engine + tranny felt fine.\nGetting the car up on a lift told the tale: Rust on the rear diff, exhaust was shot, catalytic converter held-up by a twist fo wire, and a HOLE THE SIZE OF MY FIST in the unibody beneath the driver\u0026rsquo;s sill.\nGame over. Thanked them kindly and then walked out.\nMaybe a 325e next?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/on-buying-a-car...phase-1/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, 9am this morning found me at Beechmont Toyota, looking at a 1984 318i with 173,000 miles on it. Yes, this car was made when I was in Kindergarten, here I was, trying to decide how much rust was acceptable on my new \u0026ldquo;project car\u0026rdquo; / Daily driver.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnswer: Not this much. No way.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 1984/1985 318i has the same engine (BMW\u0026rsquo;s M10) as the previous 3-series and the 1970\u0026rsquo;s BMW 2002 (yes, it\u0026rsquo;s alot of numerical designations\u0026hellip;please try to keep up). Anyway, this lump of iron produces a bulletproof 101 hp and likes to rev, despite its lumpy cam.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On buying a car...phase 1"},{"content":"Sell the mini, keep the change, and buy one of these babies:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/my-new-plan-to-take-over-the-world..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSell the mini, keep the change, and buy one of these babies:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/2002maniac/DCP_4894.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My new plan to take over the world...."},{"content":"Sleep: Haven\u0026rsquo;t gotten much lately. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s gotten even less. I require ~6hrs / night to function\u0026hellip;she requires more :-)\nSickness: Apparently, I\u0026rsquo;ve given whatever I had to everyone in my area. Germs 1, Humans nil.\n* * *\nThought\u0026hellip;a nice used 5-speed toyota pickup would fill my current needs quite well :-)\nsomething to commute in\nreliable as dirt\ngood for going to Lowes, getting firewood, etc.\nruns on regular gas\neasy to work on\ndecent mileage (25 mpg)\nI\u0026rsquo;d probably want a 2wd model, though\u0026hellip;and they\u0026rsquo;d be iffy in winter driving. Could get some snows for it + sandbags, though.\nOne thing though\u0026hellip;because they hold their value so well, you just don\u0026rsquo;t find them under $10k.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/on-sleep-sickness./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSleep: Haven\u0026rsquo;t gotten much lately. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s gotten even less. I require ~6hrs / night to function\u0026hellip;she requires more :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSickness: Apparently, I\u0026rsquo;ve given whatever I had to everyone in my area. Germs 1, Humans nil.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThought\u0026hellip;a nice used 5-speed toyota pickup would fill my current needs quite well :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003esomething to commute in\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ereliable as dirt\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003egood for going to Lowes, getting firewood, etc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eruns on regular gas\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On sleep, sickness."},{"content":"Link\nDoes this make me a thief? A cheat? Immoral?\n\u0026hellip;Or just a guy pretty deep in debt?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/id-take-the-1000./","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2005/12/billionaires_mo.html\"\u003eLink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDoes this make me a thief? A cheat? Immoral?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;Or just a guy pretty deep in debt?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I'd take the $1000."},{"content":"\u0026hellip;that way I could get through meetings where I want to throttle my PM, keeping both hands as busy as possible.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/sometimes-i-wish-i-could-juggle.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;that way I could get through meetings where I want to throttle my PM, keeping both hands as busy as possible.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sometimes I wish I could juggle..."},{"content":"Ah, the glorious cold virus\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s been with us for millenia and for the last 3 or 4 days, it\u0026rsquo;s been with me. For the past couple of days, I haven\u0026rsquo;t been able to talk (and all the people rejoiced\u0026hellip;)\n* * *\nBiggest, bombshell news of the past week is the revelation that the 5-speed British Midlands transmission in the 2002-2004 Minis is a ticking timebomb\u0026ndash;after a certain amount of time the gearbox will fail, resulting in a $3-4k repair. The problem seems to be the gearbox was engineered for England, where it\u0026rsquo;s never much below 20 degrees F. In America we routinely see 0 degrees F and below.\nNet of it all\u0026hellip;Whitney and I are weighing selling the MINI, paying off the Oldsmobile, and getting something cheaper and more reliable.\nUgh.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/convalescence...and-why-not-to-buy-an-02-04-mini/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, the glorious cold virus\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s been with us for millenia and for the last 3 or 4 days, it\u0026rsquo;s been with me. For the past couple of days, I haven\u0026rsquo;t been able to talk (and all the people rejoiced\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBiggest, bombshell news of the past week is the revelation that the 5-speed British Midlands transmission in the 2002-2004 Minis is a ticking timebomb\u0026ndash;after a certain amount of time the gearbox will fail, resulting in a $3-4k repair. The problem seems to be the gearbox was engineered for England, where it\u0026rsquo;s never much below 20 degrees F. In America we routinely see 0 degrees F and below.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"convalescence...and why not to buy an 02-04 MINI"},{"content":" Managers are like gamecocks: More than two in a room at once, and somebody dies.\nBe sure to begin each lie with the adverb: \u0026ldquo;Truthfully\u0026rdquo;.\nArrive whenever you want, then derail the meeting by asking for an update\nAccountability? Hell, I\u0026rsquo;d settle for competence\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/all-i-ever-needed-to-know-i-learned-during-a-corporate-meeting/","summary":"\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eManagers are like gamecocks: More than two in a room at once, and somebody dies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBe sure to begin each lie with the adverb: \u0026ldquo;Truthfully\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eArrive whenever you want, then derail the meeting by asking for an update\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccountability? Hell, I\u0026rsquo;d settle for competence\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e","title":"All I ever needed to know I learned during a corporate meeting"},{"content":"Let me give you the conclusion: The logs never caught, the kindling ashes litter the bottom of the wet fireplace, and the house reeks of smoke.\nYes, I tried to make a fire tonight, and I failed.\nMy house has what\u0026rsquo;s known as a \u0026lsquo;built-in,\u0026rsquo; a fireplace that is basically an afterthought. Lacking a chimney, it\u0026rsquo;s a triangular wart, occupying the place my Lay-Z-Boy should rightfully go.\nWhitney has a cold, so I thought I\u0026rsquo;d build a fire and tend to her as she reposed on the couch. Lacking anything to use for firewood aside from our dining room set, I bought kindling at Lowe\u0026rsquo;s and wood at Kroger, for a total of $10.\nArriving home, I set an initial fire only to find the flue wasn\u0026rsquo;t open wide enough. The house filling with smoke, I doused the nascent fire with water, pushed the flue open with my fire tongs and started out again, but no matter how hard I tried, I never could get a good-sized log to catch fire.\nI feel like such a failure\u0026hellip;\n* * *\nIt\u0026rsquo;s just been that kind of a day\u0026hellip;not terribly productive, nor focused, nor interesting, aside from some morning activities :-D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/on-almost-making-a-fire/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLet me give you the conclusion: The logs never caught, the kindling ashes litter the bottom of the wet fireplace, and the house reeks of smoke.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, I tried to make a fire tonight, and I failed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy house has what\u0026rsquo;s known as a \u0026lsquo;built-in,\u0026rsquo; a fireplace that is basically an afterthought. Lacking a chimney, it\u0026rsquo;s a triangular wart, occupying the place my Lay-Z-Boy should rightfully go.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney has a cold, so I thought I\u0026rsquo;d build a fire and tend to her as she reposed on the couch. Lacking anything to use for firewood aside from our dining room set, I bought kindling at Lowe\u0026rsquo;s and wood at Kroger, for a total of $10.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On (almost) making a fire"},{"content":"Ah, I yearn for my firebrand, idealogue days, when being a Republican didn\u0026rsquo;t mean you parrotted everything that Ernie Fletcher \u0026amp; George Bush said. The days when I could hold my head high and say how much the democrats were ruining my state and my country.\nOoops. The Republicans are doing just as badly. Amazing how the view from the top isn\u0026rsquo;t as clear-cut as the view from beneath.\nI ask myself why this is, and I return to what I thought in 2004: Conservatives can stomach a Liberal leader, but Liberals can\u0026rsquo;t stand a conservative, especially one as hapless as Bush. Why oh why didn\u0026rsquo;t we elect John McCain?\nFurthermore, while I\u0026rsquo;m ranting, can amend the consitution so that the children of former presidents CANNOT be president? On top of heavy-handed policies, unilateralism, we don\u0026rsquo;t need to be accused of nepotism.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;m toying with the idea of enabling comments. I have several readers these days, and would enjoy what they think, but I can\u0026rsquo;t quite reconcile that with my general hatred of blog comments.\n* * *\nCool link of the day: Flight Aware\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/on-blogging-comments-and-a-cool-site-for-air-travellers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, I yearn for my firebrand, idealogue days, when being a Republican didn\u0026rsquo;t mean you parrotted everything that Ernie Fletcher \u0026amp; George Bush said. The days when I could hold my head high and say how much the democrats were ruining my state and my country.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOoops. The Republicans are doing just as badly. Amazing how the view from the top isn\u0026rsquo;t as clear-cut as the view from beneath.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI ask myself why this is, and I return to what I thought in 2004: Conservatives can stomach a Liberal leader, but Liberals can\u0026rsquo;t stand a conservative, especially one as hapless as Bush. Why oh why didn\u0026rsquo;t we elect John McCain?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On blogging, comments, and a cool site for air travellers"},{"content":"I made a resolution that I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t blog about my complaints about work, but that meant I stopped blogging altogether.\nCheck out This thread on thecarlounge.net\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/12/the-gold-collar-generation/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI made a resolution that I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t blog about my complaints about work, but that meant I stopped blogging altogether.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCheck out \u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zeroforum?id=713\"\u003eThis thread\u003c/a\u003e on thecarlounge.net\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"The Gold Collar\" generation"},{"content":"link\nWhitney and I ran out to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire matinee at Georgetown Theatres yesterday, and I\u0026rsquo;m of two minds about it: On one hand the acting, individual scenes, effects, and \u0026ldquo;wizard world\u0026rdquo; are all stunning, but on the other, the movie is unsatisfying. I attribute that dissatisfied feeling to the underlying book itself. \u0026ldquo;Goblet of Fire\u0026rdquo; transitioned the series from the Harry story-arc to the rise of Voldemort, and the movie makes a briefer trail through the same ground.\nThe movie\u0026rsquo;s disjointed, long, but magnificent in parts:\nThe Yule Ball digression was great! It developed all the characters, provided needed comic relief, and provided the \u0026ldquo;debut\u0026rdquo; for the 3 actors as young adults, not kids\nThe underwater challenge. Wow.\nThe entrance scene of the two competing houses.\nOverall, as with the books, Prisoner of Azkhaban remains my favorite.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/review-harry-potter-and-the-goblet-of-fire/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0330373/\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/85/09/59m.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney and I ran out to see \u003cem\u003eHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire\u003c/em\u003e matinee at Georgetown Theatres yesterday, and I\u0026rsquo;m of two minds about it: On one hand the acting, individual scenes, effects, and \u0026ldquo;wizard world\u0026rdquo; are all stunning, but on the other, the movie is unsatisfying. I attribute that dissatisfied feeling to the underlying book itself. \u0026ldquo;Goblet of Fire\u0026rdquo; transitioned the series from the Harry story-arc to the rise of Voldemort, and the movie makes a briefer trail through the same ground.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"},{"content":"Last weekend, Whitney, Joey, and I ran in Phil Schneider\u0026rsquo;s 60+ mile TSD rally south of Lexington. Whitney tried her hand at driving, I navigated, and Joey held court in the back of the Pup.\nIt was a very intense rally, but Whitney and Joey were both magnificent. We ended-up with an aggregate score of only 230 after 60 miles, which was good enough for second place. But for an error on my part, we would\u0026rsquo;ve won :-)\nWhitney seemed to like Rallying alot, so I\u0026rsquo;m on the look-out for more rallies over the winter.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/the-rally-that-was.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast weekend, Whitney, Joey, and I ran in Phil Schneider\u0026rsquo;s 60+ mile TSD rally south of Lexington. Whitney tried her hand at driving, I navigated, and Joey held court in the back of the Pup.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a very intense rally, but Whitney and Joey were both magnificent. We ended-up with an aggregate score of only 230 after 60 miles, which was good enough for second place. But for an error on my part, we would\u0026rsquo;ve won :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Rally that was..."},{"content":" The new Golf and Jetta weren\u0026rsquo;t just late to the U.S. they were several model years late. And to make matters even worse, VW dealers were fending-off irate customers who were saddled with quality problems from the get-go. And those customers rewarded VW for their callousness by abandoning the brand in droves - never to come back.\ntaken from: Peter\u0026rsquo;s latest Rant\nI am Volkswagen\u0026rsquo;s ideal customer. Or, at least, I used to be. I really wanted a BMW, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t afford one. (I argue no one can really afford a new one, but that\u0026rsquo;s another topic for another day!) The VW Jetta Mk.IV was like a baby 3-series, solid, serene, teutonic, and just snobby enough to be above the rice-burners from Honda and Nissan.\nSo, I bought an 01 Jetta and had nothing but issues with it. Windows wouldn\u0026rsquo;t stay up, it stalled constantly, pieces of the complicated turbocharger failed, it leaked cosmoline rust-proofer at the door sills, and, most damningly, it just WASNT ANY FUN TO DRIVE!\nI\u0026rsquo;m glad I\u0026rsquo;m not in that same place anymore.\nBad thing is, I\u0026rsquo;d LIKE to be a VW driver again; a nice Passat with a manual tranny and a TDI at 40-50 mpg would be awesome. But I just won\u0026rsquo;t go near one again.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/why-vw-sucks.../","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe new Golf and Jetta weren\u0026rsquo;t just late to the U.S. they were several model years late. And to make matters even worse, VW dealers were fending-off irate customers who were saddled with quality problems from the get-go. And those customers rewarded VW for their callousness by abandoning the brand in droves - never to come back.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003etaken from: \u003ca href=\"http://www.autoextremist.com/page2.shtml#Rant\"\u003ePeter\u0026rsquo;s latest Rant\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am Volkswagen\u0026rsquo;s ideal customer. Or, at least, I used to be. I really wanted a BMW, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t afford one. (I argue \u003cem\u003eno one\u003c/em\u003e can really afford a new one, but that\u0026rsquo;s another topic for another day!) The VW Jetta Mk.IV was like a baby 3-series, solid, serene, teutonic, and just snobby enough to be above the rice-burners from Honda and Nissan.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why VW sucks..."},{"content":"Waking up at 7 is early for most folks, but when you\u0026rsquo;re due to pick-up a pal at 7 and you wake-up @ 7 on the dot, it\u0026rsquo;s dead late\u0026hellip;\nI was supposed to get Gary at Nolan Ford this morning, but I ended-up 20 minutes late after a panicked, flight-of-the-bumblebee race around my house.\nDidn\u0026rsquo;t shave, and that just feels icky\u0026hellip;\n* * *\nNews: I\u0026rsquo;ve got my own office. Sort of. My perennial office-mate, Patrick, moved up to the 3rd floor, leaving his side of the office empty. I soldiered-on in the old furniture configuration for a couple days:\n(ascii art:)\n12\u0026#39; \\------------------- | ---- | | |X / door | --/ | |-| |-|| | | | | || | |-| |-|| | |-| /--| 12\u0026#39; | |-| / | | |-| |---| | |-----------------| Basically, envistion my stuff on the left there (with the big \u0026lsquo;X\u0026rsquo;), on a triangular corner computer desk, with a combination desk table to my left, and a metal locker/drawer thing in the corner. Patrick\u0026rsquo;s old stuff occupied the whole bottom and right side of the room. It was empty and kinda depressing after he left, so I changed it:\n\\------------------- | |---| | | door | | -----| | | X || | | / | | - | 12\u0026#39; | | | | - |----| |-|| |-----------------| My desk is on the right side, facing the door, with a nice cozy nook towards the bottom of the office where I can have my locker, and desk/shelf withing the radius of my desk chair.\nYes, yes, I\u0026rsquo;ve turned into my mom, rearranging things for no good reason, but it feels more comfortable to me.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/busy-morning.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWaking up at 7 is early for most folks, but when you\u0026rsquo;re due to pick-up a pal at 7 and you wake-up @ 7 on the dot, it\u0026rsquo;s dead late\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was supposed to get Gary at Nolan Ford this morning, but I ended-up 20 minutes late after a panicked, flight-of-the-bumblebee race around my house.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDidn\u0026rsquo;t shave, and that just feels icky\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNews: I\u0026rsquo;ve got my own office. Sort of. My perennial office-mate, Patrick, moved up to the 3rd floor, leaving his side of the office empty. I soldiered-on in the old furniture configuration for a couple days:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Busy morning..."},{"content":"Article\nThe whole process confirms that the laws of nuclear physics worked just the same 2 billion years ago as they do today.\nSo, you mean things like Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Strong Nuclear Force, and the Weak Nuclear Force existed before people?!!\nFascinating article, but that conclusion is LAME\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/i-expect-better-than-this-from-nature/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.discover.com/web-exclusives/natures-nuclear-reactor0204/\"\u003eArticle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe whole process confirms that the laws of nuclear physics worked just the same 2 billion years ago as they do today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, you mean things like Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Strong Nuclear Force, and the Weak Nuclear Force \u003cem\u003eexisted\u003c/em\u003e before people?!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFascinating article, but that conclusion is LAME\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I expect better than this from 'Nature'"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Jumping the Shark\u0026rdquo; v. To achieve a moment where people realize \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s all downhill from here\u0026rdquo;.\nOn ER two weeks ago, they treated a chimp. A CHIMP. ugh. John Leguizamo\u0026rsquo;s character is awful, and Kristen Johnson is trying hard, but her character makes the show suck. Luca and Abbey are the only decent characters remaining.\nFor more details Jump The Shark\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/jumping-the-shark-er/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Jumping the Shark\u0026rdquo; v. To achieve a moment where people realize \u0026ldquo;it\u0026rsquo;s all downhill from here\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn ER two weeks ago, they treated a chimp. A CHIMP. ugh. John Leguizamo\u0026rsquo;s character is awful, and Kristen Johnson is trying hard, but her character makes the show suck. Luca and Abbey are the only decent characters remaining.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor more details \u003ca href=\"http://www.jumptheshark.com\"\u003eJump The Shark\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jumping the Shark: ER"},{"content":"I hate edmunds.com\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re verbose, unprofessional, and they don\u0026rsquo;t know passive voice from active voice (a particular annoyance of mine, thanks to Dr. Barbara Burch).\nArticle on why small cars rock\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/first-good-writing-from-edmunds.com/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI hate edmunds.com\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re verbose, unprofessional, and they don\u0026rsquo;t know passive voice from active voice (a particular annoyance of mine, thanks to Dr. Barbara Burch).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Columns/articleId=107891\"\u003eArticle on why small cars rock\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"First good writing from edmunds.com"},{"content":"Today is my birthday, and I feel like crap.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know if this is the yang to my normal yin, the depressive to my normal mania, but I\u0026rsquo;m pissed off.\nThoughts/Rant:\n* Money does actually suck. After trying to convince Whitney for 3 years that it\u0026rsquo;s neat, fun, green stuff that you convert into food, hobbies, etc., I\u0026rsquo;ve given up. It\u0026rsquo;s the stuff you pay other people to leave you alone. It\u0026rsquo;s the stuff you hemorrhage because cars break, people get sick, and houses leak\u0026hellip;um\u0026hellip;everything. Eighty percent of personal finance is behavior, and the remaining 20 is accounting. Unfortunately, the \u0026lsquo;behavior\u0026rsquo; part of me is really reaching for that \u0026lsquo;blow\u0026rsquo; part of the budget that just isn\u0026rsquo;t there. Don\u0026rsquo;t get me wrong\u0026ndash;my family and I are fine, but we\u0026rsquo;re not going to get to have any fun for the next decade or so. How the hell do people maintain the lifestyles they do these days?\n* On the way to work today, I passed an accident at the I-75/I-64 split where a semi truck\u0026rsquo;s wheel fell off. FELL OFF. Scare anyone else?\n* Said accident meant 45 minutes of traffic. Behind a semi truck. In 1st gear. I understand why people in LA buy automatics.\n* I\u0026rsquo;m finally understanding why people hate Christmas. It\u0026rsquo;s cubic yards of money, time, and effort spent around a holiday that\u0026rsquo;s over in 20 minutes. You eat Plus, it sucks doing the Christmas budget at the same time as you\u0026rsquo;re trying to close the rest of the budget and realize you can\u0026rsquo;t buy people what you want to buy them.\nSo, this is that \u0026ldquo;life\u0026rdquo; thing everyone keeps telling me about. Better than the alternative, I guess :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/27.-yay-me/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday is my birthday, and I feel like crap.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t know if this is the yang to my normal yin, the depressive to my normal mania, but I\u0026rsquo;m pissed off.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThoughts/Rant:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Money \u003cem\u003edoes\u003c/em\u003e actually suck. After trying to convince Whitney for 3 years that it\u0026rsquo;s neat, fun, green stuff that you convert into food, hobbies, etc., I\u0026rsquo;ve given up. It\u0026rsquo;s the stuff you pay other people to leave you alone. It\u0026rsquo;s the stuff you hemorrhage because cars break, people get sick, and houses leak\u0026hellip;um\u0026hellip;everything. Eighty percent of personal finance is behavior, and the remaining 20 is accounting. Unfortunately, the \u0026lsquo;behavior\u0026rsquo; part of me is really reaching for that \u0026lsquo;blow\u0026rsquo; part of the budget that just isn\u0026rsquo;t there. Don\u0026rsquo;t get me wrong\u0026ndash;my family and I are fine, but we\u0026rsquo;re not going to get to have any fun for the next decade or so. How the hell do people maintain the lifestyles they do these days?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"27.  Yay, me!"},{"content":"After dropping-off Whitney\u0026rsquo;s Intrigue at the Don Jacobs body shop at 6:30, I didn\u0026rsquo;t have a ride. I could have waited until 7:45 for the Don Jacobs shuttle van, but why do that, when I have Lexington\u0026rsquo;s fabulous Lextran\nAfter hoofing it about 1 mile towards downtown, I boarded the bus for the transfer station and met a nice lady who worked at the UK College of Pharmacy. At the transfer station, waiting 1/2 hour for my next bus, I met Serge Steshenko, my co-worker on my team who rides the bus everyday. He made sure I got on the right bus (#2 North) and we kept one another company until we go to the Northside Walmart, right beside Lexmark.\nIt was a very pleasant experience overall, though I wish I\u0026rsquo;d planned it better so I could\u0026rsquo;ve gotten to work earlier. I made it by 8:45, but that\u0026rsquo;s very late compared to my usual 6:30.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/my-morning-on-lextran/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter dropping-off Whitney\u0026rsquo;s Intrigue at the Don Jacobs body shop at 6:30, I didn\u0026rsquo;t have a ride. I \u003cem\u003ecould\u003c/em\u003e have waited until 7:45 for the Don Jacobs shuttle van, but why do that, when I have Lexington\u0026rsquo;s fabulous \u003ca href=\"http://www.lextran.com\"\u003eLextran\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter hoofing it about 1 mile towards downtown, I boarded the bus for the transfer station and met a nice lady who worked at the UK College of Pharmacy. At the transfer station, waiting 1/2 hour for my next bus, I met Serge Steshenko, my co-worker on my team who rides the bus everyday. He made sure I got on the right bus (#2 North) and we kept one another company until we go to the Northside Walmart, right beside Lexmark.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My morning on Lextran"},{"content":"link\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/our-trip-to-hubers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.grovestreet.com/jsp/picview.jsp?album=78348\u0026amp;view=thumbs\u0026amp;sort=date_added\u0026amp;ord=desc\u0026amp;showtrash=1\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Our trip to hubers"},{"content":"I love buying tires. I imagine I feel the same way about buying tires that women feel about buying shoes. Each tire has its own engineering qualities, balancing wear, noise, cornering, bad weather, and price.\nAfter consulting ConsumerReports, I chose the Yokohama AVID TRZ, 225/60R16, with an 80,000 mile warranty and good ride, noise, and bad weather characteristics. Not a performance tire, but why do you want one on a regular sedan?\nThis makes the 6th set of tires I\u0026rsquo;ve bought in the last 3 years (most of which are on this blog!)\nKumho Victoracers - Autocross tires (04)\nContinental CH95 Touring - came for free when I bought my 15x5.5\u0026quot; autocross wheels.\nYoko Geolandar truck tires for the dearly departed Big Red\nKumho V710 - Autocross tires (05)\nBridgestone Potenza G009\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ndash; Performance All Season for the MINI 195/60R15\nThese puppies\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/new-tires-for-sharkey/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI love buying tires. I imagine I feel the same way about buying tires that women feel about buying shoes. Each tire has its own engineering qualities, balancing wear, noise, cornering, bad weather, and price.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter consulting ConsumerReports, I chose the Yokohama AVID TRZ, 225/60R16, with an 80,000 mile warranty and good ride, noise, and bad weather characteristics. Not a performance tire, but why do you want one on a regular sedan?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Tires for Sharkey"},{"content":"Before being emasculated by Miss Jolene, Dr. Bud had a firecracker named Nadine whose Dad was a Texas oil tycoon.\nRead here for a little escapism, and plain fun about about Gulfstream IV\u0026rsquo;s, UT Longhorns fans, and the redhead\u0026rsquo;s new Mustang Cobra.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/11/dr.-bud-his-former-self.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBefore being emasculated by Miss Jolene, Dr. Bud had a firecracker named Nadine whose Dad was a Texas oil tycoon.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRead \u003ca href=\"http://www.autoextremist.com/page5.shtml#RoadKill\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e for a little escapism, and plain fun about about Gulfstream IV\u0026rsquo;s, UT Longhorns fans, and the redhead\u0026rsquo;s new Mustang Cobra.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dr. Bud, his former self..."},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/cuteness/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.sweetdaisy.net/photos/2004_christmas_parade/img_1415.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cuteness"},{"content":"Images\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/mini-gorge-05/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.grovestreet.com/jsp/albuminfo.jsp?album=78010\"\u003eImages\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.grovestreet.com/servlet/View?pid=1099208\u0026cd=837\u0026sz=m\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mini Gorge 05"},{"content":"Trying out a new Image hosting site\u0026hellip;\nAlbum\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/halloween-05.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTrying out a new Image hosting site\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.grovestreet.com/servlet/View?pid=1099160\u0026cd=609\u0026sz=m\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.grovestreet.com/jsp/picview.jsp?album=78006\"\u003eAlbum\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Halloween 05..."},{"content":"Random thought I had in church yesterday: Lawyers and their derivatives (Judges, etc.) are the apex people of our society. There is no one more powerful, ultimately, than a lawyer in American society, because these are the people who mediate disputes between two or more equal parties. Without lawyers and a judiciary, democracy couldn\u0026rsquo;t exist with our current code of laws\u0026ndash;people would get frustrated and start killing one another, and society would break down.\nAt that moment, I made a conceptual leap \u0026ndash; lawyers\u0026rsquo; preeminence is directly related to our society. That is, I think any capitalist democracy will have many powerful lawyers. I thought through other forms and flavors of government and derived the \u0026lsquo;apex people\u0026rsquo; I thought would fall out of them:\nSociety type\napex individual\nFeudalism/Manorialism\nEx: medieval europe\nLord of the manor\nBeaurocracy\nGovernment workers\nEnlightened Despotism\nEx: Louis XIV France\ncourt syncophants\nFascism\nMilitary\nCorrupt Bureaocracy\nMob Bosses\nTheocracy\nPriests\nPure Democracy\nEx: Ancient Anthens\nDemagogues\nThe one constant in history is human nature. People have a certain set of motivations, drives, and organizational/communicative abilities. Thus, given a certain set of government societal strictures, it seems that a certain type of \u0026lsquo;Apex Person\u0026rsquo; will fall out of any society.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a good PoliSci thesis in there somewhere.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/quick-theory-on-the-apex-person.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRandom thought I had in church yesterday: Lawyers and their derivatives (Judges, etc.) are the apex people of our society. There is no one more powerful, ultimately, than a lawyer in American society, because these are the people who mediate disputes between two or more equal parties. Without lawyers and a judiciary, democracy couldn\u0026rsquo;t exist with our current code of laws\u0026ndash;people would get frustrated and start killing one another, and society would break down.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quick theory on the 'apex' person..."},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s something unamerican about being at work at 6am. Whitney and I heard a great sermon yesterday about how to balance work, God, and home, and one suggestion from a guy who worked 45-50 hours/week (like me\u0026hellip;) was to go in to work early, so that he could come home at a decent hour. Mondays are traditionally my longest days, so we set our alarm for 5 am and I was in to work by 6:08.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve answered every email I had, updated our internal department webpage, made coffee, looked at our PE situation, scheduled meetings, and I\u0026rsquo;m about to fall over. This may take some getting used to.\nAnyway, having reached a lull after 2 hours of uninterrupted work, I wanted to blog. Haven\u0026rsquo;t done so in many days, and much has occurred.\nJoey and I washed both our cars and waxed the MINI yesterday. He was an exceptionally good helper, and we had lots of fun in the 65-70 degree weather with the hose. Other good news: I got the garage rearranged so that I can fit both cars snugly inside, safe from Halloween mischief.\nThe nuclear family enjoyed a quiet weekend of me toiling on Honey-Do\u0026rsquo;s. Our friends Jamie and Andy Seibert came over on Friday night for dinner, so the rest of us feasted on leftovers all weekend (not that I\u0026rsquo;m complaining). I had my weekly wig-out on Saturday night ~9pm, chafing against my new mantle of \u0026ldquo;Dadness\u0026rdquo; (I can just see my Mom grinning about that one), and deciding that I needed to do two things:\nClean up the garage (which I did)\nFind some fulfilling hobbies\nIn other news, Whitney needs adult conversation. Like Fox News, I report, you decide.\nI kinda like that new Chevy HHR saw one at Lowes while I was buying our super-duper 18 position 13\u0026rsquo; ladder on Saturday:\neffecient, practical, and it\u0026rsquo;s not a PT Cruiser. Based on the Cobalt platform, powered by an Ecotec. I doubt they\u0026rsquo;ll sell very well, so resale should be dismal. Mmm\u0026hellip;.5 years from now, baby, you\u0026rsquo;re all mine.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/bleary-eyed-and-hopped-up-on-coffee.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s something unamerican about being at work at 6am. Whitney and I heard a great sermon yesterday about how to balance work, God, and home, and one suggestion from a guy who worked 45-50 hours/week (like me\u0026hellip;) was to go in to work early, so that he could come home at a decent hour. Mondays are traditionally my longest days, so we set our alarm for 5 am and I was in to work by 6:08.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bleary-eyed, and hopped-up on coffee..."},{"content":"Bill Randall has a Website. Not a blog, for he disdains these unstructured musings, a WEBSITE.\n:-) good stuff, especially the lists of films he o\u0026rsquo;ersaw at GSP for the past 4 summers.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/biru/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBill Randall has a \u003ca href=\"http://www.billrandall.net/front.htm\"\u003eWebsite\u003c/a\u003e. Not a blog, for he disdains these unstructured musings, a WEBSITE.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) good stuff, especially the lists of films he o\u0026rsquo;ersaw at GSP for the past 4 summers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Biru"},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/trip-to-the-gorge-pics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/1600/minis.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/400/minis.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/1600/cliff.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/400/cliff.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/1600/bella.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/400/bella.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/1600/lineup.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/400/lineup.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/1600/jason_amby.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/400/jason_amby.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trip to the Gorge pics"},{"content":"Setting the stage, I write this blog as my darling Bella exclaims, \u0026ldquo;And by the way, it\u0026rsquo;s NOTHING like \u0026lsquo;Garden State\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;.\nYes, this Cameron Crowe written/directed opus is long, unconventional, and dialog heavy, but Whitney and I both loved it, and any Kentuckian is sure to love it as well.\nNominally, \u0026ldquo;Elizabethtown\u0026rdquo; is the story of a wayward shoe designer (Orlando Bloom) who lost his benefactor corporation \u0026ldquo;roughly one billion dollars\u0026rdquo;. At the very moment he\u0026rsquo;s going to ginsu himself, he learns his father, favorite son of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, has died. His mom\u0026rsquo;s thrown into overdrive, his sister is a mess, and he\u0026ndash;as oldest\u0026ndash;must fly from Oregon to Kentucky to bring his corpse home. What follows is a non-conventional fish-out-of-water tale, shot in and around Central Kentucky, as our wayward designer finds life and love.\nCritics complain the movie\u0026rsquo;s slow, predictable, but they miss the point: This movie is the flavor of Kentucky, the smoky flavor of people who understand the travails of life and our real (and insignificant) place in it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/elizabethtown...really-doesnt-suck./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSetting the stage, I write this blog as my darling Bella exclaims, \u0026ldquo;And by the way, it\u0026rsquo;s NOTHING like \u0026lsquo;Garden State\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, this Cameron Crowe written/directed opus is long, unconventional, and dialog heavy, but Whitney and I both loved it, and any Kentuckian is sure to love it as well.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNominally, \u0026ldquo;Elizabethtown\u0026rdquo; is the story of a wayward shoe designer (Orlando Bloom) who lost his benefactor corporation \u0026ldquo;roughly one billion dollars\u0026rdquo;. At the very moment he\u0026rsquo;s going to ginsu himself, he learns his father, favorite son of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, has died. His mom\u0026rsquo;s thrown into overdrive, his sister is a mess, and he\u0026ndash;as oldest\u0026ndash;must fly from Oregon to Kentucky to bring his corpse home. What follows is a non-conventional fish-out-of-water tale, shot in and around Central Kentucky, as our wayward designer finds life and love.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"Elizabethtown\"...really doesn't suck."},{"content":"Left: Patrick \u0026amp; MarkG\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/people-from-work.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLeft: Patrick \u0026amp; MarkG\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg alt=\"Image Hosted by ImageShack.us\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img374.imageshack.us/img374/4079/Image027.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"People from work..."},{"content":"\u0026hellip;and joey got to drive it\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/dad-got-a-new-tractor-this-weekend.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;and joey got to drive it\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Image Hosted by ImageShack.us\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img374.imageshack.us/img374/654/Image038.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dad got a new tractor this weekend..."},{"content":"My sweetie and Joey gave me a new Fuji FinePix S3100, 4 Megapixel digital camera!!\nthis is what I looked like when they gave it to me:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/early-birthday-present/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy sweetie and Joey gave me a new Fuji FinePix S3100, 4 Megapixel digital camera!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ethis is what I looked like when they gave it to me:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Image Hosted by ImageShack.us\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img430.imageshack.us/img430/1690/dscf00037eh.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Early Birthday present!"},{"content":"Sordid details here\nLesson? Some business models don\u0026rsquo;t work\u0026hellip;a free, muckraking newspaper in an apathetic town without identity, for example.\nTim Woodburn is a hockey hooligan who blew into town in 1995 along with the Kentucky Thoroughblades, insinuating himself into our sports-radio scene when the team left. From there he started \u0026ldquo;Snitch,\u0026rdquo; and apparently couldn\u0026rsquo;t keep his mouth shut to investors, etc.\nA paper that I won\u0026rsquo;t miss.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/the-end-of-snitch/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSordid details \u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/local/12915499.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLesson? Some business models don\u0026rsquo;t work\u0026hellip;a free, muckraking newspaper in an apathetic town without identity, for example.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTim Woodburn is a hockey hooligan who blew into town in 1995 along with the Kentucky Thoroughblades, insinuating himself into our sports-radio scene when the team left. From there he started \u0026ldquo;Snitch,\u0026rdquo; and apparently couldn\u0026rsquo;t keep his mouth shut to investors, etc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA paper that I won\u0026rsquo;t miss.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The end of 'Snitch'"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s little in life that compares to coming out of the shower to find you wife, clippers in hand, having utterly destroyed one side of her son\u0026rsquo;s head, and realizing that she must \u0026rsquo;even it up'.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a simple story really: Best of intentions (\u0026ldquo;Just a trim around his ears\u0026rdquo;), worst of possible outcomes (at this she says, \u0026ldquo;well, at least he\u0026rsquo;s not bald\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;never blog aloud\u0026hellip;:-) ). Kid\u0026rsquo;s a little short to starboard now. Port is well tapered, but that\u0026rsquo;s because I seized the WWMD (Wahl weapon of mass destruction) before she could attack.\nOf course, this was a gut-check moment for Whitney. Whom did she love more: Joe, or Joe\u0026rsquo;s hair. For awhile, I doubted. But now, minutes later, I\u0026rsquo;m certain: his hair.\nLater on, Joey appeared at the landing, a \u0026ldquo;hanger\u0026rdquo; on his finger. Bella sent him to bed, but he protested: \u0026ldquo;Aren\u0026rsquo;t ya gonna clip it off\u0026rdquo;.\n\u0026lsquo;Neath her breath, she replied, \u0026ldquo;You don\u0026rsquo;t want me near ya with clippers again.\u0026rdquo;\nWell, at least he\u0026rsquo;s already circumsized.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/well-at-least-hes-already-circumsized/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s little in life that compares to coming out of the shower to find you wife, clippers in hand, having utterly destroyed one side of her son\u0026rsquo;s head, and realizing that she must \u0026rsquo;even it up'.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a simple story really: Best of intentions (\u0026ldquo;Just a trim around his ears\u0026rdquo;), worst of possible outcomes (at this she says, \u0026ldquo;well, at least he\u0026rsquo;s not bald\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;never blog aloud\u0026hellip;:-) ). Kid\u0026rsquo;s a little short to starboard now. Port is well tapered, but that\u0026rsquo;s because I seized the WWMD (Wahl weapon of mass destruction) before she could attack.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Well, at least he's already circumsized"},{"content":" Harold needs a picture on his wall\nHarold needs a Christmas tree\nHarold needs to explore in order to learn and grow\nHarold needs a Chrismas tree, damnit\nHarold needs to come out of his shell and enjoy life\nHarold needs to know his true feelings\nHarold needs a frickin\u0026rsquo; CHRISTMAS TREE\nHarold needs a Christmas tree\nHarold needs a career\nHarold needs no one\nCourtesy Josh\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/bloggers-are-nothing-if-not-sheep-so.../","summary":"\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold needs a picture on his wall\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold needs a Christmas tree\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold needs to explore in order to learn and grow\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold needs a Chrismas tree, damnit\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold needs to come out of his shell and enjoy life\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold needs to know his true feelings\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold needs a frickin\u0026rsquo; CHRISTMAS TREE\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold needs a Christmas tree\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold needs a career\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarold needs no one\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCourtesy \u003ca href=\"http://joshsheffel.blogspot.com/2005_10_09_joshsheffel_archive.html#112903970044961436\"\u003eJosh\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bloggers are nothing if not sheep, so..."},{"content":"Unlike This guy, I think my home has a new Mac convert. Whitney really likes my powerbook, especially its ease-of-use and its ability to \u0026lsquo;instant on\u0026rsquo; from closed to open in 1 second.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s very interesting, because her machine is a top-notch Thinkpad R40, a total tank workhorse that I bought for her Christmas of 03.\nLast night she asked me to show her how to hook-up our digital camera and import + edit pictures\u0026hellip;muhaha.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/tech-war--at-home/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUnlike \u003ca href=\"http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2005/09/regretting_the.html;jsessionid=B53TMJEETTBZYQSNDBCSKH0CJUMEKJVN\"\u003eThis guy\u003c/a\u003e, I think my home has a new Mac convert. Whitney really likes my powerbook, especially its ease-of-use and its ability to \u0026lsquo;instant on\u0026rsquo; from closed to open in 1 second.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s very interesting, because her machine is a top-notch Thinkpad R40, a total tank workhorse that I bought for her Christmas of 03.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast night she asked me to show her how to hook-up our digital camera and import + edit pictures\u0026hellip;muhaha.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tech war--at home"},{"content":"I get a free subscription to \u0026ldquo;Information Week,\u0026rdquo; the softcore executive-digested version of \u0026ldquo;Software Developer\u0026rdquo; magazine. In this week\u0026rsquo;s issue there\u0026rsquo;s an article by Chris Murphy entitled \u0026ldquo;Speak Up for the IT Career,\u0026rdquo; whose thesis is there\u0026rsquo;s a huge market for talent in IT, but few young people wish to go into IT/Programming in college, so companies are forced to outsource.\nTelling quote from the article:\nOne of the first IT courses is a beginning programming class, which involves hours on end alone at the computer. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s a turn-off because people think that\u0026rsquo;s all there is to IT, and there\u0026rsquo;s a lot more than programming\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;d rather be in a team diagnosing problems, not in front of a computer all day.\u0026rdquo;\nLet me rewrite this in a more familiar context:\nOne of the first med-school courses is anatomy, which involves hours on end of looking at books and cadavers. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s a turn-off because people think that\u0026rsquo;s all there is to surgery. I\u0026rsquo;d rather be on a team cutting on live people, not learning about anatomy\nLook, people, there has been NO substantial advancement in the basics of computing since Alan Turing thought-up the his computational model in the 1940\u0026rsquo;s and Von Neumann refined it a few years later. The remainder\u0026ndash;the programming languages, the modelling techniques\u0026ndash;are all refinement steps, not advancements. Supposing you can wield and weave these pieces together without a desire to understand what\u0026rsquo;s going on makes you the worst of all professionals\u0026ndash;the poseur, the imbecile who never created anything, yet who can talk his way into management positions because other managers can\u0026rsquo;t stand the cold, simple, mathematical truth of computing.\nAnyway, the crux of the article is that kids aren\u0026rsquo;t going into IT. Why would that be? It\u0026rsquo;s a dead-end, non-respected profession that has no job security, zero reinvestment on the part of management (training? Train yourself!). Instead of being more valued as time goes by, you become marginalized.\nWould I want my son or daughter in IT? Sure\u0026hellip;if that\u0026rsquo;s where they want to go. Would I push them into it? Not a chance. This is not the fertile ground it was 10 years ago.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/on-it-careers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI get a free subscription to \u0026ldquo;Information Week,\u0026rdquo; the softcore executive-digested version of \u0026ldquo;Software Developer\u0026rdquo; magazine. In this week\u0026rsquo;s issue there\u0026rsquo;s an article by Chris Murphy entitled \u0026ldquo;Speak Up for the IT Career,\u0026rdquo; whose thesis is there\u0026rsquo;s a huge market for talent in IT, but few young people wish to go into IT/Programming in college, so companies are forced to outsource.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTelling quote from the article:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the first IT courses is a beginning programming class, which involves hours on end alone at the computer. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s a turn-off because people think that\u0026rsquo;s all there is to IT, and there\u0026rsquo;s a lot more than programming\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;d rather be in a team diagnosing problems, not in front of a computer all day.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On IT \"Careers\""},{"content":"What do you get when you cross two newlyweds with a 48 hours of uninterrupted together time?\nSex?\nNah\u0026hellip;painting.\nThe Devine Mrs. C hated her kitchen color, so I brought her flowers on Friday, made us some drinks, looked longingly into her blue eyes and said, \u0026ldquo;Honey, let\u0026rsquo;s paint the kitchen.\u0026rdquo;\nTrips to Lowes ensued, exhausting our last gift card and about $200 more, buying paint, painting paraphernalia, and painter\u0026rsquo;s tape. After disembowling our kitchen/dining room, we set out binding it with strips of blue tape at each sensitive edge. Then we assaulted it with Kilz Primer, then another coat. Saturday came and went, and our kitchen was white, with a murky tinge of brown beneath. We awaited the morn, ripe for our final victory.\nHome from church, and I started the assault, when the catharsis came: \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t like this color!\u0026rdquo; Angry words ensued, accusations, reproaches, and finally: \u0026ldquo;Go to Lowes and buy 3 colors you might like, then let\u0026rsquo;s try those on the walls.\u0026rdquo;\nDelft was depressing. Another, happier color had too much lavender. Finally we found it: Mystic Somethingoranother. Blue-grey, if you like. By now it was 4:30.\nWe slashed into the colors, our movements honed by two days of toil, yet weary were we. Dinner was a zoned-out sandwich and exasperation, with a side order or pretzels. As the British would pause for tea, so did we pause for \u0026ldquo;Desperate Housewives\u0026rdquo; (Gabby\u0026rsquo;s back with Carlos!), but then finishing touches and cleanup.\nTrim + washing-up comes tomorrow.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/the-weekend-that-was...painting./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat do you get when you cross two newlyweds with a 48 hours of uninterrupted together time?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSex?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNah\u0026hellip;painting.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Devine Mrs. C hated her kitchen color, so I brought her flowers on Friday, made us some drinks, looked longingly into her blue eyes and said, \u0026ldquo;Honey, let\u0026rsquo;s paint the kitchen.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTrips to Lowes ensued, exhausting our last gift card and about $200 more, buying paint, painting paraphernalia, and painter\u0026rsquo;s tape. After disembowling our kitchen/dining room, we set out binding it with strips of blue tape at each sensitive edge. Then we assaulted it with Kilz Primer, then another coat. Saturday came and went, and our kitchen was white, with a murky tinge of brown beneath. We awaited the morn, ripe for our final victory.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The weekend that was...painting."},{"content":"In my readings through Exodus and Leviticus, Aaron fascinates me. Brother of Moses, spokesman for the Lord, father of four sons, first high-priest of the Israelite nation, this guy (basically) had more power and importance than any other man of Israel, yet he\u0026rsquo;s a footnote. What was he like? How did he weather being a perennial second?\nThe Torah doesn\u0026rsquo;t give us much to go on for Aaron. So much of rich biblical history passes him by\u0026ndash;the plagues of Egypt, the Exodus, the golden calf, the construction of the Tabernacle, Moses\u0026rsquo;s law\u0026ndash;and yet we don\u0026rsquo;t see any of his motivation. WHY did he construct the golden calf when he knew it was wicked? HOW did he survive two of his sons being \u0026ldquo;consumed by the fire of God\u0026rdquo; (Leviticus 10:1-4)?\nDespite his deficiencies, the day-to-day spiritual life of Israel was his to oversee: Sacrifices, Sabbath observance, dietary restriction. Moses gave the law, but Aaron was the general that oversaw its implementation. The only parallel I can see is the relationship of Jesus and Peter in the NT: Jesus was the intermediary with God, just as Moses was, and Peter was \u0026ldquo;the rock upon which he [would] build [His] church\u0026rdquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s an unsatsfying comparison, since Peter was a hot-headed zealot and Aaron was milquetoast, but at least the roles are similar.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/on-aaron./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn my readings through Exodus and Leviticus, Aaron fascinates me. Brother of Moses, spokesman for the Lord, father of four sons, first high-priest of the Israelite nation, this guy (basically) had more power and importance than any other man of Israel, yet he\u0026rsquo;s a footnote. What was he like? How did he weather being a perennial second?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Torah doesn\u0026rsquo;t give us much to go on for Aaron. So much of rich biblical history passes him by\u0026ndash;the plagues of Egypt, the Exodus, the golden calf, the construction of the Tabernacle, Moses\u0026rsquo;s law\u0026ndash;and yet we don\u0026rsquo;t see any of his motivation. WHY did he construct the golden calf when he knew it was wicked? HOW did he survive two of his sons being \u0026ldquo;consumed by the fire of God\u0026rdquo; (Leviticus 10:1-4)?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Aaron."},{"content":" The difference between great people and everyone else is\nthat great people create their lives actively, while\neveryone else is created by their lives, passively waiting\nto see where life takes them next. The difference between\nthe two is the difference between living fully and just\nexisting.\n-- Michael E. Gerber\nIndeed.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/10/quote-of-the-day/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe difference between great people and everyone else is\u003cbr\u003e\nthat great people create their lives actively, while\u003cbr\u003e\neveryone else is created by their lives, passively waiting\u003cbr\u003e\nto see where life takes them next. The difference between\u003cbr\u003e\nthe two is the difference between living fully and just\u003cbr\u003e\nexisting.\u003cbr\u003e\n-- Michael E. Gerber\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIndeed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote of the day"},{"content":"The New Mrs. Combs\u0026rsquo;s summary found here\nBasically, it went off without a hitch, or so the bride saw. I got to see the labor unrest with the caterer, my family arriving 2 hours (!) too early and crowding the foyer of the church, my cousin the usher arrive after having spilt coffee all over his white shirt and gotten a new one.\nIt was a great day, one I will cherish for many reasons:\nMy bride looked at me and said, \u0026ldquo;I have hives all over my body and I threw up three times this morning,\u0026rdquo; it was so her that I couldn\u0026rsquo;t help but smile.\nSeeing Whitney freak out at my \u0026ldquo;Damn, you are so HOT\u0026rdquo; face\ngetting to kiss her hand in a moment of inspiration\nSeeing my pal Jeremy again after 4 years.\nMy best man\u0026rsquo;s toast. Joe, you are AWESOME!\nThe toast \u0026amp; roast. I was VERY dubious about that working, but Whitney\u0026rsquo;s rambling, my extemporanous thoughts, Stu\u0026rsquo;s sermon, Dad\u0026rsquo;s anecdotes, Jamie\u0026rsquo;s flippance, and Jeremy\u0026rsquo;s summation were like the Epiloge to the first part of my life and my true introduction to the next act. Honey, thank you SO much for perservering through my rejection of the idea.\nAll was beautiful, especially my bride.\nTo all my friends, I ask your prayers for our new marriage and our new family, that God grant us peace, love, and understanding in all things, His protection through our trials, and His guidance for our future. Amen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/the-wedding-summation/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe New Mrs. Combs\u0026rsquo;s summary found \u003ca href=\"http://monkeysontheside.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_monkeysontheside_archive.html#112808936155407867\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, it went off without a hitch, or so the bride saw. I got to see the labor unrest with the caterer, my family arriving 2 hours (!) too early and crowding the foyer of the church, my cousin the usher arrive after having spilt coffee all over his white shirt and gotten a new one.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a great day, one I will cherish for many reasons:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The wedding summation"},{"content":"Ah, life in the land of feast or famine\u0026hellip;\nI bowed my head this morning and said, \u0026ldquo;Lord, if it be in Your will, please make the way straight for me this day\u0026rdquo; And it has been.\n* * *\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/how-dare-things-be-slow-one-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, life in the land of feast or famine\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI bowed my head this morning and said, \u0026ldquo;Lord, if it be in Your will, please make the way straight for me this day\u0026rdquo; And it has been.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How dare things be slow one day?"},{"content":"http://www.typingtest.com/\n79 WPM\u0026hellip;ugh\u0026hellip;used to be over 100\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/fun-test/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.typingtest.com/\"\u003ehttp://www.typingtest.com/\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e79 WPM\u0026hellip;ugh\u0026hellip;used to be over 100\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fun test"},{"content":"Yes, yes, all the women of the world may now weep, I\u0026rsquo;m off the market.\n\u0026lt;/End egotism\u0026gt; Doesn\u0026rsquo;t suit me.\nI\u0026rsquo;m married to the most wonderful, spastic, loving, tender woman on the face of the earth, and I have been for going on two weeks!! I was off work from the 16th through the 26th and didn\u0026rsquo;t miss it much, but then who does? Spent lots of money, had a great wedding, reception, and honeymoon.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not myself\u0026hellip;I really can\u0026rsquo;t tell who I am yet, but I\u0026rsquo;m def. not myself.\nMore blogging later\u0026hellip;just wanted to tell everyone (okay, all 3 of ya) that I\u0026rsquo;m still alive.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/im-back-and-im-married/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYes, yes, all the women of the world may now weep, I\u0026rsquo;m off the market.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026lt;/End egotism\u0026gt; Doesn\u0026rsquo;t suit me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m married to the most wonderful, spastic, loving, tender woman on the face of the earth, and I have been for going on two weeks!! I was off work from the 16th through the 26th and didn\u0026rsquo;t miss it much, but then who does? Spent lots of money, had a great wedding, reception, and honeymoon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I'm back, and I'm MARRIED!"},{"content":"Curmudgeon: n.\nAn ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions.\nI\u0026rsquo;m getting there. Whitney and I ate our pizza and swilled our Pepsi before the morass of cable TV before us, and VH1 ran a spot promoting DAVE MATHEWS BAND: Storytellers, premiering tonight at 11pm\nMe: \u0026ldquo;Good LORD! 11pm? Who\u0026rsquo;s going to be up on a weeknight watching THAT?!\u0026rdquo;\nYup, how do you spell old fart? H-A-R-O-L-D.\nI\u0026rsquo;m a morning person. Yeah, that must be it.\n* * *\nOn a brighter note (a phrase in common usage by the anti-old person at work, LR), I think I\u0026rsquo;m in love with Whitney\u0026rsquo;s mattress. Since it found a home inside my Shaker-style cherry bed, I\u0026rsquo;ve wakened rested BEFORE my alarm on two successive mornings. No aches + pains. No sore muscles. Pillow tops rule!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/on-becoming-a-curmudgeon/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCurmudgeon: n.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m getting there. Whitney and I ate our pizza and swilled our Pepsi before the morass of cable TV before us, and VH1 ran a spot promoting \u003cem\u003eDAVE MATHEWS BAND: Storytellers, premiering tonight at 11pm\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: \u0026ldquo;Good LORD! 11pm? Who\u0026rsquo;s going to be up on a weeknight watching THAT?!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYup, how do you spell old fart? H-A-R-O-L-D.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m a morning person. Yeah, that \u003cem\u003emust\u003c/em\u003e be it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On becoming a curmudgeon"},{"content":"I now have 72 channels, ranging from news, sports, human interest, travel, cooking, learning, and not-too-recent movies. It takes me 20 minutes to flip through them all, comprehend which channel I\u0026rsquo;m watching, and discern why I really don\u0026rsquo;t want to watch that channel at that second. I just spent the last two hours trying to reaclimate myself to cable.\nI have a headache.\nI can feel my attention span shortening, my life wasting away, and a strange desire to buy airwick air freshener. Things have changed somewhat in the time I\u0026rsquo;ve been away from cable. News is now NEWS, DAMNIT! \u0026ldquo;News\u0026rdquo; is the presentation of current goings-on, possibly with human interest stories and some weird stuff to give flavor. NEWS, DAMNIT involves 3-4 blonde anchorpersons, a crawl going across the bottom of the screen, a rotating \u0026ldquo;FOX NEWS\u0026rdquo; banner in the lower corner, and snazzy graphics proclaiming the latest UPDATE regarding the president\u0026rsquo;s digestion or Alan Greenspan\u0026rsquo;s incontinence.\nI may just get a subscription to the Louisville Courier-Journal so that I can digest yesterdays events and tomorrow\u0026rsquo;s plans at a slightly slower pace, along with a cup of fine coffee and a view out my back porch.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/on-cable/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI now have 72 channels, ranging from news, sports, human interest, travel, cooking, learning, and not-too-recent movies. It takes me 20 minutes to flip through them all, comprehend which channel I\u0026rsquo;m watching, and discern why I really don\u0026rsquo;t want to watch that channel at that second. I just spent the last two hours trying to reaclimate myself to cable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have a headache.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI can feel my attention span shortening, my life wasting away, and a strange desire to buy airwick air freshener. Things have changed somewhat in the time I\u0026rsquo;ve been away from cable. News is now NEWS, DAMNIT! \u0026ldquo;News\u0026rdquo; is the presentation of current goings-on, possibly with human interest stories and some weird stuff to give flavor. NEWS, DAMNIT involves 3-4 blonde anchorpersons, a crawl going across the bottom of the screen, a rotating \u0026ldquo;FOX NEWS\u0026rdquo; banner in the lower corner, and snazzy graphics proclaiming the latest UPDATE regarding the president\u0026rsquo;s digestion or Alan Greenspan\u0026rsquo;s incontinence.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Cable"},{"content":"My powerbook\u0026rsquo;s been held hostage in Louisville for the past week, so no blogging from home, and (as we\u0026rsquo;ll soon see) I can\u0026rsquo;t blog from work. My apologies.\nThis is, at once, the best and most chaotic time in my life. Work is sucking unbelievably, but my personal and spiritual life has been blessed. Maybe God is trying to tell me something.\nFirst, the facts: They fired 300 employees, then re-organized our department (no impact to me), and slipped in a not-so-subtle warning\u0026hellip;\nInternet use is now STRICTLY monitored\nI walked in the next day and heard the unbelievable. My pal Joel Jirak, the guy who got me my job at Lexmark, the man who introduced me to Slashdot, Mozilla (later Firefox), my inspiration\u0026hellip;had been fired. Porn? Nope. The only thing I could find out was \u0026rsquo;excessive internet usage'.\nShockwaves radiated throughout our department. Not only was Joel well-liked, but he was a keystone guy, a fellow of unwaivering Christianity, good humor, and who was supporting a young wife w/two kids and another on the way. And, he\u0026rsquo;d just bought a house.\nNone of this is conjecture on my part; it\u0026rsquo;s fact. If my company wishes to dismiss me for putting it on my personal blog from my house on my own time (as if such existed for them), so be it.\nJoel, I pray for you and your family, that you might find a place that respects you.\n* * *\nBut, good news: I took the day off, got our marriage license for the wedding next week, then helped Whitney pack for the big joey/whitney move tomorrow. Her apartment is one box after another\u0026hellip; :-) I remember that feeling well. Mom and Dad are driving up to help us move things.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/so-much-good-so-much-bad.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy powerbook\u0026rsquo;s been held hostage in Louisville for the past week, so no blogging from home, and (as we\u0026rsquo;ll soon see) I can\u0026rsquo;t blog from work. My apologies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is, at once, the best and most chaotic time in my life. Work is sucking unbelievably, but my personal and spiritual life has been blessed. Maybe God is trying to tell me something.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, the facts: They fired 300 employees, then re-organized our department (no impact to me), and slipped in a not-so-subtle warning\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"So much good, so much bad..."},{"content":"You enter in the morning whistling a happy tune and by the end of the day you desperately don\u0026rsquo;t want to work there anymore.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/ahh-corporate-america.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou enter in the morning whistling a happy tune and by the end of the day you desperately don\u0026rsquo;t want to work there anymore.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ahh, corporate america..."},{"content":"As reported over on Gabe\u0026rsquo;s Blog, here\u0026rsquo;s a snap of the new, extended wheelbase mini:\n* * *\nHad insomnia last night so I finally decided to watch Sin City\nThis stylized movie version of Frank Miller\u0026rsquo;s graphic novels by the same name stars nearly everyone in hollywood who\u0026rsquo;s under 40 and who\u0026rsquo;ll work for under $2 million: Brittany Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Jessica Alba, Josh Hartnett, etc. Dark and surreal, the \u0026ldquo;plot\u0026rdquo; is actually 5-6 vignettes that occur in \u0026ldquo;Sin\u0026rdquo; (short for Basin) City, a land of angels, demons, murderers, and corruption, with the normal Film Noir inversion of sympathentic/antagonistic chracters\u0026ndash;the \u0026ldquo;officials\u0026rdquo; are mostly evil, and the ex-cons and prositutes are the \u0026ldquo;good guys\u0026rdquo;.\nThe vignettes are uneven: Bruce Willis\u0026rsquo;s Officer Hartigan, whose fatalistic, chivalric tale bookends the others, is interesting but pathetic, making him hard to root for but for his mission to save tasty Nancy from a fate worse than death. Clive Owens\u0026rsquo;s interlude among the killer prostitutes of Old Town falls oddly flat, but for the magnificent swordplay of Miho (Devon Akohi). The best of the lot is Mikey Rouke playing the psychopathic demon Marv, finding love and death on the same trippy tale, marking the anticlimax (lowest point) of the film.\nThroughout, life is cheap, violence omnipresent, and disturbing imagery abounds. For instance, we encounter Elijah Wood as the angelic/demonic Kevin, cannibal who\u0026rsquo;s refuses to scream even as Marv metes-out his torturous demise. (Rubber tubing + hacksaw + flesh eating dog. I\u0026rsquo;m GLAD Bella didn\u0026rsquo;t watch this with me!)\nAnyway, Sin City was a spell-binding art project masquerading as a mainstream film, pointless in its excess violence. Watch the Marv sequence and dispose of the rest (yes, even Jessica Alba\u0026rsquo;s cowgirl outfit)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/new-extended-mini-and-other-news.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs reported over on \u003ca href=\"http://www.motoringfile.com\"\u003eGabe\u0026rsquo;s Blog\u003c/a\u003e, here\u0026rsquo;s a snap of the new, extended wheelbase mini:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.motoringfile.com/pictures/MINI_ext2.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHad insomnia last night so I finally decided to watch \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/\"\u003eSin City\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://cdn.nflximg.com/us/boxshots/large/70021630.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis stylized movie version of Frank Miller\u0026rsquo;s graphic novels by the same name stars nearly everyone in hollywood who\u0026rsquo;s under 40 and who\u0026rsquo;ll work for under $2 million: Brittany Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Jessica Alba, Josh Hartnett, etc. Dark and surreal, the \u0026ldquo;plot\u0026rdquo; is actually 5-6 vignettes that occur in \u0026ldquo;Sin\u0026rdquo; (short for Basin) City, a land of angels, demons, murderers, and corruption, with the normal Film Noir inversion of sympathentic/antagonistic chracters\u0026ndash;the \u0026ldquo;officials\u0026rdquo; are mostly evil, and the ex-cons and prositutes are the \u0026ldquo;good guys\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New extended MINI and other news..."},{"content":"\nlink\n$94\u0026hellip;Santa, I\u0026rsquo;ve been oh so good this year.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/mmm...dustless-brake-pads.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.tirerack.com/images/brakes/search/medium/hawk_ceramic_pads.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.tirerack.com/brakes/brakes.jsp?make=Hawk\u0026amp;model=Performance+Ceramic+Pads\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e$94\u0026hellip;Santa, I\u0026rsquo;ve been oh so good this year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"mmm...dustless brake pads..."},{"content":"My family\u0026rsquo;s napping, so here goes\u0026hellip;\nI\u0026rsquo;m so HAPPY :D These past two days have been heaven\u0026hellip;relaxing, fulfilling, and just neat. Drove Whitney \u0026amp; Joey down here in the MINI, and the first thing Joey said as we pulled into the garage is, \u0026ldquo;Harold, is that your BIKE? Why don\u0026rsquo;t you every ride your BIKE?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026hellip;good question\u0026hellip;\nThe saga of my lovelorn Cannondale: I bought it in the spring of 2002, when I was on a biking kick. I\u0026rsquo;d had a crappy Giant mountainbike when I was in college, and since I was out in cosmopolitan South Lexington, I thought\u0026hellip;hmm\u0026hellip;maybe a road bike of some sort. Then my father goes, \u0026ldquo;Son, I\u0026rsquo;ll buy you whatever kinda bike you want\u0026rdquo;.\nSo, I jumped into the deep end and bought an all-aluminum Cannondale T800 touring bike:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s like a racing bike, but made more solidly in all respects, and it has 27 speeds (3 front cogs and 9 rears), like a mountain bike. Everything on it was top-notch and made to last.\nAnd I rode it for 6 months or so and then put it in the garage. :-( What happened? I moved from bike-friendly Lexington to Georgetown, and people here are not so friendly to cyclists. Specifically, I got the crap scared out of me one day going down a hill as I was passed by a car, almost losing control at 35 mph into the path of the car. So, I hung it up. The bike had beaten me.\nBeen reading lots of Josh\u0026rsquo;s posts lately about his 30+ mile bike soiree\u0026rsquo;s into the Minnesoda countryside, and Joey infected me with a bit of devil-may-care, so yesterday at 3 pm, I became a cyclist again. Joey wanted to ride his trike, and my flat-tired, never-moved Cannondale called to me once again.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t know if the thing would even move, after 3 years of neglect (chain rusted? tubes dry rotted?), but I aired-up the meaty touring rubber, threw on my old helmet and set out.\nIn a word cycling rocks. It\u0026rsquo;s exercise, transportation, and good for the environment all at once. I\u0026rsquo;m out of shape and my tailbone is sore, since it\u0026rsquo;s not used to the saddle, but it\u0026rsquo;s all coming back to me :D\n\u0026ldquo;HAROLD!! I can\u0026rsquo;t keep up with you? [pant]\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;S\u0026rsquo;ok, Joey, I\u0026rsquo;ve got 20 years and 20 gears on you!\u0026rdquo;\n:) now, if only UK will kick the snot out of UofL, this will be a good day!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/i-got-20-years-and-20-gears-on-ya/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy family\u0026rsquo;s napping, so here goes\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m so HAPPY :D These past two days have been heaven\u0026hellip;relaxing, fulfilling, and just neat. Drove Whitney \u0026amp; Joey down here in the MINI, and the first thing Joey said as we pulled into the garage is, \u0026ldquo;Harold, is that your BIKE? Why don\u0026rsquo;t you every ride your BIKE?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;good question\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe saga of my lovelorn Cannondale: I bought it in the spring of 2002, when I was on a biking kick. I\u0026rsquo;d had a crappy Giant mountainbike when I was in college, and since I was out in cosmopolitan South Lexington, I thought\u0026hellip;hmm\u0026hellip;maybe a road bike of some sort. Then my father goes, \u0026ldquo;Son, I\u0026rsquo;ll buy you whatever kinda bike you want\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\"I got 20 years and 20 gears on ya\""},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s the day before Labor Day weekend, and it\u0026rsquo;s all falling apart here\u0026hellip;\nOkay, good stuff first: I got the yard mowed (after 4 inches of rain thanks to Katrina, it was a jungle), the trimming accomplished, and the car washed in the past couple of days, but I\u0026rsquo;m horribly behind on all things wedding.\nI just ordered cable. I\u0026rsquo;m tired of having fuzzy broadcast reception\u0026hellip;just basic, no digital/TiVo/etc. Whitney and I are both newshounds, so maybe that will assuage our yen to be plugged-in. Plus, hey, Cartoon network :D\nNew Orleans is\u0026hellip;gone. Those who remained behind are enduring anarchy and violence closer to Mogadishu, Somalia, than anything America has seens since the Civil War. Civilization has collapsed there and people are doing anything to survive. It\u0026rsquo;s a microcosm of what could happen anywhere in America if even a few basic services get disrupted and people are cut-off from food and water.\nI hope this isn\u0026rsquo;t the start of a cascading failure, but it seems like it could be. America is overextended and unable to secure a city within its own borders; a few key strikes or armed uprisings during this time of vulnerability could tip the whole country into chaos.\nWedding, anyone?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/09/randomness.-.-./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s the day before Labor Day weekend, and it\u0026rsquo;s all falling apart here\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, good stuff first: I got the yard mowed (after 4 inches of rain thanks to Katrina, it was a jungle), the trimming accomplished, and the car washed in the past couple of days, but I\u0026rsquo;m horribly behind on all things wedding.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI just ordered cable. I\u0026rsquo;m tired of having fuzzy broadcast reception\u0026hellip;just basic, no digital/TiVo/etc. Whitney and I are both newshounds, so maybe that will assuage our yen to be plugged-in. Plus, hey, Cartoon network :D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Randomness. . ."},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/yes-it-rained-that-much.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://louisvilletroop30.org/albums/album05/MG_3739.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Yes, it rained that much..."},{"content":"I call this blog Harry\u0026rsquo;s Ruminations, because I think alot, and right now, I\u0026rsquo;m obsessed with how much things suck and how little I can do to stop them from sucking.\nFirst, let\u0026rsquo;s get it out of the way: I lost yesterday. I had a good, fun day, but I lost, finishing 3rd out of 6 drivers. Interestingly, all of us were on r-compound tires, so this isn\u0026rsquo;t a bad showing, and I actually lead the class for most of the runs, but I never improved on my 63.7 time, so I got beat by a 62.4 on the last round, then knocked out of 2nd by a 63.4.\nAnyway, what\u0026rsquo;s really got me down: Work just flat-out sucks. We just went through a round of layoffs (275, prolly closer to 300) and today I heard rumor of a forthcoming 1500 around December. I should be concentrating on my wedding plans, moving my new family to our house, and building a new life, but all I can think of is how crushing work is.\nAlso, the team situation\u0026hellip;I just don\u0026rsquo;t know if we\u0026rsquo;re going to make our milestone on Friday. They\u0026rsquo;ve known about it for 4 weeks, I\u0026rsquo;ve set them intermediate milestones, timelines, and meetings. I\u0026rsquo;ve held their hands, kissed their boo-boos, and protected them from reality enough so that they can concentrate.\nApparently, that\u0026rsquo;s not enough. I\u0026rsquo;m barely holding this all together as it is, and the reality is, I\u0026rsquo;m going to be gone on honeymoon and that\u0026rsquo;s just how it will be. The last time I left on vacation (for THREE DAYS), this team fell to pieces. Ugh\u0026hellip;\nFear of God is the beginning of wisdom. I\u0026rsquo;m feeling pretty stupid these days.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/feelings-musings-and-whats-wrong-with-rumors.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI call this blog Harry\u0026rsquo;s Ruminations, because I think alot, and right now, I\u0026rsquo;m obsessed with how much things suck and how little I can do to stop them from sucking.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, let\u0026rsquo;s get it out of the way: I lost yesterday. I had a good, fun day, but I lost, finishing 3rd out of 6 drivers. Interestingly, all of us were on r-compound tires, so this isn\u0026rsquo;t a bad showing, and I actually lead the class for most of the runs, but I never improved on my 63.7 time, so I got beat by a 62.4 on the last round, then knocked out of 2nd by a 63.4.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Feelings, musings, and what's wrong with rumors..."},{"content":"In 1969, Camille came to Louisiana and killed 250 people. For the last 10 years, they\u0026rsquo;ve said the next category 5 hurricane to hit Louisiana will obliterate New Orleans. Tomorrow will likely be that day.\nMOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS\u0026hellip;PERHAPS LONGER. AT\nLEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL\nFAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL\u0026hellip;LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY\nDAMAGED OR DESTROYED.\nTHE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.\nPARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD\nFRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE\nBLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE\u0026hellip;INCLUDING SOME\nWALL AND ROOF FAILURE.\nHIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY\u0026hellip;A\nFEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.\nAIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD\u0026hellip;AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH\nAS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY\nVEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE\nADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS\u0026hellip;PETS\u0026hellip;AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE\nWINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.\nPOWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS\u0026hellip;AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN\nAND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING\nINCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.\nTHE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY\nTHE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING\u0026hellip;BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW\nCROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE\nKILLED.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s the text of the NOAA warning for the greater New Orleans area. Lord, let these people be in thy sight, and may the Angel of Death pass them over. Protect them that Your name may be glorified. Amen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/at-least-its-a-girl-name/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1969, Camille came to Louisiana and killed 250 people. For the last 10 years, they\u0026rsquo;ve said the next category 5 hurricane to hit Louisiana will obliterate New Orleans. Tomorrow will likely be that day.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS\u0026hellip;PERHAPS LONGER. AT\u003cbr\u003e\nLEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL\u003cbr\u003e\nFAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL\u0026hellip;LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY\u003cbr\u003e\nDAMAGED OR DESTROYED.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"At least it's a girl name"},{"content":"Well, morale took a hit,\nand some managers were somber\nbut I still have a job,\nand will wonder no longer.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/i-still-have-a-job/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, morale took a hit,\u003cbr\u003e\nand some managers were somber\u003cbr\u003e\nbut I still have a job,\u003cbr\u003e\nand will wonder no longer.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I still have a job!"},{"content":"In pre-marital counseling yesterday, I got to face it: I have an obsessive personality. Whether it\u0026rsquo;s grades, music, photography, work, women, autocross, I GET OBSESSED.\nAs with most things, the human fallacy is believing everyone is just like yourself. I realize that most folks are not obsessive, but I am. I not only don\u0026rsquo;t get balance, I barely comprehend how most people achieve it.\nThe closest I can come is imagining most other people have a schedule in their mind of what they\u0026rsquo;re doing at any given moment, and whenever they is over, they drop it (complete or not) and move on the next thing. That would drive me batty, but then, that\u0026rsquo;s the standard workaholic foible: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll quit when the work\u0026rsquo;s done\u0026rdquo; Thing is, the work NEVER gets done.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/my-obsessive-personality/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn pre-marital counseling yesterday, I got to face it: I have an obsessive personality. Whether it\u0026rsquo;s grades, music, photography, work, women, autocross, I GET OBSESSED.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs with most things, the human fallacy is believing everyone is just like yourself. I realize that most folks are not obsessive, but I am. I not only don\u0026rsquo;t get balance, I barely comprehend how most people achieve it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe closest I can come is imagining most other people have a schedule in their mind of what they\u0026rsquo;re doing at any given moment, and whenever they is over, they drop it (complete or not) and move on the next thing. That would drive me batty, but then, that\u0026rsquo;s the standard workaholic foible: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll quit when the work\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003edone\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; Thing is, the work NEVER gets done.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My obsessive personality"},{"content":"Today is the day LXK rids itself of 275 people, and at least one of those was my friend. We have a meeting to discuss things @ 3pm. I think me just being here after lunch is a good sign; they were supposed to tell you by noon.\n\u0026lsquo;Course, I was in meetings until 12\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/hatchet-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday is the day LXK rids itself of 275 people, and at least one of those was my friend. We have a meeting to discuss things @ 3pm. I think me just being here after lunch is a good sign; they were supposed to tell you by noon.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026lsquo;Course, I was in meetings until 12\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hatchet day"},{"content":"link\n220 hp\nSuper tight suspension\nLimited slip transmission\nWeighs 2200 lbs (400lbs LESS than the Pup)\nCarbon-fiber body panels\n2000 of \u0026rsquo;em worldwide\nOf course, it\u0026rsquo;d be difficult to drive a CF car with acrylic windows as a daily driver, but what a MACHINE\u0026hellip;would prolly run with a Lotus Elise or a C6 Corvette on a Road Course; just crank in some negative camber. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/sigh-my-next-mini-if-i-was-rich..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.motoringfile.com/2005/08/25/the_latest_on_the_rumored_lightweight_mcs\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e220 hp\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuper tight suspension\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLimited slip transmission\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWeighs 2200 lbs (400lbs LESS than the Pup)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCarbon-fiber body panels\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2000 of \u0026rsquo;em worldwide\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf course, it\u0026rsquo;d be difficult to drive a CF car with acrylic windows as a daily driver, but what a MACHINE\u0026hellip;would prolly run with a Lotus Elise or a C6 Corvette on a Road Course; just crank in some negative camber. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\u003e\u003esigh\u003c\u003c my next MINI, if I was rich...."},{"content":"link\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/news.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://bioocn.blogspot.com/2005/08/breaking-news.html\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"News..."},{"content":"Adlphia is been a poop, so I\u0026rsquo;m hosting these on imageshack (click on each thumbnail for a larger pic)\nLittle Lauren, daughter of David + Anne\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/buffalo-crossing-pics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAdlphia is been a poop, so I\u0026rsquo;m hosting these on imageshack (click on each thumbnail for a larger pic)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img399.imageshack.us/my.php?image=10yn.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/8900/10yn.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img398.imageshack.us/my.php?image=01fw.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/6939/01fw.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img399.imageshack.us/my.php?image=39pj.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/2646/39pj.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img399.imageshack.us/my.php?image=27iy.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/8899/27iy.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nLittle Lauren, daughter of David + Anne\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img399.imageshack.us/my.php?image=46tz.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/7004/46tz.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img399.imageshack.us/my.php?image=78xd.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/5195/78xd.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img399.imageshack.us/my.php?image=105rx.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/3408/105rx.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img393.imageshack.us/my.php?image=118sn.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img393.imageshack.us/img393/9986/118sn.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img393.imageshack.us/my.php?image=122nm.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img393.imageshack.us/img393/2088/122nm.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Buffalo crossing pics"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;\nMore fun dreams last night. Something about the wedding going wrong and me getting arrested for marrying my cousin\u0026hellip;? I mean, I know Bella and I are close, but I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure the family tree converges around Adam and Eve, but not before. :-)\nAnywho\u0026hellip;lots of excitement going on: Twenty-six days to the wedding, the MINI\u0026rsquo;s been in the shop for diagnosis and it goes back as soon as parts arrive (burnt-out power-window on driver\u0026rsquo;s side + bad idler pulley + serpentine belt), and work\u0026rsquo;s, well, bananas (as ever).\nOn the bright side, beautiful morning with a Fall crispness in the air :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/car-love...and-other./","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.hondavision.com/photohosting/data/500/buttandcar1_5.JPG\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMore fun dreams last night. Something about the wedding going wrong and me getting arrested for marrying my cousin\u0026hellip;? I mean, I know Bella and I are close, but I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure the family tree converges around Adam and Eve, but not before. :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnywho\u0026hellip;lots of excitement going on: Twenty-six days to the wedding, the MINI\u0026rsquo;s been in the shop for diagnosis and it goes back as soon as parts arrive (burnt-out power-window on driver\u0026rsquo;s side + bad idler pulley + serpentine belt), and work\u0026rsquo;s, well, bananas (as ever).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Car love...and other."},{"content":"\nCompliments of Fark.com\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/lovely-sunset/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.extremeinstability.com/stormpics/05-8-17-3978.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCompliments of Fark.com\u003c/p\u003e","title":"lovely sunset"},{"content":"Yes, Jackson is hell\nI now have proof.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/ahh...i-have-proof/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYes, Jackson is \u003ca href=\"http://www.fonefinder.net/findome.php?npa=606\u0026amp;nxx=666\u0026amp;usaquerytype=Search+by+Number\u0026amp;cityname=\"\u003ehell\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI now have proof.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ahh...I have proof!"},{"content":"went on a book-reading bender from 3-8 today and read all of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince\n600+ pages at a sitting can cause brain warpage, so forgive me if this rambles. Also, this probably has SPOILERS, so don\u0026rsquo;t read on if you want to read the book for yourself.\nNow in his 6th year at Hogwart\u0026rsquo;s, Harry\u0026rsquo;s moved past pissy adolescence into likeable pre-adulthood. Ron, Hermione, and the other Gryffindors are learning about life and love, all while the wizarding world explodes with death and intrigue as Lord Voldemort reigns again.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s trite, but Rowling has reinvented her character YET AGAIN. The standard, rote stories of the first few books have given way to long narratives, DEEP characterizations, and appropriate twists-and-turns. Now, we see the endgame exposed, the quest required to destroy Voldemort.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/latest-harry-potter-done/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ewent on a book-reading bender from 3-8 today and read all of \u003cem\u003eHarry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0439784549.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e600+ pages at a sitting can cause brain warpage, so forgive me if this rambles. Also, this probably has SPOILERS, so don\u0026rsquo;t read on if you want to read the book for yourself.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow in his 6th year at Hogwart\u0026rsquo;s, Harry\u0026rsquo;s moved past pissy adolescence into likeable pre-adulthood. Ron, Hermione, and the other Gryffindors are learning about life and love, all while the wizarding world explodes with death and intrigue as Lord Voldemort reigns again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Latest Harry Potter: Done!"},{"content":"Woke-up to the gentle tapping of rain against my window and thought: My Car\u0026rsquo;s outside and the sunroof is up.\n\u0026hellip;Yup\u0026hellip;great\u0026hellip;\nAnyway, I had this freaky dream that I can\u0026rsquo;t quite shake. For some reason, my coworker D flew up to New York City, and I followed him, going to a museum that I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get it because I didn\u0026rsquo;t have any money but \u0026ldquo;You can get in for free with a ticket to Seattle\u0026rdquo;. It ended up that we hung out in a restaurant in the airport by the subway. I don\u0026rsquo;t remember what we talked about.\nBut, it was a very vivid dream and I have no idea what it means\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/freaky-lucid-dream.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWoke-up to the gentle tapping of rain against my window and thought: My Car\u0026rsquo;s outside and the sunroof is up.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;Yup\u0026hellip;great\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, I had this freaky dream that I can\u0026rsquo;t quite shake. For some reason, my coworker D flew up to New York City, and I followed him, going to a museum that I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get it because I didn\u0026rsquo;t have any money but \u0026ldquo;You can get in for free with a ticket to Seattle\u0026rdquo;. It ended up that we hung out in a restaurant in the airport by the subway. I don\u0026rsquo;t remember what we talked about.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Freaky, lucid dream..."},{"content":"I filled-up the MINI for $36.63 this morning\u0026hellip;yike\nOn the bright side, my MPG indicator is reading 37.9 currently :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/ouch/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI filled-up the MINI for $36.63 this morning\u0026hellip;yike\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the bright side, my MPG indicator is reading 37.9 currently :D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ouch"},{"content":"Results: (lower scores are better)\nCar# Score Entrants(Driver,Navigator) 4 179 Lo Arnold, Phil Schneider 3 466 Ginny Eager, Robin Murphey 10 780 Judd Campbell, Kelly Campbell 7 1030 ??? 9 1119 Jim Lamb, Lynn Lamb 2 1282 Mark Thomas, Betty Thomas 8 1354 Ken Hold, Ed Howell 6 1362 Chris Davis, Kurt Clayton 1 1532 Grant Goodin, Mark Goodin 5 1800 DNF--Subaru Pics:\ntop: line of porsches: a 914, Gary\u0026rsquo;s 968, and a beautiful 930.\nbottom: Closeup of the 930\nPic of me at a control with my map, route instructions, and PalmPilot I was using for timing.\nWinners:\n(from Left) Lo Arnold + Phil Schneider (1st), Robin Murphey + Ginny Eager (2nd)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/rally-results--pics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eResults: (lower scores are better)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\u003ccode\u003e\nCar#     Score     Entrants(Driver,Navigator)  \n4          179        Lo Arnold, Phil Schneider  \n3          466        Ginny Eager, Robin Murphey  \n10         780        Judd Campbell, Kelly Campbell  \n7          1030       ???  \n9          1119       Jim Lamb, Lynn Lamb  \n2          1282       Mark Thomas, Betty Thomas  \n8          1354       Ken Hold, Ed Howell  \n6          1362       Chris Davis, Kurt Clayton  \n1          1532       Grant Goodin, Mark Goodin  \n5          1800       DNF--Subaru  \n\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e\u003cp\u003ePics:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/1600/porsches.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/320/porsches.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/1600/930.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/320/930.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003etop: line of porsches: a 914, Gary\u0026rsquo;s 968, and a beautiful 930.\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003ebottom: Closeup of the 930\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rally results + Pics"},{"content":"Lexington Gas Prices\nMuhahaha\u0026hellip;.website for finding cheap gas.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/lexington-gas-prices-find-cheap-gas-prices-in-kentucky/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.lexingtongasprices.com/\"\u003eLexington Gas Prices\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuhahaha\u0026hellip;.website for finding cheap gas.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lexington Gas Prices - Find Cheap Gas Prices in Kentucky"},{"content":"7 hours, 3 beers, 4 Sprites, 2 rounds of Gojo, 1 large pizza, and no busted knuckles later, Joes\u0026rsquo; maxima has 2 new front struts and a fresh oil change.\nI think we could do it now in under 3 hours if we had to do it all over again.\nJoe\u0026rsquo;s upper suspension mount + bushing was making some extreme noises, and since his car has 138k miles on it, he decided he wanted to get some Monroe Sensa-Trac struts, and he asked, \u0026ldquo;Harold, do you think you want to tackle this?\u0026rdquo;\nThinking to myself, I\u0026rsquo;ve wrenched on my Jetta, MINI, GTO, and Big Red, sure\u0026hellip;how hard could it be? Well, MacPherson struts are clever if devilishly complex devices, and properly servicing one requires a medieval looking device known as a spring compressor:\nyou see, the strut is a combination of shock (which controls or \u0026ldquo;damps\u0026rdquo; the elastic motion of the spring) and the spring, which actually holds up your car off the \u0026ldquo;unsprung weight\u0026rdquo; of things like your control arms, wheels, and wheel hubs. Thing is, the springs have to hold up a 3000lb car, so each one has LOTS of potential energy stored in it, which is only restrained by the nut at the top. in order to safely remove the nut without killing yourself, you need to compress and hold the spring.\nAnyway, we secured the car on jack-stands, drained the oil, then tackled the driver\u0026rsquo;s side strut, making every mistake imaginable without injuring ourself: We were overcautious with the spring compressor, so that took extra time, and we disassembled the spring seat too much, requring us to reassemble it minutes later. So, 5 hours in, we only had the driver\u0026rsquo;s side done.\nWe were discouraged.\nHowever, pizza and a sense of accomplishement pushed us through to the passenger\u0026rsquo;s side, where we applied all we\u0026rsquo;d learned with the driver\u0026rsquo;s side, and did that in less than 1 hour.\nw000000000000t!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/w00t....mechanix-r-us/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e7 hours, 3 beers, 4 Sprites, 2 rounds of Gojo, 1 large pizza, and no busted knuckles later, Joes\u0026rsquo; maxima has 2 new front struts and a fresh oil change.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think we could do it now in under 3 hours if we had to do it all over again.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoe\u0026rsquo;s upper suspension mount + bushing was making some extreme noises, and since his car has 138k miles on it, he decided he wanted to get some Monroe Sensa-Trac struts, and he asked, \u0026ldquo;Harold, do you think you want to tackle this?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"w00t....mechanix R Us"},{"content":"If you use Firefox + Gmail, here\u0026rsquo;s a cool extension that adds the \u0026lsquo;Delete\u0026rsquo; button to the gmail interface.\nlink\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/neat/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you use Firefox + Gmail, here\u0026rsquo;s a cool extension that adds the \u0026lsquo;Delete\u0026rsquo; button to the gmail interface.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.arantius.com/article/arantius/gmail+delete+button/\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Neat!"},{"content":"Stupid quiz of the week:\nWARNING: There\u0026rsquo;s some VERY obscure stuff on there\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/hehe/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStupid quiz of the week:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.nerdtests.com/ft_cg.php?im\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg alt=\"My computer geek score is greater than 76% of all people in the world! How do you compare? Click here to find out!\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.nerdtests.com/images/ft/cg.php?val=4752\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWARNING: There\u0026rsquo;s some VERY obscure stuff on there\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hehe"},{"content":"There are few experiences to equal being at work at 8 o\u0026rsquo;clock at night replying to email from your boss\u0026rsquo;s boss, explaining why your crack team of developers didn\u0026rsquo;t deliver on the function your reported was \u0026ldquo;done\u0026rdquo; two days earlier.\nYou know what? I take it back. I\u0026rsquo;m GLAD I got her fired; we\u0026rsquo;ll be lucky if she\u0026rsquo;s the last, given how cavalier everyone\u0026rsquo;s working these days.\nSo yeah, here we are, knee deep in code, with my normal unitized team, decomposed into two halves, each working on a significant chunk of work. I had a meeting, told them deliver me three things in 4 weeks: Code, Running unit tests @ 80% coverage, and Documentation.\nThen I went off to put out fires everywhere else, attend meetings, sell my car\u0026hellip;you know, team lead stuff.\nSo, I come in Monday, feeling all chipper, and I go around the room. \u0026ldquo;Yes, good to see you. How was your vacation? Awesome! Well, let\u0026rsquo;s get this over with so I can go and read those journal articles on my desk\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\n10 minutes later I found out I was not only a liar, but a flat-out dupe. I\u0026rsquo;d sat in a meeting Thursday and reported things were \u0026ldquo;Just great\u0026rdquo; with the team and that our function was \u0026ldquo;right on track\u0026rdquo;. So, in our meeting, C says \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m having some big problems with that code. I just don\u0026rsquo;t quite understand ___________\u0026rdquo;.\n\u0026ldquo;What do you mean understand it? Isn\u0026rsquo;t it checked-in and in the build?\u0026rdquo;\nThink again, loser. Your tidy subteam of geniuses has clatched together in a room and DESIGNED for the past 3 weeks, and barely done any code, unit tests, or documentation. Sorry, guys, you don\u0026rsquo;t even get and \u0026ldquo;F\u0026rdquo;. This is a frickin\u0026rsquo; \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rdquo;.\nI was in shock Monday, and today I just woke up pissed-off. These are the people I\u0026rsquo;m trying to promote throughout the company as the best team since sliced bread. We can tackle ANYTHING!\nAhem\u0026hellip;.we can\u0026rsquo;t even meet a deadline WE SET for the function.\nWhy does business hate software? We\u0026rsquo;re alternately magicians or devils, depending if we DELIVER THE GOODS!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/oops...wheres-my-function/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere are few experiences to equal being at work at 8 o\u0026rsquo;clock at night replying to email from your boss\u0026rsquo;s boss, explaining why your crack team of developers didn\u0026rsquo;t deliver on the function your reported was \u0026ldquo;done\u0026rdquo; two days earlier.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know what? I take it back. I\u0026rsquo;m GLAD I got her fired; we\u0026rsquo;ll be lucky if she\u0026rsquo;s the last, given how cavalier everyone\u0026rsquo;s working these days.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo yeah, here we are, knee deep in code, with my normal unitized team, decomposed into two halves, each working on a significant chunk of work. I had a meeting, told them deliver me three things in 4 weeks: Code, Running unit tests @ 80% coverage, and Documentation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Oops...where's my function?"},{"content":"\nI came in #3 overall indexed time at today\u0026rsquo;s event. Unfortunately, Mike took #1. :)\nStill, a GREAT day autocrossing.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/updates../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v644/OneFastLotus/GreatPumpkinFULLSIZEEXPOSED.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI came in #3 overall indexed time at today\u0026rsquo;s event. Unfortunately, Mike took #1. :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, a GREAT day autocrossing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Updates.."},{"content":"Fired my first person today.\nWell, I didn\u0026rsquo;t do the firing; my manager did, but she was on my team and I could\u0026rsquo;ve made it go either way. If I\u0026rsquo;d insisted she remain, she\u0026rsquo;d have still been here, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t. Hence, I fired her.\nI feel bad about the finality of it, but it needed to happen. She was unprofessional, and a drag on the morale of other members of the team. Still, the associated sob story is rough: Two small kids, her husband is a lout, and she was a very personable likable woman.\nHowever, when it comes right down to it, if you\u0026rsquo;re not producing over a long enough time, something must be done.\nYeah, I still feel bad. :-(\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/on-firing-people/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFired my first person today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, I didn\u0026rsquo;t do the firing; my manager did, but she was on my team and I could\u0026rsquo;ve made it go either way. If I\u0026rsquo;d insisted she remain, she\u0026rsquo;d have still been here, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t. Hence, I fired her.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI feel bad about the finality of it, but it needed to happen. She was unprofessional, and a drag on the morale of other members of the team. Still, the associated sob story is rough: Two small kids, her husband is a lout, and she was a very personable likable woman.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On firing people"},{"content":"MINI UK Announce Factory JCW Option\nDaddy Like! However, this close to the model changeover, I might wait for the 07 and the factory changes\u0026hellip;.I\u0026rsquo;d really like to try that 4-door (rear suicide doors) version\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/mini-uk-announce-factory-jcw-option/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.motoringfile.com/2005/08/03/mini_uk_announce_factory_jcw_option\"\u003eMINI UK Announce Factory JCW Option\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDaddy Like! However, this close to the model changeover, I might wait for the 07 and the factory changes\u0026hellip;.I\u0026rsquo;d really like to try that 4-door (rear suicide doors) version\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MINI UK Announce Factory JCW Option"},{"content":"Muhahaha\u0026hellip;.A new blogger in town.\nWelcome to the blogosphere, Marshall.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/another-one-down.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMuhahaha\u0026hellip;.A \u003ca href=\"http://jeffingtown.blogspot.com/\"\u003enew blogger\u003c/a\u003e in town.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWelcome to the blogosphere, Marshall.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another one down..."},{"content":"From the GM Fastlane Blog\nTherefore, we are introducing the 2006 lineup this month with an emphasis on value. We have cut prices on 30 of our 76 models. For instance, the Chevy Silverado Crew Cab was $31,045 in 2005, but the 2006 is priced at $27,990. We are launching new models at prices that are aggressively competitive, such as the Pontiac Solstice at $19,995, when we could sell them all at twice that much this year. Also, we are extending our warranties on certain models and adding former options as standard equipment.\nSell things for what they\u0026rsquo;re actually worth, or else your customers are going to just wait for incentives anyway.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/08/finally...sane-pricing-from-gm/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the \u003ca href=\"http://fastlane.gmblogs.com\"\u003eGM Fastlane Blog\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTherefore, we are introducing the 2006 lineup this month with an emphasis on value. We have cut prices on 30 of our 76 models. For instance, the Chevy Silverado Crew Cab was $31,045 in 2005, but the 2006 is priced at $27,990. We are launching new models at prices that are aggressively competitive, such as the Pontiac Solstice at $19,995, when we could sell them all at twice that much this year. Also, we are extending our warranties on certain models and adding former options as standard equipment.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Finally...sane pricing from GM"},{"content":"After some not-so-subtle hints from my sweetie:\nOur new house, and Sharkey:\nJoey\u0026rsquo;s room (2 views)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/some-fresh-pics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter some not-so-subtle hints from my sweetie:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur new house, and Sharkey:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img28.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ourhouse1rr.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/9677/ourhouse1rr.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoey\u0026rsquo;s room (2 views)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img28.imageshack.us/my.php?image=JoeysRoom2.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/4876/JoeysRoom2.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img28.imageshack.us/my.php?image=JoeysRoom1.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/3095/JoeysRoom1.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some fresh pics"},{"content":"The Apotheosis Saga\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/awesome-radio-drama/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cephalopod.com/listen.html\"\u003eThe Apotheosis Saga\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Awesome radio drama"},{"content":"Check this out:\nTadaList Lets you maintain a very cool web todo list/lists and edit it inline in your browser just like in an app like Lotus Notes, Outlook, or others.\n:-) Type C personality, here I come.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/new-organizational-tool/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCheck this out:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.tadalist.com/\"\u003eTadaList\u003c/a\u003e Lets you maintain a very cool web todo list/lists and edit it inline in your browser just like in an app like Lotus Notes, Outlook, or others.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) Type C personality, here I come.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New organizational tool"},{"content":"\u0026hellip;no amount of money can make you enjoy a job you don\u0026rsquo;t like.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve bellyached to everyone that will listen, and they\u0026rsquo;re (apparently) very tired of it. Everybody has problems, and whining about a job that pays you an obscene amount of money to (literally) twiddle your fingers all day doesn\u0026rsquo;t get much traction with most people.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t blame them. It is getting kinda sad that no one sympathizes with me in the least\u0026hellip;doesn\u0026rsquo;t help the crushing loneliness I feel every night when I go home to my empty house, that\u0026rsquo;s for sure.\nDoesn\u0026rsquo;t change the fact that nothing I\u0026rsquo;m doing these days turns my crank. And I\u0026rsquo;m currently embroiled in a power struggle in which I\u0026rsquo;m just a pawn.\nI mean, literally, if I worked 10 or 12 hours a day programming, I got some gratification from that. If I work 10 or 12 hours a day as a team lead, I\u0026rsquo;m doing\u0026hellip;what, exactly? Planning schedules for my team? Figuring out whom I should yell at? Writing frickin\u0026rsquo; EMAIL that no one reads, anyway?\nI was reading a programming book the other day and I just stopped because I realized I should stop. That\u0026rsquo;s just not my job anymore, so why waste time LEARNING ANYTHING?\nI figure I have two options, give up and say \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s just a job\u0026rdquo; and do my best at it, or do something about it\u0026ndash;demand to go back to development, transfer to another part of the company where I can be a developer, or just find another place to work.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/the-old-addage-is-true.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;no amount of money can make you enjoy a job you don\u0026rsquo;t like.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve bellyached to everyone that will listen, and they\u0026rsquo;re (apparently) very tired of it. Everybody has problems, and whining about a job that pays you an obscene amount of money to (literally) twiddle your fingers all day doesn\u0026rsquo;t get much traction with most people.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t blame them. It is getting kinda sad that no one sympathizes with me in the least\u0026hellip;doesn\u0026rsquo;t help the crushing loneliness I feel every night when I go home to my empty house, that\u0026rsquo;s for sure.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The old addage is true..."},{"content":"I confess. I\u0026rsquo;m a parking lot slut.\nMost people park in the same parking place every single day, without fail. Makes them feel comfortable and safe. Not me.\nOh no, some days I\u0026rsquo;m in the mood to park in the very front, where everyone can see my shiny MINI; other days, I find a spot in the very back of the lot, away from those who would ding the Pup.\nToday, I nestled in the gap between a Camry and an Accord, midpack. I\u0026rsquo;d never parked there before.\nI got a thrill.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/on-being-a-pl-slut/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI confess. I\u0026rsquo;m a parking lot slut.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost people park in the same parking place every single day, without fail. Makes them feel comfortable and safe. Not me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh no, some days I\u0026rsquo;m in the mood to park in the very front, where everyone can see my shiny MINI; other days, I find a spot in the very back of the lot, away from those who would ding the Pup.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On being a PL Slut"},{"content":"\nA book on loan from my friend the Mac fiend, this is the first in a series by Roger Zelazny, and it\u0026rsquo;s a quick involving read at only 176 pages. The guy\u0026rsquo;s terse and vivid and the action never stops, but I found the basic premise to be so much Fantasy that the characters were hard to get into.\nBasically, the idea is that there\u0026rsquo;s one \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; city (Amber) and that all the other universes and dimensions are \u0026ldquo;shadows\u0026rdquo; of that one. Amber\u0026rsquo;s ruled by a central monarchy, and that monarch has died (or\u0026hellip;something\u0026hellip;). Anyway, the remaining 9 boys and 6 girls of his brood all fight it out to see who can recapture the throne.\nIt plays-out like a game of poker, crossed with chess, with a dash of \u0026ldquo;Braveheart\u0026rdquo; thrown in. Good, but not great.\nDid feel good to actually read a book again.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/nine-princes-in-amber/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0380014300.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA book on loan from my friend the Mac fiend, this is the first in a series by Roger Zelazny, and it\u0026rsquo;s a quick involving read at only 176 pages. The guy\u0026rsquo;s terse and vivid and the action never stops, but I found the basic premise to be so much Fantasy that the characters were hard to get into.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, the idea is that there\u0026rsquo;s one \u0026ldquo;true\u0026rdquo; city (Amber) and that all the other universes and dimensions are \u0026ldquo;shadows\u0026rdquo; of that one. Amber\u0026rsquo;s ruled by a central monarchy, and that monarch has died (or\u0026hellip;something\u0026hellip;). Anyway, the remaining 9 boys and 6 girls of his brood all fight it out to see who can recapture the throne.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nine Princes in Amber"},{"content":"Well, they\u0026rsquo;re going to get rid of 275 of us over the next month. Regular employees only (we\u0026rsquo;re the ones that are ongoing legacy risks\u0026ndash;401(k)\u0026rsquo;s, pensions, healthcare costs) have the option of taking a 4-26 week pay package (based up # of years of service) plus 3 months of health care coverage\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;or you can just wait until Aug 25th and find out if you get the Involuntary Exit Program (i.e. \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re FIRED\u0026rdquo;). It\u0026rsquo;s unknown if you get the severance package with eh IEP\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/%232-part-deux/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, they\u0026rsquo;re going to get rid of 275 of us over the next month. Regular employees only (we\u0026rsquo;re the ones that are ongoing legacy risks\u0026ndash;401(k)\u0026rsquo;s, pensions, healthcare costs) have the option of taking a 4-26 week pay package (based up # of years of service) plus 3 months of health care coverage\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;or you can just wait until Aug 25th and find out if you get the Involuntary Exit Program (i.e. \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re FIRED\u0026rdquo;). It\u0026rsquo;s unknown if you get the severance package with eh IEP\u003c/p\u003e","title":"#2 Part Deux"},{"content":" As part of the company\u0026rsquo;s ongoing optimization of its expense structure, Lexmark also announced today that it will reduce its workforce by approximately 275 employees through the first half of 2006 with a majority of the affected employees exiting in the third quarter of 2005. A majority of the reductions are expected to occur at the Lexington site. However, the number of people employed at the site will remain about the same on a year-over-year basis as a result of R\u0026amp;D hiring this year.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/shit/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs part of the company\u0026rsquo;s ongoing optimization of its expense structure, Lexmark also announced today that it will reduce its workforce by approximately 275 employees through the first half of 2006 with a majority of the affected employees exiting in the third quarter of 2005. A majority of the reductions are expected to occur at the Lexington site. However, the number of people employed at the site will remain about the same on a year-over-year basis as a result of R\u0026amp;D hiring this year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Shit"},{"content":"\nIt sucks to be 36.5\u0026quot; tall. That\u0026rsquo;s what I learned taking Joey and Whitney up to Kings Island on Friday in Sharkey.\nSharkey\u0026rsquo;s our Olds Intrigue. I name my cars\u0026hellip;sue me.\nDigression\u0026hellip;The names of all my cars and those I\u0026rsquo;ve been in contact with:\nLi\u0026rsquo;l Green My 1995 Nissan 200SX SE-R. It was Teal, a tint of green, and it saw me through every stupid thing a 16-20 year old can do with a car, including a bad accident with a deer.\nThe Problem Child 2001 Jetta Wolfsburg edition. I hated that car, and it hated me. I\u0026rsquo;ll never buy German again, and it looks like I got out just at the right time.\nBig Red (I) Robin\u0026rsquo;s 1998(?) Taurus SHO. I loved the wheels, but not much else about this contrived ovoid monstrosity from Dearborn by way of Yamaha.\nThe Pup My MINI. The reason my online handle is miniharryc\nBig Red (II) Dad\u0026rsquo;s 2001 Chevy Silverado that I had for 7 months before selling it to buy Thor.\nBig Blue Robin\u0026rsquo;s 2003 Honda Accord that she insists upon autocrossing, despite being down 1000 lbs and race tires. Good car, bad tranny + brakes.\nThor My 04 GTO that I\u0026rsquo;m trying to sell. Sigh\u0026hellip;right car, wrong time.\n_The Bomb_The embarrasment that was Whitney\u0026rsquo;s 1994 Ford Taurus. Seafoam Green, bad\u0026hellip;um\u0026hellip;everything. We got $500 for it and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t be more thankful.\nSharkey Named because the Intrigue is a rather sleek, low sedan, like a Mako Shark. Okay\u0026hellip;the real reason? We love the Sharkey/Farmers exit on I64 near Morehead.\n* * *\nOkay, so we\u0026rsquo;re at PKI, and we find out that you can\u0026rsquo;t ride ANYTHING fun unless you\u0026rsquo;re 40 inches tall. Beastie? Nope. Rugrats Rapter? No. Anything outside kiddie land? No. I\u0026rsquo;m praying for a growth spurt by next year:\nUs on the Ghoster Coaster\nAs for The Italian Job ride, it has all of the foibles of a linear-induction ride (slow dispatch, lots of down time), along with the problems of a massively themed production (can only have 1 car on track at once), AND each train can only carry TWELVE people. I was timing the launches, and it was 60-70 seconds between trains, and that\u0026rsquo;s only 720 people/hour. Ugh. I thought I would wait in line, but I jumped out and rode Beast instead.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/kings-island./","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/1600/KingsIslandView.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1934/231/320/KingsIslandView.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nIt sucks to be 36.5\u0026quot; tall. That\u0026rsquo;s what I learned taking Joey and Whitney up to \u003ca href=\"http://www.pki.com\"\u003eKings Island\u003c/a\u003e on Friday in Sharkey.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSharkey\u0026rsquo;s our Olds Intrigue. I name my cars\u0026hellip;sue me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDigression\u0026hellip;The names of all my cars and those I\u0026rsquo;ve been in contact with:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLi\u0026rsquo;l Green\u003c/em\u003e My 1995 Nissan 200SX SE-R. It was Teal, a \u003cstrong\u003etint\u003c/strong\u003e of green, and it saw me through every stupid thing a 16-20 year old can do with a car, including a bad accident with a deer.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kings Island."},{"content":"Shout out to the unloved Lexmark X5150 All-in-One (Scan/Print/Copy/Fax)\nDid all 31 sets of invitations, reply cards, reply envelopes, and a mail-merge of different envelopes and everything came out perfectly. We took several days of calligraphy down to 2 hours of Microsoft Word.\nCoolest part had to be doing a mail merge from an CSV Excel spreadsheet with the guest list into the envelope screen in Word. I\u0026rsquo;ve never done this, and it was a snap. The M$ guys should be proud of how reassuring and robust this process was\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/invitations-are-done/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eShout out to the unloved Lexmark X5150 All-in-One (Scan/Print/Copy/Fax)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.crnila.net/lexmark/kartuse/x5150.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDid all 31 sets of invitations, reply cards, reply envelopes, and a mail-merge of different envelopes and everything came out perfectly. We took several days of calligraphy down to 2 hours of Microsoft Word.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCoolest part had to be doing a mail merge from an CSV Excel spreadsheet with the guest list into the envelope screen in Word. I\u0026rsquo;ve never done this, and it was a snap. The M$ guys should be proud of how reassuring and robust this process was\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Invitations are done!"},{"content":"i bought a car, a 2001 Olds Intrigue. It\u0026rsquo;s sweet and navy blue.\nI went to Kings Island with Joey and Whitney. It was fun. I laughed, I cried, i got mad.\nI bought some tires for the MINI yesterday before we went to PKI, Bridgestone Potenza G009\u0026rsquo;s\n195/60R15, mounted on my regular MINI wheels. The budget didn\u0026rsquo;t quite allow for the 15x7 Kosei\u0026rsquo;s that I wanted, but this is a decent compromise.\nI washed three vehicles today and I\u0026rsquo;m pretty tired, so I don\u0026rsquo;t know if I\u0026rsquo;ll make the autocross tomorrow or not.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/summary-of-events.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003ei bought a car, a 2001 Olds Intrigue. It\u0026rsquo;s sweet and navy blue.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI went to Kings Island with Joey and Whitney. It was fun. I laughed, I cried, i got mad.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI bought some tires for the MINI yesterday before we went to PKI, Bridgestone Potenza G009\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.tirerack.com/images/tires/bridgestone/bs_potenza_g009_ci2_l.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e195/60R15, mounted on my regular MINI wheels. The budget didn\u0026rsquo;t quite allow for the 15x7 Kosei\u0026rsquo;s that I wanted, but this is a decent compromise.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"summary of events..."},{"content":"link\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/google-map-of-my-parents-farm/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://maps.google.com/maps?q=41311\u0026amp;ll=37.543287,-83.595572\u0026amp;spn=0.047211,0.068085\u0026amp;t=k\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Google map of my parents' farm"},{"content":"Anybody wanna Buy a GTO\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/sigh-its-really-for-sale-now/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnybody wanna \u003ca href=\"http://www.ls1gto.com/forums/showthread.php?p=486460#post486460\"\u003eBuy a GTO\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\u003e\u003esigh\u003c\u003c it's really for sale, now"},{"content":"The guy who was running the Body Shop at frank shoop got fired. Eeek\u0026hellip;my poor GTO.\nOn the bright side, it should be done today. :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/troubling-news.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe guy who was running the Body Shop at frank shoop got fired. Eeek\u0026hellip;my poor GTO.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the bright side, it should be done today. :D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Troubling news..."},{"content":"Susan came to town and complained that I post too much car crap on my blog.\nYeah, and??? :-)\nCheck THIS out. In my never-ending quest for the sweetheart car that\u0026rsquo;s been babied since day one, I was cruising 502StreetScene.com and happened upon this jewel.\nThis is a \u0026lsquo;Classic\u0026rsquo; Sentra SE-R, with the original 140hp engine swapped for a Japanese SR20VE pushing at least 190 hp, probably more. Black and very clean, this thing could probably go for years, if we could keep the rust away.\n$2600\u0026hellip;mmm\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/ah-if-id-only-had-this-10-years-ago.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSusan came to town and complained that I post too much car crap on my blog.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, and??? :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCheck \u003ca href=\"http://www.502streetscene.net/forum/showthread.php?t=38363\u0026amp;page=1\u0026amp;pp=15\"\u003eTHIS\u003c/a\u003e out. In my never-ending quest for the sweetheart car that\u0026rsquo;s been babied since day one, I was cruising 502StreetScene.com and happened upon this jewel.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a \u0026lsquo;Classic\u0026rsquo; Sentra SE-R, with the original 140hp engine swapped for a Japanese SR20VE pushing at least 190 hp, probably more. Black and very clean, this thing could probably go for years, if we could keep the rust away.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ah, if I'd only had this 10 years ago..."},{"content":"My friend scott has a \u0026lsquo;92 Honda Accord wagon for sale, with only 41k original miles, from one owner (his grandfather)\nPics:\nTold my mechanic about it, and he said: \u0026ldquo;92 w/41k miles? buy it.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/dont-laugh.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy friend scott has a \u0026lsquo;92 Honda Accord wagon for sale, with only 41k original miles, from one owner (his grandfather)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePics:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com//pictures/VEHICLE/1992/Honda/3906/004797-E.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com//pictures/VEHICLE/1992/Honda/3905/004999-E.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTold my mechanic about it, and he said: \u0026ldquo;92 w/41k miles? buy it.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"don't laugh..."},{"content":"Bella reports that the MINI\u0026rsquo;s current tires are about worn-out (well, the 3 that are original\u0026hellip;had to buy a new one when I took it to Cincy a few weeks ago), so I\u0026rsquo;m looking around.\nRather than buy another set for the 15x5.5\u0026quot; rims I\u0026rsquo;ve got on the car, I can do this:\nGet a set of Kosei K1 Racing wheels, 15x7\u0026quot;\nAnd the wrap them with a set of Kumho Ecsta 711\u0026rsquo;s in 215/55R15:\nPkg is about $600 and they\u0026rsquo;d just bolt right on.\nThen I\u0026rsquo;d have THREE sets of wheels/tires:\n- Set of Snow tires\n- Set of Set of racing slicks\n- Set of sweet, painted wheels for everyday use. :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/mini-upgrades/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBella reports that the MINI\u0026rsquo;s current tires are about worn-out (well, the 3 that are original\u0026hellip;had to buy a new one when I took it to Cincy a few weeks ago), so I\u0026rsquo;m looking around.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than buy another set for the 15x5.5\u0026quot; rims I\u0026rsquo;ve got on the car, I can do this:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGet a set of Kosei K1 Racing wheels, 15x7\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.tirerack.com/images/wheels/kosei/swap/kos_k1_race_w_ci3_l.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd the wrap them with a set of Kumho Ecsta 711\u0026rsquo;s in 215/55R15:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MINI upgrades"},{"content":"Yes, it stains your teeth and addicts you, but man, my synapses are firing this morning.\nBrought the Palm Zire back from the dead. I\u0026rsquo;m working on a wedding, a rally, a honeymoon, two projects at work, housework, yardwork, buying food for the house, and looking for a car for W. My brain asploded a week ago, and I need help. It\u0026rsquo;s sitting on the charger right now.\nSpeaking of organizing\u0026hellip;check out this site. Can\u0026rsquo;t wait to look @ it tonight.\nI\u0026rsquo;m helping to plan the Dog Days Rally, which will start in Georgetown on August 13th at 8:15 am. We\u0026rsquo;ll be doing an easy TSD rally through the countryside, with a break in the middle. Just had a meeting last night with Lo \u0026amp; Phil, our rallymeisters, and they gave me lots of tips about planning the route. I need to get the route planned and flyers designed by Sunday. Yikes.\nOther than that, God has turned on the soaker hose for Central Kentucky. The dying remnants of Dennis spin atop Owensboro, misting the earth and causing certain Software Engineers to oversleep.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/coffee-is-such-a-good-thing/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYes, it stains your teeth and addicts you, but man, my synapses are firing this morning.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBrought the Palm Zire back from the dead. I\u0026rsquo;m working on a wedding, a rally, a honeymoon, two projects at work, housework, yardwork, buying food for the house, and looking for a car for W. My brain asploded a week ago, and I need help. It\u0026rsquo;s sitting on the charger right now.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpeaking of organizing\u0026hellip;check out \u003ca href=\"http://www.getorganizednow.com/\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e site. Can\u0026rsquo;t wait to look @ it tonight.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Coffee is such a good thing"},{"content":"Ah, the unloved Toyota Echo:\nBasically, this is the car that spawned Scion. Styled by Toyota\u0026rsquo;s California design center as the replacement for the utilitarian Tercel, this bug-eyed, misproportioned design is the camel of the automotive world: Better in most respects than competitors, but it\u0026rsquo;s UGLY!\nAnd so it is\u0026hellip;these same underpinnings form the chassis of the Scion Xa and Xb.\nIt has tiny wheels, but since it only weighs 2000lbs, the 108hp engine feels powerful.\nThe other thing: This car has 50k miles on it, all in Rental Fleets, but it\u0026rsquo;s still tight. No squeaks, rattles, or wobbles even at highway speeds.\nImpressive engineering, even in this little bug-eyed auto.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/rental-car-review-toyota-echo/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, the unloved Toyota Echo:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com//pictures/VEHICLE/2003/Toyota/100165073/010279-E.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, this is the car that spawned Scion. Styled by Toyota\u0026rsquo;s California design center as the replacement for the utilitarian Tercel, this bug-eyed, misproportioned design is the camel of the automotive world: Better in most respects than competitors, but it\u0026rsquo;s UGLY!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd so it is\u0026hellip;these same underpinnings form the chassis of the Scion Xa and Xb.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt has tiny wheels, but since it only weighs 2000lbs, the 108hp engine feels powerful.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rental Car review: Toyota Echo"},{"content":"I was recently filling out a registration for Hi5, which seems nothing short of a pyramid scheme to me, and one of the fields there was \u0026lsquo;hobbies\u0026rsquo;\nI entered the standard\u0026ndash;autocross, photography, computers\u0026ndash;but I thought, you know I blog an awful lot. Seems like I can\u0026rsquo;t go a day or two without spewing my inner Harold all over this forum (Still militantly devoid of comments\u0026hellip;you wanna debate me, email me. These are my own thoughts, damnit!)\nSo, is blogging a hobby? Def:\nAn activity or interest pursued outside one\u0026rsquo;s regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.\nThis is definitely outside my normal occupation, though it involves the same medium (computers) that is my occupation. I do it mainly to maintain my own sanity. No one cares what I think (ultimately), but having a record of loves and races lost and won, of hellish and not-so-bad days under the corporate bootheel, and pictures I can share is soothing.\nFor some, blogging is a shortcut to getting published, for those who yearn to be someone a cut above the average salaried schlep living in post-modern america. For me, it\u0026rsquo;s an essential pallative exercise. For some reason, knowing that if I die tomorrow, there are people who know about this blog and my words will live on, if only in electronic form.\nRandom idea for blogger (and its parent, Google) to make more money: Why not offer a service that, upon your death, your loved ones get a copy of your blog(s). Kill some trees to commemorate your own demise so that others can comment on how inane your inner thoughts were.\n\u0026hellip;\nYikes that sounds more vitriolic than I wanted.\nAnyway, blogging\u0026hellip;hobby :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/can-blogging-be-a-hobby/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was recently filling out a registration for \u003ca href=\"http://www.hi5.com\"\u003eHi5\u003c/a\u003e, which seems nothing short of a pyramid scheme to me, and one of the fields there was \u0026lsquo;hobbies\u0026rsquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI entered the standard\u0026ndash;autocross, photography, computers\u0026ndash;but I thought, you know I blog an awful lot. Seems like I can\u0026rsquo;t go a day or two without spewing my inner Harold all over this forum (Still militantly devoid of comments\u0026hellip;you wanna debate me, email me. These are my own thoughts, damnit!)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Can blogging be a hobby?"},{"content":"Shout out to Jack Kain Ford, they gave me my money back with no questions asked.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/the-car-business...part-deux/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eShout out to \u003ca href=\"http://www.jackkainford.com\"\u003eJack Kain Ford\u003c/a\u003e, they gave me my money back with no questions asked.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The car business...part deux"},{"content":"My new house is back on the old copper wire, suckling at the teat of BellSouth.\n570-8486\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/back-on-the-grid-i-have-a-landline.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy new house is back on the old copper wire, suckling at the teat of BellSouth.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e570-8486\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back on the grid: I have a landline..."},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ll give you the short version:\nOn friday, I came to terms with a dealer on a 2002 Oldsmobile Intrigue with 44k miles. I picked up the car Saturday after waiting THREE HOURS for the F\u0026amp;I guy to get his crap together.\nI took the car to Mike Jansen and he said it was..umm..okay. It\u0026rsquo;d been in a front end and rear end collision, including replacement of the a/c condenser and the radiator. Also, the driver\u0026rsquo;s side front suspension had a bad ball-joint.\nWhtiney wasn\u0026rsquo;t thrilled with this, so I\u0026rsquo;m off tomorrow morning to exercise Jack Kain Ford\u0026rsquo;s 3 day/150 mile return policy.\n* * *\nI feel like a fool, and it\u0026rsquo;d definitely taught me a lesson. The car would most likely have been okay after some repairs, but I don\u0026rsquo;t want to mess around with my family\u0026rsquo;s car for the next 5-10 years.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/the-saga-of-the-wayward-oldsmobile/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll give you the short version:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn friday, I came to terms with a dealer on a 2002 Oldsmobile Intrigue with 44k miles. I picked up the car Saturday after waiting THREE HOURS for the F\u0026amp;I guy to get his crap together.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI took the car to Mike Jansen and he said it was..umm..okay. It\u0026rsquo;d been in a front end and rear end collision, including replacement of the a/c condenser and the radiator. Also, the driver\u0026rsquo;s side front suspension had a bad ball-joint.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"the saga of the wayward oldsmobile"},{"content":"Lord, I hate everything about being awake and being at work right now. Give me the strength to persevere the grandstanding, the prima donnas, the power hungry, the reluctant, and my own ego until 5 pm. Amen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/a-morning-prayer.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLord, I hate everything about being awake and being at work right now. Give me the strength to persevere the grandstanding, the prima donnas, the power hungry, the reluctant, and my own ego until 5 pm. Amen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A morning prayer..."},{"content":"After a rather disgusting first a moment ago, I want to reflect upon the \u0026ldquo;firsts\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;ve had in my new house.\nFirst time mowing my own lawn. I don\u0026rsquo;t despise it (yet), but we\u0026rsquo;ll see how the newness wears off\nFirst time weed-whacking my own place. I still don\u0026rsquo;t like this, but I did get a pretty neat trimmer:\nFirst prayer said around my dinner table. This was an AWESOME moment.\nFirst two cockroaches around my garbage in my garage. Welcome to home ownership\nFirst leaky faucet. Drip. Drip. Drip.\nFirst door that doesn\u0026rsquo;t quite shut right\nthis \u0026lsquo;first\u0026rsquo; edited for content\u0026hellip;hehehe\nWhat a week it\u0026rsquo;s been! I\u0026rsquo;m truly blessed\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/firsts/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter a rather disgusting first a moment ago, I want to reflect upon the \u0026ldquo;firsts\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;ve had in my new house.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst time mowing my own lawn. I don\u0026rsquo;t despise it (yet), but we\u0026rsquo;ll see how the newness wears off\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst time weed-whacking my own place. I still don\u0026rsquo;t like this, but I did get a pretty neat trimmer:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.lowes.com/product/084931/084931829732.jpg?wid=158\u0026cvt=jpeg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst prayer said around my dinner table. This was an AWESOME moment.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Firsts"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Harold, Did you get dressed in the dark?\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/quote-for-the-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Harold, Did you get dressed in the dark?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quote for the day"},{"content":"The Car Lounge: What are your friday\u0026rsquo;s like?\nBasically, Fridays at LXK are the \u0026ldquo;nothing can get done today\u0026rdquo; day. We don\u0026rsquo;t believe in having reasonable backups in place for people on vacation,, so summer days are nuts.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/man-i-wish-my-fridays-were-like-this/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zerothread?id=2034137\"\u003eThe Car Lounge: What are your friday\u0026rsquo;s like?\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, Fridays at LXK are the \u0026ldquo;nothing can get done today\u0026rdquo; day. We don\u0026rsquo;t believe in having reasonable backups in place for people on vacation,, so summer days are nuts.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Man, I wish my fridays were like this:"},{"content":"All is well, the sun lowers, and my sprinkler tries to water my scorched lawn as I contemplate a wonderous weekend of rest, re-centering, and accustoming myself to my new house.\nLast night, I really felt awesome as I watched a thunderstorm to our east from my back porch, clicking away my Voigtlander on the tripod, trying to catch that elusive lightning shot with the shutter held open on \u0026lsquo;Bulb\u0026rsquo;.\nI finally have most everything where it goes, minus the stuff I intend to sell anyway (extra chair, some bric-a-brac, random garage stuff). The living room has taken shape, and feels spacious and homey, if bare on the walls. Whitney was a great help, advising and encouraging,even setting up my books for me in the living room.\nOur family day today was a great success, with Stu, Cathy, and Rachel having lunch with Joey, Whitney, and myself. I stuffed myself on sammiches and chips, with a great salad. The afternoon saw the Brentzels depart and our little family off to the park to exercise and enjoy the good weather.\n* * *\nRandom: I really wish it would rain. My lawn\u0026rsquo;s dead, and the hard-scrabble dirt seems to soak up any amount of sprinkler with no results.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/a-magnificent-weekend/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAll is well, the sun lowers, and my sprinkler tries to water my scorched lawn as I contemplate a wonderous weekend of rest, re-centering, and accustoming myself to my new house.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast night, I really felt awesome as I watched a thunderstorm to our east from my back porch, clicking away my Voigtlander on the tripod, trying to catch that elusive lightning shot with the shutter held open on \u0026lsquo;Bulb\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"a magnificent weekend"},{"content":"Just watched Jack Nicholson\u0026rsquo;s opus One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u0026rsquo;s Nest and I\u0026rsquo;m moved by how big this \u0026ldquo;little\u0026rdquo; film was. Nicholson playes R.P McMurphy (\u0026ldquo;Murph\u0026rdquo;), a petty con-man who talked his way from a chain gang into the insane asylum. The supporting cast is a who\u0026rsquo;s-who of character actors: Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, etc.\nOn a level, it\u0026rsquo;s the same plot as \u0026ldquo;Cool Hand Luke\u0026rdquo;: Wiseguy gets into trouble, imprisoned by some sadist, and yet he finds a way to separate himself and enjoy his incarceration, all the while plotting his escape. It\u0026rsquo;s the same anti-establishment, anti-hero role, and it has the same tragic denoument. Also like \u0026ldquo;Luke\u0026rdquo;, this film\u0026rsquo;s hero is not the protagonist, because ultimately he\u0026rsquo;s the same static character, the catalyst for the other actors.\nExample: In the opening scene, we find the other patients meekly in line before the Sadistic Nurse Ratched in various states of catatonia. After Murph\u0026rsquo;s arrival, we learn that most of them aren\u0026rsquo;t even forced to remain at the asylum; they\u0026rsquo;ve chosen to stay there to hide from their own demons. Led by Murph\u0026rsquo;s manic con-speak, they transform, ultimately challenging authority and growing beyond their own demons, reveling in the broader world beyond.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/amazing-film-one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust watched Jack Nicholson\u0026rsquo;s opus \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0073486/\"\u003eOne Flew Over the Cuckoo\u0026rsquo;s Nest\u003c/a\u003e and I\u0026rsquo;m moved by how big this \u0026ldquo;little\u0026rdquo; film was. Nicholson playes R.P McMurphy (\u0026ldquo;Murph\u0026rdquo;), a petty con-man who talked his way from a chain gang into the insane asylum. The supporting cast is a who\u0026rsquo;s-who of character actors: Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, etc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn a level, it\u0026rsquo;s the same plot as \u0026ldquo;Cool Hand Luke\u0026rdquo;: Wiseguy gets into trouble, imprisoned by some sadist, and yet he finds a way to separate himself and enjoy his incarceration, all the while plotting his escape. It\u0026rsquo;s the same anti-establishment, anti-hero role, and it has the same tragic denoument. Also like \u0026ldquo;Luke\u0026rdquo;, this film\u0026rsquo;s hero is not the protagonist, because ultimately he\u0026rsquo;s the same static character, the catalyst for the other actors.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Amazing film: \"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest\""},{"content":"A house just isn\u0026rsquo;t a house until you find your TV remotes.\nOpinions on this matter differ, though :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/07/how-to-know-youre-really-home/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA house just isn\u0026rsquo;t a house until you find your TV remotes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOpinions on this matter differ, though :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"how to know you're really home"},{"content":"This is just getting nuts. We have development managers fighting project managers fighting product definition people. We have managers going behind other\u0026rsquo;s backs\u0026hellip;crazy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/bad-to-bad-to-worse.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is just getting nuts. We have development managers fighting project managers fighting product definition people. We have managers going behind other\u0026rsquo;s backs\u0026hellip;crazy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bad to bad to worse..."},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Mindshare\u0026rdquo; (n) d. ???\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/corporatespeak-of-the-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Mindshare\u0026rdquo; (n) \u003cem\u003ed.\u003c/em\u003e ???\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Corporatespeak of the day"},{"content":"Preface: I\u0026rsquo;m sore, I\u0026rsquo;m tired, and I\u0026rsquo;m fasting in preparation for my dr\u0026rsquo;s appointment @ 12. Take that into consideration for what it\u0026rsquo;s worth.\nI hate the fact that an adult male cannot talk to a colleague who\u0026rsquo;s an attractive female (even though she does nothing for me) without people gossiping about them.\nMay I just shout this: I LOVE MY FIANCEE! She is the only woman for me. I can\u0026rsquo;t generally stand other women, and this woman, in particular, over long periods of time. I marvel each day that I\u0026rsquo;ve found a woman that I not only can stand, but actually ENJOY being around and sharing my life with.\nBut, of course, since no other man on this floor can look this woman in the eye and have a conversation with her, the fact that I can do so is cause for speculation.\n\u0026ldquo;Can I talk to you as a Brother in Christ? I know my wife wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want me hanging around with another woman like that.\u0026rdquo; I realize the truth in what P\u0026rsquo;s saying, and I\u0026rsquo;ll have to do just that, but I hate that it has to be that way.\nKeeping up appearances. Buncha frickin\u0026rsquo; nerds\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/i-hate-people-sometimes./","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePreface: I\u0026rsquo;m sore, I\u0026rsquo;m tired, and I\u0026rsquo;m fasting in preparation for my dr\u0026rsquo;s appointment @ 12. Take that into consideration for what it\u0026rsquo;s worth.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI hate the fact that an adult male cannot talk to a colleague who\u0026rsquo;s an attractive female (even though she does nothing for me) without people gossiping about them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMay I just shout this: I LOVE MY FIANCEE! She is the only woman for me. I can\u0026rsquo;t generally stand other women, and this woman, in particular, over long periods of time. I marvel each day that I\u0026rsquo;ve found a woman that I not only can stand, but actually ENJOY being around and sharing my life with.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I hate people sometimes."},{"content":"I sit snug and thankful in my new home, with all my stuff safely moved from my apartment to\u0026hellip;somewhere in the vicinty of my new house.\nYes, I\u0026rsquo;m living out of a box, and nothing is where it\u0026rsquo;s going to eventually end-up, but I\u0026rsquo;m here.\nBad news: My GTO suffered not one, but TWO collisions today while I moved. Stu ran his trailer into my open door and dented it, and I back my mom\u0026rsquo;s dually pickup into the grille, pushing the grille in and creating a dent in the left front side of the hood.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/the-new-house/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI sit snug and thankful in my new home, with all my stuff safely moved from my apartment to\u0026hellip;somewhere in the vicinty of my new house.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, I\u0026rsquo;m living out of a box, and nothing is where it\u0026rsquo;s going to eventually end-up, but I\u0026rsquo;m here.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBad news: My GTO suffered not one, but TWO collisions today while I moved. Stu ran his trailer into my open door and dented it, and I back my mom\u0026rsquo;s dually pickup into the grille, pushing the grille in and creating a dent in the left front side of the hood.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The new house"},{"content":"Box office receipts climbing\nTheatres nationwide are raking in less and less money, despite gaudy summer blockbusters. Hmmm\u0026hellip;.let\u0026rsquo;s think about this.\n1. This is the DVD era. Netflix and Blockbuster have mail-order subscription services for DVDs that come out 3-6 months following theatre release, allowing family viewing of films for essentially fixed cost. Contrast that with $10/ticket + popcorn. Oh yeah, about that\n2. This is the HD TV era. For better or worse, even Joe Schmo out there has a 16:9 Plasma screen with Subwoofers the size of your Aunt Edna\u0026rsquo;s purse.\n3. Movies suck. Michael Bay (\u0026ldquo;Armageddon\u0026rdquo;) and the MTV generation of directors who can work a gimick but can\u0026rsquo;t tell a story have one-upped themselves out of existence. Go watch \u0026ldquo;The Godfather\u0026rdquo; and compare it to any of the current crop of blockbusters. Its painful to see how little $100 million buys you these days.\n4. This is the big thing: Society has changed. Where once you *had* to go to the theatre to get the broad vistas of a \u0026ldquo;Gone with the Wind\u0026rdquo;, theatre-going is an exception now. This is the quote that\u0026rsquo;s killing theatres: \u0026ldquo;That looks good enough to see in a theatre.\u0026rdquo; Your LOTR series or \u0026ldquo;Star Wars\u0026rdquo; movies are \u0026ldquo;event\u0026rdquo; films that you want to watch much like an opera or symphony, but that\u0026rsquo;s just not necessary for most films these days.\nHollywood needs to change its production + distribution model, because in 20 years, theatres as we know them today won\u0026rsquo;t exist.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/if-this-was-on-fark-its-be-an-obvious-tag/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/26/box.office.ap/index.html\"\u003eBox office receipts climbing\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTheatres nationwide are raking in less and less money, despite gaudy summer blockbusters. Hmmm\u0026hellip;.let\u0026rsquo;s think about this.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. This is the DVD era. Netflix and Blockbuster have mail-order subscription services for DVDs that come out 3-6 months following theatre release, allowing family viewing of films for essentially fixed cost. Contrast that with $10/ticket + popcorn. Oh yeah, about that\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. This is the HD TV era. For better or worse, even Joe Schmo out there has a 16:9 Plasma screen with Subwoofers the size of your Aunt Edna\u0026rsquo;s purse.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"If this was on fark, it's be an *obvious* tag"},{"content":"After rising with the sun both days this weekend and working outside both 95-degree days, Monday finds me exhausted. Case in point: I staggered into work, broke out our fresh-roasted coffee beans and made coffee. Only problem is, I put the RAW BEANS into the coffee filter. Thankfully, I realized this before turning the machine on.\nThis weekend\u0026rsquo;s theme was exceeding expectations. I expected to have a light day of packing on Saturday. Instead, my whole apartment is packed and cleaned, and 75% of it is already moved to my new house.\nSunday, I started the day at 5am in Louisville where I\u0026rsquo;d gone to retrieve my MINI, drove to Georgetown to get my AutoX gear, then made it to the site by 7:30 to help Scott go get the sponsor cars from Paul Miller.\nQuick aside: Ford and Mazda are completely brain dead. I drove a \u0026ldquo;Saleen\u0026rdquo; Focus over to the site, and I drove an 05 RX-8 back. Bother were completely gutless, hard to see out of, and had brittle suspensions. Quality starts with a good platform, a robust drivetrain + suspension, and the ability to CARRY ACTUAL PEOPLE. Honda gets this right. BMW gets this right (even in the MINI). Ford + Mazda dropped the ball on both these, IMHO.\nAnyway, the autocross. Six runs on grippy asphalt with two slaloms, a wide turnabout, a very tight middle section and a broad sweeper into the finish. I was consistent all day in the 38.xxx second range, but I almost got nipped in the end, as Scott finished with a 38.09x to my 38.055. I won the day by 4 hundreths of a second :-). Also, I got to try my hand at announcing, and got rave reviews all around; I was tentative at first, but my love of the sport and knowledge of the backstories to most of the cars competing made it easy to do play-by-play and some color commentary.\nRandom: Did I mention i hurt all over?\nRandom 2: Why is it the word \u0026ldquo;proper\u0026rdquo; always looks like it\u0026rsquo;s misspelled to me?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/pain-no-sunburn-and-other-musings..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter rising with the sun both days this weekend and working outside both 95-degree days, Monday finds me exhausted. Case in point: I staggered into work, broke out our fresh-roasted coffee beans and made coffee. Only problem is, I put the RAW BEANS into the coffee filter. Thankfully, I realized this before turning the machine on.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis weekend\u0026rsquo;s theme was exceeding expectations. I expected to have a light day of packing on Saturday. Instead, my whole apartment is packed and cleaned, and 75% of it is already moved to my new house.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pain, no sunburn, and other musings...."},{"content":"I won my SCCA class for the first time since Last May :-) And I beat my arch-rival.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/i-won/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI won my SCCA class for the first time since Last May :-) And I beat my arch-rival.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I won"},{"content":" All organizations will eventually be run by those who stay awake in committee.\nI\u0026rsquo;m in a rather dilbert-esque meeting right now and I told Joel (who\u0026rsquo;s looking over my shoulder) that I\u0026rsquo;d blog his quote immediately.\nso there.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/tidbit-of-wisdom-from-joel-jirak/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll organizations will eventually be run by those who stay awake in committee.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m in a rather dilbert-esque meeting right now and I told Joel (who\u0026rsquo;s looking over my shoulder) that I\u0026rsquo;d blog his quote immediately.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eso there.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tidbit of wisdom from Joel Jirak"},{"content":"Miss Piggy is voiced by a MAN!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/sickening-realizations/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMiss Piggy is voiced by a MAN!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/12/15/22m.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sickening realizations"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m assuming the phrase \u0026ldquo;Come to Jesus\u0026rdquo; comes from that scene in Flight of the Intruder where Fred Thompson\u0026rsquo;s character, acting as lead in the court martial of Jake Grafton and his bombardier says, \u0026ldquo;I hope you both realize that now is the time to come to Jesus.\u0026rdquo;\nAnyway, one of my guys screwed-up. Again. I yelled at him last time for his transgressions, and so I get to go to a meeting where a manager gets to \u0026ldquo;discuss\u0026rdquo; with me about his options.\nSo, for _____, now is the time to come to Jesus. Or find another job, likely.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/the-come-to-jesus-meeting./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m assuming the phrase \u0026ldquo;Come to Jesus\u0026rdquo; comes from that scene in \u003cem\u003eFlight of the Intruder\u003c/em\u003e where Fred Thompson\u0026rsquo;s character, acting as lead in the court martial of Jake Grafton and his bombardier says, \u0026ldquo;I hope you both realize that \u003cem\u003enow\u003c/em\u003e is the time to come to Jesus.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, one of my guys screwed-up. Again. I yelled at him last time for his transgressions, and so I get to go to a meeting where a manager gets to \u0026ldquo;discuss\u0026rdquo; with me about his options.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The \"Come to Jesus\" meeting."},{"content":"Check this out:\non June 15th I received a: \u0026ldquo;Congratulations you won a Mini\nCooper\u0026rdquo; flash on the website and an email stating the same.\nThe next step is they\u0026rsquo;re going to be sending me an affidavit in the\nmail within 3 weeks that has to be returned within 3 weeks (21\ndays).. then they have to verify my bottle cap and affidavit and\nthen it could be up to a year until it\u0026rsquo;s delivered to the BMW shop\nand then I have 5 days to pick it up\u0026hellip; so if all of this happens\ncorrectly \u0026hellip; I won!\nhere\u0026rsquo;s the Mini info:\nGrand Prize: (Quantity: 75; 1 per day from 5/18/05-7/31/05) 2005\nMINI Cooper Convertible in chili red with black top, chili red\nmirror caps, 1.6 liter Overhead Cam (OHC), Continuously Variable\nAutomatic transmission with lever-mounted 6-speed steptronic mode,\n15\u0026quot; 5 star wheels, black leatherette seats, leather steering wheel\nwith 6 disc AM/FM CD changer, ARV $24,500 (US)\nSomeone from Georgetown won a Dr. Pepper MINI!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/props-to-gtown/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCheck this out:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eon June 15th I received a: \u0026ldquo;Congratulations you won a Mini\u003cbr\u003e\nCooper\u0026rdquo; flash on the website and an email stating the same.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next step is they\u0026rsquo;re going to be sending me an affidavit in the\u003cbr\u003e\nmail within 3 weeks that has to be returned within 3 weeks (21\u003cbr\u003e\ndays).. then they have to verify my bottle cap and affidavit and\u003cbr\u003e\nthen it could be up to a year until it\u0026rsquo;s delivered to the BMW shop\u003cbr\u003e\nand then I have 5 days to pick it up\u0026hellip; so if all of this happens\u003cbr\u003e\ncorrectly \u0026hellip; I won!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Props to G'town"},{"content":"Okey, here\u0026rsquo;s the scenario:\nI\u0026rsquo;m moving to my new house 2 miles down the road on a Tuesday. No one\u0026rsquo;s free on a tuesday, save my mom, my aunt, Whitney\u0026rsquo;s dad, and me.\nThis is looking\u0026hellip;umm\u0026hellip;troubling.\nMore than likely, I\u0026rsquo;ll ask the leasing office if I can stay until July 2nd, so that I can get a regular moving crew over here for the really heavy stuff.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/m-day-28-jun-2005/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkey, here\u0026rsquo;s the scenario:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m moving to my new house 2 miles down the road on a \u003cem\u003eTuesday\u003c/em\u003e. No one\u0026rsquo;s free on a tuesday, save my mom, my aunt, Whitney\u0026rsquo;s dad, and me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is looking\u0026hellip;umm\u0026hellip;troubling.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMore than likely, I\u0026rsquo;ll ask the leasing office if I can stay until July 2nd, so that I can get a regular moving crew over here for the really heavy stuff.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"M-day: 28 Jun 2005"},{"content":"\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo;\nMy GTO is up on the block.\nGuess I can only have one cool, impractical car at a time :D\n* * *\nIn a related note, whitney and I were driving Toyotas this weekend. Hated the Matrix, really liked the Corolla. Really solid little car.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/thor-i-hardly-knew-ye.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy GTO is \u003ca href=\"http://www.ls1gto.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29092\"\u003eup on the block\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGuess I can only have one cool, impractical car at a time :D\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn a related note, whitney and I were driving Toyotas this weekend. Hated the Matrix, really liked the Corolla. Really solid little car.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thor, I hardly knew ye..."},{"content":"There are some people doing really neat things with technology. But, on the whole, my company is not doing it. So, I ask myself, why is this so? Some thoughts:\n* Lack of the \u0026ldquo;R\u0026rdquo; in \u0026ldquo;R\u0026amp;D\u0026rdquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s trite to say that 99% of computers is \u0026ldquo;programming\u0026rdquo; and 1% is \u0026ldquo;Computer Science,\u0026rdquo; but it remains true that the challenge today is analyzing problems and finding appropriate solutions. The thing we\u0026rsquo;re missing is knowledge transfer from the cutting edge to the troops in the trenches.\n* Unambiguous requirements. I love requirements that read \u0026ldquo;I need a system that does X, Y, and Z.\u0026rdquo; What I usually get are things like \u0026ldquo;Support the new Printer\u0026rdquo;. Doesn\u0026rsquo;t describe what the new printer does, or what\u0026rsquo;s new about that printer. By the time I get my HANDS ON that printer, it\u0026rsquo;s likely too late for me to do integration tests to determine if I can even talk to that printer adequately.\n* No commitment to User Interface. None. Management wants to shovel software out with no concept of how people are going to use the darn thing.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/musing-programming-problems/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere are some people doing really neat things with technology. But, on the whole, my company is not doing it. So, I ask myself, why is this so? Some thoughts:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Lack of the \u0026ldquo;R\u0026rdquo; in \u0026ldquo;R\u0026amp;D\u0026rdquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s trite to say that 99% of computers is \u0026ldquo;programming\u0026rdquo; and 1% is \u0026ldquo;Computer Science,\u0026rdquo; but it remains true that the challenge today is analyzing problems and finding appropriate solutions. The thing we\u0026rsquo;re missing is knowledge transfer from the cutting edge to the troops in the trenches.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Musing: Programming problems?"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s a blast from the past I found on \u0026lsquo;Wikipedia\u0026rsquo;:\nDennis M. Ritchie\u0026rsquo;s Homepage\nAnd there, a barely tarnished gem, a PDF of the 1974 C Programmer\u0026rsquo;s Manual. 25 or so pages that clearly delineate the language that would inspire hackers throughout the world.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/the-guy-who-invented-c/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a blast from the past I found on \u0026lsquo;Wikipedia\u0026rsquo;:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/\"\u003eDennis M. Ritchie\u0026rsquo;s Homepage\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd there, a barely tarnished gem, a PDF of the \u003ca href=\"http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/cman74.pdf\"\u003e1974 C Programmer\u0026rsquo;s Manual\u003c/a\u003e. 25 or so pages that clearly delineate the language that would inspire hackers throughout the world.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The guy who invented 'C'"},{"content":"Today sucked as a team lead; it\u0026rsquo;s as if my post from yesterday came to fruition, as I had to dress-down a team member for not doing his job, only to be criticized by the offended party for being too heavy handed.\nLook, if you don\u0026rsquo;t want me to keep my people in line, then don\u0026rsquo;t come to me with crap like, \u0026ldquo;_____ isn\u0026rsquo;t doing his job. He\u0026rsquo;s off in la-la land while we\u0026rsquo;re way behind. Now, are you going to talk to him, or do you want me to do it.\u0026rdquo;\nFirst of all, he\u0026rsquo;s my guy, so he\u0026rsquo;s special. Forget you \u0026ldquo;talking to him,\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;ll do it myself. If you\u0026rsquo;re prepared to have people on your team, you owe it to them to do a good job leading and tell them when they\u0026rsquo;ve screwed-up and how they can do it better. So, thanks big Kahuna, ye of the non-work, I\u0026rsquo;ll do my own dirty work.\nThen I really screwed-up. The guy who was leading the other group comes to me and said, \u0026ldquo;you know, I didn\u0026rsquo;t really need you to take it to that level. I was wanting to bring him along and now it looks like that can\u0026rsquo;t happen.\u0026rdquo; Look, I may be a young team lead, but get off the frickin\u0026rsquo; fence, Marshall. If you\u0026rsquo;re going to complain 24-7 about my guy and have your whole hoity-toity development group criticize MY team because we\u0026rsquo;ve got one guy who can\u0026rsquo;t tow the line, BELIEVE that I\u0026rsquo;ll take steps to remedy the situation. I\u0026rsquo;m already set-up to fail by my management, I won\u0026rsquo;t be undermined.\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;m pissed, and I compound that by walking by Marhsall complaining to his confidant about the situation and yell in, \u0026ldquo;Yep. I\u0026rsquo;m just yelling at everyone today. Bad Harold.\u0026rdquo; I apologized for this later, to which the divine Mr. M said, \u0026ldquo;Oh well\u0026hellip;just taught me to close the door when I talk about certain things.\u0026rdquo;\nAll this simply confirming the fact that I work with the most sensitive egomaniacs this side of MIT. Everything is becoming a struggle.\nTo his credit, the member of my team whom I admonished took it well, but he\u0026rsquo;s on a VERY short leash with me at this point.\n* * *\nRay of hope: My team did work together magnificently today to solve a problem and release our build on time. I just hope I can string together enough \u0026ldquo;wins\u0026rdquo; like that to cohese use through the rest of the year.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/sigh/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday sucked as a team lead; it\u0026rsquo;s as if my post from yesterday came to fruition, as I had to dress-down a team member for not doing his job, only to be criticized by the offended party for being too heavy handed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLook, if you don\u0026rsquo;t want me to keep my people in line, then don\u0026rsquo;t come to me with crap like, \u0026ldquo;_____ isn\u0026rsquo;t doing his job. He\u0026rsquo;s off in la-la land while we\u0026rsquo;re way behind. Now, are you going to talk to him, or do you want me to do it.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"\u003e\u003esigh\u003c\u003c"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s a pic to illustrate just how hard life is for the outside edge of the front tires of an AutoX MINI;\nMy Mini weighs ~2500lb in autocross trim. I\u0026rsquo;d say 2000 lbs of that is on that right front tire in this sweeper. I need some CAMBER dang it!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/how-hard-a-life-to-my-front-tires-have.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a pic to illustrate just how hard life is for the outside edge of the front tires of an AutoX MINI;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imageshack.us\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Image Hosted by ImageShack.us\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img111.echo.cx/img111/9654/miniautoxsmall5ir.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy Mini weighs ~2500lb in autocross trim. I\u0026rsquo;d say 2000 lbs of that is on that right front tire in this sweeper. I need some CAMBER dang it!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How hard a life to my front tires have..."},{"content":"Had an epiphany about why I like Fox\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Hell\u0026rsquo;s Kitchen\u0026rdquo; and NBC\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Apprentice\u0026rdquo;: People get fired. In today\u0026rsquo;s professional world, mediocre performers remain year after year, bringing down the average productivity of the group. Because there\u0026rsquo;s no turn-over, there\u0026rsquo;s no real incentive to replace those people who\u0026rsquo;ve lost their edge with fresh faces with new ideas.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a very real thrill associated with seeing white-collared folks dealing with the same crap (job insecurity, performance requirements) that blue-collar folks deal with every day.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/on-the-popularity-of-hells-kitchen-and-apprentice/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHad an epiphany about why I like Fox\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Hell\u0026rsquo;s Kitchen\u0026rdquo; and NBC\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Apprentice\u0026rdquo;: People get fired. In today\u0026rsquo;s professional world, mediocre performers remain year after year, bringing down the average productivity of the group. Because there\u0026rsquo;s no turn-over, there\u0026rsquo;s no real incentive to replace those people who\u0026rsquo;ve lost their edge with fresh faces with new ideas.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a very real thrill associated with seeing white-collared folks dealing with the same crap (job insecurity, performance requirements) that blue-collar folks deal with every day.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the popularity of \"Hell's Kitchen\" and \"Apprentice\""},{"content":"Mr \u0026amp; Mrs Smith, starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt was one of the most entertaining and genuinely funny movies I\u0026rsquo;ve seen in a long time. A preposterous mismash of \u0026ldquo;Spy versus Spy\u0026rdquo; and The War of the Roses, the film hinges upon the genuine chemistry between Jolie\u0026rsquo;s type-A techno spy against Pitt\u0026rsquo;s type-B, shoot-from-the-hip spook.\nOkay, these are two of the sexiest people on earth, and they\u0026rsquo;re given this kind of premise. This movie\u0026rsquo;s going to sell popcorn :-)\nBy not trying to be too much, Smith was an unexpected treat.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/review-mr--mrs.-smith/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0356910/\"\u003eMr \u0026amp; Mrs Smith\u003c/a\u003e, starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt was one of the most entertaining and genuinely funny movies I\u0026rsquo;ve seen in a long time. A preposterous mismash of \u0026ldquo;Spy versus Spy\u0026rdquo; and \u003cem\u003eThe War of the Roses\u003c/em\u003e, the film hinges upon the genuine chemistry between Jolie\u0026rsquo;s type-A techno spy against Pitt\u0026rsquo;s type-B, shoot-from-the-hip spook.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, these are two of the sexiest people on earth, and they\u0026rsquo;re given this kind of premise. This movie\u0026rsquo;s going to sell popcorn :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Mr + Mrs. Smith"},{"content":"Mark Rivera designed a great, fast course at the LFUCG dump truck training pad, and this time I brought the MINI instead of the GTO.\nvideo\nCoursemap\nI was #6 on PAX. Had a really good day, in a 3-way battle for the HS trophy. I kept getting better throughout the day, starting with a 41.2 and ending with a 39.8xx. Only .18 seconds separated first from 3rd :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/another-autocross...and-a-close-2nd/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMark Rivera designed a great, fast course at the LFUCG dump truck training pad, and this time I brought the MINI instead of the GTO.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.soundoff92.com/bpullen/2005-06-12/14_hs_med.avi\"\u003evideo\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.ckrscca.org/soloevents/050612/course20050612-1.pdf\"\u003eCoursemap\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was #6 on \u003ca href=\"http://www.ckrscca.org/soloevents/050612/20050612_pax_.htm\"\u003ePAX\u003c/a\u003e. Had a really good day, in a 3-way battle for the HS trophy. I kept getting better throughout the day, starting with a 41.2 and ending with a 39.8xx. Only .18 seconds separated first from 3rd :)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Another autocross...and a close 2nd"},{"content":"My MINI is fine.\nI drove home tonight and did accel. runs in 3rd \u0026amp; 4th from 25mph or so, and could detect no slippage. I also did no-throttle starts just feathering the clutch, and found no chatter whatsoever.\nSo there\u0026rsquo;s $1k I can put back in the bank. Whew!\nAdmittedly, the car does stumble when starting from a standstill with the A/C on, but it\u0026rsquo;s a 2700lb car w/no power.\nHehe\u0026hellip;autocross sunday\u0026hellip;:D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/what-a-difference-a-day-makes.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy MINI is fine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI drove home tonight and did accel. runs in 3rd \u0026amp; 4th from 25mph or so, and could detect no slippage. I also did no-throttle starts just feathering the clutch, and found no chatter whatsoever.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo there\u0026rsquo;s $1k I can put back in the bank. Whew!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdmittedly, the car does stumble when starting from a standstill with the A/C on, but it\u0026rsquo;s a 2700lb car w/no power.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What a difference a day makes..."},{"content":"As is my custom, I gave away the punchline before telling the story. Whitney and I had an \u0026lsquo;05 MINI Cooper (stock: 115hp), with the Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT)\nCVT\u0026rsquo;s fascinate me\u0026hellip;imagine two pulleys connected by a belt. If the ratio of the pulleys remains the the same, you get a defined gear ratio. Thing is, in a CVT, the pulleys can vary their diameter, and hence the amount of mechanical advantage they provide. Great technology, but CVT\u0026rsquo;s are a dead end: No design yet devised can reliably handle much more than 200 ft-lbs of torque, so they\u0026rsquo;re only good for small cars.\nBasically, the Chili Red w/white top Cooper was a dud, and I tie it directly to the tranny. Ponderously slow, the thing couldn\u0026rsquo;t get out of its own way in traffic.\nOn the bright side, the steering was tight, and I really liked how they retuned the suspension.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/on-the-05-minis/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs is my custom, I gave away the punchline before telling the story. Whitney and I had an \u0026lsquo;05 MINI Cooper (stock: 115hp), with the Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCVT\u0026rsquo;s fascinate me\u0026hellip;imagine two pulleys connected by a belt. If the ratio of the pulleys remains the the same, you get a defined gear ratio. Thing is, in a CVT, the pulleys can vary their diameter, and hence the amount of mechanical advantage they provide. Great technology, but CVT\u0026rsquo;s are a dead end: No design yet devised can reliably handle much more than 200 ft-lbs of torque, so they\u0026rsquo;re only good for small cars.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the '05 MINIs"},{"content":"Niiiiice new 19\u0026quot; flatscreen here at The BMW Store in Cincy.\nWell, turns out the fender-bender here is going to cost me a new wheel for the loaner and a new section on the bumper to install, so that\u0026rsquo;ll probably be $95 in labor + $40 for the bumper section, plus Lord-only-knows for a new 16\u0026quot; allow wheel.\nFun times. Plus, I get to drive back to Lex, stay at work until my product is fixed (say, Saturday morning\u0026hellip;).\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/blogging-from-the-mini-store/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNiiiiice new 19\u0026quot; flatscreen here at \u003ca href=\"http://www.thebmwstore.com/\"\u003eThe BMW Store\u003c/a\u003e in Cincy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, turns out the fender-bender here is going to cost me a new wheel for the loaner and a new section on the bumper to install, so that\u0026rsquo;ll probably be $95 in labor + $40 for the bumper section, plus Lord-only-knows for a new 16\u0026quot; allow wheel.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFun times. Plus, I get to drive back to Lex, stay at work until my product is fixed (say, Saturday morning\u0026hellip;).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Blogging from the Mini store"},{"content":"Well, I ran into Mike while taking Patrick to the car dealership, and he said he\u0026rsquo;d price me the install of a new clutch, pressure plate, throwout bearing, lightweight flywheel, AND 4 shocks to replace the worn-out units on my MINI, and only charge me 10 hrs of labor. Plus, he only charges $45/rate-hr for labor.\n:-) Cars. They giveth, and yet, they taketh away.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/the-minis-overhaul/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, I ran into Mike while taking Patrick to the car dealership, and he said he\u0026rsquo;d price me the install of a new clutch, pressure plate, throwout bearing, lightweight flywheel, AND 4 shocks to replace the worn-out units on my MINI, and only charge me 10 hrs of labor. Plus, he only charges $45/rate-hr for labor.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) Cars. They giveth, and yet, they taketh away.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The MINI's overhaul"},{"content":"Perhaps I bragged on my dealership too much. Perhaps I smiled a bit too much at the autocross when I told them, \u0026ldquo;The dealer is going to replace my clutch for free!\u0026rdquo;\nBut, they\u0026rsquo;re not.\nDid some reasearch; apparently both clutches in the MC + MCS are total crap, and have been expiring at an alarming rate as the fleet of \u0026lsquo;02 and \u0026lsquo;03 coopers approaches 50k-75k miles.\nFound a clutch, pressure plate, and throwout bearing that look nice and sturdy\nat MiniMania.com\nOnly problem is, that\u0026rsquo;s $450 BEFORE installation. On the bright side, the car should never need another clutch.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/queering-the-deal.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePerhaps I bragged on my dealership too much. Perhaps I smiled a bit too much at the autocross when I told them, \u0026ldquo;The dealer is going to replace my clutch for free!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut, they\u0026rsquo;re not.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDid some reasearch; apparently both clutches in the MC + MCS are total crap, and have been expiring at an alarming rate as the fleet of \u0026lsquo;02 and \u0026lsquo;03 coopers approaches 50k-75k miles.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFound a clutch, pressure plate, and throwout bearing that look nice and sturdy\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://new.minimania.com/web/Item/NMG1611/AddedFrom/FrontPage/InvDetail.cfm\"\u003eat MiniMania.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Queering the deal..."},{"content":"Taking a walk along the sprawling, strangely busy throughway beside my apartment, I found myself eaten by bugs, and eaten with thoughts, as though my mind found peace enough to speak to me once again. It\u0026rsquo;s been a long while, but my brain seems there for the first time in a long while.\nI\u0026rsquo;m strangely proud of myself that I was able to convert 40 degrees Celsius to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, applying a touch of 5-th grade arithmetic. In other news, it\u0026rsquo;s 104 DEGREES IN INDIA. Granted, the 91 here isn\u0026rsquo;t so temperate.\n* * *\nMy main thought on my walk tonight is how much I *don\u0026rsquo;t* feel out of place in Georgetown. Or Louisville, for that matter. I grew up in a backwater, and for years, I carried the alternation of shame and pride, of awkwardness and defiance, like a mantle. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s known both sides of that particular inferiority/superiority complex, and it\u0026rsquo;s no doubt become tiresome.\nAs with most things, I saw this change in myself by viewing another soul awash in the same dichotomy: A girl at work is marrying a boy from Cincinnati, and proclaims her family hates her \u0026ldquo;because of where she\u0026rsquo;s from\u0026rdquo;. Likely, they do, if only because they know the sort of baggage that entails. I\u0026rsquo;ve been there; I\u0026rsquo;ve second-guessed every step, decried every slight, and nurtured every grudge I could against people I didn\u0026rsquo;t understand.\nThe one I didn\u0026rsquo;t understand, of course, was myself. And neither does she. It\u0026rsquo;s a self-perpetuating disease, this insecurity, this out-of-placeness: The more one moves the the periphery, the faster and more certain that flight becomes. Jokes become barbs; secrets turn to conspiracy; and genuine concern becomes petty obstacle.\nI am no longer that person, and I praise God for that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/thoughts-on-a-long-summer-walk/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTaking a walk along the sprawling, strangely busy throughway beside my apartment, I found myself eaten by bugs, and eaten with thoughts, as though my mind found peace enough to speak to me once again. It\u0026rsquo;s been a long while, but my brain seems \u003cem\u003ethere\u003c/em\u003e for the first time in a long while.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m strangely proud of myself that I was able to convert 40 degrees Celsius to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, applying a touch of 5-th grade arithmetic. In other news, it\u0026rsquo;s 104 DEGREES IN INDIA. Granted, the 91 here isn\u0026rsquo;t so temperate.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Thoughts on a long summer walk"},{"content":"1. Red Sox Win World Series\n2. Woodward \u0026amp; Berstein give-up who Deep Throat is\n3. Apple switches to an Intel chip\nREPENT!!!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/signs-of-the-apocalypse/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e1. Red Sox Win World Series\u003cbr\u003e\n2. Woodward \u0026amp; Berstein give-up who Deep Throat is\u003cbr\u003e\n3. Apple switches to an Intel chip\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eREPENT!!!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Signs of the apocalypse"},{"content":"Muhahahaha: link\n(WARNING: 15 MB download)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/...and-now-the-video/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMuhahahaha: \u003ca href=\"http://www.soundoff92.com/bpullen/2005-06-05%20Autocross/Heat%201/14FS_high.wmv\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(WARNING: 15 MB download)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"...and now, the video"},{"content":"Okay, taking my cue from Natalie Portman, I decided to buzz my head on Saturday:\nReaction so far:\nIndia: \u0026ldquo;Perhaps, since it is 40 degrees Centigrade, we can all get haircuts similar to yours.\u0026rdquo;\nPadma: \u0026ldquo;Oh\u0026hellip;.haircut?\u0026rdquo;\nPatrick: (upset) \u0026ldquo;so, is B.H. your hero or something.?.?!\u0026rdquo; (B. got his head shaved for the Star Wars premiere.)\nSerge (Ukranian Accent): \u0026ldquo;Oh\u0026hellip;cool! I like it. I get my head same way\u0026rdquo;\nCarl: ..stunned silence\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;That is NOT YOU!! I hate clowns, but this ranks right up there..it\u0026rsquo;s freaking me out\u0026rdquo;\nJeff + David: \u0026ldquo;I thought that was Vin Diesel standing there. (Jeff:) Wow, you have one of those heads that can pull that look off.\nI like it so far. I rolled out of bed and got to work by 6:45 today, thanks to my no-maintenance-req\u0026rsquo;d hairdo.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/first-responses-to-the-hair./","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, taking my cue from Natalie Portman, I decided to buzz my head on Saturday:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://photos1.blogger.com/img/92/3358/195/natalieportmanbald04.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReaction so far:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIndia: \u0026ldquo;Perhaps, since it is 40 degrees Centigrade, we can all get haircuts similar to yours.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePadma: \u0026ldquo;Oh\u0026hellip;.haircut?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePatrick: (upset) \u0026ldquo;so, is B.H. your hero or something.?.?!\u0026rdquo; (B. got his head shaved for the Star Wars premiere.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSerge (Ukranian Accent): \u0026ldquo;Oh\u0026hellip;cool! I like it. I get my head same way\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCarl: ..stunned silence\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;That is NOT YOU!! I hate clowns, but this ranks right up there..it\u0026rsquo;s freaking me out\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"First responses to the hair."},{"content":"Check out the F-Stock results here\nThor crushes the nearest competitor by 2+ seconds on ALL SEASON STREET TIRES :-)\nDang, it was fun.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/nothing-like-a-little-winning.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCheck out the F-Stock results \u003ca href=\"http://www.ckrscca.org/soloevents/050605/20050605_fin.htm\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThor crushes the nearest competitor by 2+ seconds on ALL SEASON STREET TIRES :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDang, it was fun.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Nothing like a little winning..."},{"content":"I just paid my last rent check.\nIn 4 weeks, I\u0026rsquo;m in my house :-D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/the-last.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just paid my last rent check.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 4 weeks, I\u0026rsquo;m in my house :-D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"the last..."},{"content":" Technical people respond to questions in three ways: It is technically impossible (meaning: I don\u0026rsquo;t feel like doing it); It depends (meaning: abandon all hope of a useful answer); The data bits are flexed through a collectimizer which strips the flow-gate arrays into virtual message elements (meaning: I don\u0026rsquo;t know).\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/dilbert/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTechnical people respond to questions in three ways: It is technically impossible (meaning: I don\u0026rsquo;t feel like doing it); It depends (meaning: abandon all hope of a useful answer); The data bits are flexed through a collectimizer which strips the flow-gate arrays into virtual message elements (meaning: I don\u0026rsquo;t know).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e","title":"Dilbert"},{"content":" No control, all the responsibility. Everyone complains to you, and you control absolutely nothing. You can\u0026rsquo;t hire anybody to help out your situation, you can\u0026rsquo;t fire poor performing team members, and you can\u0026rsquo;t make a decision that your manager can\u0026rsquo;t override. And yet, all the downside is yours, because managers make sure to CYA on everything.\nAll the responsibility, no extra pay. I get paid an obscene amount of money for my age, education level, and experience. But when I got this loser position of team lead, did I get any extra scratch for my trouble? Nope. However, unlike my days as a grunt, I can\u0026rsquo;t take off random days to achieve personal sanity.\nThe aggrivation.\nCrack the whip My product is always at the end of the development cycle for our other products, so minute changes in their development cause panic for us. I can\u0026rsquo;t be in panic mode all the time.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a bazillion others, but I\u0026rsquo;m just crying in my beer here. I can\u0026rsquo;t believe I took this sucker job sometimes. Other days, it\u0026rsquo;s good. \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/06/rant-reasons-i-hate-being-a-team-lead/","summary":"\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNo control, all the responsibility\u003c/em\u003e. Everyone complains to you, and you control absolutely nothing. You can\u0026rsquo;t hire anybody to help out your situation, you can\u0026rsquo;t fire poor performing team members, and you can\u0026rsquo;t make a decision that your manager can\u0026rsquo;t override. And yet, all the downside is yours, because managers make sure to CYA on everything.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAll the responsibility, no extra pay\u003c/em\u003e. I get paid an obscene amount of money for my age, education level, and experience. But when I got this loser position of team lead, did I get any extra scratch for my trouble? Nope. However, unlike my days as a grunt, I can\u0026rsquo;t take off random days to achieve personal sanity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rant: Reasons I hate being a team lead"},{"content":"w00t!!\nGot a call from my tenants today; Kami said they wanted to sell their stainless-steel fridge after all.\nhehe.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/i-have-a-fridge/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ew00t!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGot a call from my tenants today; Kami said they wanted to sell their stainless-steel fridge after all.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ehehe.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I have a fridge!"},{"content":"\nPictures here\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/memorial-day-2005/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/MemorialDay2005/MemorialDay2005-Images/6.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePictures \u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/MemorialDay2005/MemorialDay2005.html\"\u003ehere\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Memorial Day 2005"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m sitting here tonight, realizing that the first part of my life is over and the second part is beginning. The first part was learning, the second part will be doing. (I\u0026rsquo;m hoping I get a third part, sitting-on-the-porch-and-watching)\nAnyway, so I\u0026rsquo;m working on my mission statement. If this is to be the \u0026ldquo;doing\u0026rdquo; portion, I should know what I want to do.\nGAAAAAAAA\u0026hellip;.\nI\u0026rsquo;m definitely big on learning, I\u0026rsquo;m dilligent, and I want to help others. Not big on stuff, really.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/why-are-mission-statements-so-hard-to-write/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m sitting here tonight, realizing that the first part of my life is over and the second part is beginning. The first part was learning, the second part will be doing. (I\u0026rsquo;m hoping I get a third part, sitting-on-the-porch-and-watching)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, so I\u0026rsquo;m working on my mission statement. If this is to be the \u0026ldquo;doing\u0026rdquo; portion, I should know what I want to do.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGAAAAAAAA\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m definitely big on learning, I\u0026rsquo;m dilligent, and I want to help others. Not big on stuff, really.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why are mission statements so hard to write?"},{"content":"The Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy sounds alot like me after going through high school with a certain gal w/initials J.M.\u0026ndash;he finds women annoying temptresses whose sensual nature will destroy his church, so he tells them to STFU.\nwoman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15But women[a] will be saved[b] through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.\nGet a grip, man! Adam was right there, and he, of his own free will, ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. I mean, I dislike the clucking tongues of old biddies as much as the next man, but give women their due.\n* * *\nOther than that, Timothy is okay, but it seems written by an old man who\u0026rsquo;s finally realized that his larger, philosophical epistles (Romans, Corinthians) are being ignored\u0026ndash;he needs to give specific pastoral instructions, or else Christendom is going to fragment into a billion pieces (as it did, anyway).\nUnlike some, I won\u0026rsquo;t dismiss Paul just because he doesn\u0026rsquo;t like/understand women. Women in his day were the center of most Pagan cults, particularly in Greece, and the rise of Christianity required wresting control from the holy feminine to the divine masculine. Furthermore, I doubt there would BE a Modern church without Paul; at the very least, Protestant Christianity wouldn\u0026rsquo;t exist. Likely, Christianity would\u0026rsquo;ve died along with the sack of Jerusalem in 70 AD and the diaspora of the \u0026ldquo;home\u0026rdquo; church. Paul recentered the church in Rome and Greece, and used the shipping lanes and good road system to spread the Gospel. By Constantine\u0026rsquo;s day, the empire was so infested with Christians that it was impossible to exterminate them.\nUltimately, what should be women\u0026rsquo;s role in the Church? I don\u0026rsquo;t have the answer, but I believe Paul\u0026rsquo;s blanket statement above stems more from the expediencies of his time than the realities of our own. Perhaps it\u0026rsquo;s heresy to say so, but I just can\u0026rsquo;t see excluding women from speaking in church, teaching her fellow Christians, or even preaching, if she feels the call.\n:-) Good to actually have my mind in gear, once again.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/paul-misogynist/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy sounds alot like me after going through high school with a certain gal w/initials J.M.\u0026ndash;he finds women annoying temptresses whose sensual nature will destroy his church, so he tells them to STFU.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ewoman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15But women[a] will be saved[b] through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Paul: Misogynist?"},{"content":"People from Eastern Kentucky pronounce \u0026ldquo;our\u0026rdquo; as \u0026ldquo;air\u0026rdquo;. Total givaway for someone from East KY.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/random/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePeople from Eastern Kentucky pronounce \u0026ldquo;our\u0026rdquo; as \u0026ldquo;air\u0026rdquo;. Total givaway for someone from East KY.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Random"},{"content":"Lost tonight was an immense waste of time\u0026hellip;we learned nothing about what\u0026rsquo;s really going on, and I\u0026rsquo;m really ceasing to care about most of these characters.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/wtf/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLost\u003c/em\u003e tonight was an immense waste of time\u0026hellip;we learned nothing about what\u0026rsquo;s really going on, and I\u0026rsquo;m really ceasing to care about most of these characters.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"WTF?"},{"content":"Why I love my GTO\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/review-2005-pontiac-gto/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhy I love my \u003ca href=\"http://www.autoextremist.com/page5.shtml#RoadKill\"\u003eGTO\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: 2005 Pontiac GTO"},{"content":"Nausicaa is one of Miyazaki\u0026rsquo;s best animes, and it was my pleasure to watch the re-released US version yesterday. The film combines many of miyazaki\u0026rsquo;s important themes, like environmentalism, the evils of technology, and the general stupidity of humanity about all things environmental.\nUnlike some other Miyazaki films like \u0026ldquo;Spirited Away\u0026rdquo;, this is an action movie, following the princess of the valley of the wind, Nausicaa, as she flies in her glider, dodging bullets and two warring factions from what remains of humanity 1000 years after a nuclear war.\nWe see all of humanity here, from the gentle, loving, and good, to the greedy, petty, and evil. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/review-nausicaa/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0087544/\"\u003eNausicaa\u003c/a\u003e is one of Miyazaki\u0026rsquo;s best animes, and it was my pleasure to watch the re-released US version yesterday. The film combines many of miyazaki\u0026rsquo;s important themes, like environmentalism, the evils of technology, and the general stupidity of humanity about all things environmental.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnlike some other Miyazaki films like \u0026ldquo;Spirited Away\u0026rdquo;, this is an action movie, following the princess of the valley of the wind, Nausicaa, as she flies in her glider, dodging bullets and two warring factions from what remains of humanity 1000 years after a nuclear war.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Nausicaa"},{"content":"My blog used to be so interesting\u0026hellip;I was reading through the posts from last year, and holy cow was it a fun read.\nWas that ME writing those entries?\nSo sleepy\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/requiem-for-a-blog/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy blog used to be so interesting\u0026hellip;I was reading through the posts from last year, and holy cow was it a fun read.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWas that ME writing those entries?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo sleepy\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Requiem for a blog"},{"content":"Thanks to my friend Ben Pullen (\u0026ldquo;3WheeledWonder\u0026rdquo;) for some vids (Windows Media req\u0026rsquo;d):\nHi Res\nLow Res\nThe second one was taken on my fastest run of the day, a 41.1xx, which was good for #4 on PAX. I still needed another .762 seconds to get Scott though, grrrrrr\u0026hellip;\nOverall Results: link\n***\nAh, what a glorious day. Started with a pitiful 44.xxx time, which I cut down to 42.075, then 41.7. I got over-agressive on the next run, and caught a 42.6, then had my best run of the day: 41.1xx\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/autox-vids--results/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThanks to my friend Ben Pullen (\u0026ldquo;3WheeledWonder\u0026rdquo;) for some vids (Windows Media req\u0026rsquo;d):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.soundoff92.com/bpullen/2005-05-22-ckr/HaroldC_Above.wmv\"\u003eHi Res\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.soundoff92.com/bpullen/2005-05-22-ckr/HaroldC_Angle2_low.wmv\"\u003eLow Res\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe second one was taken on my fastest run of the day, a 41.1xx, which was good for #4 on PAX. I still needed another .762 seconds to get Scott though, grrrrrr\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOverall Results: \u003ca href=\"http://www.ckrscca.org/soloevents/050522/20050522_fin.htm\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAh, what a glorious day. Started with a pitiful 44.xxx time, which I cut down to 42.075, then 41.7. I got over-agressive on the next run, and caught a 42.6, then had my best run of the day: 41.1xx\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AutoX vids + results"},{"content":"Ah, a whole 48+ hrs w/o working. This weekend thing is great!\nFriday, I drove to get Whitney from Louisville and we went out to eat at Smokey Bones BBQ. Awful. Contacts clouded over, and I blinked my way in Thor back to G\u0026rsquo;town.\nSaturday, we once again missed a mtg with our (now former) pastor, Dwight, but we did get to spend quality time with two old pals, Jamie and Andy both of whom work at Z103 here in Lexington. I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated; their house is awesome, and they received us with open arms. Then, Whitney and I went to see Revenge of the Sith together. She really enjoyed the movie, and intuited this: There was a Sith Lord who could influence the midichloreans to create life AND to keep someone alive (he was Darth Sidious\u0026rsquo;s master). Perhaps it was HE who influenced them to impregnate Shmi with Anakin, setting the whole prophesy in motion.\nI thought this was lightning-bolt information. Whitney just said, \u0026ldquo;DUR!!!\u0026rdquo;\nWe drove back to da Ville and spent 5-10pm with Whitney\u0026rsquo;s friend David and his wife Anne. This was, in essence, \u0026ldquo;marriage on the cheap 101\u0026rdquo; which was great. Grilled-out and fed us awesome chicken, corn-on-the-cob, etc., but I kinda hit a wall around 8pm, which I didn\u0026rsquo;t really surmount: I ran out of words.\nToday was autocross, which was fun and challenging @ Applebee\u0026rsquo;s field in Lexington. I placed 2nd in my class, but 4th in overall time among all drivers. I was never close to scott\u0026rsquo;s time all day, and felt like he was just toying with me, really, but my times were good nonetheless. Made it from my last run to Georgetown in 25 minutes, literally throwing the tires out of the MINI so I could give it to Whitney for the journey back to louisville.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/the-weekend-that-was/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, a whole 48+ hrs w/o working. This weekend thing is great!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFriday, I drove to get Whitney from Louisville and we went out to eat at Smokey Bones BBQ. Awful. Contacts clouded over, and I blinked my way in Thor back to G\u0026rsquo;town.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaturday, we once again missed a mtg with our (now former) pastor, Dwight, but we did get to spend quality time with two old pals, Jamie and Andy both of whom work at Z103 here in Lexington. I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated; their house is awesome, and they received us with open arms. Then, Whitney and I went to see \u003cem\u003eRevenge of the Sith\u003c/em\u003e together. She really enjoyed the movie, and intuited this: There was a Sith Lord who could influence the midichloreans to create life AND to keep someone alive (he was Darth Sidious\u0026rsquo;s master). Perhaps it was HE who influenced them to impregnate Shmi with Anakin, setting the whole prophesy in motion.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"the weekend that was"},{"content":"Google now offers personalizations\ncheck it out\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/oh-yeah/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGoogle now offers personalizations\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com/ig\"\u003echeck it out\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"OH YEAH!"},{"content":"I wrote some darn fine code today. Multithreaded programming makes your head hurt, but there\u0026rsquo;s nothing like a good, coordinated algorithm between two threads. Well, okay, sex is better. But as work goes, it\u0026rsquo;s good :D\nMost irksome phrase on earth: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re definitely having some weather tonight\u0026rdquo; Yup.\nI bought a yo-yo today.\nMuhahahaha nerd fun for everyone.\nHad a great SCCA meeting tonight. Male bonding :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/fun-stuff-today/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI wrote some darn fine code today. Multithreaded programming makes your head hurt, but there\u0026rsquo;s nothing like a good, coordinated algorithm between two threads. Well, okay, sex is better. But as work goes, it\u0026rsquo;s good :D\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost irksome phrase on earth: \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re definitely having some weather tonight\u0026rdquo; Yup.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI bought a yo-yo today.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.airtrafficonline.com/acatalog/duncan-imperial-grn.gif\"\u003e Muhahahaha nerd fun for everyone.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHad a great SCCA meeting tonight. Male bonding :D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fun stuff today"},{"content":"Just in case you\u0026rsquo;re jonesing to write some not-too-useful programs: Free Pascal\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/and-now-for-something-completely-different.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust in case you\u0026rsquo;re jonesing to write some not-too-useful programs: \u003ca href=\"http://www.freepascal.org/\"\u003eFree Pascal\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"And now for something completely different..."},{"content":"14 hours at work and the frickin\u0026rsquo; product is STILL BROKEN.\nSomeday, look back at this time in your life and cringe.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/ugh/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e14 hours at work and the frickin\u0026rsquo; product is STILL BROKEN.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomeday, look back at this time in your life and cringe.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ugh"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s 11:30, I got here at 7:30, and this is the first time I\u0026rsquo;ve sat down at my desk since arriving.\nThis morning:\n8am Video conference with my Kolkata team, which went well. Everyone seems to have responded well to my notes.\n8:30am Video conference with my testers \u0026amp; management. This was the biggie, and was a good first step. Now new ship issue PTRs\n9am meeting with the Lexington team, who were very \u0026ldquo;up\u0026rdquo; and willing to discuss problems. At least somebody got some rest this weekend.\n10:15 up with the stress \u0026amp; stability team to re-verify that, yes, our last release was stable and well-behaved. Yay\n10:45-11:30. Discussion of 3 big PTRs with the rest of my team and what issues they\u0026rsquo;re having. Updated my manager on what\u0026rsquo;s going on.\nIn the process I had a cup of Navy coffee\u0026hellip;double strength tar that\u0026rsquo;s about like espresso, but poured into a regular coffee cup. I expect to crash any time now.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/monday.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s 11:30, I got here at 7:30, and this is the first time I\u0026rsquo;ve sat down at my desk since arriving.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis morning:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8am Video conference with my Kolkata team, which went well. Everyone seems to have responded well to my notes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8:30am Video conference with my testers \u0026amp; management. This was the biggie, and was a good first step. Now new ship issue PTRs\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e9am meeting with the Lexington team, who were very \u0026ldquo;up\u0026rdquo; and willing to discuss problems. At least \u003cem\u003esomebody\u003c/em\u003e got some rest this weekend.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Monday..."},{"content":"Man, it\u0026rsquo;s the PERFECT DAY outside: Sunny, 60 degrees, and no autocross :-(\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/such-a-nice-day...no-autocross/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMan, it\u0026rsquo;s the PERFECT DAY outside: Sunny, 60 degrees, and no autocross :-(\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Such a nice day...no autocross"},{"content":"two monitors, venerable WKQQ on my single-speaker radio, stuck at the office on a rainy Saturday when I should be packing up my apartment, that\u0026rsquo;s Harvid.\nManagement determined last week that my product was so utterly broken that we needed an \u0026ldquo;All hands on deck\u0026rdquo; effort to fix it. Since it\u0026rsquo;d actually cost money to pay contractors overtime, read this as \u0026ldquo;all REGULAR employees\u0026rdquo; on deck.\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;m here pouring through code letting Harvid have full reign. I\u0026rsquo;m heading home by 6, though, to exercise and relax a bit, then clean-up my house.\nFun? What\u0026rsquo;s that? Oh, that\u0026rsquo;s what OTHER PEOPLE get to have\u0026hellip;\nbitter much?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/harvids-field-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003etwo monitors, venerable WKQQ on my single-speaker radio, stuck at the office on a rainy Saturday when I should be packing up my apartment, that\u0026rsquo;s Harvid.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eManagement determined last week that my product was so utterly broken that we needed an \u0026ldquo;All hands on deck\u0026rdquo; effort to fix it. Since it\u0026rsquo;d actually cost money to pay contractors overtime, read this as \u0026ldquo;all REGULAR employees\u0026rdquo; on deck.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;m here pouring through code letting Harvid have full reign. I\u0026rsquo;m heading home by 6, though, to exercise and relax a bit, then clean-up my house.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Harvid's field day"},{"content":"Having finally acquired one of those damnable camera-cellphones-fm tuners-bluetooth gadgets (which magically still works as a plain old phone), I decided to put it to use today.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s my pal Jeff (nee \u0026ldquo;Marshall\u0026rdquo; to Whitney)\nJeff\u0026rsquo;s standing in front of my alter-brain (my whiteboard) and beside my office door, which is defiantly collaged with Dilbert comic strips.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s my officemate, Patrick:\nPatrick\u0026rsquo;s sporting the new iPod Mini his wife got him for his birthday.\nI talk alot of crap, but these guys get me through the good times \u0026amp; the bad.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/some-guys-i-work-with../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHaving finally acquired one of those damnable camera-cellphones-fm tuners-bluetooth gadgets (which magically still works as a plain old phone), I decided to put it to use today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s my pal Jeff (nee \u0026ldquo;Marshall\u0026rdquo; to Whitney)\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/misc/Jeff.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJeff\u0026rsquo;s standing in front of my alter-brain (my whiteboard) and beside my office door, which is defiantly collaged with Dilbert comic strips.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s my officemate, Patrick:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/misc/Patrick.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePatrick\u0026rsquo;s sporting the new iPod Mini his wife got him for his birthday.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Some guys I work with.."},{"content":"(This blog brought to you by coffee, the never-ending source of stimulation for the programmer mind.)\nThough I own two of the coolest cars in existence today (a MINI and a GTO), there are several cars out there I\u0026rsquo;d love to have, but the practicalities of life infringe upon it. My list, in no particular order:\nA Saab 9-3 Viggen\nFront Wheel Drive\nHatchback\n260 horsepower turbo 4 cylinder.\nMMMM\u0026hellip;.practical.\nChevy Impala SS LT1\n260 hp, old Small Block Chevy architecture. Plenty of elbow room.\nVW Jetta TDI\nI know, I know\u0026hellip;I had a Mk.IV \u0026lsquo;Dub, but I got the wrong one. Instead of the turbo gasser, I should\u0026rsquo;ve gotten the diesel. Great power, and 50-60 mpg, and none of the problems that plagued the 1.8T\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/requiem-for-the-cars-ill-never-own.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e(This blog brought to you by coffee, the never-ending source of stimulation for the programmer mind.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThough I own two of the coolest cars in existence today (a MINI and a GTO), there are several cars out there I\u0026rsquo;d love to have, but the practicalities of life infringe upon it. My list, in no particular order:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Saab 9-3 Viggen\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.fantasycars.com/derek/cars/images/saab/93viggen_4.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFront Wheel Drive\u003cbr\u003e\nHatchback\u003cbr\u003e\n260 horsepower turbo 4 cylinder.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMMMM\u0026hellip;.practical.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Requiem for the cars I'll never own..."},{"content":"Some english phrases make no sense to me:\ncatch-as-catch-can: Huh?\nI\u0026rsquo;ll be out-of-pocket this afternoon: Huh?\nOne thing, a pair of things, several things: How is it that \u0026lsquo;several\u0026rsquo; comes to mean three, all of a sudden?\nWorking with so many foreign peeps, you start understanding just how random, chaotic, and redundant English is. Sentence construction, word choice, phraseology, neologisms, and odd tenses (\u0026ldquo;He might have been going to the park next Thursday\u0026rdquo;) combine to make English hard to master.\nMy head hurts. I\u0026rsquo;m getting lunch.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/weirdness/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome english phrases make no sense to me:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ecatch-as-catch-can\u003c/em\u003e: Huh?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll be out-of-pocket this afternoon\u003c/em\u003e: Huh?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOne thing, a pair of things, several things\u003c/em\u003e: How is it that \u0026lsquo;several\u0026rsquo; comes to mean three, all of a sudden?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWorking with so many foreign peeps, you start understanding just how random, chaotic, and redundant English is. Sentence construction, word choice, phraseology, neologisms, and odd tenses (\u0026ldquo;He might have been going to the park next Thursday\u0026rdquo;) combine to make English hard to master.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weirdness"},{"content":"Derby 131 has come and gone, and you can almost year the sighs from here. The great stories\u0026ndash;Fleet Alex, Steinbrenner\u0026rsquo;s colt, et al.\u0026ndash;all fell in the stretch to the longest of long-shots, a horse that has no shot at either the Preakness or Belmont.\nAnother year, another yawn.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/the-derby/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDerby 131 has come and gone, and you can almost year the sighs from here. The great stories\u0026ndash;Fleet Alex, Steinbrenner\u0026rsquo;s colt, et al.\u0026ndash;all fell in the stretch to the longest of long-shots, a horse that has no shot at either the Preakness or Belmont.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnother year, another yawn.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i.a.cnn.net/si/2005/more/05/07/kentucky.derby.ap/t1_derby_finish2_ap.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Derby"},{"content":"This is for all you folks ready to go to college, ready to be the next Alan Turing, John Backus, or Bill Gates. Don\u0026rsquo;t become a programmer. You\u0026rsquo;ll either land in some sweatshop like ACS where people yell at you all day to fix the problems they cause by their mismanagement, or you\u0026rsquo;ll land in some massive corporation, where they\u0026rsquo;ll force you do to crappy work until you\u0026rsquo;re burnt-out.\nMeh. I hate my job. Must be Thursday :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/on-programming.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is for all you folks ready to go to college, ready to be the next Alan Turing, John Backus, or Bill Gates. Don\u0026rsquo;t become a programmer. You\u0026rsquo;ll either land in some sweatshop like ACS where people yell at you all day to fix the problems they cause by their mismanagement, or you\u0026rsquo;ll land in some massive corporation, where they\u0026rsquo;ll force you do to crappy work until you\u0026rsquo;re burnt-out.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeh. I hate my job. Must be Thursday :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On programming..."},{"content":"No races for CKRSCCA at Commonwealth Stadium this year.\nSchedule\nBasically, all little lots where you can have only a 25 second course, or lots where it\u0026rsquo;s sealed asphalt (EKU)\nUgh\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/well-its-official/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNo races for CKRSCCA at Commonwealth Stadium this year.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.ckrscca.org/solosched.htm\"\u003eSchedule\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, all little lots where you can have only a 25 second course, or lots where it\u0026rsquo;s sealed asphalt (EKU)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUgh\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Well, it's official"},{"content":"Read this and tell me the problem is oversaturation, not Scott Bakula\u0026rsquo;s bad acting or braindead storylines.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/news-treks-going-dark..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRead \u003ca href=\"http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?id=30935\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e and tell me the problem is oversaturation, not Scott Bakula\u0026rsquo;s bad acting or braindead storylines.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"News: Trek's going dark...."},{"content":" I miss my MINI. It\u0026rsquo;s doing yeoman work shuttling the better 2/3rds of my nascent family around Louisville.\nOkay\u0026hellip;scattered FROST tonight. In May. In Kentucky. ??\nI\u0026rsquo;ve discovered the toughest part of step-parenthood is not what I expected. Not liking your stepkid, I expected. Him not liking me, I expected. What I did NOT expect is me really caring about him, yet realizing he\u0026rsquo;d never care about me.\nThis is the same feeling Norie had about Jarod (ne \u0026ldquo;Bo Bo\u0026rdquo;) Slone, and it makes me sad. I SO MUCH want to be a part of Joey\u0026rsquo;s life, but there are certain critical moments that only a parent\u0026rsquo;s love can get you through, moments when the child looks with uncertainty or fear and says to himself, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s okay that\u0026rsquo;s my {Mommy | Daddy}.\u0026rdquo; I will ever be an outsider.\nSadness. But such is life\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/05/miscellaneous/","summary":"\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI miss my MINI. It\u0026rsquo;s doing yeoman work shuttling the better 2/3rds of my nascent family around Louisville.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay\u0026hellip;scattered FROST tonight. In May. In Kentucky. ??\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve discovered the toughest part of step-parenthood is not what I expected. Not liking your stepkid, I expected. Him not liking me, I expected. What I did NOT expect is me really caring about him, yet realizing he\u0026rsquo;d never care about me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the same feeling Norie had about Jarod (ne \u0026ldquo;Bo Bo\u0026rdquo;) Slone, and it makes me sad. I SO MUCH want to be a part of Joey\u0026rsquo;s life, but there are certain critical moments that only a parent\u0026rsquo;s love can get you through, moments when the child looks with uncertainty or fear and says to himself, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s okay that\u0026rsquo;s my {Mommy | Daddy}.\u0026rdquo; I will ever be an outsider.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Miscellaneous"},{"content":"Sideways: What\u0026rsquo;s the big deal? I mean, it\u0026rsquo;s a decent story and it WILL make you want to try Pinot Noir, even though it\u0026rsquo;s the most tasteless, bodiless wine out there. This is not a funny movie, as it\u0026rsquo;s made out to be.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a sad, cautionary tale of a divorced man beginning the long decline of middle age who must witness the joie de vive of every other person in Napa valley as he reflects on his own failures. It\u0026rsquo;s well acted, and there are moments of comic relief, but the general thread (\u0026ldquo;This guy is SUCH a loser\u0026rdquo;) runs so strong that I never could get into the other characters.\nVirginia Madsen is good, and certain scenes have excellent dialog, but the whole Nihilistic uselessness of the whole story turned me off. It\u0026rsquo;s worth watching, if only to encourage you to do SOMETHING with your life (kids, career, hobbies, marriage) by the time you\u0026rsquo;re 40.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/gettin-my-whine-on...sideways/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0375063/\"\u003eSideways\u003c/a\u003e: What\u0026rsquo;s the big deal? I mean, it\u0026rsquo;s a decent story and it WILL make you want to try Pinot Noir, even though it\u0026rsquo;s the most tasteless, bodiless wine out there. This is not a funny movie, as it\u0026rsquo;s made out to be.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a sad, cautionary tale of a divorced man beginning the long decline of middle age who must witness the joie de vive of every other person in Napa valley as he reflects on his own failures. It\u0026rsquo;s well acted, and there are moments of comic relief, but the general thread (\u0026ldquo;This guy is SUCH a loser\u0026rdquo;) runs so strong that I never could get into the other characters.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gettin' my Whine on...Sideways"},{"content":"This is as blown as I\u0026rsquo;ve been since that time in College where I wrote my \u0026lsquo;History of the South\u0026rsquo; term paper in 30 hours, from the start of the research to the completed, bibliographied, 20 page work.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been overseeing the translations workshop, trying to use my damn product along with the translators, and it\u0026rsquo;s been a revelation. We\u0026rsquo;re 4 weeks from release, and the product doesn\u0026rsquo;t work. Not even close.\nCertain features perform under ideal conditions, and certain features just don\u0026rsquo;t. I\u0026rsquo;m tempted to host an amnesty day, in which all the programmers get together and reveal all the hacks, bad code, and issues that exist with their pieces of the codebase, because unless everyone gets very real, very soon, we\u0026rsquo;re doomed. I can\u0026rsquo;t BELIEVE how embarrasingly bad the user experience is at this point.\nAnyway, I\u0026rsquo;ve been here past 9 or 10 at night since Monday and I\u0026rsquo;m starting to see things floating through my vision. I\u0026rsquo;m going to go home w/o my laptop and watch \u0026lsquo;Sideways\u0026rsquo; and have some spaghetti. Peace.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/on-being-blown.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is as blown as I\u0026rsquo;ve been since that time in College where I wrote my \u0026lsquo;History of the South\u0026rsquo; term paper in 30 hours, from the start of the research to the completed, bibliographied, 20 page work.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been overseeing the translations workshop, trying to use my \u003ca href=\"http://www.markvisionprofessional.com\"\u003edamn product\u003c/a\u003e along with the translators, and it\u0026rsquo;s been a revelation. We\u0026rsquo;re 4 weeks from release, and the product doesn\u0026rsquo;t work. Not even close.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Being Blown..."},{"content":"\nSpanglish is a revelation: Touching, genuine, intimate, and involving, it\u0026rsquo;s the \u0026ldquo;small\u0026rdquo; picture at its best. The story is one of integration and separation, as a single latino mother (the stunning Paz Vega) makes a way for herself and her daughter in the swankiest parts of Los Angeles, amid a family tearing itself apart. The mother is a control-freak basket-case (Tea Leoni, taking a page from Annette Benning\u0026rsquo;s character in American Beauty), the father (Adam Sandler) an irresolute chef afraid of his own restaurant\u0026rsquo;s success. Their two children are amazingly well adjusted, considering.\nScenes in this movie will make you remember the sweet moments in your life\u0026ndash;unrequited impossible love, the joy of simple kindness, the awkwardness and discovery of a new culture and place. In particular, the scene between Sandler and Vega speak volumes with a single look.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/review-spanglish/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/96/36/58m.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0371246/\"\u003eSpanglish\u003c/a\u003e is a revelation: Touching, genuine, intimate, and involving, it\u0026rsquo;s the \u0026ldquo;small\u0026rdquo; picture at its best. The story is one of integration and separation, as a single latino mother (the stunning Paz Vega) makes a way for herself and her daughter in the swankiest parts of Los Angeles, amid a family tearing itself apart. The mother is a control-freak basket-case (Tea Leoni, taking a page from Annette Benning\u0026rsquo;s character in \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/\"\u003eAmerican Beauty\u003c/a\u003e), the father (Adam Sandler) an irresolute chef afraid of his own restaurant\u0026rsquo;s success. Their two children are amazingly well adjusted, considering.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Spanglish"},{"content":"Conversation I had during the 2 1/2 hours I was working the course yesterday whilst the wind froze me and the sun burnt my face to a crisp:\nJohn: Man, Tony\u0026rsquo;s WRX is awesome!\nMe: Yeah, he\u0026rsquo;s got everything on it\u0026hellip;his 6-speed transmission alone cost $4k\nJohn: Holy SHIT\u0026hellip;what does he do for a living\nMe: He\u0026rsquo;s a programmer, I think\u0026hellip;\nJohn: See, now that\u0026rsquo;s what I need to get into\u0026hellip;no more of this turning wrenches for Uncle Sam\nMe: :-) You never know\u0026hellip;sometimes, it\u0026rsquo;s not what it\u0026rsquo;s cracked-up to be\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/the-grass-is-always-greener..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eConversation I had during the 2 1/2 hours I was working the course yesterday whilst the wind froze me and the sun burnt my face to a crisp:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn: \u003cem\u003eMan, Tony\u0026rsquo;s WRX is awesome!\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: \u003cem\u003eYeah, he\u0026rsquo;s got everything on it\u0026hellip;his 6-speed transmission alone cost $4k\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn: \u003cem\u003eHoly SHIT\u0026hellip;what does he do for a living\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe: \u003cem\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s a programmer, I think\u0026hellip;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn: \u003cem\u003eSee, now that\u0026rsquo;s what I need to get into\u0026hellip;no more of this turning wrenches for Uncle Sam\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The grass is always greener...."},{"content":" Why were American cars from the early 90\u0026rsquo;s so crappy? Specifically, I\u0026rsquo;m speaking of the the Chevy Lumina and Ford Taurus. Granted, these were cars of the (now non-existent) cheap, mid-size, soft suspension class, but where\u0026rsquo;s the quality? Drive a 10 year old Accord versus a 10 year old Taurus, and the Honda is a revelation.\nWhy is it people at autocross keep trying to kill me? I was 10 feet away from 3 spins this weekend, one of which saw a guy in a Mitsubishi Evo sliding at me WITH HIS FOOT STILL ON THE GAS. Also, got to watch a 4000 lb Volvo S60R slide right into a patch of grass I\u0026rsquo;d been standing in just 10 minutes before.\nWhy must mother/daughter relationships be so rocky? Is there something about estrogen + estrogen that\u0026rsquo;s similar to magnetism: Like charges repel? Is it the Electra complex, only lasting for 40 years? I had serious relationships with 3 women, and none could stand her own mother.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/random-complaints/","summary":"\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy were American cars from the early 90\u0026rsquo;s so crappy? Specifically, I\u0026rsquo;m speaking of the the Chevy Lumina and Ford Taurus. Granted, these were cars of the (now non-existent) cheap, mid-size, soft suspension class, but where\u0026rsquo;s the quality? Drive a 10 year old Accord versus a 10 year old Taurus, and the Honda is a revelation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy is it people at autocross keep trying to kill me? I was 10 feet away from 3 spins this weekend, one of which saw a guy in a Mitsubishi Evo sliding at me WITH HIS FOOT STILL ON THE GAS. Also, got to watch a 4000 lb Volvo S60R slide right into a patch of grass I\u0026rsquo;d been standing in just 10 minutes before.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Random complaints"},{"content":"The day is nearly over, and I\u0026rsquo;ve done quite a bit:\ntook the powerless powerbook to CompUSA down in Lexington for its first warranty service. Turns-out the PB is fine, my A/C adapter\u0026rsquo;s worn-out. I have a new one on the way from Cupertino, all free of charge.\nHad a rather fruitless quest for a new cell phone (which I don\u0026rsquo;t need, anyway..) The Nokia 6230 is backordered in the whole region, and I don\u0026rsquo;t like the Motorola V551 very much\nGot a new Sam\u0026rsquo;s Club card and bought a year\u0026rsquo;s supply of razor blades for $28\nVisited the mecca of tools (sears) and got a new pair of gloves and a Craftsman Strap-wrench (sounds like a sex-toy, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it?) for my next task\u0026hellip;\nChanged the oil in the GTO with fresh 5w30 Mobil1 and a AC Delco PF46 filter. The gloves and the strapwrench made it a nice, easy job, and I finally had a good drip-pan from Wal-Mart. This is the point at which I really started to enjoy my day\nI watched my first DVD in a long time\u0026hellip;Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, directed by Mr. Madonna, Guy Ritchie. Like Q. Tarantino, Ritchie\u0026rsquo;s an auteur, obsessed with male bonding, snappy dialog, and interesting camera work. At its heart, this it\u0026rsquo;s the tale of bumbling petty criminals and their misadventures in London. Characters are well-drawn but confusing, since bald Englishmen with bad teeth and impenetrable accents all look and act alike\u0026hellip;\nAfter that, came the housework, the phone calls, and the second trip to walmart of the day, to get my Timex watchband fixed.\nAlong the way, I found out we have a new pope, the guy from Germany now calling himself Benedict XVI. He\u0026rsquo;s a very conservative guy, so all the whiny Europeans calling for divorce, women priests, the removal of celibacy, and contraception will have to wait for Benny\u0026rsquo;s (likely imminent) demise. For y sake, i\u0026rsquo;m proud that \u0026ldquo;The Church\u0026rdquo; is sticking to its guns\u0026hellip;after all, if it withstood Huns, the Dark Ages, the Plague, and Luther, what\u0026rsquo;s Post-post-modernism going to do?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/wigging-part-2/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe day is nearly over, and I\u0026rsquo;ve done quite a bit:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003etook the powerless powerbook to CompUSA down in Lexington for its first warranty service. Turns-out the PB is fine, my A/C adapter\u0026rsquo;s worn-out. I have a new one on the way from Cupertino, all free of charge.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHad a rather fruitless quest for a new cell phone (which I don\u0026rsquo;t need, anyway..) The Nokia 6230 is backordered in the whole region, and I don\u0026rsquo;t like the Motorola V551 very much\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wigging, part 2"},{"content":"I just feel frickin\u0026rsquo; OFF today. I don\u0026rsquo;t know if it\u0026rsquo;s my job, the crushing importance of EVERYTHING I do these days, or various other things.\nCalled in to work to take the day off\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s going to rain until Sunday and I just don\u0026rsquo;t really want to be around people today. I feel like a total lout\u0026hellip;\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s bothering me? :-) Guess. Go ahead. I\u0026rsquo;ll wait\u0026hellip;.\nAnyway, I\u0026rsquo;m going to try and get a few things done today and get outside and just generally try and feel a bit more like myself and a bit less like an automaton. Again\u0026hellip;just OFF. Off-center, off-kilter\u0026hellip;OFF.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/wigging....day-1/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just feel frickin\u0026rsquo; OFF today. I don\u0026rsquo;t know if it\u0026rsquo;s my job, the crushing importance of EVERYTHING I do these days, or various other things.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCalled in to work to take the day off\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s going to rain until Sunday and I just don\u0026rsquo;t really want to be around people today. I feel like a total lout\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s bothering me? :-) Guess. Go ahead. I\u0026rsquo;ll wait\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, I\u0026rsquo;m going to try and get a few things done today and get outside and just generally try and feel a bit more like myself and a bit less like an automaton. Again\u0026hellip;just OFF. Off-center, off-kilter\u0026hellip;OFF.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wigging....Day 1"},{"content":"The only thing worse than someone hollering FREE BEER in a bar is a bank saying FREE GAS to a town of yuppies and rednecks driving SUVs.\nStarted lining-up @ 4am this morning, and they\u0026rsquo;re repeating the promotion this afternoon\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/free-as-in...gas/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe only thing worse than someone hollering FREE BEER in a bar is a bank saying \u003ca href=\"http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/11425725.htm\"\u003eFREE GAS\u003c/a\u003e to a town of yuppies and rednecks driving SUVs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStarted lining-up @ 4am this morning, and they\u0026rsquo;re repeating the promotion this afternoon\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Free as in...Gas?"},{"content":"Mike Nichols\u0026rsquo; Closer is one of two movies I hate but grudgingly respect, the other being The Rules of Attraction. Closer is the depressing tale of relationships gone wrong, fidelity ignored, and carnal lust indulged and counter-indulged to the last.\nThis is one of those art house films that can\u0026rsquo;t quite decide if it\u0026rsquo;s brilliant or irrelevant. As it begins, we find Dan (Jude Law) meeting the displaced American, Alice (Natalie Portman). Dan\u0026rsquo;s a failed novelist who\u0026rsquo;s writing obituaries. Later, we see him publishing his first novel, as Anna (Julia Roberts) photographs him. Dan makes a pass as Anna, even as Alice is on the way to meet him at the studio. All the characters read brilliant lines with no emotions.\nAs the movie progresses, the characters become more and more emotional, less rational and more randomly evil. Ironically, the only \u0026ldquo;pure\u0026rdquo; character is Alice, the inveterate smoker, stripper, and liar. The other points of the compass are, alternately, perverts (Larry), depressed adultresses (Anna), and hopeless creepy romantics (Dan). As we close, we find none are happy; despite having many chances to avert disaster, the only focus they have is ruining their own lives and driving away anyone that really loves them.\nLike \u0026ldquo;Rules of Attraction\u0026rdquo;, this movie will put you off relationships in general and marriage in particular. Each \u0026ldquo;breakup\u0026rdquo; scene had me recalling my own break-ups (down to individual lines of dialog in certain cases), and each reconciliation filled me with dread.\nCloser is a wrenching, slow ride through the dregs of human soul. You\u0026rsquo;ve been warned.\nFor the more profane version: Click here\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/review-closer/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMike Nichols\u0026rsquo; \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0376541/\"\u003eCloser\u003c/a\u003e is one of two movies I hate but grudgingly respect, the other being \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0292644/\"\u003eThe Rules of Attraction\u003c/a\u003e. \u003cem\u003eCloser\u003c/em\u003e is the depressing tale of relationships gone wrong, fidelity ignored, and carnal lust indulged and counter-indulged to the last.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is one of those art house films that can\u0026rsquo;t quite decide if it\u0026rsquo;s brilliant or irrelevant. As it begins, we find Dan (Jude Law) meeting the displaced American, Alice (Natalie Portman). Dan\u0026rsquo;s a failed novelist who\u0026rsquo;s writing obituaries. Later, we see him publishing his first novel, as Anna (Julia Roberts) photographs him. Dan makes a pass as Anna, even as Alice is on the way to meet him at the studio. All the characters read brilliant lines with no emotions.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: \"Closer\""},{"content":" Prince Ranier of Monaco is dead. Ruler of the poshest principality in the world, husband of Grace Kelly, father of two beautiful daughters. Lived to be 81.\nYale and Columbia graduate students are about to strike Well, so long as Magenta doesn\u0026rsquo;t go too, we can still have the Rocky Horror revival at midnight\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/things-you-dont-know-when-youre-working-14-hour-days./","summary":"\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/15/monaco.funeral/index.html\"\u003ePrince Ranier of Monaco\u003c/a\u003e is dead. Ruler of the poshest principality in the world, husband of Grace Kelly, father of two beautiful daughters. Lived to be 81.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/04/14/ivy.league.strike.ap/index.html\"\u003eYale and Columbia graduate students are about to strike\u003c/a\u003e Well, so long as Magenta doesn\u0026rsquo;t go too, we can still have the Rocky Horror revival at midnight\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e","title":"Things you don't know when you're working 14 hour days."},{"content":"So, there I was, outside on a beautiful spring day, noting the change in the dogwoods from flowers to foliage, crusing at 95 in my GTO, Nirvana\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Smells Like Teen Spirit,\u0026rdquo; awash in my ears. The tranny hummed a mechanical song beneath my fingertips, comfortably loping in 6th gear.\nLife is good when your new house is perfect.\nPhilip Preston (of \u0026ldquo;Preston Home Inspections\u0026rdquo; fame) had given his stamp of approval (\u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s one hell of a house, man\u0026rdquo;), with his wife/gf/squeeze\u0026rsquo;s agreement.\nSo, from now, it\u0026rsquo;s just getting the title search completed, signing the post-occupancy agreement (they can\u0026rsquo;t leave until June 20th b/c they\u0026rsquo;re building a new house), and closing.\n* * *\nAnd on the way back, my first honest-to-goodness \u0026ldquo;friendly contest\u0026rdquo;. I was on the cell calling Bella when I saw a dual-exhaust mustang cruise up beside me in the fast lane. Dark tint. Sounded mean.\nOrdinarily, a \u0026lsquo;Stang is nothing to an LS1-equipped car. Ranging from 205-305 horsepower, these inferior pony cars are no match for a Camaro/Firebird/GTO/Vette, with their 300-400 hp. But THIS thing was another animal entirely.\nThis was a 2003 Mustang Cobra, with the 400 hp supercharged engine. Especially from a rolling start, this guy could eat me for breakfast, because he had me by 50 hp and was 300 lbs lighter than the portly Goat.\nSouthbound, approaching the 64/75 merge, he waited for me, slowing his 80mph pace down to 70 or so. He wasn\u0026rsquo;t being an ass, revving his engine or weaving. Just waiting. I heard a blip of the throtttle, then another. Ahh\u0026hellip;two downshifts. I double-clutched from 6th to 3rd, matching him ratio-for-ratio. We both got in the left lane, behind a semi, me right behind him.\nThe second we had daylight approaching the 3-lane merge, we both nailed it, him surging ahead, of course, since he knew the exact moment this race would start. We had a half mile of clear left lane, but we needed nothing like that. In an eyeblink, we were at 100, then 110, 120, 125. Thor was like a different animal, a cat unleashed, running towards after the gazelle ahead. There\u0026rsquo;s nothing like the sound of a smallblock at 6000 rpm. I slammed it into 4th, the nose dipping on the clutch in, then rising again as I sidestepped it and nailed the throttle. We lifted at 130, having consumed maybe 10 seconds of real-world time.\nI pulled up beside the guy and gave him a big thumbs-up. Nice fella, that Cobra guy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/and-the-saga...ends...i-hope/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, there I was, outside on a beautiful spring day, noting the change in the dogwoods from flowers to foliage, crusing at 95 in my GTO, Nirvana\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Smells Like Teen Spirit,\u0026rdquo; awash in my ears. The tranny hummed a mechanical song beneath my fingertips, comfortably loping in 6th gear.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLife is good when your new house is perfect.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePhilip Preston (of \u0026ldquo;Preston Home Inspections\u0026rdquo; fame) had given his stamp of approval (\u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s one hell of a house, man\u0026rdquo;), with his wife/gf/squeeze\u0026rsquo;s agreement.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"And the saga...ends...I hope"},{"content":"\n\u0026hellip;one rather surprised competitor at the Atlanta Nat\u0026rsquo;l AutoX.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/something-ruining-your-whole-day.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.cashmo.org/2005/05atlanta180.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;one rather surprised competitor at the Atlanta Nat\u0026rsquo;l AutoX.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Something ruining your whole day..."},{"content":"And now, a shout-out to the incomparable, Mrs. Shannon Suzanne McRoberts:\nDo you need interesting art for your walls?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/shout-out/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnd now, a shout-out to the incomparable, Mrs. Shannon Suzanne McRoberts:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.shannonmcroberts.com/\"\u003eDo you need interesting art for your walls?\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Shout out"},{"content":"Man, people hit about 25-27 and they just GOTTA GET MARRIED!\nThe Barger-Fields wedding\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/more-wedding-bells.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMan, people hit about 25-27 and they just GOTTA GET MARRIED!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.wedding.brandonsfields.com/\"\u003eThe Barger-Fields wedding\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More Wedding bells..."},{"content":"As Promised:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/the-pics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs Promised:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img60.echo.cx/my.php?image=proposal0xl.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img60.echo.cx/img60/8859/proposal0xl.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"THE PICS!"},{"content":"So, the reality of being team lead strikes home.\nFour million nits to pick, people complaining, and everyone wants a piece of my time.\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo;\nOn the BRIGHT side\u0026hellip;They accepted my offer on the new house at 100 Sardula. I called the home inspector, gave my 30 day notice at my apartment (I\u0026rsquo;ll be out by May 14th), and sent off my check for house appraisal.\nExciting :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/so....tired..../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, the reality of being team lead strikes home.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFour million nits to pick, people complaining, and everyone wants a piece of my time.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the BRIGHT side\u0026hellip;They accepted my offer on the new house at 100 Sardula. I called the home inspector, gave my 30 day notice at my apartment (I\u0026rsquo;ll be out by May 14th), and sent off my check for house appraisal.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExciting :D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"So....tired...."},{"content":"Well, it\u0026rsquo;s been about a month since I dl\u0026rsquo;ed the ROM image for the original FF1, and I just beat it tonight\u0026hellip;\nYeeha\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m suddenly 11 years old again :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/finished-ff1/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, it\u0026rsquo;s been about a month since I dl\u0026rsquo;ed the ROM image for the original FF1, and I just beat it tonight\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imageshack.us\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Image Hosted by ImageShack.us\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img217.echo.cx/img217/581/ffend4xa.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeeha\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m suddenly 11 years old again :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"FINISHED FF1!"},{"content":"Dear Lord, on this sabbath day, thank you for the great gifts You bestowed upon us this weekend. First, thank you for the wonderous Spring weather, with sun from Friday afternoon straight through this evening.\nAlso, thanks for Whitney and thank You for letting her say \u0026lsquo;Yes\u0026rsquo;.\nThanks for guiding our house search today, and keeping us safe on the roadways.\nAmen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/a-thanksgiving-prayer/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDear Lord, on this sabbath day, thank you for the great gifts You bestowed upon us this weekend. First, thank you for the wonderous Spring weather, with sun from Friday afternoon straight through this evening.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlso, thanks for Whitney and thank You for letting her say \u0026lsquo;Yes\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThanks for guiding our house search today, and keeping us safe on the roadways.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A thanksgiving prayer"},{"content":"I LOVE SuSE Linux\nGot to troubleshoot a problem today on our Linux box, and despite it\u0026rsquo;s nearly 3 years of age, the thing just SCREAMS. So good to be back in the Unix/Linux world where things are files, period. Everything works like a file, and the OS isn\u0026rsquo;t going down, no matter how much you beat on it.\nDefinitely not the most user-friendly of systems, but for the professional who wants to get something done, a good SuSE box with tons of programming goodies and network utilities is hard to beat.\nYes, I\u0026rsquo;ve been at work for 11 hrs and 30 minutes\u0026hellip;\u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/random-harvid-moment.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI LOVE \u003ca href=\"http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/index.html\"\u003eSuSE Linux\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGot to troubleshoot a problem today on our Linux box, and despite it\u0026rsquo;s nearly 3 years of age, the thing just SCREAMS. So good to be back in the Unix/Linux world where things are files, period. Everything works like a file, and the OS isn\u0026rsquo;t going down, no matter how much you beat on it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDefinitely not the most user-friendly of systems, but for the professional who wants to get something done, a good SuSE box with tons of programming goodies and network utilities is hard to beat.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Random Harvid moment..."},{"content":"Mike (handle: Gateway), the guy whose thread got me into the GTO has another new (read: leased) car: Read All about it\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/the-saga-of-the-message-board-continues.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMike (handle: Gateway), the guy whose thread got me into the GTO has another new (read: leased) car: \u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zerothread?id=1914670\"\u003eRead All about it\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The saga of the message board continues..."},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/cool-pic/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.fototime.com/8899B51FAF0A986/standard.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"cool pic"},{"content":"1. Get the right people\n2. Give them the right tools and training\n3. Remove all obstacles to their work\n4. Profit.\n\u0026hellip;\nSeems to be working so far. Of course, the downside to this is what you do if you don\u0026rsquo;t have the right people.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/my-team-lead-style.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e1. Get the right people\u003cbr\u003e\n2. Give them the right tools and training\u003cbr\u003e\n3. Remove all obstacles to their work\u003cbr\u003e\n4. Profit.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeems to be working so far. Of course, the downside to this is what you do if you don\u0026rsquo;t have the right people.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"My Team Lead style..."},{"content":"Well, the current owner of 107 Secretariat street didn\u0026rsquo;t like my requests to fix a couple things and give us an allowance for the roof he allowed to cook off his house. My realtor told me I was being somewhat unreasonable, and maybe I was. It was a nice little house in a good area, but it scared us.\nA full repaint, a new roof, and repairs from general neglect would be our constant companions.\nWhen I got the news, I thought someone had punched me in the stomach. Somewhere, down in my heart, I thought the owners would meet us halfway and we\u0026rsquo;d still have the cute little house. \u0026raquo;Sigh\u0026laquo;\nBut oh well. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s searching for more prospects for us already.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/the-house-saga-continues.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, the current owner of 107 Secretariat street didn\u0026rsquo;t like my requests to fix a couple things and give us an allowance for the roof he allowed to cook off his house. My realtor told me I was being somewhat unreasonable, and maybe I was. It was a nice little house in a good area, but it scared us.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA full repaint, a new roof, and repairs from general neglect would be our constant companions.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The house saga continues..."},{"content":"Diane Sawyer looks like an older version of Paris Hilton.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/random-thought.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDiane Sawyer looks like an older version of Paris Hilton.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Random thought..."},{"content":"Pics from the last few weeks coming at ya!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/photoblog/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePics from \u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/EndOfMarch2005/EndOfMarch2005.html\"\u003ethe last few weeks\u003c/a\u003e coming at ya!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/EndOfMarch2005/EndOfMarch2005-Images/7.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Photoblog"},{"content":"We\u0026rsquo;ve come back to daylight savings time, much like a drunk returns to church, or a guilty husband returns home: We know this is where we need to be, but it\u0026rsquo;s hard to do. We now have daylight after work to play with, and that leads to MORE hyperactivity and less sleep.\nHad a great time this weekend up with Whitney and Joe-man, who is celebrating his 4th birthday. He got some Transformers, which I think Whitney and I love more than he does. Go figure.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/monday-musings.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve come back to daylight savings time, much like a drunk returns to church, or a guilty husband returns home: We know this is where we need to be, but it\u0026rsquo;s hard to do. We now have daylight after work to play with, and that leads to MORE hyperactivity and less sleep.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHad a great time this weekend up with Whitney and Joe-man, who is celebrating his 4th birthday. He got some Transformers, which I think Whitney and I love more than he does. Go figure.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Monday Musings..."},{"content":"Two hot cars line the lot here, deep inside Indian country. Thor and the Pup, their catalytic converters ticking, sit in the parking lot on Breckinridge Lane, in the city that\u0026rsquo;s holding its breath.\nYes, I\u0026rsquo;m a Wildcat fan surrounded by Cardinal Red. It\u0026rsquo;s eerie.\n* * *\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a cold day in hell (aka Louisville), and Whitney, Joey, and I watched a good exhibition game this afternoon between the Cincinnati Reds and the Toronto Bluejays at Slugger Field. A stiff breeze blew in towards home plate from left field, and it was COLD. The Reds jumped out on bad Toronto pitching to a 3-0 lead, but Toronto came back, taking the lead in the 6th. After a full line change, the second string for both teams saw Cincy knock-in two to take the lead finally at 7-6.\nPitching for both teams underperformed, thought the Cincy starter was sharp, minus the hanging curve Toronto crushed in the 2nd.\nCan\u0026rsquo;t wait for baseball season! :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/behind-enemy-lines/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwo hot cars line the lot here, deep inside Indian country. Thor and the Pup, their catalytic converters ticking, sit in the parking lot on Breckinridge Lane, in the city that\u0026rsquo;s holding its breath.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, I\u0026rsquo;m a Wildcat fan surrounded by Cardinal Red. It\u0026rsquo;s eerie.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a cold day in hell (aka Louisville), and Whitney, Joey, and I watched a good exhibition game this afternoon between the Cincinnati Reds and the Toronto Bluejays at Slugger Field. A stiff breeze blew in towards home plate from left field, and it was COLD. The Reds jumped out on bad Toronto pitching to a 3-0 lead, but Toronto came back, taking the lead in the 6th. After a full line change, the second string for both teams saw Cincy knock-in two to take the lead finally at 7-6.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Behind enemy lines"},{"content":"For every magnificent up, there\u0026rsquo;s usually a sickening down\u0026hellip;\nJust got back from my home inspection, done by a very thorough, straightforward man named Philip Preston. He found some \u0026ldquo;issues\u0026rdquo; with the house.\nFirst is the grade. The house is on a completely flat plot, and there\u0026rsquo;s not grade away from the house, so water will naturally tend to pool around it. Thankfully, he said the crawlspace was very dry, despite being poorly vented. (It has fewer vents than current code requires, but it\u0026rsquo;s per code for 7 years ago).\nHe said that the main beam under the South end of the house was improperly shimmed using folded metal pieces, and these compressed, causing a squeak in the floor under what will be Joey\u0026rsquo;s room. Nothing serious, and he said I could fix this by installing a proper, unfolded metal shim.\nThe big thing is the roof. He said the attic spaces hadn\u0026rsquo;t been allowed adequate ventilation, so the shingles had essentially cooked over the past 7 years, halving the life of the roof. So, I\u0026rsquo;m facing roof replacement in 4 years rather than 14 years. In other words, I WILL be replacing the roof on the house. There goes the vacation fund\u0026hellip;\nThe contrace I have on the property is written with a CONTINGENT UPON INSPECTION clause, so I\u0026rsquo;m weighing my options. I could do nothing, obviously, but since my offer on the house ($122k) was on a house in working order with a good roof. Now I\u0026rsquo;m looking at a paint job, new roof, and numerous cosmetic repairs.\nTough stuff\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ll know more when I get the full report this afternoon.\nOn the BRIGHT side\u0026hellip;no termites.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/all-is-not-necessarily-well-in-house-ville/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor every magnificent up, there\u0026rsquo;s usually a sickening down\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust got back from my home inspection, done by a very thorough, straightforward man named Philip Preston. He found some \u0026ldquo;issues\u0026rdquo; with the house.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst is the grade. The house is on a completely flat plot, and there\u0026rsquo;s not grade away from the house, so water will naturally tend to pool around it. Thankfully, he said the crawlspace was very dry, despite being poorly vented. (It has fewer vents than current code requires, but it\u0026rsquo;s per code for 7 years ago).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"All is not necessarily well in house-ville"},{"content":"My favorite part of April Fool\u0026rsquo;s Day?\nPrank tech stories on slashdot\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/04/april-fools-day.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy favorite part of April Fool\u0026rsquo;s Day?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://slashdot.org\"\u003ePrank tech stories on slashdot\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"April Fool's day..."},{"content":"Ladies and Gentlemen,\nMy offer on a house has just been accepted!!! w00t!!!!\nI\u0026rsquo;ll be moving 2 miles down the road to a domecile with a 2-car garage, a large central living room, and 3 Bedrooms, 2 baths, and a basketball goal.\nI\u0026rsquo;m about to faint.\nThat is all.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/wooohooo/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLadies and Gentlemen,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy offer on a house has just been accepted!!! w00t!!!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll be moving 2 miles down the road to a domecile with a 2-car garage, a large central living room, and 3 Bedrooms, 2 baths, and a basketball goal.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m about to faint.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat is all.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"WOOOHOOO!!!"},{"content":"You\u0026rsquo;re eating \u0026ldquo;Macaroni and spaghetti sauce\u0026rdquo;, because you made Kraft Mac\u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo;Cheese without realizing you had no milk.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/defining-bachelor-moment.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re eating \u0026ldquo;Macaroni and spaghetti sauce\u0026rdquo;, because you made Kraft Mac\u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo;Cheese without realizing you had no milk.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Defining Bachelor moment..."},{"content":"Up at 4:45 this morning, and I\u0026rsquo;m still at work. Yikes\u0026hellip;this team lead thing is about what it\u0026rsquo;s cracked-up to be: All the responsibility, no benefits, no real power.\nGrand.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/day-one-of-burnout-induction.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUp at 4:45 this morning, and I\u0026rsquo;m still at work. Yikes\u0026hellip;this team lead thing is about what it\u0026rsquo;s cracked-up to be: All the responsibility, no benefits, no real power.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGrand.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Day one of burnout induction..."},{"content":"\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/he-he.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.bobandtom.com/gen3/5cover_img/redneck_car_alarm.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"He he..."},{"content":"Had a feeling 05 was going to be life-changing, and that\u0026rsquo;s come to pass.\n* I\u0026rsquo;m wanting to get married\n* I\u0026rsquo;m trying to buy a house\n\u0026hellip;And\u0026hellip;\n* I\u0026rsquo;ve been promoted/demoted/reassigned to be team lead of my product. I now get to \u0026ldquo;drive\u0026rdquo; the new function, attend all the meetings, and generally be the point man for the whole thing. This should look good on my resume as I\u0026rsquo;m assuming more responsiblity and leadership.\nThe track record of those who\u0026rsquo;ve had this position before me is undeniable:\nM -\u0026gt; Area lead architect\nS -\u0026gt; 1st line manager\nS -\u0026gt; 1st line manager\nD -\u0026gt; Requirements lead\nDoes it scare me? Yes. Does it make me long for the simpler days of Perl scripts and throw-away Java code? Yes. Does it excite me in a weird way? Yeah. It\u0026rsquo;s opportunity\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;ll definitely help me move up in the company.\nMy fears are manifold: I\u0026rsquo;m moving away from the technical arena of creating things to organization, administration, and architecture. I could lose the edge that makes me such a hotshot around here. Team Leads (particularly D) became figureheads who moved from meeting to meeting, losing the respect of their people. Ugh.\nI want to change things. Lord, grant me the wisdom to serve the members of my team, keep some balance in my life, and make the right decisions when the time comes. Amen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/life-changing-events.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHad a feeling 05 was going to be life-changing, and that\u0026rsquo;s come to pass.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* I\u0026rsquo;m wanting to get married\u003cbr\u003e\n* I\u0026rsquo;m trying to buy a house\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;And\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* I\u0026rsquo;ve been promoted/demoted/reassigned to be team lead of my product. I now get to \u0026ldquo;drive\u0026rdquo; the new function, attend all the meetings, and generally be the point man for the whole thing. This should look good on my resume as I\u0026rsquo;m assuming more responsiblity and leadership.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Life changing events..."},{"content":"This week, our software departments gets the rare pleasure of having an on-site consultant. I say rare in that this happens once every 5 years, and such visitation sparks a flurry of new products. It\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026ldquo;Big Bang,\u0026rdquo; if you will, without the follow-up munchies and stinky bedsheets.\nAnyway, the guy, C, is a unapologetic Canadian ass with a golden-hammer attitude towards the product he\u0026rsquo;s advocating. \u0026ldquo;It can do everything well,\u0026rdquo; he says. Thankfully, the product is free (they make money on consulting), so at least we didn\u0026rsquo;t have to listen to a hard-sell on the software.\n* * *\nIn other news, perhaps I won\u0026rsquo;t be getting VoIP after all. Spam to your phone?!!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/consultant-day-1/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis week, our software departments gets the rare pleasure of having an on-site consultant. I say rare in that this happens once every 5 years, and such visitation sparks a flurry of new products. It\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026ldquo;Big Bang,\u0026rdquo; if you will, without the follow-up munchies and stinky bedsheets.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, the guy, C, is a unapologetic Canadian ass with a golden-hammer attitude towards the product he\u0026rsquo;s advocating. \u0026ldquo;It can do everything well,\u0026rdquo; he says. Thankfully, the product is free (they make money on consulting), so at least we didn\u0026rsquo;t have to listen to a hard-sell on the software.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Consultant, Day 1"},{"content":"Things you remember @ odd moments:\nThe other movie we saw was Cold Creek Manor a disposable thriller starring Sharon Stone, and Dennis Quaid, who must be dying for work at this point. It\u0026rsquo;s charitable to say the film is slow; it\u0026rsquo;s more accurate to say it\u0026rsquo;s a complete waste of your time. All characters are stereotypes, and it\u0026rsquo;s overlong for what story there is.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/movie-reviews-part-deux/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThings you remember @ odd moments:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other movie we saw was \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0331468/\"\u003eCold Creek Manor\u003c/a\u003e a disposable thriller starring Sharon Stone, and Dennis Quaid, who must be dying for work at this point. It\u0026rsquo;s charitable to say the film is slow; it\u0026rsquo;s more accurate to say it\u0026rsquo;s a complete waste of your time. All characters are stereotypes, and it\u0026rsquo;s overlong for what story there is.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"movie reviews, part deux"},{"content":"With my day off on Friday to stay with Bella after her surgery, we got to watch lots of movies\u0026hellip;\nFirst up was Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow with Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the hamming Angelina Jolie. It\u0026rsquo;s a beautiful film, though HIGHLY implausible. Glad to have watched it on DVD instead of the theatre.\nUnfortunately, I can\u0026rsquo;t remember the movie in the middle\u0026hellip;I just can\u0026rsquo;t!\nLast was Y Tu Mama Tambien, which I still find to be a good movie wrapped inside a disgusting, hollow shell. At it center are the Solipsitic trio of Tenoch, Luisa, and Julio, two horny teens and a hot older woman who head for Del Playa Boca Cielo (Heaven\u0026rsquo;s Mouth Beach). Tenoch is of the Castillian upper-crust, Julio is lower middle class, and Luisa is from Spain. The film highlights the disparity in Mexico between the haves and have-nots. With a nice twist at the end.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/movie-weekend.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWith my day off on Friday to stay with Bella after her surgery, we got to watch lots of movies\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst up was \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0346156/\"\u003eSky Captain and the World of Tomorrow\u003c/a\u003e with Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the hamming Angelina Jolie. It\u0026rsquo;s a beautiful film, though HIGHLY implausible. Glad to have watched it on DVD instead of the theatre.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnfortunately, I can\u0026rsquo;t remember the movie in the middle\u0026hellip;I just can\u0026rsquo;t!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast was \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0245574/\"\u003eY Tu Mama Tambien\u003c/a\u003e, which I still find to be a good movie wrapped inside a disgusting, hollow shell. At it center are the Solipsitic trio of Tenoch, Luisa, and Julio, two horny teens and a hot older woman who head for Del Playa Boca Cielo (Heaven\u0026rsquo;s Mouth Beach). Tenoch is of the Castillian upper-crust, Julio is lower middle class, and Luisa is from Spain. The film highlights the disparity in Mexico between the haves and have-nots. With a nice twist at the end.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Movie weekend..."},{"content":"- I was so keyed-up I didn\u0026rsquo;t fall asleep until midnight.\n- I LEFT MY FRICKIN MORTGAGE APP on the table instead of bringing it to work to fax it in. I am so upset by this. Had the darn thing done on Saturday night, but I waited until Monday so I could fax it in from work (read: free). Well, guess I\u0026rsquo;m not faxing it until tomorrow. Frick.\n- I got boggin\u0026rsquo; (toboggin) hair so as soon as I got to work, I took my UK boggin off and my hair was standing straight up. Had to wet it and comb it for 10 minutes in the bathroom to get it to lay down.\n* * *\nOn the bright side, I found out they made a mistake processing my raise from my promotion a few months back, so I get an extra $500 on my salary. And it\u0026rsquo;s retroactive. w00t!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/self-flagellation.../","summary":"\u003cp\u003e- I was so keyed-up I didn\u0026rsquo;t fall asleep until midnight.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- I LEFT MY FRICKIN MORTGAGE APP on the table instead of bringing it to work to fax it in. I am so upset by this. Had the darn thing done on Saturday night, but I waited until Monday so I could fax it in from work (read: free). Well, guess I\u0026rsquo;m not faxing it until tomorrow. Frick.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- I got boggin\u0026rsquo; (toboggin) hair so as soon as I got to work, I took my UK boggin off and my hair was standing straight up. Had to wet it and comb it for 10 minutes in the bathroom to get it to lay down.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Self flagellation..."},{"content":"House Shopping\u0026hellip;\nWhitney\u0026rsquo;s Account of our house shopping yesterday.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/house-shopping/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHouse Shopping\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://monkeysontheside.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_monkeysontheside_archive.html#111073934010069093\"\u003eWhitney\u0026rsquo;s Account\u003c/a\u003e of our house shopping yesterday.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"House Shopping"},{"content":"Reservoir Dogs is one very, very disturbing movie\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/reservoir-dogs/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105236/\"\u003eReservoir Dogs\u003c/a\u003e is one very, very disturbing movie\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6304490100.01._PE_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reservoir Dogs"},{"content":"As promised, pictorial of the Fire at my apartment complex\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs promised, pictorial of the \u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/OaksFire/OaksFire.html\"\u003eFire at my apartment complex\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/OaksFire/OaksFire-Images/2.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Article on the Apartment Fire\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArticle on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.wtvq.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WTVQ%2FMGArticle%2FTVQ_BasicArticle\u0026amp;c=MGArticle\u0026amp;cid=1031781475913\u0026amp;path=!news!localnews\"\u003eApartment Fire\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"This makes a week exactly since my last blog, and more like two since my last substantive update.\nI was sick last week until Friday, going totally ape whilst staring at the four walls in my rather lonely apartment. Work on Friday was a pure joy; I was freshened and eager, though I sounded like a megaphone stuck in a tin-can when I spoke.\nFriday was re-org day here on the Software-Development floor of LXK. My old manager, K, whom I respected is gone to her next tour of duty, replaced by the newly-promoted S, another woman. Instead of K\u0026rsquo;s even-temperedness, we now have S\u0026rsquo;s volatility. Combine that with her complete ignorance of my product, and we\u0026rsquo;ll see. I know one thing\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m sure she won\u0026rsquo;t be having monthly one-on-one meetings with her subordinates the way that K did.\nThe weekend was nice, as Whitney, Joey, and I went to the craft fair at the Fair/Expo center in Lousiville. Joey was bored to tears, and I wasn\u0026rsquo;t far behind, but hey, you need to do things for Mom every so often so I didn\u0026rsquo;t mind it. Sunday was perhaps the worst, as it was the first litmus test for my \u0026rsquo;no autocross in Cincy\u0026rsquo; resolution.\nPicture it: I\u0026rsquo;ve been highly stressed and cooped-up for a week. It\u0026rsquo;s 60 degrees with a light Southerly breeze. I\u0026rsquo;d gotten my new V710 race tires mounted and they were SITTING IN THE MINI. So, of course, I was inside, having a quiet lunch with the in-laws. It was nice, but that addicted part of me was screaming \u0026lsquo;WTF are you doing here, man?!\u0026rsquo;. I\u0026rsquo;ve read the forums accounting the events up there for the past week, the swagger my pal Scott has had for besting the rest of the H-Stock class by 5 seconds. Irksome.\nNow, there\u0026rsquo;ll be plenty of autocross this year, more than my budget and clutch can sustain, I\u0026rsquo;d wager, just between Louisville and Lexington. But MAN I have the fever\u0026hellip;\n* * *\nThere\u0026rsquo;s be some pics of this tonight, but what do I wake up to today? My apartment complex\u0026rsquo;s clubhouse is IN FLAMES! I heard this low buzzing sound outside my apartment\u0026ndash;turns out, it was the fire bell going off\u0026ndash;and when I went outside to go to work, there were 5 fire trucks, hoses everywhere, and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get out. Grand\u0026hellip; Anyway, pics to follow.\nLast, but not least, a shout-out to Dr. Bud, who apparently didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep with Miss Carrie Anne after last week\u0026rsquo;s update. His continuing saga of reconciliation with Miss Jolene. This week:\nBud examines the realities of marrying a woman 25 years his junior\nHis best friend has a sit-down breakfast with him and slaps him with reality\nWe end with Bud going back over to his house to confront Jolene herself\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis makes a week exactly since my last blog, and more like two since my last substantive update.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sick last week until Friday, going totally ape whilst staring at the four walls in my rather lonely apartment. Work on Friday was a pure joy; I was freshened and eager, though I sounded like a megaphone stuck in a tin-can when I spoke.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFriday was re-org day here on the Software-Development floor of LXK. My old manager, K, whom I respected is gone to her next tour of duty, replaced by the newly-promoted S, another woman. Instead of K\u0026rsquo;s even-temperedness, we now have S\u0026rsquo;s volatility. Combine that with her complete ignorance of my product, and we\u0026rsquo;ll see. I know one thing\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m sure she won\u0026rsquo;t be having monthly one-on-one meetings with her subordinates the way that K did.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Don\u0026rsquo;t ask me why, but I find the melodrama of Dr. Bud E. Bryan amazing.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s this middle aged-guy who has THREE women after him: Jolene (his wife), Nadine (his psycho ex), and Carrie Anne (the chiseled coed). To beat it all, he has the real details of his life in his column in a CAR MAGAZINE.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/dr.-bud-e.-bryan/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDon\u0026rsquo;t ask me why, but I find the melodrama of \u003ca href=\"http://www.autoextremist.com/page5.shtml#RoadKill\"\u003eDr. Bud E. Bryan\u003c/a\u003e amazing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s this middle aged-guy who has THREE women after him: Jolene (his wife), Nadine (his psycho ex), and Carrie Anne (the chiseled coed). To beat it all, he has the real details of his life in his column in a CAR MAGAZINE.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dr. Bud E. Bryan"},{"content":"Oh the joy of not having a jackhammer headache and a 103 degree fever!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/03/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOh the joy of not having a jackhammer headache and a 103 degree fever!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"I have the flu.\nI awoke Sunday feeling achy all over, then woozy as I dressed for church. After a nap, I rose feverish. Bella nursed me throughout the night and I\u0026rsquo;ve recuperated at home today.\nStill, my head is pounding, I have a low-grade fever and I\u0026rsquo;m sleepy all the time\u0026hellip;definitely looking forward to getting a flu shot next year.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI have the flu.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI awoke Sunday feeling achy all over, then woozy as I dressed for church. After a nap, I rose feverish. Bella nursed me throughout the night and I\u0026rsquo;ve recuperated at home today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, my head is pounding, I have a low-grade fever and I\u0026rsquo;m sleepy all the time\u0026hellip;definitely looking forward to getting a flu shot next year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"My taxes are filed. Yay :-)\nInstead of software, I used TurboTax on the Web, and I was very pleased with the results.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy taxes are filed. Yay :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInstead of software, I used TurboTax on the Web, and I was very pleased with the results.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH\nI\u0026rsquo;m team lead this week. It\u0026rsquo;s day two, and I\u0026rsquo;m already wanting to pull my hair out.\nWhat I need is someone who\u0026rsquo;s good on the server to whom I can delegate work. On the client side, I\u0026rsquo;m covered, but the server is a total disaster. I\u0026rsquo;m delegating like you wouldn\u0026rsquo;t believe, and I\u0026rsquo;m still utterly buried.\nHonestly, I can\u0026rsquo;t wait for some of these marketing drones and grandstanding managers to GO THE FRICK HOME so I can do some of the work I should\u0026rsquo;ve had done last Friday.\nWhat am I supposed to do? Yell at myself to work harder?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m team lead this week. It\u0026rsquo;s day two, and I\u0026rsquo;m already wanting to pull my hair out.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat I need is someone who\u0026rsquo;s good on the server to whom I can delegate work. On the client side, I\u0026rsquo;m covered, but the server is a total disaster. I\u0026rsquo;m delegating like you wouldn\u0026rsquo;t believe, and I\u0026rsquo;m still utterly buried.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHonestly, I can\u0026rsquo;t wait for some of these marketing drones and grandstanding managers to GO THE FRICK HOME so I can do some of the work I should\u0026rsquo;ve had done last Friday.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Mmmm\u0026hellip;.born in the Year of the Horse\nBella was born in the Year of the Sheep\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMmmm\u0026hellip;.born in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.new-year.co.uk/chinese/calendar/horse.htm\"\u003eYear of the Horse\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBella was born in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.new-year.co.uk/chinese/calendar/sheep.htm\"\u003eYear of the Sheep\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Just finished David Owen\u0026rsquo;s dense-yet-inspiring biography of Xerography and its inventor, Chester Carlson, entitled Copies in Seconds\nIn his first few chapters, Owen tries to imbue his fascination for the ordinary (to those of Generation X and afterwards) office copier. Frankly, his treatment of the development of copying is boring. I don\u0026rsquo;t care about scribes, Gutenburg, or Ditto machines. He spends inordinate prose on the distinction between \u0026ldquo;copying\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;duplication\u0026rdquo;, and why the idea of \u0026lsquo;copying\u0026rsquo; is so important.\nThe thing is, \u0026ldquo;copying\u0026rdquo; is dying. It became necessary because of the industrial world, but in the post-industrial world, everything is digital and the concept of \u0026ldquo;files\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;originals\u0026rdquo; holds less and less meaning. Still, Carlson\u0026rsquo;s invention underlies every copier and laser printer. He invented toner, and it\u0026rsquo;s LXK\u0026rsquo;s sale of toner that pays my salary, so I, at least, am suitably in awe.\nThe book comes into its own in the second part, once we\u0026rsquo;re through the treatise on printing and Carlson\u0026rsquo;s own hard-luck story. There are a few salient points:\nCarlson came-up with the concept of xerography (he called it electrophotography) independently. No one else was working on it, and no one else has developed a siginificantly different version of it since. Literally, without this man and his idea, plain-paper copiers and laser printers might not exist today.\nOnce Carlson convinced someone to develop his idea, after every other corporation turned him down, it took years to develop a working, automated copier. He presented the concepts to the Haloid (later \u0026lsquo;Xerox\u0026rsquo;) corporation in the early 1940\u0026rsquo;s, and the first coper, the Xerox 914 didn\u0026rsquo;t appear until 1960. The man defined persistence.\nOkay, I saved you from reading the book.\nStill, there were some awesome anecdotes and quotes. I\u0026rsquo;ll leave you with one:\nPress on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/review-copies-in-seconds/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust finished \u003ca href=\"http://www.simonsays.com/content/content.cfm?sid=33\u0026amp;pid=355425\"\u003eDavid Owen\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e dense-yet-inspiring biography of Xerography and its inventor, Chester Carlson, entitled \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743251172/\"\u003eCopies in Seconds\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.simonsays.com/assets/isbn/0743251172/C_0743251172.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn his first few chapters, Owen tries to imbue his fascination for the ordinary (to those of Generation X and afterwards) office copier. Frankly, his treatment of the development of copying is boring. I don\u0026rsquo;t care about scribes, Gutenburg, or Ditto machines. He spends inordinate prose on the distinction between \u0026ldquo;copying\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;duplication\u0026rdquo;, and why the idea of \u0026lsquo;copying\u0026rsquo; is so important.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Copies in Seconds"},{"content":"On NASCAR\nNASCAR\u0026rsquo;s brand of homogenized, low-tech racing is back for another season. Fields of 35-45 \u0026ldquo;athletes\u0026rdquo; will pilot tube-framed \u0026lsquo;Murican V-8s in 40 races from today through late November. Aside from a handful of visits to road-courses, all these races will be on ovals, ranging from the bullring half-mile of Bristol to the world\u0026rsquo;s fastest track, the 2.66 mile tri-oval at Talledega.\nNascar is at once Good-Ole-Boy, downhome charm and a corporate juggernaut that\u0026rsquo;s the secondmost lucrative sport behind football. Once confined to circuits in the Southeast, the series ranges from coast to cost, north to south. Whereas the man on the street 30 years ago might equate \u0026ldquo;car racing\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;Indy 500\u0026rdquo;, he now thinks \u0026ldquo;NASCAR\u0026rdquo;.\nThe big question is WHY? Why is the sport so popular? And what do I think about it?\nIn a word, it\u0026rsquo;s accessible: Much like baseball, NASCAR provides hooks for everyone from the casual fan (even the antagonist who \u0026ldquo;only watches for the wrecks\u0026rdquo;) to the total fanatic, who has his driver tatooed on his butt and subscribes to online updates from \u0026ldquo;his\u0026rdquo; team\u0026rsquo;s garage Blog. There are other parallels to baseball: The long season \u0026ldquo;frames\u0026rdquo; the productive year from the first inkling of spring to after the first frost, and the events themselves develop like a baseball game, with long stretches of tedium, punctuated by intense incidents. And, let\u0026rsquo;s face it, more people drive these days than play baseball.\nAs for my opinion: At its essence, NASCAR fields uninteresting cars that aren\u0026rsquo;t close to \u0026ldquo;stock\u0026rdquo; chasing their tails for two hours or more. Still yet, the drivers are real personalities, and they embrace their fans, unlike most series that either have no fan support (club racing, SCCA) or which actively disdain them (Formula 1). Fans ARE Nascar, so much so that the sport\u0026rsquo;s hijinks both on and off the track seem like Pro Wrestling. Only NASCAR\u0026rsquo;s obsession with \u0026ldquo;runnin\u0026rsquo; equal\u0026rdquo; keeps it near, but not over, the line between competition and scripted exhibition.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll watch a few of the marquee races, especially the roadcourses, but I don\u0026rsquo;t care much about the meat of the season at the cookie-cutter ovals.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/on-nascar/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOn NASCAR\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNASCAR\u0026rsquo;s brand of homogenized, low-tech racing is back for another season. Fields of 35-45 \u0026ldquo;athletes\u0026rdquo; will pilot tube-framed \u0026lsquo;Murican V-8s in 40 races from today through late November. Aside from a handful of visits to road-courses, all these races will be on ovals, ranging from the bullring half-mile of Bristol to the world\u0026rsquo;s fastest track, the 2.66 mile tri-oval at Talledega.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNascar is at once Good-Ole-Boy, downhome charm and a corporate juggernaut that\u0026rsquo;s the secondmost lucrative sport behind football. Once confined to circuits in the Southeast, the series ranges from coast to cost, north to south. Whereas the man on the street 30 years ago might equate \u0026ldquo;car racing\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;Indy 500\u0026rdquo;, he now thinks \u0026ldquo;NASCAR\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Nascar"},{"content":"Went to the farm machinery show today with Dad and Ceeb.\nI feel kinda crappy tonight. Headache and tingling on my face + sinuses.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/farm-machinery-show-2005/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWent to the farm machinery show today with Dad and Ceeb.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/FarmMachinery2005/FarmMachinery2005.html\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/FarmMachinery2005/FarmMachinery2005-Images/10.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI feel kinda crappy tonight. Headache and tingling on my face + sinuses.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Farm Machinery Show 2005"},{"content":"Ugh\u0026hellip;what a weird, up-and-down day. I\u0026rsquo;m currently on a very strong DOWN\u0026hellip;\n- Up at 7:00 when Dad calls. He re-confirms we\u0026rsquo;re going to the Farm Machinery show in Louisville tomorrow. Up\n- I have to go to work today Down\n- I take a vacation day. It\u0026rsquo;s nice outside, and I can go ring shopping and relax. Up\n- I realize just how dirty my apartment is Down\n- I clean it up and organize Up\n- I head out to the ring shop that Scott suggested. Up\n- While at the ring shop, Dave calls me and tells me they\u0026rsquo;re sending him to Luxemburg tomorrow and that they need me. Down\n- The ring shop only sells loose stones, and then gets them set. Up\n- They\u0026rsquo;re out of princess cut diamonds Down\n- As I\u0026rsquo;m pulling into the parking lot, I get a call from my beloved, and she\u0026rsquo;s very happy Up\n- She thinks I bought her two dozen roses. I hadn\u0026rsquo;t. Down\n- I get the work done in about an hour, calling Whitney as I leave. Up\n- She\u0026rsquo;s mad and disappointed I didn\u0026rsquo;t send her flowers. I\u0026rsquo;m disappointed that I didn\u0026rsquo;t send her flowers. I make an offhand remark. Hilarity ensues. Down\u0026hellip;WAY down.\nSo, my day is sucking so far, but it is beautiful outside. I have the weirdest inclination to drive to Florida or something, though I\u0026rsquo;m a little old for Spring Break.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/slice-of-life/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUgh\u0026hellip;what a weird, up-and-down day. I\u0026rsquo;m currently on a very strong DOWN\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Up at 7:00 when Dad calls. He re-confirms we\u0026rsquo;re going to the Farm Machinery show in Louisville tomorrow. \u003cem\u003eUp\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n- I have to go to work today \u003cem\u003eDown\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n- I take a vacation day. It\u0026rsquo;s nice outside, and I can go ring shopping and relax. \u003cem\u003eUp\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n- I realize just how dirty my apartment is \u003cem\u003eDown\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n- I clean it up and organize \u003cem\u003eUp\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n- I head out to the ring shop that Scott suggested. \u003cem\u003eUp\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n- While at the ring shop, Dave calls me and tells me they\u0026rsquo;re sending him to Luxemburg tomorrow and that they need me. \u003cem\u003eDown\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n- The ring shop only sells loose stones, and then gets them set. \u003cem\u003eUp\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n- They\u0026rsquo;re out of princess cut diamonds \u003cem\u003eDown\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n- As I\u0026rsquo;m pulling into the parking lot, I get a call from my beloved, and she\u0026rsquo;s very happy \u003cem\u003eUp\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n- She thinks I bought her two dozen roses. I hadn\u0026rsquo;t. \u003cem\u003eDown\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n- I get the work done in about an hour, calling Whitney as I leave. \u003cem\u003eUp\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n- She\u0026rsquo;s mad and disappointed I didn\u0026rsquo;t send her flowers. I\u0026rsquo;m disappointed that I didn\u0026rsquo;t send her flowers. I make an offhand remark. Hilarity ensues. \u003cem\u003eDown\u0026hellip;WAY down.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Slice of life"},{"content":"On order from Ken Towrey\u0026rsquo;s in Louisville, 4 Kumho V710 racing slicks:\nß\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/kumho-v710/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn order from Ken Towrey\u0026rsquo;s in Louisville, 4 Kumho V710 racing slicks:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.tirerack.com/images/tires/kumho/ku_ecsta_v710_ci2_l.jpg\"\u003eß\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kumho V710"},{"content":"Ahh, the delicious irony: The guy who started the GTO thread on the Car Lounge is going to have to get rid of his GTO\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAhh, the delicious irony: The guy who started the GTO thread on the Car Lounge is going to have to \u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net/zerothread?id=1835172\u0026amp;page=1\"\u003eget rid of his GTO\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Don\u0026rsquo;t know whether to label this tragedy or the successful pursuit of a Darwin Award.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDon\u0026rsquo;t know whether to label \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/16/extreme.skier.death.ap/index.html\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e tragedy or the successful pursuit of a Darwin Award.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"on the left is a TUNGSTEN CARBIDE wedding band. On the Right is a titanium band that weighs nothing. Seriously, thing feels like you\u0026rsquo;re wearing a piece of plastic.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eon the left is a TUNGSTEN CARBIDE wedding band. On the Right is a titanium band that weighs nothing. Seriously, thing feels like you\u0026rsquo;re wearing a piece of plastic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img211.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img211\u0026amp;image=davis_man.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img211.exs.cx/img211/6324/davis_man.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Check out the Valentine\u0026rsquo;s cake that Whitney made for me:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/valentine-cake/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCheck out the Valentine\u0026rsquo;s cake that Whitney made for me:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img211.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img211\u0026amp;image=vday_cake.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img211.exs.cx/img211/8228/vday_cake.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Valentine Cake"},{"content":"Just finished Mark Haddon\u0026rsquo;s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night.\nThe 217 page novel is about the world of an autistic English teenager named Christopher adept at math and intensely logical but unable to express emotion or understand humor. I found the tale riveting, and the last half of the book from its climax through the falling action of his journey to London to find his mother reinforces how scary modern life is.\nA quick read, with some cool math/logic puzzles inside to boot. :D The chapters are even numbered by prime #\u0026rsquo;s (2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23\u0026hellip;)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/review-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust finished Mark Haddon\u0026rsquo;s novel \u003ca href=\"http://mostlyfiction.com/contemp/haddon.htm\"\u003eThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://mostlyfiction.com/images/cover_large/cid.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 217 page novel is about the world of an autistic English teenager named Christopher adept at math and intensely logical but unable to express emotion or understand humor. I found the tale riveting, and the last half of the book from its climax through the falling action of his journey to London to find his mother reinforces how scary modern life is.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night"},{"content":"Currently listening to a book on tape of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, encapsulator of Victorian England, its middle class, and the plight of young, bored women looking to get married.\nReading, or rather, listening to this book, I\u0026rsquo;m reminded why the Romantic Movement of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, and Keats was so big: It was vital and alive. The rest of England is dead. These women\u0026ndash;LITERALLY!\u0026ndash;have nothing to do but sit and plot their marriages. Their families are rich enough to spare them hard labor, so there they are, twittering about to no good use.\nThe prose is treacly and verbose. Like Dickens\u0026rsquo;s serial novels, Austen\u0026rsquo;s plot is static, woven with words and dialogue but not real events. By Chapter 8, we\u0026rsquo;ve made it through one dancing party. It\u0026rsquo;s said that Austen read aloud her manuscripts to ensure that the words flowed well, and even if that\u0026rsquo;s apocryphal, I can believe it. Indeed, Austen shows us deft, econonomical passages every so often, such that I can believe the whole novel is a grand joke, satirizing how overblown Victorian diction was.\nAnyway, there are two satisfying characters emererging: Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth are both iconoclasts and headstrong. If they weren\u0026rsquo;t in the book, I\u0026rsquo;d have taken the CD\u0026rsquo;s back to the library already.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/pride-and-prejudice-review/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCurrently listening to a book on tape of \u003cem\u003ePride and Prejudice\u003c/em\u003e by \u003ca href=\"http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/janeinfo.html\"\u003eJane Austen\u003c/a\u003e, encapsulator of Victorian England, its middle class, and the plight of young, bored women looking to get married.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReading, or rather, \u003cem\u003elistening to\u003c/em\u003e this book, I\u0026rsquo;m reminded why the Romantic Movement of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, and Keats was so big: It was vital and alive. The rest of England is dead. These women\u0026ndash;LITERALLY!\u0026ndash;have nothing to do but sit and plot their marriages. Their families are rich enough to spare them hard labor, so there they are, twittering about to no good use.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pride and Prejudice Review"},{"content":"Just got through with Dashiell Hammett\u0026rsquo;s famous The Maltese Falcon, the prototypical and oft-imitated detective novel.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a quick read, at only 217 pages, with good characters, some murders and a little mystery.\nOverall, I didn\u0026rsquo;t like it\u0026hellip;long way to go for an elliptical story and characters I didn\u0026rsquo;t care about.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/the-maltese-falcon/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust got through with Dashiell Hammett\u0026rsquo;s famous \u003ca href=\"http://theedge.bostonherald.com/bookNews/view.bg?articleid=68260\"\u003eThe Maltese Falcon\u003c/a\u003e, the prototypical and oft-imitated detective novel.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a quick read, at only 217 pages, with good characters, some murders and a little mystery.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOverall, I didn\u0026rsquo;t like it\u0026hellip;long way to go for an elliptical story and characters I didn\u0026rsquo;t care about.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Maltese Falcon"},{"content":"Blog from within a useless Meeting:\nWe\u0026rsquo;re finding that one of our divisions is sort of eating the other one, just based upon merit and the overwhelming personality of its President. :-) I still wonder if I shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have taken a job over there, though I think they outsourced all their programmers years ago.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBlog from within a useless Meeting:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re finding that one of our divisions is sort of eating the other one, just based upon merit and the overwhelming personality of its President. :-) I still wonder if I shouldn\u0026rsquo;t have taken a job over there, though I think they outsourced all their programmers years ago.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Couple of conclusions J. and I came to today after reading Joel Spolsky\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Guide to Guerilla Interviewing\u0026rdquo;.\n1. We\u0026rsquo;ve got way too many of the \u0026ldquo;Get things done\u0026rdquo;/\u0026ldquo;Not smart\u0026rdquo; people. These are folks who treat code like disposable parts, hacking around without thinking. \u0026ldquo;Anything to make it work\u0026rdquo; is the mantra for these people. Compentent programmers spend most of their time fixing the sublte (and not too sublte) errors that come from these people.\n2. We have a few of the \u0026ldquo;Smart\u0026rdquo;/\u0026ldquo;Can\u0026rsquo;t get things done\u0026rdquo; people, and they\u0026rsquo;re magificent in their intellectual spendor, but infuriating to deal with on a project. I\u0026rsquo;m naturally this way, so I hold a soft spot for this type, but they *are* maddening to deal with on a constant basis.\n3. We don\u0026rsquo;t have any entry-level people coming up who can replace us, with one rather shining exception. The company isn\u0026rsquo;t hiring the type of smart-yet-inexperienced folks you need to have for continuity and true brilliance. Think of it like a baseball team with no minor-league farm teams\u0026ndash;the players at the top may be great right now, but where are you in 5 years? 10 years?\n4. We have no way of dealing with problems #1 and #2. We want only the sharpest, ablest people working with us so that they\u0026rsquo;re not a drain, and they\u0026rsquo;re effective, but yet neither of us wants to march into our Manager\u0026rsquo;s office and say \u0026ldquo;I want ____ fired\u0026rdquo;\nI think this is a problem for all companies, really, and one reason why outsourcing is so attractive: The outsourced company deals with this issue and they can be as ruthless as necessary. Or, if they\u0026rsquo;re too soft-hearted, they don\u0026rsquo;t meet their deadlines, and you fire the whole company and hire another outsourcing firm.\nThis is yet another area where Google seems to have an advantage: They hire only the brightest, grow them into some beneficial role, and repeat as necessary.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCouple of conclusions J. and I came to today after reading \u003ca href=\"http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html\"\u003eJoel Spolsky\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ldquo;Guide to Guerilla Interviewing\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. We\u0026rsquo;ve got way too many of the \u0026ldquo;Get things done\u0026rdquo;/\u0026ldquo;Not smart\u0026rdquo; people. These are folks who treat code like disposable parts, hacking around without thinking. \u0026ldquo;Anything to make it work\u0026rdquo; is the mantra for these people. Compentent programmers spend most of their time fixing the sublte (and not too sublte) errors that come from these people.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Giving you a snapshot of how overloaded a software engineer can become when he\u0026rsquo;s working for a hardware company:\nMy current projects/tasks/research items:\nOn my current product:\nsecurity:\nSupport for test tools for our next printer family that\u0026rsquo;s currently in test\nNew server function responsibilities\nUpdatest to a spec that\u0026rsquo;s 3 months out-of-date\nUnit tests that I haven\u0026rsquo;t written\nbug Reports: 7 outstanding (probably will get more)\nField issues: none (for now)\nGeneral technical leadership responsibilities: 30mins-2hrs / day\nMy new project:\nWork on a prototype (with 2 other guys)\nSetting-up a new build system for the project\nRepresent my team with several committee\u0026rsquo;s and working groups\nTrying to teach myself 3 new technologies\nI just took a second to write on my current responsibilities and it\u0026rsquo;s amazing. I feel like I\u0026rsquo;m floundering in the storm here.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/being-a-software-engineer-at-a-hardware-company/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGiving you a snapshot of how overloaded a software engineer can become when he\u0026rsquo;s working for a hardware company:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy current projects/tasks/research items:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn my current product:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003esecurity:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSupport for test tools for our next printer family that\u0026rsquo;s currently in test\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNew server function responsibilities\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUpdatest to a spec that\u0026rsquo;s 3 months out-of-date\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnit tests that I haven\u0026rsquo;t written\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ebug Reports: 7 outstanding (probably will get more)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eField issues: none (for now)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Being a Software Engineer at a Hardware Company"},{"content":"Preface: I\u0026rsquo;m not looking for baby names for any specific reason, but this is just COOL!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePreface: I\u0026rsquo;m not looking for baby names for any specific reason, but this is just \u003ca href=\"http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/\"\u003eCOOL!\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Ah, Google, king of this vast meritocracy called the Internet. Check out Google Maps everyone. I may never hit Mapquest again.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, Google, king of this vast meritocracy called the Internet. Check out \u003ca href=\"http://maps.google.com\"\u003eGoogle Maps\u003c/a\u003e everyone. I may never hit Mapquest again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Alert Alert Alert!\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re using FireFox to browse the web, please do the following to prevent a \u0026lsquo;phishing\u0026rsquo; vulnerability that could cause identity theft:\n1. type about:config into the navigation bar (the same place you\u0026rsquo;d type a URL)\n2. scroll down and find the key network.enableIDN\n3. If it says \u0026rsquo;true\u0026rsquo;, double click on that line and set it to \u0026lsquo;false\u0026rsquo;.\nThis tweak will protect you from getting redirected from a legitimate site to ones where your Identity could be stolen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlert Alert Alert!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;re using FireFox to browse the web, please do the following to prevent a \u0026lsquo;phishing\u0026rsquo; vulnerability that could cause identity theft:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. type \u003ccode\u003eabout:config\u003c/code\u003e into the navigation bar (the same place you\u0026rsquo;d type a URL)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. scroll down and find the key \u003ccode\u003enetwork.enableIDN\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3. If it says \u0026rsquo;true\u0026rsquo;, double click on that line and set it to \u0026lsquo;false\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis tweak will protect you from getting redirected from a legitimate site to ones where your Identity could be stolen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Pic of Wes during the race\u0026hellip;pretty Porsche :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePic of Wes during the race\u0026hellip;pretty Porsche :D\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Image Hosted by ImageShack.us\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img127.exs.cx/img127/1817/wesporsche2td.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Hats off to Wes Allen, of our local chapter of SCCA, competing today (and tomorrow!) in the grueling Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. Wes is running in the GT class in a Porsche GT3. Here\u0026rsquo;s his team listing:\nNumber\nClass\nTeam name\nDrivers\ncar type\nsponsors\n43\nGT\nOrison-Planet Earth Motorsports\nWes Allen, Lexington, KY; Brad Blum, Winter Park, FL; Eric Lux, Buffalo, NY; Manuel Soltero, San Juan, PR; Ron Zitza, Maitland, FL\nPorsche GT3 Cup\nLexair/ Rembrandt Charms/ Zotz Racing/ SGI\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/hats-off-to-wes-allen/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHats off to Wes Allen, of our local chapter of SCCA, competing today (and tomorrow!) in the grueling \u003ca href=\"http://www.daytona24hr.com/\"\u003eRolex 24 Hours of Daytona\u003c/a\u003e. Wes is running in the GT class in a Porsche GT3. Here\u0026rsquo;s his team listing:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNumber\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClass\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeam name\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDrivers\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ecar type\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003esponsors\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e43\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGT\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOrison-Planet Earth Motorsports\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWes Allen, Lexington, KY; Brad Blum, Winter Park, FL; Eric Lux, Buffalo, NY; Manuel Soltero, San Juan, PR; Ron Zitza, Maitland, FL\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hats off to Wes Allen"},{"content":"Amid getting my MINI its 45k mile service, I\u0026rsquo;m driving a BMW X3 as a loaner\nIt\u0026rsquo;s AWFUL!\nThe ride is brittle and uncertain. The thing is so stiff-legged that Ohio roads are a real pain. It\u0026rsquo;s not roomy at all, and this base, base, base model lacks even cruise control.\nI left my cell phone at home, so I was forced to drive all the way back to G\u0026rsquo;town so I can know when the Pup is done with its overhaul.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAmid getting my MINI its 45k mile service, I\u0026rsquo;m driving a BMW X3 as a loaner\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.hs-elektronik.com/bilder/bmw-x3-30i.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s AWFUL!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe ride is brittle and uncertain. The thing is so stiff-legged that Ohio roads are a real pain. It\u0026rsquo;s not roomy at all, and this base, base, base model lacks even cruise control.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI left my cell phone at home, so I was forced to drive all the way back to G\u0026rsquo;town so I can know when the Pup is done with its overhaul.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Sighted as my GTO goes by:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSighted as my GTO goes by:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.crownvic.net/ubbthreads/user_uploads/6379.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"How to know you\u0026rsquo;ve been using Firefox for too long: You\u0026rsquo;re in a regular windows application (say, Lotus Notes) and you hit Ctrl-T for a new tab.\n* * *\nAnother momentous day ahead for me: This is my last day when I can fix the problems for our testing before I get hauled in front of the V.P. of our division for disciplinary action. I\u0026rsquo;ve rewritten the crappy code of TWO OTHER groups to try and avoid this situation, but I\u0026rsquo;m dealing with people who don\u0026rsquo;t understand Java all that well. At least, I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hire them, based upon the crappy code I\u0026rsquo;ve seen.\nDriving the GTO today\u0026hellip;had a blast charging down the interstate, feeling that infectous exhaust burble, the stick trembling in my hand as I shifted between 5th and 6th.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHow to know you\u0026rsquo;ve been using \u003ca href=\"http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/\"\u003eFirefox\u003c/a\u003e for too long: You\u0026rsquo;re in a regular windows application (say, Lotus Notes) and you hit Ctrl-T for a new tab.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnother momentous day ahead for me: This is my last day when I can fix the problems for our testing before I get hauled in front of the V.P. of our division for disciplinary action. I\u0026rsquo;ve rewritten the crappy code of TWO OTHER groups to try and avoid this situation, but I\u0026rsquo;m dealing with people who don\u0026rsquo;t understand Java all that well. At least, I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hire them, based upon the crappy code I\u0026rsquo;ve seen.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Ah, the memories:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, the memories:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cfhf.net/lyrics/3-2-1.htm\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.cfhf.net/lyrics/images/321.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"I thought this was highly appropriate, given that I watched TRON the other day.\nTron is kinda like the Matrix, and it has a sort of retro-chic to it, but there\u0026rsquo;s very little story there to hang all the SFX on.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/tron/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI thought this was highly appropriate, given that I watched \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/\"\u003eTRON\u003c/a\u003e the other day.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ft/2005/ft050202.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTron is kinda like the Matrix, and it has a sort of retro-chic to it, but there\u0026rsquo;s very little story there to hang all the SFX on.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"TRON"},{"content":"A pal of mine once remarked that I was addicted to spending money, that money burns a hole in my pocket. I denied this for years, but I am here today to tell you she was right: I\u0026rsquo;ve cut out credit cards from my spending cold turkey, and I now have the shakes. That\u0026rsquo;s right, withdrawl.\nThe first month on this restricted living on a budget is now over, and I\u0026rsquo;ve just sent off my last big CC payment. (Netflix bills via CC, so I\u0026rsquo;ll still be getting a Discover bill monthly, but that\u0026rsquo;s no big deal). I don\u0026rsquo;t even carry my CC\u0026rsquo;s with me; they\u0026rsquo;re at home in a drawer.\nSo, today, I\u0026rsquo;m crusing the internet during lunch and I think\u0026hellip;hmm, almost time to buy some race tires for the upcoming autocross season. This launches me through a bonanza of sites designed for impulse purchases: First, my cellphone contract is up next month, so I visited Cingular, Nextel, and T-Mobile looking for other plans and phones. All the plans and phones are $45-$60/month (YIKE!), so I head over to Vonage, gazing longingly at their Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) stuff, where you can make unlimited calls from home for $25/month. Then I\u0026rsquo;m back over to TireRack looking at other tire solutions for my MINI (drat Whitney\u0026rsquo;s uncle George, he has me looking @ Michelins!).\nI can\u0026rsquo;t count the number of little piddly things I\u0026rsquo;ve bought with a credit card on a whim that weren\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;expensive\u0026rdquo;, but weren\u0026rsquo;t cheap\u0026ndash;a gadget for $70, a set of $40 wiper blades (yeah, that was \u0026ldquo;Paying the stupid tax\u0026rdquo;), things off ebay, books off amazon I could just as easily get from the library. I DO love my Ken Onion Chive knife, but it was a definite impulse buy. Likewise, I love my GTO, but that\u0026rsquo;s the biggest impulse purchase I\u0026rsquo;ll ever make!\nAnyway, the point: I\u0026rsquo;m off impulse purchases. If I need to buy something online with a CC, I have to get the thing out of the drawer AT HOME to do it. My bank account, my kids\u0026rsquo; college funds, and my personal sanity will thank me for it, I\u0026rsquo;m sure, but right now it\u0026rsquo;s PAINFUL! :-D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/spending-money/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA pal of mine once remarked that I was addicted to spending money, that money burns a hole in my pocket. I denied this for years, but I am here today to tell you she was right: I\u0026rsquo;ve cut out credit cards from my spending cold turkey, and I now have the shakes. That\u0026rsquo;s right, withdrawl.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first month on this restricted living on a budget is now over, and I\u0026rsquo;ve just sent off my last big CC payment. (Netflix bills via CC, so I\u0026rsquo;ll still be getting a Discover bill monthly, but that\u0026rsquo;s no big deal). I don\u0026rsquo;t even carry my CC\u0026rsquo;s with me; they\u0026rsquo;re at home in a drawer.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Spending Money"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve never thought of Stephen King as terse; anyone who\u0026rsquo;s read \u0026ldquo;Needful Things\u0026rdquo; can tell you that. He recommends brevity and conciseness to all writers in this piece on how to be a writer.\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t written any fiction myself, aside from that one history term paper that was \u0026ldquo;historical fiction\u0026rdquo; written over 36 hours of Hell, in over 10 years. I wrote a 12 page short story called \u0026ldquo;Friends of the Air\u0026rdquo; that I thought was quite goood\u0026ndash;good enough for me to get a Distinguished on my 8th grade portfolio. The story centered around two friends who were flying home for Christmas from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati in a Piper Cherokee when they encouter a winter Thunderstorm over Altoona, PA. The story culminates with them on short final to a country airstrip, ice covering their wings, the throttle firewalled just to keep their ice-cube Piper from falling out of the sky. I liked it\u0026ndash;classic buddy story, gripping, and action-packed.\n* * *\nI wonder at Fiction writers these days, how the business keeps going. Ultimately, they have to sell writing to a country with no imagination that doesn\u0026rsquo;t like to read. The pulp fiction market, with its westerns, sci-fi, and Harlequins plays well in the heartland, but who\u0026rsquo;s READING all these trifling fiction books I see in the bookstore?\nGranted, I\u0026rsquo;m reading more non-fiction books these days, including self-help, technical, history, and biographies, so maybe I\u0026rsquo;m out-of-touch.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve never thought of Stephen King as terse; anyone who\u0026rsquo;s read \u0026ldquo;Needful Things\u0026rdquo; can tell you that. He recommends brevity and conciseness to all writers in \u003ca href=\"http://www.icestormcity.com/rumble/king.html\"\u003ethis piece\u003c/a\u003e on how to be a writer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI haven\u0026rsquo;t written any fiction myself, aside from that one history term paper that was \u0026ldquo;historical fiction\u0026rdquo; written over 36 hours of Hell, in over 10 years. I wrote a 12 page short story called \u0026ldquo;Friends of the Air\u0026rdquo; that I thought was quite goood\u0026ndash;good enough for me to get a Distinguished on my 8th grade portfolio. The story centered around two friends who were flying home for Christmas from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati in a Piper Cherokee when they encouter a winter Thunderstorm over Altoona, PA. The story culminates with them on short final to a country airstrip, ice covering their wings, the throttle firewalled just to keep their ice-cube Piper from falling out of the sky. I liked it\u0026ndash;classic buddy story, gripping, and action-packed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Just for the record, I like it when her arse twitches\n* * *\nToday has been a rather good day at work: A very productive meeting that I lead this morning that\u0026rsquo;s provoked discussion among my co-workers, and lots of talking.\nSoftware Engineers\u0026rsquo; days fall into two categories: Days where you talk versus those that are silent. Lots of meetings and hallway talk means a verbal day and some slack. Crunch time and a dealine yield quiet, closed doors, and clanging keys. Oddly, I can take either one.\nIt seems the only way I can get any slack around here is to create my own. My nascent team that I\u0026rsquo;m bucking to lead are eager, but swamped with other work. Management hasn\u0026rsquo;t been very decisive, and we\u0026rsquo;re left in limbo, but I\u0026rsquo;m EXCITED about work again.\nI know it\u0026rsquo;s quite a switch from my apocalyptic blog of a few weeks back, but I\u0026rsquo;m happy. I work 12 hour days and I\u0026rsquo;m happy. I feel tired and I\u0026rsquo;m happy. It\u0026rsquo;s weird.\nGod loves me, and I\u0026rsquo;m feeling loveable. My old minister used to say, \u0026ldquo;In order to be blessed, you\u0026rsquo;ve gotta be blessable,\u0026rdquo; and I\u0026rsquo;m taking steps to be that way. I feel things are going forward in my life, both personally and professionally. But overall, just feeling God\u0026rsquo;s love (or accepting it) is a big step for me. Smiling. Greeting people honestly. Feeling I have nothing to hide. Oh, it\u0026rsquo;s wonderful!\nA large part of my attitude change is due to this book: Every Man, God\u0026rsquo;s Man. I started reading this book the very day after my low-point last weekend, when I felt my life was going nowhere and Nihilism was creeping back into my thoughts.\nI wish I could say the book told me I was hugely important and that my life would have a massive influence on the future of mankind. It didn\u0026rsquo;t. Rather, it talks about understanding your place as a man in service to God. How to understand you\u0026rsquo;re not perfect, how to deal with it, and how to not give Satan a threshold in your life.\nLooking at it objectively, nothing has changed in my life\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m still working hard and I still live a long way from those I love. But my attitude about it has changed: I feel blessed for what I have. Amen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/02/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust for the record, \u003ca href=\"http://monkeysontheside.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_monkeysontheside_archive.html#110726966796536671\"\u003eI like it when her arse twitches\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday has been a rather good day at work: A very productive meeting that I lead this morning that\u0026rsquo;s provoked discussion among my co-workers, and lots of talking.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSoftware Engineers\u0026rsquo; days fall into two categories: Days where you talk versus those that are silent. Lots of meetings and hallway talk means a verbal day and some slack. Crunch time and a dealine yield quiet, closed doors, and clanging keys. Oddly, I can take either one.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"\nNerd factor 5, ENGAGE!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.wxplotter.com/ft_nq.php?im\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"I am nerdier than 70% of all people. Are you nerdier? Click here to find out!\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.wxplotter.com/images/ft/nq.php?val=9711\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNerd factor 5, ENGAGE!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"A Long Way from Town\nGood, soul-clearing rant from Mr. Sheffel responding to a Time article on dependent post-adolescence.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve ruminated on this before, but it bears repeating: There needs to be a middle tier in this country between minimum-wage-earners and the lucky 5% who make $100k or more. We need honest work in trades, factories, farms, and mines for people who aren\u0026rsquo;t cut out to go to college, but who want to contribute to society.\n:-) Read his rant. It\u0026rsquo;s awesome!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/followout-a-long-way-from-town/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://joshsheffel.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_joshsheffel_archive.html#110671617138334985\"\u003eA Long Way from Town\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGood, soul-clearing rant from Mr. Sheffel responding to a \u003cem\u003eTime\u003c/em\u003e article on dependent post-adolescence.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve ruminated on this before, but it bears repeating: There needs to be a middle tier in this country between minimum-wage-earners and the lucky 5% who make $100k or more. We need honest work in trades, factories, farms, and mines for people who aren\u0026rsquo;t cut out to go to college, but who want to contribute to society.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Followout: A Long Way from Town"},{"content":"Amid a very boring status meeting, my co-worker S, from Ukraine broke out the following when someone said, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s just that close to being done\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Russian proverb says, \u0026lsquo;Your elbow is near, but you can\u0026rsquo;t bite it\u0026rsquo;.\u0026rdquo;\n:-) Worth going to that worthless meeting just for that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAmid a very boring status meeting, my co-worker S, from Ukraine broke out the following when someone said, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s just that close to being done\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Russian proverb says, \u0026lsquo;Your elbow is near, but you can\u0026rsquo;t bite it\u0026rsquo;.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) Worth going to that worthless meeting just for that.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Congratulations to Stacey and Charlie Davidson on the birth of their girl, Autumn Makenzie.\nShe was born on January 18th, 8lbs 11oz (!) and 21.5 in long.\nGraduated with Stacey and Charlie from BHS.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/congratulations/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCongratulations to Stacey and Charlie Davidson on the birth of their girl, Autumn Makenzie.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe was born on January 18th, \u003cem\u003e8lbs 11oz\u003c/em\u003e (!) and 21.5 in long.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img194.exs.cx/img194/5118/baby212621wa.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGraduated with Stacey and Charlie from BHS.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Congratulations"},{"content":"Couple of movies this weekend:\nFast Times at Ridgemont High\nThe 70\u0026rsquo;s were over, Reagan was restoring hope, and AIDS hadn\u0026rsquo;t broken on the American consciousness. Ahhh\u0026hellip;1982, the year Cameron Crowe\u0026rsquo;s masterpiece, Fast Times at Ridgemont High premiered. Up-and-coming cast members included Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates (before \u0026lsquo;Gremlins\u0026rsquo;), Forest Whitaker, Anthony Edwards as a Stoner (!), and a cameo by Nic Cage.\nA highly watchable, if inconsequential, piece of fluff, I LOVE THIS MOVIE, if only for the reminder of 1980\u0026rsquo;s style.\nGarden State\nIt\u0026rsquo;s hard to see Zach Braff as anyone but J.D. from television\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Scrubs\u0026rdquo;, but he plays against type here as the numb Andrew Largemen in this late-twentysomething lament, which he also wrote and directed.\nIn its 102 minutes, the movie follows bit-part actor Andrew Largemen, an lapsed Jew from New Jersey as he returns home for the first time in 9 years to bury his mother, a depressed parapalegic. During this interruption to his meaningless, La-La Land existence, he finds himself reconnecting with family, old (loser) friends, and himself.\nThe crux of this movie is a giant, two-word question: \u0026ldquo;So what?\u0026rdquo; At each point in the film, the plot moves forward, but upon reflection, the audience is left saying \u0026ldquo;So what?\u0026rdquo;. Largeman\u0026rsquo;s mother dies. He hates his overmedicated, numb existence. He has loser friends. He falls in love for a compulsive liar (Natalie Portman, an annoying delight). The surrounding cast play stark, undeveloped antagonists, befitting an indie film. People swear inappropriately, again befitting Indie status.\nDesite its hollowness, I found the film worthy because of its nuances. As the story arcs from L.A. to Jersey, we not only understand Largeman\u0026rsquo;s numbness, we experience it\u0026ndash;It seems the first 15 minutes of the film are deliberately unengaging and distant. We don\u0026rsquo;t care about this man; neither does he care about himself or others. Later, that changes\u0026ndash;he comes to understand his father and love (or pity) others. He becomes a participant.\nIn the end, the movie encourages introspection: How numb am I to life? Does life have a point, and is it okay if it doesn\u0026rsquo;t?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/movie-reviews/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCouple of movies this weekend:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0083929/\"\u003eFast Times at Ridgemont High\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 70\u0026rsquo;s were over, Reagan was restoring hope, and AIDS hadn\u0026rsquo;t broken on the American consciousness. Ahhh\u0026hellip;1982, the year Cameron Crowe\u0026rsquo;s masterpiece, \u003cem\u003eFast Times at Ridgemont High\u003c/em\u003e premiered. Up-and-coming cast members included Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates (before \u0026lsquo;Gremlins\u0026rsquo;), Forest Whitaker, Anthony Edwards as a Stoner (!), and a cameo by Nic Cage.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA highly watchable, if inconsequential, piece of fluff, I LOVE THIS MOVIE, if only for the reminder of 1980\u0026rsquo;s style.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Movie Reviews"},{"content":"I can\u0026rsquo;t sleep. I\u0026rsquo;ve tossed and turned for nearly two hours, but for some reason I just can\u0026rsquo;t quiet my mind enough to fall asleep. Plus I have a headache. Plus, I have to be up in 5 hoursto go to my meaningless meeting so a bunch of Indians can piss and moan because I didn\u0026rsquo;t get to answer their emails last week while I was killing myself to reach an arbitrary deadline set by a lame-duck team lead.\nI halfway think they should require us all to write blogs about what we\u0026rsquo;re actually doing, what actually works with our software and what doesn\u0026rsquo;t, and what we really thing. There is an INCREDIBLE amount of out-and-out lying that goes on in the corporate world, and the pallative vent of blogging can at least lend some perspective.\nSo, the story about why I\u0026rsquo;m losing sleep over something so trivial as work:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a year-long slog through a design and development of this new software thingamabobber. It\u0026rsquo;s your classic designed-by-committee, ivory-tower thing, full of good intentions, but probably worse than useless. It moved from being a research topic to a full-blown \u0026ldquo;business-gotta-have-it\u0026rdquo; thing before we even had a prototype. Egos got bruised. Politics became heated.\nEssentially, my current insomnia and foreboding is my pennance for not killing the thing. I had the power and political capital to do it, but the groupthink that invades the corporate world invaded me to, and so I let it slide on pure \u0026lsquo;status quo\u0026rsquo;.\nSo, after a year of weekly meetings, not much progress, grandstanding, etc., we\u0026rsquo;re down to implementing the thing, and it\u0026rsquo;s a death march within a death march. In addition to what would be a crushing load from my normal project, I\u0026rsquo;m now the guy who gets to \u0026lsquo;make it work\u0026rsquo; on this white elephant.\nI hate it. It\u0026rsquo;s soured me on my current project, and it\u0026rsquo;s damn near soured me on my whole profession. From the underlings who are insubortinate, to the team leads who lead inconsitently, to the hands-off managers who just couldn\u0026rsquo;t give a shit, I hate the lot of them. I get to deal with this same crap from now until I die. This does not make me happy.\n* * *\nI tried my best throughout this long weekend (I consider any weekend where I don\u0026rsquo;t work a long weekend) to forget about work. But it\u0026rsquo;s nagging at me constantly, reminding me of responsibilities unmet, expectations unfulfilled, and just how much aggrivation work is going to be for the forseeable future.\nHonestly, I just wanna bail and make a fresh start somewhere else. It scares the hell out of me, but I\u0026rsquo;ve realized every project I do will be a retread of this (the last 4 have been!), just because of the culture where I work. There are monetary rewards, but nothing is worth working the way I have for the past two weeks: Little sleep, no exercise, poor diet, irritability. Good Lord, I wanted to kill my girlfriend for \u0026lsquo;camping out\u0026rsquo; on a parking space at Meijer today, for Heaven\u0026rsquo;s Sake!\nSo anyway, my innate desire to make things is waning. At this point, I\u0026rsquo;d settle for a decent job I could make a living at, that I could do very well from 8-5pm and then have time for my family. I dont\u0026rsquo; want my kids not knowing their father. Also, i\u0026rsquo;d like to live long enough to have kids.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/cannot-sleep/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI can\u0026rsquo;t sleep. I\u0026rsquo;ve tossed and turned for nearly two hours, but for some reason I just can\u0026rsquo;t quiet my mind enough to fall asleep. Plus I have a headache. Plus, I have to be up in 5 hoursto go to my meaningless meeting so a bunch of Indians can piss and moan because I didn\u0026rsquo;t get to answer their emails last week while I was killing myself to reach an arbitrary deadline set by a lame-duck team lead.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cannot Sleep"},{"content":"Most addictive game in the world:\nSnood\nDownload and play at your peril!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/snood/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMost addictive game in the world:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.snood.com/\"\u003eSnood\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDownload and play at your peril!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Snood"},{"content":"The Dante\u0026rsquo;s Inferno Test has sent you to Purgatory!\nHere is how you matched up against all the levels:\nLevel\nScore\nPurgatory (Repenting Believers)\nVery High\nLevel 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)\nLow\nLevel 2 (Lustful)\nVery High\nLevel 3 (Gluttonous)\nModerate\nLevel 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)\nLow\nLevel 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)\nLow\nLevel 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)\nVery Low\nLevel 7 (Violent)\nModerate\nLevel 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)\nLow\nLevel 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)\nLow\nTake the Dante\u0026rsquo;s Inferno Hell Test\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Dante\u0026rsquo;s Inferno Test has sent you to \u003cem\u003ePurgatory!\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nHere is how you matched up against all the levels:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLevel\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eScore\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html#0\"\u003ePurgatory\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Repenting Believers)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVery High\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html#1\"\u003eLevel 1 - Limbo\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Virtuous Non-Believers)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLow\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html#2\"\u003eLevel 2\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Lustful)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVery High\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html#3\"\u003eLevel 3\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Gluttonous)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eModerate\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html#4\"\u003eLevel 4\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Prodigal and Avaricious)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLow\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html#5\"\u003eLevel 5\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Wrathful and Gloomy)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLow\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html#6\"\u003eLevel 6 - The City of Dis\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Heretics)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVery Low\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html#7\"\u003eLevel 7\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Violent)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eModerate\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html#8\"\u003eLevel 8- the Malebolge\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"I miss hockey.\nI really miss being able to watch hockey LIVE, when the Thoroughblades were in Lexington.\nAmerica responded to the NHL lockout with a collective shrugh of the shoulders, but I CARE, darn it! Hockey is a wonderful sport: Grace, power, speed, action, and violence in one package.\nSadly, it\u0026rsquo;s awful on Television, and unlike basketball or football, you don\u0026rsquo;t grow-up playing pickup games of hockey in Florida, Texas, or California.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/missing-hockey/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI miss hockey.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI really miss being able to watch hockey LIVE, when the Thoroughblades were in Lexington.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.nightfall.net/freelancephotography/redwhite91803/page1/fullimages/DSC_0018_f.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmerica responded to the NHL lockout with a collective shrugh of the shoulders, but I CARE, darn it! Hockey is a wonderful sport: Grace, power, speed, action, and violence in one package.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSadly, it\u0026rsquo;s awful on Television, and unlike basketball or football, you don\u0026rsquo;t grow-up playing pickup games of hockey in Florida, Texas, or California.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Missing Hockey"},{"content":"How to know you\u0026rsquo;ve been working some very long days:\nEmail from manager: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll be out for Jury Duty the next two days\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nYou: [Homer Simpson voice] \u0026ldquo;mmmmmmmm\u0026hellip;..Jury Duty\u0026rdquo;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHow to know you\u0026rsquo;ve been working some very long days:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEmail from manager: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll be out for Jury Duty the next two days\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou: [Homer Simpson voice] \u0026ldquo;mmmmmmmm\u0026hellip;..Jury Duty\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"The first Hummer I\u0026rsquo;ve ever liked:\nThe H3. Not too massive and it\u0026rsquo;s well proportioned.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/hummer-h3/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe first Hummer I\u0026rsquo;ve ever liked:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.autoextremist.com/Detroit%20Autoshow%202005/rantpics/h3.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe H3. Not too massive and it\u0026rsquo;s well proportioned.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hummer H3"},{"content":"For two days, my project has beaten me. Never three days in a row!\n/wishful thinking.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor two days, my project has beaten me. Never three days in a row!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e/wishful thinking.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"GEEZE it\u0026rsquo;s cold.\nI have plastic over both my windows, and towels under every door, and still yet my apartment is chilly. Spring is how many months away?\nThe Pup\u0026rsquo;s hating her consignment outside this winter: The driver\u0026rsquo;s side door\u0026rsquo;s creaky, the engine takes forever to warm-up, and that pop-crackle-pop rattle under the engine (heat shield?) is back. Still, it\u0026rsquo;s a superior car to drive in the winter\u0026ndash;climate control, heated seats + mirrors, and snow tires.\n* * *\nRandom thought that\u0026rsquo;s been running through my mind for a Ph.D. thesis in Sociology: The internet has revolutionized the way people learn and share information, but so far no one has attempted to quantify that. Two areas I can give examples are programming and automobiles.\nProgrammers used to look-up code examples in dusty, out-of-date manuals and could only share information with one another via regular mail, at conferences, or in trade journals. Today, the next generation of programmers downloads Open Source packages of code, ready-to-use. Sticky coding or development issues are only a Google search away from solution.\nThe internet changed automobile sales, purchasing, ownership, and maintenance, as well. Before, the best way to learn more about your car\u0026rsquo;s operation and maintenance was by joining a local or national club, with dues and monthly or quartely meetings. Today, I can join any number of automotive chats or forums to learn more on my car. For instance, I had step-by-step illustrated instructions on changning my MINI\u0026rsquo;s oil in minutes.\nIn essence, what you have today is a sort of \u0026ldquo;hive learning\u0026rdquo; model, where each \u0026ldquo;newbie\u0026rdquo; moves toward being a professor in his or her specialty, able to teach from afar, connected only by avatar, username, and the internet itself.\nMy thesis would be this hive model is helping people learn specialized topics rapidly and thoroughly. The real devil would be quantifying just how much. I have no experience in Sociology, not even a college \u0026ldquo;Intro to\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; class, so I\u0026rsquo;m out of my depth. Does sound interesting, though.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGEEZE it\u0026rsquo;s cold.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have plastic over both my windows, and towels under every door, and still yet my apartment is chilly. Spring is how many months away?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Pup\u0026rsquo;s hating her consignment outside this winter: The driver\u0026rsquo;s side door\u0026rsquo;s creaky, the engine takes forever to warm-up, and that pop-crackle-pop rattle under the engine (heat shield?) is back. Still, it\u0026rsquo;s a superior car to drive in the winter\u0026ndash;climate control, heated seats + mirrors, and snow tires.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"CNN.com - Journalist: U.S. planning for possible�attack on Iran - Jan 16, 2005: \u0026ldquo;Hersh said Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld view Bush\u0026rsquo;s re-election as \u0026lsquo;a mandate to continue the war on terrorism,\u0026rsquo; despite problems with the U.S.-led war in Iraq.\u0026rdquo;\nYikes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/16/hersh.iran/index.html\"\u003eCNN.com - Journalist: U.S. planning for possible�attack on Iran - Jan 16, 2005\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;Hersh said Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld view Bush\u0026rsquo;s re-election as \u0026lsquo;a mandate to continue the war on terrorism,\u0026rsquo; despite problems with the U.S.-led war in Iraq.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYikes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Ah, such a relaxing weekend! The world freezes outside, and a gentle snow greeted me on my way to church this morning, consigning Thor to the garage in favor of the Pup\u0026rsquo;s winter tires and FWD traction.\nWhitney came down this weekend and we had great times at Ruby Tuesday\u0026rsquo;s, going to watch \u0026ldquo;The Aviator\u0026rdquo;, and then watching \u0026ldquo;King Arthur\u0026rdquo; off her Netflix queue. :-) Went bowling today and cracked 100, which is decent for me.\nMovie reviews:\nThe Aviator In Scorsese\u0026rsquo;s long homage to mad genius billionaire Howard Hughes, we see Leonardo DiCaprio star as Hughes taking us through periods of hubris, height, and humiliation on his way to a showdown with Juan Trippe and (it would seem) the entire United States government. (Really, what\u0026rsquo;s $56 million between friends?)\nThe movie\u0026rsquo;s uneven. The planes shimmer, wondrous CGI so real you can practially smell their exhaust. In his quest for detail and completeness, Scorsese misses that some parts of the film are dull. Do we care about his jailbait concubines? In particular, scenes depicting Hughes\u0026rsquo;s madness drag-on. After 5 minutes of a long-fingernailed, naked Leo babbling and urinating into milk bottles, you just want to scream \u0026ldquo;We get it! He\u0026rsquo;s nuts!\u0026rdquo;\nStill, Hughes\u0026rsquo;s relationship with Katherine Hepburn shines, blazingly human and tender amid the cold aluminum monocoque of his planes. Their relationship would make a great 90 minute movie, and both DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett\u0026rsquo;s Hepburn are sympathetic neurotics, giving career-defining performances.\nIn the end the measure of a true epic is whether you\u0026rsquo;d recommend to your friends, \u0026ldquo;You HAVE to see this in the theatre\u0026rdquo;. My recommendation: Wait for video.\n* * *\nKing Arthur This would be a great, ground-breaking movie, EXCEPT for battle scenes straight from Gladiator and Braveheart, combined with visuals straight out of Peter Jackson\u0026rsquo;s Lord of the Rings trilogy. The movie imagines how Arthur, fabled son of Uthur Pendragon could\u0026rsquo;ve risen from the waning Roman garrison to lead native resistence of the Germanic Angle/Saxon/Jute invasion.\nUnlike The Aviator the world we\u0026rsquo;re given here is comfortably small, centering around a man and his cadre of 6 indentured-servant knights, blinded by idealism and religion. We\u0026rsquo;re given time to learn the characters, laugh with them, and appreciate their motivation.\nOverall, I liked it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, such a relaxing weekend! The world freezes outside, and a gentle snow greeted me on my way to church this morning, consigning Thor to the garage in favor of the Pup\u0026rsquo;s winter tires and FWD traction.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney came down this weekend and we had great times at Ruby Tuesday\u0026rsquo;s, going to watch \u0026ldquo;The Aviator\u0026rdquo;, and then watching \u0026ldquo;King Arthur\u0026rdquo; off her Netflix queue. :-) Went bowling today and cracked 100, which is decent for me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Alice and Bill.com - Independent Tech\nBecause EVERYONE needs an underwater mp3 player.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.aliceandbill.com/2005/01/underwater-mp3-player.html\"\u003eAlice and Bill.com - Independent Tech\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://techdigestuk.typepad.com/tech_digest/images/Oregon-thumb.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBecause EVERYONE needs an underwater mp3 player.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"God be with you L-Squared. You\u0026rsquo;ll be in my prayers each day. Good luck in your fight to stay with us in God\u0026rsquo;s Eden, and know that your attitude edifies my heart and brings a tear to my eye.\nPeace be with you.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/l-squared/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGod be with you \u003ca href=\"http://mrembo.blogspot.com/\"\u003eL-Squared\u003c/a\u003e. You\u0026rsquo;ll be in my prayers each day. Good luck in your fight to stay with us in God\u0026rsquo;s Eden, and know that your attitude edifies my heart and brings a tear to my eye.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePeace be with you.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"L-Squared"},{"content":"Great New Yorker this week:\nDan Baum writes a provocative article, \u0026ldquo;Battle Lessons\u0026rdquo;, about how Captains and Lieutenants are using internet forums to exchange information about how to do their jobs. Just like my own addiction to Slashdot and The Car Lounge, warriors in the field check these sites daily for tips and community. The sites: CompanyCommand and PlatoonLeader.\nAdam Gopnik reviews two new Leonardo da Vinci books, examining the ups and downs of Leo\u0026rsquo;s life, and revealing, once again how extraordinary and (at times) maddening the man was.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/battle-lessons/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGreat \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com\"\u003eNew Yorker\u003c/a\u003e this week:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDan Baum writes a provocative article, \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050117fa_fact\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Battle Lessons\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e, about how Captains and Lieutenants are using internet forums to exchange information about how to do their jobs. Just like my own addiction to \u003ca href=\"http://www.slashdot.org\"\u003eSlashdot\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://forums.thecarlounge.net\"\u003eThe Car Lounge\u003c/a\u003e, warriors in the field check these sites daily for tips and community. The sites: \u003ca href=\"http://CompanyCommand.com\"\u003eCompanyCommand\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://PlatoonLeader.org\"\u003ePlatoonLeader\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdam Gopnik reviews \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/?050117crbo_books\"\u003etwo new Leonardo da Vinci books\u003c/a\u003e, examining the ups and downs of Leo\u0026rsquo;s life, and revealing, once again how extraordinary and (at times) maddening the man was.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Battle Lessons"},{"content":"Oh man\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m calling it right now: Apple will sell a billion Mac mini\u0026rsquo;s\nThing is 6.5\u0026quot;x6.5\u0026quot;x2\u0026quot;\u0026hellip;Makes so much sense it\u0026rsquo;s not even fair: Finally, an affordable mac that you can use any keyboard or monitor you have lying around. Finally a competitor to the PC.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOh man\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m calling it right now: Apple will sell a billion \u003ca href=\"http://www.apple.com/macmini/\"\u003eMac mini\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.apple.com/macmini/images/indextop20050111.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThing is 6.5\u0026quot;x6.5\u0026quot;x2\u0026quot;\u0026hellip;Makes so much sense it\u0026rsquo;s not even fair: Finally, an affordable mac that you can use any keyboard or monitor you have lying around. Finally a competitor to the PC.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Well, I\u0026rsquo;m one week into Giving Up Coffee and I\u0026rsquo;m doing great except for one thing: The Smell.\nThe heavenly smell of someone\u0026rsquo;s cup of fresh-brewed, freshly-ground, single source beans. Black coffee, with all the nuances of taste and flavor explodes inside my brain\u0026ndash;the aroma and earthy tones, the notes of bitterness and clarity. It\u0026rsquo;s like the old bugs-bunny cartoons where the girl\u0026rsquo;s perfume would tease the hapless fop\u0026rsquo;s nose and drag him back to her mistress.\nYes, the smell gets me. But, my body likes me drinking more water and less pure poison.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/giving-up-coffee-1-week-in/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, I\u0026rsquo;m one week into \u003ca href=\"http://my.webmd.com/content/article/94/103004.htm?z=1728_00000_1000_nb_02\"\u003eGiving Up Coffee\u003c/a\u003e and I\u0026rsquo;m doing great except for one thing: The Smell.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe heavenly smell of someone\u0026rsquo;s cup of fresh-brewed, freshly-ground, single source beans. Black coffee, with all the nuances of taste and flavor explodes inside my brain\u0026ndash;the aroma and earthy tones, the notes of bitterness and clarity. It\u0026rsquo;s like the old bugs-bunny cartoons where the girl\u0026rsquo;s perfume would tease the hapless fop\u0026rsquo;s nose and drag him back to her mistress.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Giving up coffee, 1 week in"},{"content":"Ahh, Mondays, the days I get up at 5 am, zombie-around for 2 hours, rush to the office in time to be 5 minutes late to my Monday Video Conference\u0026hellip;\nSome random thoughts:\nMy theory o\u0026rsquo; the day: You can tell how close a software development firm is to crunch time by the state of its snack machine. Full snack machines imply workers who aren\u0026rsquo;t snacking, thus ones not in a hurry. These lucky hackers come to work after a good breakfast, take time for lunch out (or brownbag), and leave in time to eat dinner elsewhere.\nAn empty snack machine reveals the department crunched for time, with programmers consuming raw, sugary snacks like Pop Tarts, Zingers, and *gasp* Honey Buns. They\u0026rsquo;re staying late, working into the wee hours to concoct our next killer, free (!) software product.\nOur machine had only one package of Pop Tarts left, which is a sure sign of things ramping-up.\nBrad Pitt wanted kids, and Jennifer Aniston didn\u0026rsquo;t; that\u0026rsquo;s my take on the whole Brad/Jen split. These two seemed like a normal, committed couple, though Pitt strikes me as a genuine, likeable guy. My money is on Jen causing this whole mess.\nOr maybe she watched Troy, and couldn\u0026rsquo;t stand the shame. Or maybe he watched any of her movies except The Good Girl. Honestly, though, seems like they should ammend Hollywood wedding vows to be, \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;Til Death or 7 years or cellulite or it\u0026rsquo;s-just-not-working-out-but-we-wanna-be-friends do you part.\u0026rdquo;\nOn Marriage So why do so many marriages fail? Two factors (from a secular point of view): Miscommunication and Missed Expectations. Miscommunication arises because people won\u0026rsquo;t seek to understand their spouse. Expectations are too high, in that our society promises fulfillment and happiness 24 hrs / day.\nFrom what I\u0026rsquo;ve seen, simply talking things out, remaining committed, and expecting highs and lows works. As was told to me, love is not an emotion. Rather, love is a choice you make every day, a binding sent by God to weave people together with a bond unbreakable by the tears in the fabric of life.\nProbably the greatest lesson I learned last year was to ALLOW YOUR PARTNER TO BE UPSET. Never rob someone of her right to be mad, forcing them to effect a mask of calm\u0026ndash;She will resent you for it. If it becomes a pattern, she\u0026rsquo;ll wear the mask always, never lettting you see her true emotions, creating a wall to true communication and understand. As heart-rending as it is to see someone you love mad at you, you MUST allow it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAhh, Mondays, the days I get up at 5 am, zombie-around for 2 hours, rush to the office in time to be 5 minutes late to my Monday Video Conference\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome random thoughts:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy theory o\u0026rsquo; the day: You can tell how close a software development firm is to crunch time by the state of its snack machine. Full snack machines imply workers who aren\u0026rsquo;t snacking, thus ones not in a hurry. These lucky hackers come to work after a good breakfast, take time for lunch out (or brownbag), and leave in time to eat dinner elsewhere.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Few pics from the 2004 Awards banquet\nDavid Patrick\nMy 2nd place tropy:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/2004-awards-banquet/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFew pics from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ckrscca.org/AwardsBanquet2004.htm\"\u003e2004 Awards banquet\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDavid Patrick\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg alt=\"Image Hosted by\\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eImageShack.us\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img104.exs.cx/img104/5035/davidpatrick9qx.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy 2nd place tropy:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg alt=\"Image Hosted by\\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eImageShack.us\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img104.exs.cx/img104/5879/mytrophy6tj.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2004 Awards Banquet"},{"content":"From left, Chris Brown, Bill Randall, and Joe Guillory\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom left, Chris Brown, Bill Randall, and Joe Guillory\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Image Hosted by\\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eImageShack.us\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img104.exs.cx/img104/9118/billchrisandjoe9ha.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"A shout-out to my mom, the illustrious Dottie, who sent me this in response to my tongue in cheek blog entry below:\nWrite what you are feeling! Is that not what a blog is all about? Love ya, mom!\nAnd I always *will* write what I want.\nDidn\u0026rsquo;t realize my tongue-in-cheek post about Bill\u0026rsquo;s criticism of all the \u0026ldquo;car crap\u0026rdquo; on my blog would cause such an uproar.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/mom-encouraging-me/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA shout-out to my mom, the illustrious Dottie, who sent me this in response to my tongue in cheek blog entry below:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cpre tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\u003ccode\u003e\nWrite what you are feeling!  Is that not what a blog is all about?\n\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/pre\u003e\u003cp\u003eLove ya, mom!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I always *will* write what I want.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDidn\u0026rsquo;t realize my tongue-in-cheek post about Bill\u0026rsquo;s criticism of all the \u0026ldquo;car crap\u0026rdquo; on my blog would cause such an uproar.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mom Encouraging Me"},{"content":"Report from some of my faithful readers:\nBill and his Mom are both tired of reading the tripe that currently passes for deep thought in my blog. They\u0026rsquo;re tired of car-based topics, ramblings about pop-culture that are of no significance, and other topics not so funny as konichiwaffle.\nHenceforth, my blog shall be devoid of such drivel.\n\u0026hellip;most of the time.\n[AMENDMENT] Bill is just tired of the car stuff. The other stuff can remain :-D\n* * *\nFurthermore, Bill reported to me today that I read way too much into those postcards he sent me from Japan and Thailand.\n[AMENDMENT] Bill reported that my report, above, makes no sense. The people responsible have been sacked.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/responding-to-bill-randall/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eReport from some of my faithful readers:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBill and his Mom are both tired of reading the tripe that currently passes for deep thought in my blog. They\u0026rsquo;re tired of car-based topics, ramblings about pop-culture that are of no significance, and other topics not so funny as konichiwaffle.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHenceforth, my blog shall be devoid of such drivel.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;most of the time.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[AMENDMENT] Bill is just tired of the car stuff. The other stuff can remain :-D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Responding to Bill Randall"},{"content":"Odd experience today:\nOne of my coworkers walked into my office and said, \u0026ldquo;Harold, are you keeping your MINI?\u0026rdquo; Faced with selling his Subaru Impreza wagon to a friend in Virginia, W came in and asked me if I was interested in selling my MINI to him.\n:-) I told him I was not. Financially, it\u0026rsquo;d probably be smart if I downshifted to having only one car, but I love both my cars too much.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOdd experience today:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of my coworkers walked into my office and said, \u0026ldquo;Harold, are you keeping your MINI?\u0026rdquo; Faced with selling his Subaru Impreza wagon to a friend in Virginia, W came in and asked me if I was interested in selling my MINI to him.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) I told him I was not. Financially, it\u0026rsquo;d probably be smart if I downshifted to having only one car, but I love both my cars too much.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Now presenting,The Rotunda, a collective work of William Sanford Randall (Bill-san) and Robert Camp.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow presenting,\u003ca href=\"http://therotunda.blogspot.com/\"\u003eThe Rotunda\u003c/a\u003e, a collective work of William Sanford Randall (Bill-san) and Robert Camp.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"For all those of you who watched the Halftime show at the Orange Bowl, join me now in saying: TRAIN WRECK.\nKelly Clarkson\u0026rsquo;s mike wasn\u0026rsquo;t on.\nAshlee Simpson was 1/4 second off her backing vocal.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2005/01/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor all those of you who watched the Halftime show at the Orange Bowl, join me now in saying: TRAIN WRECK.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKelly Clarkson\u0026rsquo;s mike wasn\u0026rsquo;t on.\u003cbr\u003e\nAshlee Simpson was 1/4 second off her backing vocal.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Lots of randomness today:\nSomething irks me about \u0026ldquo;The Western Whitehouse,\u0026rdquo; George Bush\u0026rsquo;s ranch in Crawford, Texas. The man\u0026rsquo;s the leader of the free world and commander of the most powerful army the world has ever known, but he\u0026rsquo;s still AN ELECTED OFFICIAL. We the people pay his salary, and he has a nice place to live near that\u0026rsquo;s in proximity to the rest of the government\u0026hellip;the ACTUAL whitehouse.\n(Pic taken at the aforementioned WWW:)\nIt just struck me last night how haughty this man is that he could, by fiat, designate HIS OWN HOUSE as the adjunct seat of the American executive Branch. Is it too much to ask a guy to do his job in the traditional way?\nConsider: Phantom of the Opera (the movie version). Visually lush, the movie delights the eyes, especially the stunning transition from B\u0026amp;W to color as the chandelier resurrects itself and arises to the heavens. Unfortunately, Phantom falls flat, as none of these people can actually SING! How do you have an \u0026ldquo;Opera\u0026rdquo; themed musical with people who can\u0026rsquo;t SING?!\nFurthermore, there are several serious gaffes and goofs in the movie: In the first scene in Phantom\u0026rsquo;s lair, you can see the shadow of the camera pass across Phantom\u0026rsquo;s face during a panned close-up shot. The actress playing Christine has visible fillings in her teeth, not something you\u0026rsquo;d see in the 1870\u0026rsquo;s.\nThere are moments of unintended humor: The whole dream/reality sequence when phantom takes Christine down to his lair the first time looks like a bad 1980\u0026rsquo;s rock video: A boat obviously on a track, arms holding candelabras that are just gold-painted people\u0026rsquo;s arms, lit candles arising from underwater (!). I was giggling uncontrollably by the end of the sequence.\nMinnie Driver is an unexpected delight, stealing several scenes as she hams-up her role as aging diva. Wish she could lip synch better, though.\nRead an interesting article on MSN about what the \u0026ldquo;unofficial\u0026rdquo; office dress code. Here at LXK software I can sum it up in two words: Blue Jeans. Wear anything but blue jeans you cease to be a worker and become a ladder-climber bucking for management. Funny, though, I see some first-line managers wearing jeans too. Seems like jeans are a \u0026ldquo;brake\u0026rdquo; on your career: If you\u0026rsquo;re happy where you are, and don\u0026rsquo;t want to go to the next level (management, middle-management, etc.), put on some jeans.\nThese days, I\u0026rsquo;m wearing jeans quite a bit. There was the time when I wore slacks everyday, but the current quagmire of my project has me in jeans. Nothing says acquiescence quite like denim\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/phantom-of-the-opera-movie/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLots of randomness today:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething irks me about \u0026ldquo;The Western Whitehouse,\u0026rdquo; George Bush\u0026rsquo;s ranch in Crawford, Texas. The man\u0026rsquo;s the leader of the free world and commander of the most powerful army the world has ever known, but he\u0026rsquo;s still AN ELECTED OFFICIAL. We the people pay his salary, and he has a nice place to live near that\u0026rsquo;s in proximity to the rest of the government\u0026hellip;the ACTUAL whitehouse.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Pic taken at the aforementioned WWW:)\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2004/US/12/29/bush.quake/story.bush.pool.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phantom of the Opera (Movie)"},{"content":"\nAhh yes, this is what my GTO looks like in Australia.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.hsv.com.au/cars/vz/wallpapers/gtocoupe_1024.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAhh yes, this is what my GTO looks like in Australia.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Check out this snazzy bluetooth headset Whitney got me for Christmas:\nWorks really well so far\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m talking to Whitney, and my phone is across the room, plugged into its charger.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCheck out this snazzy bluetooth headset Whitney got me for Christmas:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://img80.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img80\u0026amp;image=coolchristmasgift4kp.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://img80.exs.cx/img80/4498/coolchristmasgift4kp.th.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWorks really well so far\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m talking to Whitney, and my phone is across the room, plugged into its charger.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Gotta love the internet\u0026hellip;\nLocation of every manned spacecraft from the USA\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGotta love the internet\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.live.com/misc/CapsuleLocations.html\"\u003eLocation of every manned spacecraft from the USA\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Requiem for a Gladiator:\nReggie,\nAmbassador\nFather\nMinister\nCompetitor\nMan\nYou shall be missed, #92. God be with you.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/rip-reggie-white/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRequiem for a Gladiator:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReggie,\u003cbr\u003e\nAmbassador\u003cbr\u003e\nFather\u003cbr\u003e\nMinister\u003cbr\u003e\nCompetitor\u003cbr\u003e\nMan\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou shall be missed, #92. God be with you.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i.a.cnn.net/si/2004/writers/peter_king/12/26/king.white/p1_122604_white_getty.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RIP Reggie White"},{"content":"Images of my Christmas 2004\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eImages of my \u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/christmas2004/christmas2004.html\"\u003eChristmas 2004\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/christmas2004/christmas2004-Images/16.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"The GTO\u0026rsquo;s freshly washed and put away, the MINI\u0026rsquo;s loaded with winter clothes and shod with Dunlop snow tires, and I\u0026rsquo;ve padded my midsection with fruitcake.\nWinter, do your worst!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe GTO\u0026rsquo;s freshly washed and put away, the MINI\u0026rsquo;s loaded with winter clothes and shod with Dunlop snow tires, and I\u0026rsquo;ve padded my midsection with fruitcake.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWinter, do your worst!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Geeze, it\u0026rsquo;s cold out there this morning\u0026hellip;7 deg F on the MINI thermometer.\nDriving the Pup after a weekend in the GTO is a study in contrasts: The clutch effort in a MINI is non-existent, making it a much better friend in dense traffic, and the much-maligned British Midlands 5-speed is like silk compared to the 6-speed Tremec in the GTO. And it\u0026rsquo;s SO easy to blip the throttle for a perfect heel-and-toe downshift in a MINI.\nThe Pup\u0026rsquo;s 1000 lbs lighter than the GTO, but it feels even more than that. And, gotta love those heated seats!\nOne caveat: Going from a 6-speed to a 5-speed can be a problem. All the way right and down is 6th gear in the GTO. It\u0026rsquo;s REVERSE in the MINI. Not something you want to find-out going 45 mph :-(\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/mini-vs-gto/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGeeze, it\u0026rsquo;s cold out there this morning\u0026hellip;7 deg F on the MINI thermometer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDriving the Pup after a weekend in the GTO is a study in contrasts: The clutch effort in a MINI is non-existent, making it a much better friend in dense traffic, and the much-maligned British Midlands 5-speed is like silk compared to the 6-speed Tremec in the GTO. And it\u0026rsquo;s SO easy to blip the throttle for a perfect heel-and-toe downshift in a MINI.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MINI vs GTO"},{"content":"Finally some pics of the New GTO, salt encrusted though it was after my travels this weekend.\nWent down to Jackson to do some computer work for the library, and to show-off the new car. It was a magnificent ride down, and only a little scary during the snow bursts we saw today on the way back.\nThe car already has over 900 miles on the odometer, and it\u0026rsquo;s averaging around 20mpg on the highway on 87-octane gas.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/new-2004-gto/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFinally some pics of the \u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/GTO/GTO.html\"\u003eNew GTO\u003c/a\u003e, salt encrusted though it was after my travels this weekend.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/GTO/GTO-Images/2.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWent down to Jackson to do some computer work for the library, and to show-off the new car. It was a magnificent ride down, and only a little scary during the snow bursts we saw today on the way back.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe car already has over 900 miles on the odometer, and it\u0026rsquo;s averaging around 20mpg on the highway on 87-octane gas.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New 2004 GTO"},{"content":":-) Here\u0026rsquo;s the Vortex Thread that got me to buy the GTO.\n3 guys (maybe 4) got GTOs out of the deal, but Gateway, the thread originator, didn\u0026rsquo;t pull the trigger.\nLots of good GTO pics in the thread. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/gto-thread-on-vwvortex/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e:-) Here\u0026rsquo;s the \u003ca href=\"http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=1726132\"\u003eVortex Thread\u003c/a\u003e that got me to buy the GTO.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3 guys (maybe 4) got GTOs out of the deal, but Gateway, the thread originator, didn\u0026rsquo;t pull the trigger.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLots of good GTO pics in the thread. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"GTO thread on VWVortex"},{"content":"Serenity NOW!\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo;\nOkay, when you\u0026rsquo;re going on vacation there are certain things you don\u0026rsquo;t do:\n-- don\u0026rsquo;t break the build. This is the prime directive, because if you\u0026rsquo;re gone, you can\u0026rsquo;t fix it.\n-- don\u0026rsquo;t lock half the libraries in the project just so you know no one (Harold!) can change them on you. This is the \u0026ldquo;this code is mine damnit\u0026rdquo; syndrome.\nI\u0026rsquo;m hung-out-to-dry today, and I don\u0026rsquo;t know whether to laugh or cry. My parter on this project is out until Monday, and she screwed-up our library system royally. The only workable version of our component is on her system, and I have no way to get to it other than calling her cellphone and asking her for her system password. She didn\u0026rsquo;t check-it-in to our code library, so I can\u0026rsquo;t do any of the work assigned to me.\nYike.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/serenity-now/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSerenity NOW!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, when you\u0026rsquo;re going on vacation there are certain things you don\u0026rsquo;t do:\u003cbr\u003e\n-- don\u0026rsquo;t break the build. This is the prime directive, because if you\u0026rsquo;re gone, you can\u0026rsquo;t fix it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-- don\u0026rsquo;t lock half the libraries in the project just so you know no one (Harold!) can change them on you. This is the \u0026ldquo;this code is mine damnit\u0026rdquo; syndrome.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m hung-out-to-dry today, and I don\u0026rsquo;t know whether to laugh or cry. My parter on this project is out until Monday, and she screwed-up our library system royally. The only workable version of our component is on her system, and I have no way to get to it other than calling her cellphone and asking her for her system password. She didn\u0026rsquo;t check-it-in to our code library, so I can\u0026rsquo;t do any of the work assigned to me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Serenity NOW"},{"content":"Learned something on my way to South Lexington to pick up my office-mate Patrick: Don\u0026rsquo;t try to ease into the throttle while your shifting the GTO. Clutch-in, shift, and STAY THE FREAK AWAY FROM THE THROTTLE until after you\u0026rsquo;re in the next gear.\nI had the poor car (still searching for a nickname\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;Goat\u0026rdquo; is the traditional name for a GTO, and Big Blue is Robin\u0026rsquo;s car\u0026rsquo;s name\u0026hellip;we\u0026rsquo;ll see what pans-out) bucking like a bronco in traffic just shifting through 1-2-3. Once I stayed away from the throttle all driveline lash ceased.\n* * *\nToday\u0026rsquo;s the day of the yearly Holiday potluck for my area. Everyone brings a dish and we all pig-out from 11-1. Usually some good ethnic food, thanks to all our Chinese, Filipino, Indian, and Japanese workers. They get to sample my ultimate taste of Kentucky\u0026ndash;Maker\u0026rsquo;s Mark bourbon brownies, made with a new recipie Whitney found on the Marker\u0026rsquo;s Mark website.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/driving-a-gto-in-traffic/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLearned something on my way to South Lexington to pick up my office-mate Patrick: Don\u0026rsquo;t try to ease into the throttle while your shifting the GTO. Clutch-in, shift, and STAY THE FREAK AWAY FROM THE THROTTLE until after you\u0026rsquo;re in the next gear.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had the poor car (still searching for a nickname\u0026hellip;\u0026ldquo;Goat\u0026rdquo; is the traditional name for a GTO, and Big Blue is Robin\u0026rsquo;s car\u0026rsquo;s name\u0026hellip;we\u0026rsquo;ll see what pans-out) bucking like a bronco in traffic just shifting through 1-2-3. Once I stayed away from the throttle all driveline lash ceased.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Driving a GTO in traffic"},{"content":"What can I say? I found a 2004 GTO for a steal this morning at 9:30, and by 12, I had signed the papers, traded-off my Chevy Silverado, and powered down the road in a Kentucky-Blue Pontiac that could take-on anyone.\nThe seats are amazingly comfortable, the 350hp LS2 is both smooth and menacing, and the transmission is chunky and satisfying. The car feels brutish and blunt\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s all force and no apologies. No wussy cylinder deactivation\u0026hellip;if you keep your foot in it, this thing\u0026rsquo;s good for 158mph and 6mpg\nThe car stickered at $33k, but there was a red-tag sticker on the doorjam that had it at $24,990, which was lower than my target price from last night, even before I started to haggle. Why can car-buying be like this all the time? How much does the darn thing COST?\nSeriously, I took one look at the color of the car, and fell in love\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s a metallic blue color that\u0026rsquo;s just like Kentucky blue. The test drive was lengthy and representative\u0026ndash;the car drives small, and has so much thrust available under your right foot in any gear you feel confident. It\u0026rsquo;s a different feel from my MINI, certainly. The Pup feels like it can go anywhere, but it\u0026rsquo;s unable to out-accelerate anything, so you must pick your way through traffic.\nGot back to the dealership giggling at myself. The price was nearly $8k off MSRP without me even having to haggle, and the dealership seemed ready to move. No need for false bravado. I informed my salesman that I wanted to see a deal, and we headed in from the 20-degree temperatures.\nNow, the only melancholy part of this whole story is what I used for down-payment. I traded-in Big Red, the truck my dad gave me back in May, the super-invisible mobile that I tool around Jackson and Eastern Kentucky like a ghost. Seriously, there anyone in a truck is just like everyone else.\nI liked that truck a great deal, especially for the amazing generosity and love it represented from my Dad. All things considered, though, I\u0026rsquo;m more comfortable with the driving dynamics of cars, and now I have two really kick-ass machines:\nDaily commute, around town, autocross: The Pup\nLong highway trips, special events (drag racing?), carrying 4 adults: The GTO\n* * *\nI can\u0026rsquo;t tell you how effortless the GTO is on the interstate. Notch the shifter in 6th, dropping the rpms to 1700 at 75mph and cruise, all the while getting 25mpg. Hills disappear, and traffic is a mere toe nudge from separation.\nLest you think it\u0026rsquo;s perfect, there are some downsides here:\nTo Americanize the Australian Holden Monaro, they had to move the gas tank into the trunk, cutting to trunk space to a miniscule 7 cubic feet. My Nissan had 10, and my MINI with the seats folded has 17. Those 4 adults better pack light\nWeight. This car\u0026rsquo;s a linebacker, not a wide receiver. At 3800lbs, it outweighs the Vette by almost half-a-ton.\nMissing \u0026ldquo;nice things\u0026rdquo;: No OnStar, No sunroof (not even as an option), weak stereo, no heated seats/mirrors\nQuirky rear-seat mechanism: You have to fold the seat forward, then wait an eternity for the seat electric motor to move the seat forward for access. The rear seats themselves are good-sized (best if you\u0026rsquo;re under 6 feet), but getting back there is for the narrow of hip\nAll-in-all, it\u0026rsquo;s a back-to-basics muscle-car, a last-gasp remnant of the second age of performance cars (1994-2004), before oil prices, environmental reponsibility, or the end-of-civilization has us all driving low-powered hybrids.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/buying-a-2004-gto/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat can I say? I found a 2004 GTO for a steal this morning at 9:30, and by 12, I had signed the papers, traded-off my Chevy Silverado, and powered down the road in a Kentucky-Blue Pontiac that could take-on anyone.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe seats are amazingly comfortable, the 350hp LS2 is both smooth and menacing, and the transmission is chunky and satisfying. The car feels brutish and blunt\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s all force and no apologies. No wussy cylinder deactivation\u0026hellip;if you keep your foot in it, this thing\u0026rsquo;s good for 158mph and 6mpg\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Buying a 2004 GTO"},{"content":"Why OH WHY do I read The \u0026lsquo;Tex? I mean, all it does is give me car fever, something fierce\u0026hellip;\nSo, here\u0026rsquo;s the deal\u0026hellip;Pontiac brought the GTO back to America for 2004, and priced them right out of the market at $31k. This is roughly the same price as a Chrysler 300C.\nPics:\nGTO:\n300C:\nAnyway, for $32k, I\u0026rsquo;m buying the Chrysler, no question.\n\u0026hellip;but the plot thickens\u0026hellip;\nAfter the inital hype died, Pontiac couldn\u0026rsquo;t give away the GTO. Styling was somewhat bland, and the 6-speed got panned for being vague, but the essentials were there: 350hp V-8 engine, manual tranny, independent rear suspension, and room for 4 people. GM\u0026rsquo;s stepping up to the plate, adding some \u0026ldquo;visual excitement\u0026rdquo; to the styling, and plopping-in the 400hp v-8 from the Z06 corvette\n\u0026hellip;which leaves a problem\u0026hellip;what to do with the 2004 models languishing on dealer lots. GM has slapped $5500 of rebates on the vehicle, and combined with an invoice price of $29k for a manual tranny GTO and you can get one for about $25000.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a pretty good deal for a powerful, V-8, RWD car that\u0026rsquo;s not a ford mustang :-)\nAnd it just so happens, it\u0026rsquo;s the same price as that Mini Cooper \u0026lsquo;S\u0026rsquo; I priced-out on Sunday afternoon.\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo;\nUnfortunately, it\u0026rsquo;d be an awful autocross car, at 3700 lbs. The dealership in Paris has a Kentucky blue one with the manual\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m tempted to see if they want to deal. Driving my MINI long-distance w/people is painful, and I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be giving up much in mileage. The GTO is rated @ 29mpg highway with that ultra-tall 6th gear.\nInsurance is probably a killer, though.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/vwvortex/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhy OH WHY do I read \u003ca href=\"http://www.vwvortex.com\"\u003eThe \u0026lsquo;Tex\u003c/a\u003e? I mean, all it does is give me car fever, something fierce\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, here\u0026rsquo;s the deal\u0026hellip;Pontiac brought the GTO back to America for 2004, and priced them right out of the market at $31k. This is roughly the same price as a Chrysler 300C.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePics:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGTO:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com//pictures/VEHICLE/2004/Pontiac/100369148/028169-E.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e300C:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com//pictures/VEHICLE/2005/Chrysler/100378299/032878-E.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, for $32k, I\u0026rsquo;m buying the Chrysler, no question.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;but the plot thickens\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter the inital hype died, Pontiac couldn\u0026rsquo;t give away the GTO. Styling was somewhat bland, and the 6-speed got panned for being vague, but the essentials were there: 350hp V-8 engine, manual tranny, independent rear suspension, and room for 4 people. GM\u0026rsquo;s stepping up to the plate, adding some \u0026ldquo;visual excitement\u0026rdquo; to the styling, and plopping-in the 400hp v-8 from the Z06 corvette\u003c/p\u003e","title":"VWVortex"},{"content":"I hate our firmware guys\nI hate our firmware guys\nI hate our firmware guys\nI hate our firmware guys\nI hate our firmware guys\nI hate our firmware guys\nI\u0026rsquo;m not letting this ruin my day or anything (it\u0026rsquo;s almost over, come hell or high water), but things like this get on my nerves: Firmware and us agreed upon the behavior of our protocol 2 MONTHS AGO, and now it comes-out that both sides misunderstood the requirements.\nSo do they have to change? \u0026ldquo;Well, we can go ask our manager for permission to bail you guys out, but you guys do it because it\u0026rsquo;s easier for you.\u0026rdquo; They don\u0026rsquo;t have to change, because the lot of them is going on vacation tomorrow until after the 1st of the year.\nFrigging Code Cowboys.\n[end rant]\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI hate our firmware guys\u003cbr\u003e\nI hate our firmware guys\u003cbr\u003e\nI hate our firmware guys\u003cbr\u003e\nI hate our firmware guys\u003cbr\u003e\nI hate our firmware guys\u003cbr\u003e\nI hate our firmware guys\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not letting this ruin my day or anything (it\u0026rsquo;s almost over, come hell or high water), but things like this get on my nerves: Firmware and us agreed upon the behavior of our protocol 2 MONTHS AGO, and now it comes-out that both sides misunderstood the requirements.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"\nPics from the MINI Christmas part last night:\nPics\nWe arrived 45 mins late to the party with 8 MINIs there, total. Brad and Raecarol Ennis hosted the party in their pretty house in an affluent neighborhood. Most of the partygoers were families, and all the kids loved Brad\u0026rsquo;s downstairs full of toys.\nThe only bad part of the night is it REALLY has me wanting a MINI Cooper S, especially after hearing that the new \u0026lsquo;Hyper Blue\u0026rsquo; color is just like the the old Indi-Blue. Priced-one-out, and it\u0026rsquo;d be $24k, which would be about $10k over what I could get for my MINI. \u0026raquo;Sigh\u0026laquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://jubatus.home.insightbb.com/images/MiniChristmasCake.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePics from the MINI Christmas part last night:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://jubatus.home.insightbb.com/MiniChristmas.html\"\u003ePics\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe arrived 45 mins late to the party with 8 MINIs there, total. Brad and Raecarol Ennis hosted the party in their pretty house in an affluent neighborhood. Most of the partygoers were families, and all the kids loved Brad\u0026rsquo;s downstairs full of toys.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe only bad part of the night is it REALLY has me wanting a MINI Cooper S, especially after hearing that the new \u0026lsquo;Hyper Blue\u0026rsquo; color is just like the the old Indi-Blue. Priced-one-out, and it\u0026rsquo;d be $24k, which would be about $10k over what I could get for my MINI. \u0026raquo;Sigh\u0026laquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Watched The Whole Ten Yards up at Whitney\u0026rsquo;s on Saturday night. It\u0026rsquo;s embarrasingly bad, as neither the plot nor characters make any sense. There were maybe two or three funny lines in the whole movie.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/the-whole-ten-yards/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWatched \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0327247/\"\u003eThe Whole Ten Yards\u003c/a\u003e up at Whitney\u0026rsquo;s on Saturday night. It\u0026rsquo;s embarrasingly bad, as neither the plot nor characters make any sense. There were \u003cem\u003emaybe\u003c/em\u003e two or three funny lines in the whole movie.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Whole Ten Yards"},{"content":"When I was about 11, my Dad and I were laying-out sticks in the field for the forthcoming tobacco harvest. I looked at the whole task, the number of rows, and the number of sticks. I told Dad, \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;ll never get this done!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t look at the rows ahead, just the row you\u0026rsquo;re on, son. We\u0026rsquo;ll get done.\u0026rdquo;\nAnd we did.\n* * *\nWhen I\u0026rsquo;m having days like today, it feels good to remember that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/just-look-at-the-row-youre-on/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen I was about 11, my Dad and I were laying-out sticks in the field for the forthcoming tobacco harvest. I looked at the whole task, the number of rows, and the number of sticks. I told Dad, \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;ll never get this done!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t look at the rows ahead, just the row you\u0026rsquo;re on, son. We\u0026rsquo;ll get done.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we did.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen I\u0026rsquo;m having days like today, it feels good to remember that.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Just Look at the Row You're On"},{"content":"If nothing else will convince you, Allison Krauss\u0026rsquo;s voice will assure you there\u0026rsquo;s a God. Nothing so pure, sweet, and perfect could come about by accident.\nWhitney and I went to The Louisville Palace last night for a performance of Allison Krauss and Union Station at 7:30. Being the last night of their two-night engagement at the Palace, the band was relaxed and playful, taking the audience through a setlist that ranged from haunting ballads to hard-thrumming bluegrass to more contemporary Country, mixing light banter and anecdotes along the way.\nJerry Douglass lent his signature Dobro to the rest of Union Station, made up of Allison doing both vocals and fiddle; Dan Tyminski on vocal, mandolin, and guitar; Ron Block on Banjo and Guitar; and Barry Bales on Bass. Their sound is tight and well-rehearsed, but retains the improvisational flair and virtuosity that keeps me coming back. Douglass is peerless on the Dobro, having redefined the instrument\u0026rsquo;s modern sound, and both Block and Tyminski amaze.\nThe concert itself ran for about 2 hours, with the band gathering around a single area microphone (an homage to the old Bluegrass radio programs) for their encores: Krauss and Tyminski singing the hauting \u0026ldquo;My Ain True Love\u0026rdquo;, the core of Union Station harmonizing \u0026lsquo;round Allison for \u0026ldquo;Down to the River to Pray\u0026rdquo;, and one final number I can\u0026rsquo;t remember.\nUtterly amazing. Fills my heart just to know people still exist that play real instruments and sing without electronic \u0026ldquo;magic\u0026rdquo; assisting them.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/allision-krauss-union-station/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf nothing else will convince you, \u003ca href=\"http://www.blogger.com/app/www.allisonkrauss.com\"\u003eAllison Krauss\u0026rsquo;s voice\u003c/a\u003e will assure you there\u0026rsquo;s a God. Nothing so pure, sweet, and perfect could come about by accident.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.sitemason.com/files/f/f3sroQ/3126.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney and I went to \u003ca href=\"http://www.louisvillepalace.com/\"\u003eThe Louisville Palace\u003c/a\u003e last night for a performance of Allison Krauss and Union Station at 7:30. Being the last night of their two-night engagement at the Palace, the band was relaxed and playful, taking the audience through a setlist that ranged from haunting ballads to hard-thrumming bluegrass to more contemporary Country, mixing light banter and anecdotes along the way.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Allision Krauss \u0026 Union Station"},{"content":"Great entry\nover on Josh\u0026rsquo;s Blog about how my puny hometown made it into the New York times as a counterpoint to New York\u0026rsquo;s education reform efforts.\nI\u0026rsquo;m one of the few people who liked KERA, but then again, I like to write. I feel KERA works well, if applied to students from 7th grade onwards (as it was with me) by teachers who are motivated. Unfortunately, the teachers from my hometown are lazy and complacent, with those who believed in students and their education moving \u0026ldquo;up the hill\u0026rdquo; to the now-bankrupt Independent city school.\nSeriously, my idea for education is this:\n* learn traditionally throughout grade school. KERA doesn\u0026rsquo;t work if you can\u0026rsquo;t form a sentence, let alone a paragraph. Furthermore, certain skills like arithmetic and spelling lend themselves to rote and repetition. For all the complaints about how bad our educational system was, I would\u0026rsquo;ve put my 3rd grade class from Mrs. Dora Holbrook up against anyone doing spelling, reading, and multiplication tables.\n* Phase in KERA in middle school, so that students begin to synthesize subjects together. Having the foundation of math, reading, writing, and spelling, move on to composition, in-depth sciences, etc.\n* Leave KERA out of math classes, if you asked me. Make your future engineers be literate and communicative, but DON\u0026rsquo;T make them do it in Calculus class.\n* Get rid of calculators in school, except for Calculus students who need graphing functions.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/education-in-eastern-ky/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGreat \u003ca href=\"http://joshsheffel.blogspot.com/2004_12_05_joshsheffel_archive.html#110239704609783615\"\u003eentry\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nover on \u003ca href=\"http://joshsheffel.blogspot.com\"\u003eJosh\u0026rsquo;s Blog\u003c/a\u003e about how my puny hometown made it into the New York times as a counterpoint to New York\u0026rsquo;s education reform efforts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m one of the few people who liked KERA, but then again, I like to write. I feel KERA works well, if applied to students from 7th grade onwards (as it was with me) by teachers who are motivated. Unfortunately, the teachers from my hometown are lazy and complacent, with those who believed in students and their education moving \u0026ldquo;up the hill\u0026rdquo; to the now-bankrupt Independent city school.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Education in Eastern KY"},{"content":"So, today at work pretty much stinks. I missed my 9am meeting, I\u0026rsquo;m basically relegated to doing garbage-cleanup work on the codebase 12 hours a day for the next month (Merry Christmas everyone!), but this video brought a smile to my face:\nvideo (right click-\u0026gt;Save Target As)\nIt\u0026rsquo;s Gilles Villenueve vs Rene Arnoux back when Forumla 1 was real racing, not technological overkill.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/work-stinks/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, today at work pretty much stinks. I missed my 9am meeting, I\u0026rsquo;m basically relegated to doing garbage-cleanup work on the codebase 12 hours a day for the next month (Merry Christmas everyone!), but this video brought a smile to my face:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wNjYyMzIwNnM0MTNkZmQzMXk1NDE=\"\u003evideo\u003c/a\u003e (right click-\u0026gt;Save Target As)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s Gilles Villenueve vs Rene Arnoux back when Forumla 1 was real racing, not technological overkill.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Work Stinks"},{"content":"This makes 12 hours at work (and counting), and I\u0026rsquo;ve been up since 5. Yike.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/12-hours-and-counting/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis makes 12 hours at work (and counting), and I\u0026rsquo;ve been up since 5. Yike.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"12 Hours and Counting"},{"content":"I get the blessing of a quiet weekend after what\u0026rsquo;s been a hectic week at work. Thank you, Lord!\nWhitney invited me to her office Christmas party at the Gault house, and it was decent, if a tad boring. We arrived fashionably late (halfway through cocktail hour), and we sat with Whitney\u0026rsquo;s boss and CEO, both women, and their husbands, as well as David and Anne, a great couple from WV who\u0026rsquo;ve just had a baby girl this past year.\nThe evening was okay. The food was great, the service was attentive, and the conversation was\u0026hellip;umm\u0026hellip;okay, not to my taste, but bearable. Then the entertainment began with the emcee and his partern beginning a LOOOONG party game involving each table of 7-10 people acting as a \u0026rsquo;team\u0026rsquo;, playing trivia. The game dragged-on for two hours, intermixed with Christmas bonuses and door prizes, finally ending with dancing, but by then I was pretty much pooped.\nWhitney and I danced for about 20 minutes, then decided to leave.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI get the blessing of a quiet weekend after what\u0026rsquo;s been a hectic week at work. Thank you, Lord!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney invited me to her office Christmas party at the Gault house, and it was decent, if a tad boring. We arrived fashionably late (halfway through cocktail hour), and we sat with Whitney\u0026rsquo;s boss and CEO, both women, and their husbands, as well as David and Anne, a great couple from WV who\u0026rsquo;ve just had a baby girl this past year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Take the quiz: \u0026ldquo;How much road rage do you have?\u0026rdquo;\nDisplay more anger than half.\nWell, I\u0026rsquo;m not exactly proud. But, at least there are more people who display more road rage than yourself. You may get angry at most drivers, but you aren\u0026rsquo;t a psycho who does drive by shootings.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTake the quiz: \u003ca href=\"http://www.zenhex.com/quiz.php?id=726\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;How much road rage do you have?\u0026rdquo;\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDisplay more anger than half.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nWell, I\u0026rsquo;m not exactly proud. But, at least there are more people who display more road rage than yourself. You may get angry at most drivers, but you aren\u0026rsquo;t a psycho who does drive by shootings.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s an emergency project at work that I\u0026rsquo;ve been pulled off to work on. It means long days and maybe weekends from now until after the first of the year (Bah-humbug).\nYay.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/12/emergency-project/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s an emergency project at work that I\u0026rsquo;ve been pulled off to work on. It means long days and maybe weekends from now until after the first of the year (Bah-humbug).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYay.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Emergency Project"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m rarely shaken by a movie, but Requiem for a Dream was unforgettable. A window into the life of four junkies, it gave me a new appreciation for how much Hell can exist on earth.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/requiem-for-a-dream/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m rarely shaken by a movie, but \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0180093/\"\u003eRequiem for a Dream\u003c/a\u003e was unforgettable. A window into the life of four junkies, it gave me a new appreciation for how much Hell can exist on earth.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Requiem for a Dream"},{"content":"Quote for the day:\n\u0026ldquo;Nothing beats my S-10. It\u0026rsquo;s been to hell and back so many times it gets Christmas cards from Satan.\u0026rdquo;\nTaken from a thread about cars that won\u0026rsquo;t die.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eQuote for the day:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Nothing beats my S-10. It\u0026rsquo;s been to hell and back so many times it gets Christmas cards from Satan.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTaken from a thread about cars that won\u0026rsquo;t die.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Random thought about Dwight\u0026rsquo;s sermon today:\nAs he discussed Ephesian\u0026rsquo;s 3:25-32, Dwight interjected something interesting. It seems Europe is being overrun by Muslims.\nThis brings-up the defining conflict of the early 21st century: Fundamentalist Islam versus the Secularist Europe and America.\nWhat is the endgame here? Western civilization wants to assimilate the rest of the world (minus the Chinese/S.E. Asian block), but what\u0026rsquo;s the Muslim game here? Western (especially European) thought is secular, and so can co-exist with Muslim nations. Muslim thought is more fundamentalist, so co-existence seems impossible.\nI\u0026rsquo;m reminded of Frank Herbert\u0026rsquo;s book, Dune, where the fundamentalist Fremen can overtake the empire because they control the essential resource\u0026ndash;the Spice. This situation seems similar\nI suppose the greatest juxaposition here is the Muslims, who refuse to assimilate, versus the Secularist Europeans, who stand for precisely nothing. Christianity has meant nothing to these people since the Industrial Revolution, and they have no ideology beyond their own Epicurean delights. They\u0026rsquo;re horrified by these people who refuse to yield to their immoral, diffuse culture.\nThe result seems inevitable\u0026ndash;discrimination, open hostility, then persecution, ultimately leading to schism and revolt.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/sermon-reflection/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRandom thought about Dwight\u0026rsquo;s sermon today:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs he discussed Ephesian\u0026rsquo;s 3:25-32, Dwight interjected something interesting. It seems Europe is being overrun by Muslims.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis brings-up the defining conflict of the early 21st century: Fundamentalist Islam versus the Secularist Europe and America.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat is the endgame here? Western civilization wants to assimilate the rest of the world (minus the Chinese/S.E. Asian block), but what\u0026rsquo;s the Muslim game here? Western (especially European) thought is secular, and so can co-exist with Muslim nations. Muslim thought is more fundamentalist, so co-existence seems impossible.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sermon Reflection"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m struggling with this latest technical book I\u0026rsquo;m reading, J2EE Development without EJB\nBasically, it\u0026rsquo;s hard to digest, with lots of high-level enterprise construction pieces, but not much to hang it on. I\u0026rsquo;ve never built applications the way the author has for the past 5 years, so things he finds as a matter of course, I don\u0026rsquo;t intuitively understand.\nI\u0026rsquo;m blogging about it, basically so I can try to synthesize what I\u0026rsquo;ve read in the book so far.\nEnterprise applications usually have three layers (or \u0026ldquo;tiers\u0026rdquo;):\nAt the bottom, there\u0026rsquo;s the data, usually stored in high-performance relational databases like Oracle, SQL Server, or several open-source alternatives. More often than not, these systems can be legacy datastores that the business has used for years or decades. For instance, imagine the reservation system for an airline\nAt the top level, there\u0026rsquo;s the interface to the user. Often, this is a website accessed via a regular web-browser. A good example here would be an airline\u0026rsquo;s website with it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Make a Reservation\u0026rdquo; function\nThe real issue here (at least for me, as a server-side application programmer) is what comes in the middle. At the top, you have the presentation, at the bottom there\u0026rsquo;s the data. The real magic is in the middle, known as the \u0026ldquo;business layer\u0026rdquo;, where you interact with the presentation layer to change the state of the back-end data. An example would be the process you go through on an airline\u0026rsquo;s website to search for a route, customize and save an itinerary, pay for your trip, and even print tickets. All those are what software engineers call \u0026ldquo;use cases\u0026rdquo;, and the trick is writing business logic to allow them to happen.\nOf course, there are other factors\u0026hellip;the system must be robust, reliable, and fault tolerant. It must never allow customer information to be lost or corrupted. It must be self-healing, and it must scale to the needs of your business. It\u0026rsquo;s these tagential requirements that make IBM, BEA, and other companies that make Mission-Critical application servers billions of dollars: Companies stake their business on them, so the software must be robust.\nThe problem with robustness is it makes for ugly code and complicated systems, and as I\u0026rsquo;ve blogged before, the success or failure of a system hinges on its abstractions: If the lead architect can\u0026rsquo;t keep the whole system (or at least a 30,000 foot perspective of it) in his head at once, the system will fail, because it won\u0026rsquo;t be thought-out properly.\nThus, in 1996, Sun came out with a framework for making enterprise-level software, such that applications could be written WITHOUT worrying about mission-critical issues, called Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE). To summarize, they succeeded in some areas, but failed in one critical area: Programmer productivity. This book I\u0026rsquo;m reading takes nearly a decade of experience with J2EE applications and boils-down ways to write such software productively, using Software Engineering best practices.\nBut, even so, it\u0026rsquo;s complicated work, changing the way you must think about applications. And my brain\u0026rsquo;s kinda rejecting it.*\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/j2ee-development-without-ejb/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m struggling with this latest technical book I\u0026rsquo;m reading, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0764558315/\"\u003eJ2EE Development without EJB\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0764558315.01._PE34_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, it\u0026rsquo;s hard to digest, with lots of high-level enterprise construction pieces, but not much to hang it on. I\u0026rsquo;ve never built applications the way the author has for the past 5 years, so things he finds as a matter of course, I don\u0026rsquo;t intuitively understand.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m blogging about it, basically so I can try to synthesize what I\u0026rsquo;ve read in the book so far.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"J2EE Development without EJB"},{"content":"I love coffee, football, and having a lazy Sunday :-)\nAnd naps.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI love coffee, football, and having a lazy Sunday :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd naps.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Without fail, this is always the time of year when I go:\n\u0026ldquo;Why isn\u0026rsquo;t the girl-next-door Donna Reid?\u0026rdquo;\nYup\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m watching It\u0026rsquo;s a Wonderful Life\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWithout fail, this is always the time of year when I go:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Why isn\u0026rsquo;t the girl-next-door Donna Reid?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://jeu.frcd.free.fr/jpg/12s02i03.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYup\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m watching \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/\"\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a Wonderful Life\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Josh, take note: I finished a Dave Barry book, Boogers are my Beat\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a bit of fluff, but militantly so: Barry sets us straight at the beginning that he sometimes does journalism, sometimes does reality, but most often prefers the hilariously mundane. His columns about his Miami-fried hide landing in Grank Lakes, North Dakota during January had me laughing for minutes at a time.\nStill he can be serious: His essay about Flight 93 was worth the price of the book alone.\nLooks like a long string of technical books for me from now on. :-(\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/boogers-are-my-beat/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJosh, take note: I finished a Dave Barry book, \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400047579/\"\u003eBoogers are my Beat\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/catalog_cover.pperl?1-4000-8076-2\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a bit of fluff, but militantly so: Barry sets us straight at the beginning that he sometimes does journalism, sometimes does reality, but most often prefers the hilariously mundane. His columns about his Miami-fried hide landing in Grank Lakes, North Dakota during January had me laughing for minutes at a time.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill he can be serious: His essay about Flight 93 was worth the price of the book alone.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Boogers are my Beat"},{"content":"Pretty decent discussion on Slashdot today about metaphors for software development. One of the more cogent posts:\n_\nFrankly, I always hated the whole cathedral vs bazaar metaphor. I don\u0026rsquo;t think it portrays well the virtues and faults of open source and proprietary software. I use proprietary software (MacOS + some closed apps) for the same reason I prefer to \u0026ldquo;dine out\u0026rdquo; rather than cook my own meals. I just want to choose something delicious from the restaurant\u0026rsquo;s menu - and I don\u0026rsquo;t care that my choices are limited. Yes, if you cook in your own kitchen, you can customize you meal the way you like it - as it is with open source software. But this will consume you a lot of time and effort, so most people would rather avoid it - unless they really enjoy cooking, have really to much spare time or are really short on cash. It\u0026rsquo;s similar with Free Software - you use it if you really like to \u0026rsquo;tinker\u0026rsquo; with everything or are really short on cash. But if you don\u0026rsquo;t like the former and are not limited by latter, you will rather go to a store with proprietary solutions - where your choices are obviously limited, but you\u0026rsquo;re saving time and effort. So I think restaurant vs kitchen is a better metaphor for proprietary vs free/open._\nI\u0026rsquo;d take it further\u0026ndash;sometimes, open-source software is wanting to cook great vegetable soup, realizing you don\u0026rsquo;t have any celery, and then having to GROW YOUR OWN celery before you can enjoy soup. In Open Source Software (OSS), sometimes you have to code something yourself, or fix bugs yourself. Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s cheaper, and you have the knowledge that that piece of code works, but it\u0026rsquo;s hassle, and it goes against your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a big push right now towards the commoditization of software\u0026ndash;the real money isn\u0026rsquo;t in software, it\u0026rsquo;s in the hardware to run it on and in the services and customizations you sell to people. This is IBM\u0026rsquo;s business model and it made them 40 Billion dollars last year alone\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/cathedral-v-bazaar/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePretty decent discussion on \u003ca href=\"http://www.slashdot.org\"\u003eSlashdot\u003c/a\u003e today about metaphors for software development. One of the more cogent posts:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e_\u003cbr\u003e\nFrankly, I always hated the whole cathedral vs bazaar metaphor. I don\u0026rsquo;t think it portrays well the virtues and faults of open source and proprietary software. I use proprietary software (MacOS + some closed apps) for the same reason I prefer to \u0026ldquo;dine out\u0026rdquo; rather than cook my own meals. I just want to choose something delicious from the restaurant\u0026rsquo;s menu - and I don\u0026rsquo;t care that my choices are limited. Yes, if you cook in your own kitchen, you can customize you meal the way you like it - as it is with open source software. But this will consume you a lot of time and effort, so most people would rather avoid it - unless they really enjoy cooking, have really to much spare time or are really short on cash. It\u0026rsquo;s similar with Free Software - you use it if you really like to \u0026rsquo;tinker\u0026rsquo; with everything or are really short on cash. But if you don\u0026rsquo;t like the former and are not limited by latter, you will rather go to a store with proprietary solutions - where your choices are obviously limited, but you\u0026rsquo;re saving time and effort. So I think restaurant vs kitchen is a better metaphor for proprietary vs free/open._\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cathedral -v- Bazaar"},{"content":"Do I have a clothing personality?\nThis is the question I asked myself at 10:30 last night after reading another chapter in my Organization For Dummies book, this one about closets + wardrobe. Granted, most of the stuff was over my head: \u0026ldquo;For all your ready to wear clothes, don\u0026rsquo;t wash them too often, and avoid leaving clothes in the dryer, as they will wrinkle\u0026rdquo;. Okay, but what\u0026rsquo;s all this \u0026ldquo;ready to wear\u0026rdquo; stuff. Who has clothes that you CAN\u0026rsquo;T WEAR?\nThe kicker for me was this phrase: \u0026ldquo;Go through your closet and ask yourself \u0026lsquo;Does this piece really fit my clothing personality\u0026rsquo;?\u0026rdquo;\nNow, I\u0026rsquo;m a big fan of jargon and neologisms, but \u0026lsquo;clothing personality\u0026rsquo;? Is my clothing personality an introvert? Extroverted? Psychopathic? Fond of plaid? Squeamish around children and the stains they cause? (Probably)\n[end bad Dave Barry-esque riffing]\nAs my darling said (translating the obvious womanspeak of it all), it means \u0026ldquo;Will this look good on me?\u0026rdquo;\nSheesh.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/clothing-personality/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDo I have a clothing personality?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the question I asked myself at 10:30 last night after reading another chapter in my Organization For Dummies book, this one about closets + wardrobe. Granted, most of the stuff was over my head: \u0026ldquo;For all your ready to wear clothes, don\u0026rsquo;t wash them too often, and avoid leaving clothes in the dryer, as they will wrinkle\u0026rdquo;. Okay, but what\u0026rsquo;s all this \u0026ldquo;ready to wear\u0026rdquo; stuff. Who has clothes that you CAN\u0026rsquo;T WEAR?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Clothing Personality"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve changed my opinion on the type-A, feminazi organization-or-die book I bought last weekend. In addition to a few gems of organization Zen (\u0026ldquo;Get a morning routine. That way, you won\u0026rsquo;t be doing things willy-nilly\u0026rdquo;. Thanks!), it\u0026rsquo;s providing many useful Blog topics.\nSuch as: Why I\u0026rsquo;m glad I don\u0026rsquo;t wear makeup. Or why I\u0026rsquo;m glad I\u0026rsquo;m a man, in general.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a chapter in the book about organizing your bathroom. There\u0026rsquo;s another chapter about organizing your purse. Most of the former and all of the latter deal with one subject\u0026ndash;makeup.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s my requirements for a good morning experience:\nBrush teeth\nShower\nShave\nPut contacts in\nDress\nLeave\nA woman, to all the above, must add some Picasso-like adornment of their face with foundation, mascara, lipstick, lipgloss, powder, eyeliner, lipliner, concealer, and God knows what else. Is this a one time deal? NO! The woman must somehow carry a miniture stockpile of all the above WITH HER throughout the day for the inevitable touch-up.\nI couldn\u0026rsquo;t begin to carry this off. I can barely coordinate the shaving ritual of Water, lather, shave, water, aftershave. I feel weighed-down by too many keys on my keychain or too thick a wallet. I can\u0026rsquo;t COMPREHEND messing with that amount of stuff.\nI figure a woman has a few advantages (I\u0026rsquo;d not be averse to having a clitoris\u0026hellip;17 orgasms in a row must be a nice feeling), but forget it if I had to wear makeup.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve changed my opinion on the type-A, feminazi organization-or-die book I bought last weekend. In addition to a few gems of organization Zen (\u0026ldquo;Get a morning routine. That way, you won\u0026rsquo;t be doing things willy-nilly\u0026rdquo;. Thanks!), it\u0026rsquo;s providing many useful Blog topics.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuch as: Why I\u0026rsquo;m glad I don\u0026rsquo;t wear makeup. Or why I\u0026rsquo;m glad I\u0026rsquo;m a man, in general.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a chapter in the book about organizing your bathroom. There\u0026rsquo;s another chapter about organizing your purse. Most of the former and all of the latter deal with one subject\u0026ndash;makeup.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Random thought I had while walking to the coffemaker: Socialism and American Capitalism are converging.\nThink about it: The central tenet of Socialism is public ownership of the Means of Production. In modern America, most workers own stock in companies (via their 401(k), etc.), so in essence, the workers (the public) do own the means of production.\nNow, granted, in our system, the top 1% of the bougeoisie never have to work a day in their lives (Paris Hilton?), but yet own most of the means of production by way of their influence on corporations as shareholders.\nStill yet, in a roundabout way, we the workers in this capitalist paradise make it more indirectly socialist every time we contribute to our 401(k), Roth IRA, or individual investments.\nIrony. :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/socialism-and-capitalism-convergence/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRandom thought I had while walking to the coffemaker: \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism\"\u003eSocialism\u003c/a\u003e and American Capitalism are converging.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThink about it: The central tenet of Socialism is public ownership of the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production\"\u003eMeans of Production\u003c/a\u003e. In modern America, most workers own stock in companies (via their 401(k), etc.), so in essence, the workers (the public) do own the means of production.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow, granted, in our system, the top 1% of the bougeoisie never have to work a day in their lives (Paris Hilton?), but yet own most of the means of production by way of their influence on corporations as shareholders.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Socialism and Capitalism Convergence"},{"content":"Coupla pics from my birthday two weekends ago:\nThe cake (Icing and decoration courtesy of my Darling)\nThe really awesome quilt hanger that Whitney got for me:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCoupla pics from my birthday two weekends ago:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe cake (Icing and decoration courtesy of my Darling)\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/birthday2004/birthday1.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe really awesome quilt hanger that Whitney got for me:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/birthday2004/birthday2.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Well, crap. There goes Colin Powell\nI have no way of knowing, of course, but I believe C.P. hs been the only one preventing massinve \u0026ldquo;group think\u0026rdquo; inside the Whitehouse. He was a voice of dissent on the invasion of Iraq, and he\u0026rsquo;s the only one in the Bush high command with real international and military experience (Dubya\u0026rsquo;s non-appearance at Nat\u0026rsquo;l Guard training notwithstanding).\nHe\u0026rsquo;ll be missed.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/there-goes-colin-powell/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, crap. \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/15/powell.reax/index.html\"\u003eThere goes Colin Powell\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have no way of knowing, of course, but I believe C.P. hs been the only one preventing massinve \u0026ldquo;group think\u0026rdquo; inside the Whitehouse. He was a voice of dissent on the invasion of Iraq, and he\u0026rsquo;s the only one in the Bush high command with real international and military experience (Dubya\u0026rsquo;s non-appearance at Nat\u0026rsquo;l Guard training notwithstanding).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;ll be missed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"There goes Colin Powell"},{"content":"Gadgets, gadgets, gadgets\u0026hellip;\nWell, I made it a whole two hours before going and buying myself that Zire 21 at Staples. I\u0026rsquo;ve liked PalmPilots since \u0026lsquo;99, and I think I\u0026rsquo;ll like this latest incarnation very much. It\u0026rsquo;s extremely basic, but that\u0026rsquo;s fine with me. It imported all my information from my powerbook tonight with only a little tweaking.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGadgets, gadgets, gadgets\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000CBJ8J.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, I made it a whole two hours before going and buying myself that Zire 21 at Staples. I\u0026rsquo;ve liked PalmPilots since \u0026lsquo;99, and I think I\u0026rsquo;ll like this latest incarnation very much. It\u0026rsquo;s extremely basic, but that\u0026rsquo;s fine with me. It imported all my information from my powerbook tonight with only a little tweaking.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"A Weekend Retrospective.\nI walked in this morning, roughly on time for my 7:30 video conference with India only to recall\u0026hellip;there IS NO video conference with India. Que sera sera\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re having their Diwali Festival, and are out of the office until tomorrow.\nAnyway, my weekend:\nFriday night, I got the Pup out of the garage after its two week repose for my trip to Louisville to see Whitney and Joey. After driving the truck for so long, it took a few minutes to adjust to the size, power (or lack therof), and nimbleness of my MINI, though I did notice on the trip up there that it had developed a pull to the right.\nSomeone trashed Whitney\u0026rsquo;s car, so on Saturday morning, I did livery duty, shuttling them to the Pediatrician\u0026rsquo;s office. We had lunch with Whitney\u0026rsquo;s sister, whose made a miraculous recovery, and then dinner at her place\u0026ndash;delicious chicken soup.\nSunday was church, lunch, a nap, and a drive home for me. Finally got to talk to Joe, which was awesome. No \u0026ldquo;Desperate Housewives,\u0026rdquo; thanks to the American Music Awards\u0026hellip;meh.\nWorking through a new book: The Complete Idiots Guide to Organizing Your Life. So far, I\u0026rsquo;m regretting the purchase, for various reasons:\nLike all my self help \u0026ldquo;simplify your life\u0026rdquo; books, this one is written from a woman\u0026rsquo;s perspective.\nLike everyone except for Elaine St. James, this author is wordy and repetitive. Ironically, you need to be disorganized and verbose to achieve order and simplicity. Sure.\nThis woman worships at the altar of the day-planner/pda. I\u0026rsquo;ve gone from having one, to not using one, to having an awesome one (Tungstn T), to throwing the non-functioning hunk of junk away. I do miss it, though, and I\u0026rsquo;m considering getting the el-cheapo Palm Zire 21 ($99) to replace it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/weekend-retrospective/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA Weekend Retrospective.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI walked in this morning, roughly on time for my 7:30 video conference with India only to recall\u0026hellip;there IS NO video conference with India. Que sera sera\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re having their \u003ca href=\"http://www.diwalimela.com/about-diwali/\"\u003eDiwali Festival\u003c/a\u003e, and are out of the office until tomorrow.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, my weekend:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFriday night, I got the Pup out of the garage after its two week repose for my trip to Louisville to see Whitney and Joey. After driving the truck for so long, it took a few minutes to adjust to the size, power (or lack therof), and nimbleness of my MINI, though I did notice on the trip up there that it had developed a pull to the right.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weekend Retrospective"},{"content":"Got back on the Book-reading bandwagon the past few days, this time with a technical slant:\nPattern Hatching: Design Patterns Applied\nThis book is sort of a meta-meta-patterns book, that is it\u0026rsquo;s a book about a book about patterns. You see, computer software is a science of building abstractions; at the lowest level, computers execute a series of instructions, one after another, at blazing speed. If you group these instructions together from start to finish with one purpose, you have an algorithm. If you factor-out common parts of several agorithms, you have subroutines, functions, or procedures. At this point, you\u0026rsquo;re two \u0026ldquo;levels of abstraction\u0026rdquo; away from the way the computer actually works.\nThe human brain can only hold so much information, and for a programmer to write a program, he needs to keep a significant amount of the program in his head at one time. So, like physicists or cosmologists trying to understand the universe, we must develop more and more elaborate metaphors for the actual subject matter at hand.\nThe great revolution in metaphors after the subroutines and functions were Objects, giving rise to the term Object-Oriented Programming. Objects combine data and the procedures that operate upon it such that the programmer can dispense with writing bare arrays, maps, and functions and deal with bigger building blocks like \u0026ldquo;Car\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Plane\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Guidance system\u0026rdquo;. Object Orientation is wonderful, because it lets you deal with a whole system without overloading your poor little brain. However, we\u0026rsquo;re getting pretty high up the ladder of abstraction (now at level 3 or more), so it requires a bit more finesse than regular procedure calls and algorithms. You have to get your mind to think in a different way than you learned programming Pascal back at college.\nEnter Design Patterns. As people amassed a decade or more of Object-Oriented programming, they began to notice patterns emerge in the way they put objects together. When solving a similar problem, they found they could apply prior structures of objects. This is like other forms of engineering or craftsmanship: Eventually, you learn to make jigs and forms so that your work is repeatable. So, Design patterns are level 4.\nThe Design Patterns book came-about in 1994, and now 10 years later, one of the original authors writes this book about how to apply the patterns, some of the pitfalls thereof, and the thought processes of high-level systems designers. The book is a quick, easy read, and I\u0026rsquo;d highly recommend it for someone like me who\u0026rsquo;s been using patterns for years and who\u0026rsquo;d appreciate an even more in-depth discussion of nuances of them. Still, it\u0026rsquo;s helpful to have the original Design Patterns for reference.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/tech-books/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGot back on the Book-reading bandwagon the past few days, this time with a technical slant:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://g.bookpool.com/covers/935/0201432935_140_20O.gif\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.bookpool.com/.x/hygtcbxad6/ss?qs=pattern+hatching\u0026amp;x=0\u0026amp;y=0\"\u003ePattern Hatching: Design Patterns Applied\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis book is sort of a meta-meta-patterns book, that is it\u0026rsquo;s a book about a book about patterns. You see, computer software is a science of building abstractions; at the lowest level, computers execute a series of instructions, one after another, at blazing speed. If you group these instructions together from start to finish with one purpose, you have an algorithm. If you factor-out common parts of several agorithms, you have subroutines, functions, or procedures. At this point, you\u0026rsquo;re two \u0026ldquo;levels of abstraction\u0026rdquo; away from the way the computer actually works.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tech Books"},{"content":"On Having Unscheduled Time\nToday, I had no schedule. That is, I discarded all things I had scheduled (Autocross, etc.) and just existed. I slept-in. I ate cake for breakfast. I wished my lovely a good trip back to Louisville, then I embarked on a little TLC for Big Red, my Chevy Silverado.\nBig Red has 113,000 miles, and hadn\u0026rsquo;t had an oil change since its mid-life overhaul in May. It takes 6 quarts of 5w-30 to fill the crankcase of the 4.8L V-8, and I purchased a case of Valvoline yesterday, resolving that I wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to pay $48 for an oil change at the speedy-change place. I have the tools; why not do it myself?\n*** Random thought: Given that this truck has a 25 gallon gas tank, it costs less to change the oil at Valvoline Instant Oil change than it does to fill the tank with 87 Octane. Go figure ***\nWell, after a useless trip to Walmart, a run to Advance auto parts (needed an oil filter cap wrench\u0026hellip;), and a return trip to Advance to dump the oil and buy some Turtle Wax, Big Red now basks in the afterglow of fresh oil, a new Purolator oil filter, and a wax job.\nSuch a wonderful day\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/on-having-unscheuled-time/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn Having Unscheduled Time\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, I had no schedule. That is, I discarded all things I had scheduled (Autocross, etc.) and just existed. I slept-in. I ate cake for breakfast. I wished my lovely a good trip back to Louisville, then I embarked on a little TLC for Big Red, my Chevy Silverado.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBig Red has 113,000 miles, and hadn\u0026rsquo;t had an oil change since its mid-life overhaul in May. It takes 6 quarts of 5w-30 to fill the crankcase of the 4.8L V-8, and I purchased a case of Valvoline yesterday, resolving that I wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to pay $48 for an oil change at the speedy-change place. I have the tools; why not do it myself?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Having Unscheuled Time"},{"content":"Why Bush Won\nSay what you like—that at least Bush finally got elected, that the Red Sox swept the World Series because Kerry had to borrow the curse, that America deserves what it gets—but, in my humble opinion, this perceived American crisis of masculinity is the real cause of what happened November 2. Like watching action movies or professional sports, participating in the Bush victory was a psychic restorative, giving back some semblance of a sense of manly honor that has been stolen away by time clocks, Dr. Phil, and Zoloft. Bush\u0026rsquo;s message speaks directly to the heart of the emasculated modern man: stick with me, and we\u0026rsquo;ll stand tall, provide for our families, and kick terrorist ass.\nInteresting.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/why-bush-won/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.corporatemofo.com/stories/041103whybushwon.htm\"\u003eWhy Bush Won\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSay what you like—that at least Bush finally got elected, that the Red Sox swept the World Series because Kerry had to borrow the curse, that America deserves what it gets—but, in my humble opinion, this perceived American crisis of masculinity is the real cause of what happened November 2. Like watching action movies or professional sports, participating in the Bush victory was a psychic restorative, giving back some semblance of a sense of manly honor that has been stolen away by time clocks, Dr. Phil, and Zoloft. Bush\u0026rsquo;s message speaks directly to the heart of the emasculated modern man: stick with me, and we\u0026rsquo;ll stand tall, provide for our families, and kick terrorist ass.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why Bush Won"},{"content":"Random, utterly useless tidbit: After trying this past season every weekend to find the perfect tire pressure combination for autocross bliss in a MINI, I found it in my last 4 events, pretty much by accident.\nIF you have a MINI Cooper, Sports Suspension, and 15\u0026quot; tires running 205/50R15 Kumho Victoracers, run the rear tires 4psi HIGHER than the fronts, and the car will turn-in marvelously.\nIf the event is warm to hot (that is, above 50 degrees), run the tires at 44f/47r, adjusting the rears up or down in increments to increase or decrease rotation.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s pretty much it. There\u0026rsquo;s nothing quite like barrelling towards a hairpin, easing off the throttle in your MINI and feeling the front end tuck-in and the rear take a set that scoots your right around it. Good stuff!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/tire-pressure/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRandom, utterly useless tidbit: After trying this past season every weekend to find the perfect tire pressure combination for autocross bliss in a MINI, I found it in my last 4 events, pretty much by accident.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIF you have a MINI Cooper, Sports Suspension, and 15\u0026quot; tires running 205/50R15 Kumho Victoracers, run the rear tires 4psi HIGHER than the fronts, and the car will turn-in marvelously.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf the event is warm to hot (that is, above 50 degrees), run the tires at 44f/47r, adjusting the rears up or down in increments to increase or decrease rotation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tire Pressure"},{"content":"No joke\u0026hellip;recent headlines from Slate\nWhy Kerry Lost\nHow to move to Canada\nDemocratic Values: how to Win in the Red States\nBlame it on the Guardian: The international press contemplates 4 more years of Bush\nthey seem just a little distraught.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNo joke\u0026hellip;recent headlines from \u003ca href=\"http://slate.msn.com\"\u003eSlate\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy Kerry Lost\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow to move to Canada\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDemocratic Values: how to Win in the Red States\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBlame it on the Guardian: The international press contemplates 4 more years of Bush\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ethey seem just a \u003cem\u003elittle\u003c/em\u003e distraught.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"The debate du jour on Slashdot: Creationism versus Evolution\nInteresting quote:\nThere\u0026rsquo;s protestant theology in a nutshell. Now, here\u0026rsquo;s where creationism comes in (again, so the argument goes):\nIf there was no literal first man and woman, then there was no talking snake to tempt them into eating an apple. If that didn\u0026rsquo;t happen, there was no literal fall (the fall had to be by CHOICE, protestants don\u0026rsquo;t accept that God just made humans imperfect from the start). If there was no literal fall, then mankind is not in need of redemption. If there is no need for redemption, there is no need for Christ. This would basically invalidate protestant Christianity.\nNever really thought about it this way: Unless there\u0026rsquo;s Original Sin, Jesus was Buddah, basically.\nLively debate, if nothing else.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe debate du jour on Slashdot: \u003ca href=\"http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/01/1344237\"\u003eCreationism versus Evolution\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInteresting quote:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s protestant theology in a nutshell. Now, here\u0026rsquo;s where creationism comes in (again, so the argument goes):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf there was no literal first man and woman, then there was no talking snake to tempt them into eating an apple. If that didn\u0026rsquo;t happen, there was no literal fall (the fall had to be by CHOICE, protestants don\u0026rsquo;t accept that God just made humans imperfect from the start). If there was no literal fall, then mankind is not in need of redemption. If there is no need for redemption, there is no need for Christ. This would basically invalidate protestant Christianity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Ah, I finally have an excuse for having no color distinction compared to women: Some woman have tetrachromatic vision\nThat\u0026rsquo;s right\u0026hellip;in addition to the regular Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) vision that men have, some women with a mutuant gene can perceive 4 channels of color.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh, I finally have an excuse for having no color distinction compared to women: \u003ca href=\"http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1202859.htm\"\u003eSome woman have tetrachromatic vision\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s right\u0026hellip;in addition to the regular Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) vision that men have, some women with a mutuant gene can perceive 4 channels of color.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"\nMuhahahahahahaha\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/11/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.miniusa.com/images/email/politics/car.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuhahahahahahaha\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Random, cool xhtml based slideshow template. Yep\u0026hellip;a slideshow in a browser, no software (*cough*Powerpoint*cough*) required.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/xhtml...eww/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRandom, cool \u003ca href=\"http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/\"\u003exhtml based\u003c/a\u003e slideshow template. Yep\u0026hellip;a slideshow in a browser, no software (*cough*Powerpoint*cough*) required.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"XHTML...eww"},{"content":"\nZardoz\nKey learning: When your somewhat-off, reminds-you-of-your-freaky-ex-roomate friend at work says a movie is \u0026ldquo;kinda weird\u0026rdquo;, don\u0026rsquo;t watch it.\nSean Connery wears a diaper (or sumo garb, take your pick) throughout, and basically the screenwriter creates a vision of \u0026ldquo;Brave New World\u0026rdquo; crossed with \u0026ldquo;A Clockwork Orange\u0026rdquo;.\nDefinitely some cool moments, but not worth much. Thankfully, with netflix, it\u0026rsquo;s free. :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/zardoz/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/09/45/11m.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0070948/\"\u003eZardoz\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKey learning: When your somewhat-off, reminds-you-of-your-freaky-ex-roomate friend at work says a movie is \u0026ldquo;kinda weird\u0026rdquo;, don\u0026rsquo;t watch it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSean Connery wears a diaper (or sumo garb, take your pick) throughout, and basically the screenwriter creates a vision of \u0026ldquo;Brave New World\u0026rdquo; crossed with \u0026ldquo;A Clockwork Orange\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDefinitely some cool moments, but not worth much. Thankfully, with netflix, it\u0026rsquo;s free. :D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Zardoz"},{"content":"Big red now has some new Bilstein shocks, thanks to my father, some air tools, and a little elbow grease. It took us two-and-a-half hours, but knowing what I know now, I could probably do it in about an hour\u0026rsquo;s time.\nThe jack only slipped once, but we had two jackstands under the frame at the time, so the whole process was injury free, minus some bruised knuckles.\nThe new shocks firm-up the ride of the truck, but it\u0026rsquo;s not punishing. It just feels more planted and controlled than before.\nStayed the night at their place, catatonically watching the Red Sox complete their sweep of the Cardinals. Bedtime was midnight; morning came too early at 5:30. I made it through some DENSE fog to Lexmark by 8.\n* * *\nUntil next Tuesday, I\u0026rsquo;m the acting team lead for my product. Stress and lots of typing emails will result, I\u0026rsquo;m sure. Still, I\u0026rsquo;m excited\u0026hellip;that, along with a new project I get to work on has me \u0026ldquo;giddy as a schoolgirl\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nNo one knows who will win the election next Tuesday. This uncertainty has only increased the frenzy around the election. It\u0026rsquo;s annoying.\nYes, I\u0026rsquo;m a zombie this morning. Simple sentences are all I can hold in my head at this point. In other news, I\u0026rsquo;m ready to be a manager.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBig red now has some new Bilstein shocks, thanks to my father, some air tools, and a little elbow grease. It took us two-and-a-half hours, but knowing what I know now, I could probably do it in about an hour\u0026rsquo;s time.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe jack only slipped once, but we had two jackstands under the frame at the time, so the whole process was injury free, minus some bruised knuckles.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe new shocks firm-up the ride of the truck, but it\u0026rsquo;s not punishing. It just feels more planted and controlled than before.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Pics of our recent MINI-club run to Red River Gorge\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePics of our recent MINI-club run to \u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/miniGorge2004/\"\u003eRed River Gorge\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/miniGorge2004/miniGorge2004-Images/2.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Marshall, dear Marshall\u0026hellip;if only you\u0026rsquo;d read this\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMarshall, dear Marshall\u0026hellip;if only you\u0026rsquo;d read \u003ca href=\"http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Custom/MSN/CareerAdvice/414.htm\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"End-of-time watch, day 2: The Red Sox are ahead 2-0, despite 4 errors in last night\u0026rsquo;s 6-2 win over St. Louis. With Pedro Martinez slated to pitch on Tuesday in St. Louis, the Sox are on track.\n* * *\nAhh, the weekend. The MINI rally over to Natural Bridge was fun, if only because I met another guy named \u0026lsquo;Harold\u0026rsquo;, who drives a Yellow/Black MCS, a 2002 model he picked-up via the Suzuki dealership he works at. He dented one of his 17\u0026quot; wheels on the way there, so Whitney and I helped-out by donating my MC spare tire (MCS\u0026rsquo;s don\u0026rsquo;t have spares\u0026hellip;from the factory, they use run-flat tires). It looked kinda funny, but it seemed to hold-up well.\nAnyway, the Red River Gorge was beautiful, probably right at peak color, or may just a little past. First, we had lunch at the Nat\u0026rsquo;l Bridge Lodge, then we hiked up the 1/2 mile trail to the Bridge. From there, it was into the Gorge proper through the Nada Tunnel, then to Sky Bridge.\nThe group was a bit more relaxed than normal. The yuppie quotient was down from usual\u0026hellip;Most of these folks seemed to enjoy their MINIs and not get too wrapped-up in the fashion of the car.\n* * *\nShout-out of praise: Looks like no monday-morning VC w/India today.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEnd-of-time watch, day 2: The Red Sox are ahead 2-0, despite 4 errors in last night\u0026rsquo;s 6-2 win over St. Louis. With Pedro Martinez slated to pitch on Tuesday in St. Louis, the Sox are on track.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAhh, the weekend. The MINI rally over to Natural Bridge was fun, if only because I met another guy named \u0026lsquo;Harold\u0026rsquo;, who drives a Yellow/Black MCS, a 2002 model he picked-up via the Suzuki dealership he works at. He dented one of his 17\u0026quot; wheels on the way there, so Whitney and I helped-out by donating my MC spare tire (MCS\u0026rsquo;s don\u0026rsquo;t have spares\u0026hellip;from the factory, they use run-flat tires). It looked kinda funny, but it seemed to hold-up well.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Just had a 2 hour meeting cancelled\u0026hellip;yay!!\nMy spirits are riding high today. We had our SCCA club meeting last night, and it was one of our best meetings ever, with 25 members attending. Heard good stories about CENDIV up in Cincy, Scott\u0026rsquo;s travails with his new (old) ZX2, and the wheel that fell off George\u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo;Dee\u0026rsquo;s motorhome in Maine (Wrong part in the wheel spindle, it turns out).\nWaited-around this morning and picked-up my new Bilstein shocks for my truck, and talked to Dad, who quickly agreed to a father/son project for putting them on. :-)\nBest of all, after my blow-up yesterday at my office-mate, I have the office to myself, at least this morning. So, the door\u0026rsquo;s closed, the overhead fluorescent lights are off, and I\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to some productivity.\nAnd I get to see my baby tonight, and go on a MINI outing tomorrow. Isn\u0026rsquo;t it great?!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust had a 2 hour meeting cancelled\u0026hellip;yay!!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy spirits are riding high today. We had our SCCA club meeting last night, and it was one of our best meetings ever, with 25 members attending. Heard good stories about CENDIV up in Cincy, Scott\u0026rsquo;s travails with his new (old) ZX2, and the wheel that fell off George\u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo;Dee\u0026rsquo;s motorhome in Maine (Wrong part in the wheel spindle, it turns out).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWaited-around this morning and picked-up my new Bilstein shocks for my truck, and talked to Dad, who quickly agreed to a father/son project for putting them on. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Requiem for Alex Kingston, who\u0026rsquo;s leaving ER after 7 seasons.\nShe\u0026rsquo;s never been one of my favorite characters, but seems she\u0026rsquo;s leaving the show on bad terms, the suits at NBC deciding her character was getting too old and dowdy to attract the 18-35 demographic.\nSo now, we have the new rock-star wannabe resident. Lovely.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/rip-alex-kingston/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRequiem for Alex Kingston, who\u0026rsquo;s leaving ER after 7 seasons.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i.imdb.com/mptv1.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe\u0026rsquo;s never been one of my favorite characters, but seems she\u0026rsquo;s leaving the show on bad terms, the suits at NBC deciding her character was getting too old and dowdy to attract the 18-35 demographic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo now, we have the new rock-star wannabe resident. Lovely.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RIP Alex Kingston"},{"content":"Man, the truck has been making a dent in my pocketbook here lately: First, a new set of tires (see below) that I got installed today at Ashley\u0026rsquo;s wheel and brake.\nI had them investigate a noise in the steering. Turns out, I had a bad inner tie rod on the right side, so there\u0026rsquo;s more moolah.\nStill, the paint\u0026rsquo;s nice and shiny, and it\u0026rsquo;s nice for tooling around in, plus there\u0026rsquo;s just something intoxicating about a V-8.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/big-red/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMan, the truck has been making a dent in my pocketbook here lately: First, a new set of tires (see below) that I got installed today at Ashley\u0026rsquo;s wheel and brake.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had them investigate a noise in the steering. Turns out, I had a bad inner tie rod on the right side, so there\u0026rsquo;s more moolah.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, the paint\u0026rsquo;s nice and shiny, and it\u0026rsquo;s nice for tooling around in, plus there\u0026rsquo;s just something intoxicating about a V-8.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Big Red"},{"content":"Can it be possible that BOSTON will pull it out against the yankees?\nAs I type this, it\u0026rsquo;s the top of the 9th, one out, and runners at the corners for Boston, with the Sox aheadd 9-3. Aside from a slip in the 7th by Pedro Martinez, Boston has been flawless.\nCan it be?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCan it be possible that BOSTON will pull it out against the yankees?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs I type this, it\u0026rsquo;s the top of the 9th, one out, and runners at the corners for Boston, with the Sox aheadd 9-3. Aside from a slip in the 7th by Pedro Martinez, Boston has been flawless.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCan it be?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"\nRonin\nThis movie is alot of flash for not much substance, but it\u0026rsquo;s watchable, with Robert DeNiro doing his best Sean Penn impersonation and statuesque eye candy from Natascha McElhone. The car chases are incredible, and make a decent spy thriller exceptional. By the end, nothing seems resolved, save many dead, stereotype characters.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/review-ronin/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/05/65/91m.jpg\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0122690/\"\u003eRonin\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis movie is alot of flash for not much substance, but it\u0026rsquo;s watchable, with Robert DeNiro doing his best Sean Penn impersonation and statuesque eye candy from Natascha McElhone. The car chases are incredible, and make a decent spy thriller exceptional. By the end, nothing seems resolved, save many dead, stereotype characters.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Ronin"},{"content":"Bullitt\nThis Steve McQueen vehicle (pardon the pun) from 1968 is a real bore, featuring an amazing, non-sequitor car chase between a Mustang with a 390 Big Block V-8 and a mean, black Dodge Charger with a big-block 440 V-8. Minus this scene, the movie is unwatchable: Slow, with under-developed characters, the film meanders from one scene to the next, with little flow.\nOh, and the Dodge manages to lose five hubcaps during the chase scene.\nMeh.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0062765/\"\u003eBullitt\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/37/78/50m.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis Steve McQueen vehicle (pardon the pun) from 1968 is a real bore, featuring an amazing, non-sequitor car chase between a Mustang with a 390 Big Block V-8 and a mean, black Dodge Charger with a big-block 440 V-8. Minus this scene, the movie is unwatchable: Slow, with under-developed characters, the film meanders from one scene to the next, with little flow.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, and the Dodge manages to lose five hubcaps during the chase scene.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Bill, Bill, Bill-san. Glad to see you have such interesting taste in post cards :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/bill-randall/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBill, Bill, Bill-san. Glad to see you have such interesting taste in post cards :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/misc/postcard.JPG\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bill Randall"},{"content":"Something\u0026rsquo;s up: All of first line managers in my department are here at 8am, sharp. I smell presentation to the department head :D\nI finally did get some sleep last night, if only 4 hours or so.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/somethings-up/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSomething\u0026rsquo;s up: All of first line managers in my department are here at 8am, sharp. I smell presentation to the department head :D\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI finally did get some sleep last night, if only 4 hours or so.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Something's up"},{"content":"As seems to be the norm these days, it\u0026rsquo;s way too late, and I\u0026rsquo;m way too awake. Somehow in my last two weeks, I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to upset my circadian rhythms so that I\u0026rsquo;m groggy every day at 2pm, and awake each night very late.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve always joked that I\u0026rsquo;ve lived with sleep debt since my Sophomore year in college (didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep for 7 months straight, really), and the results are there\u0026ndash;I can fall asleep easily within a minute of going to bed. Well, up until the last two weeks anyway.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know if it\u0026rsquo;s work, the shortening of the days, anxiety, or what, but something is messing with me.\n* * *\nWork is, well, work. After my prolonged nap this afternoon (yeah, I know\u0026hellip;nap late in afternoon == no sleep that night.), I looked at my finances a bit and realized I have a pretty good thing going. Decent job that\u0026rsquo;s not too demanding. Decent benefits. Overall mediocrity.\nThe world has, what, 6-7 Billion people in it by now? Given that, how can one individual really expect anything BUT mediocrity? I do, though.\nAnyway, I guess what I need is a dose of final disillusionment. You know, that final knockout blow of reality that kills all illusions you had that life isn\u0026rsquo;t what you\u0026rsquo;d imagined it would be.\nLarger question: What DID I imagine life would be?\nLarger answer: I didn\u0026rsquo;t.\n* * *\nThe above requires explanation, of course, especially for my Type-A readers. The funniest question I\u0026rsquo;ve ever been asked is \u0026ldquo;Harold, where do you see yourself in 5 years?\u0026rdquo;\nMy answer: Alive, I hope. Aside from that, I find all other speculation pointless.\nMy mind DOES NOT work in terms of planning nebulous things. Had I planned Christopher Columbus\u0026rsquo;s expedition to America, Europe would\u0026rsquo;ve been conquered by the Aztecs in 1745. Thus, the large turning-points in my life have been more osmosis than sound and fury. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t say I\u0026rsquo;m indecisive; rather, I ignore the question, let alone the decision.\nGive me an autocross course to navigate or a piece of software to design and I\u0026rsquo;m your man. Problem/Solution/Done. Instant gratification. Move the timeline out past some threshold and I\u0026rsquo;m a Galapagos tortoise on his back\u0026ndash;Dead meat.\nExamples:\n\u0026ldquo;What do you want to be when you grow up?\u0026rdquo; Let\u0026rsquo;s see\u0026hellip;athletically inept. Nearsighted. Shy. Studious. Good with machines. Bit of a primadonna. Was there a CHOICE here? LOL\u0026hellip;the only \u0026ldquo;big dream\u0026rdquo; I had here was being a pilot, but that was mostly a phase. Also had ideas about photography and music (brief BRIEF dream there), but I do like to eat.\nChoice of college: I visited like 4 schools. I hated the whole application and essay-writing process. I did not self-promote. My ACT scores were good enough for many schools, but I had no definite career in mind (see above), so wherever was fine.\nChoice of job: Networking from school. Started as an hourly co-op in college, then got hired-on full-time upon graduation. Again, not exactly lots of active participation on my part. I literally had someone ask me if I wanted a job while I was doing Calculus homework in Asher Science Center at Georgetown. Doesn\u0026rsquo;t get easier than that.\nI am getting wise enough to find the above silly. One MUST have plans, and I\u0026rsquo;m coming to another turning point in my life. So, looms the question: Where do I see myself in 5 years?\nSo, some goals I\u0026rsquo;m setting for myself, here and now:\nActive member of some Protestant congregation. I\u0026rsquo;ve never found a church home. Period. It\u0026rsquo;s time I did.\nActive participant in some sport/physical activity. Different ones for different seasons.\nLearning a foreign language/culture. Preferably, something without the Latin alphabet. Ancient Greek, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese all seem attractive. These cultures all think differently than Western Europeans, and I find that fascinating.\nRead constantly. I\u0026rsquo;ve done well this year with my resolution to read more, but I find myself slipping back into \u0026lsquo;veg in front of TV\u0026rsquo; mode.\nFamily. I want to settle down and have kids of my own.\nEducation? This one\u0026rsquo;s up-in-the-air for me right now, as I just don\u0026rsquo;t want more CompSci education. History? Useless, really. Business? Nah, though I find it interesting as a sideline.\n* * *\nso, back to the original question: What did (or do) I imagine life to be?\nPurposeful. Above all things, that\u0026rsquo;s what I want my life to be. I want my knowledge and accomplishments to mean something to humanity as a whole and to my loved ones in particular. And that\u0026rsquo;s what gets me about my current job and lifestyle\u0026ndash;MEANINGLESS. I lead a life that\u0026rsquo;s the poster-child for Nihilism, at least in its current form.\n:-) But, I see a road to changing all that. God grant me the courage to go down it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs seems to be the norm these days, it\u0026rsquo;s way too late, and I\u0026rsquo;m way too awake. Somehow in my last two weeks, I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to upset my circadian rhythms so that I\u0026rsquo;m groggy every day at 2pm, and awake each night very late.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve always joked that I\u0026rsquo;ve lived with sleep debt since my Sophomore year in college (didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep for 7 months straight, really), and the results are there\u0026ndash;I can fall asleep easily within a minute of going to bed. Well, up until the last two weeks anyway.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"MEAN!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMEAN!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/bomber/b-2-981203b2.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Oh my\u0026hellip;.never seen such a funny, profane, pissed-off squirrel\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/pissed-squirrel/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOh my\u0026hellip;.never seen such a funny, profane, pissed-off \u003ca href=\"http://www.illwillpress.com/vault.html\"\u003esquirrel\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pissed Squirrel"},{"content":"Latest Gossip:\nChris Brown is a full-time minster of worship and students at broadway baptist church in lexington.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLatest Gossip:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris Brown is a full-time minster of worship and students at broadway baptist church in lexington.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Geeze\u0026hellip;this is a what\u0026rsquo;s known as a slow news day:\nAsexuality: It\u0026rsquo;s not just for amoebas anymore\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGeeze\u0026hellip;this is a what\u0026rsquo;s known as a slow news day:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/10/14/asexual.study/index.html\"\u003eAsexuality: It\u0026rsquo;s not just for amoebas anymore\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Study links gene to homosexuality\nIntellectually, the article is attractive. Gay men inherit a gene that in women causes fruitfulness and in men causes fruitiness.\nDoes explain the prevalence of homosexuality throughout history, when, logically, such men cannot reproduce and pass-on their genes.\nStill, I\u0026rsquo;d argue there\u0026rsquo;s much more nurture than nature at work here. The distribution of homo/heterosexual men within a given society varies much too widely: In ancient Greece, nearly every wealthy man was wholly or partly homosexual; it was a societal norm. Unless all of their mothers were carrying this \u0026lsquo;fruitful\u0026rsquo; gene, such a skewed distribution points towards learned behavior to me.\nDo people have tendencies? Absolutely! However, social mores will determine how those tendencies find express, in all but the most extreme ends of the bell curve.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/genes-homosexuality/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/10/13/homosexuality.study.reut/index.html\"\u003eStudy links gene to homosexuality\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIntellectually, the article is attractive. Gay men inherit a gene that in women causes fruitfulness and in men causes fruitiness.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDoes explain the prevalence of homosexuality throughout history, when, logically, such men cannot reproduce and pass-on their genes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, I\u0026rsquo;d argue there\u0026rsquo;s much more nurture than nature at work here. The distribution of homo/heterosexual men within a given society varies much too widely: In ancient Greece, nearly every wealthy man was wholly or partly homosexual; it was a societal norm. Unless all of their mothers were carrying this \u0026lsquo;fruitful\u0026rsquo; gene, such a skewed distribution points towards learned behavior to me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Genes -\u003e Homosexuality?"},{"content":"Watching the debate tonight:\n\u0026ldquo;The solution to all our problems is getting people retrained for the jobs of the 21st century.\u0026rdquo;\n-- George Bush\nYou know what? Not everyone needs to be a programmer, or a database administrator, or a .com CEO. Not everyone needs a college diploma. Forcing adults to endure another 4 years of school just for the sake of getting an entry-level job belittles both those unfortunate students and the for-pay institutions that must digest them.\nWhat we DO need is a way for honest high-school graduates to earn a living. The elimination of manufacturing, tradesman jobs, and skilled working-class jobs is killing the middle class.\nI\u0026rsquo;d argue that in order to have a sustainable social and economic structure, we need to plug the ever-widening hole in our skillset. Most of these jobs come from the 19th century or earlier, not the 21st century.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/2004-debate/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWatching the debate tonight:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The solution to all our problems is getting people retrained for the jobs of the 21st century.\u0026rdquo;\u003cbr\u003e\n-- George Bush\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know what? Not everyone needs to be a programmer, or a database administrator, or a .com CEO. Not everyone needs a college diploma. Forcing adults to endure another 4 years of school just for the sake of getting an entry-level job belittles both those unfortunate students and the for-pay institutions that must digest them.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2004 Debate"},{"content":"Well, after sliding SIDEWAYS onto the interstate yesterday in the rain, I have a new set of Yokohama Geolandar\u0026rsquo;s in 245/75R16 headed for Ashley\u0026rsquo;s Wheel and Brake.\nshould be there either friday or early this coming week.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/sliding-sideways/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, after sliding SIDEWAYS onto the interstate yesterday in the rain, I have a new set of Yokohama Geolandar\u0026rsquo;s in 245/75R16 headed for Ashley\u0026rsquo;s Wheel and Brake.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.tirerack.com/images/tires/yokohama/yo_geo_hts_g051_owl.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eshould be there either friday or early this coming week.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sliding sideways"},{"content":"Some days you slack, some days you procrastinate. And then, there\u0026rsquo;s today:\n[\nWhich OS are You?](http://bbspot.com/News/2003/01/os_quiz.php)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome days you slack, some days you procrastinate. And then, there\u0026rsquo;s today:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2003/01/os_quiz/slackware.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhich OS are You?](\u003ca href=\"http://bbspot.com/News/2003/01/os_quiz.php\"\u003ehttp://bbspot.com/News/2003/01/os_quiz.php\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Idyllic weekend spent up in Louisville, relaxing away from the hustle and bustle of life. Lovely :)\nWatched quite a few movies:\nThe Girl Next Door\nGood, not great flick. All the players are B-list, aside from Elisha Cuthbert, but the story\u0026rsquo;s heartwarming and somewhat interesting. It\u0026rsquo;s an unoriginal rip-off of \u0026ldquo;Risky Business\u0026rdquo; in many ways.\nPorky\u0026rsquo;s\nAh, the infamous Porky\u0026rsquo;s, the movie that reminds us why we\u0026rsquo;re really glad we\u0026rsquo;re not horny teenagers in 1950\u0026rsquo;s Florida. There is ONE scene that makes this movie watchable: The hilarious sex scene with a young Kim Catrall as Miss \u0026ldquo;Lassie\u0026rdquo; Honeywell. Aside from that, this is a diffuse, pointless, anacrhonistic period piece that tries to string together a series of moneyshot vingnettes (\u0026ldquo;Girls in the shower\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Having Honeywell in the morning\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Boys at the whorehouse\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m just a Jew\u0026rdquo;) with the merest hint of a unifying thread. It commits the only unforgivable sin of the teen sex romp\u0026ndash;It\u0026rsquo;s BORING!\nLaws of Attraction\nThe only thing this phoned-in Brosnan/Moore vehicle has going for it is its name. It\u0026rsquo;s title is so similar to about 10 other films, you can\u0026rsquo;t zero-in on how bad it is with your friends. Say \u0026ldquo;Glitter\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Gigli\u0026rdquo; and everyone will immediately recognize the waste of celluloid you\u0026rsquo;re speaking of; say \u0026ldquo;Laws of Attraction\u0026rdquo; and you can\u0026rsquo;t remember which of the films that is.\nAnyway, the plot and characters are like a Mad Lib gone awry:\nThe Romantic Comedy Mad-lib\nName a city: New York\nName a profession: Lawyer\nWhich character should be the neat freak: The woman\nWhich should be the slob: The Man\nName a country they should away to for their wedding: Ireland\nName the worst actress you could have in the supporting role: Parker Posey\nWhich supporting character should be behind it all: The mom\nActually, the above could\u0026rsquo;ve made a decent film (God knows, J.Lo makes millions off this very formula like clockwork!), if only it didn\u0026rsquo;t get more preposterous with each reel. By the end, I swear there was a leprechaun behind the whole thing\u0026ndash;would\u0026rsquo;ve been more believable.\n* * *\nHad a bad case of insomnia last night\u0026hellip;couldn\u0026rsquo;t get to sleep until almost 2am. Can\u0026rsquo;t remember the last time I had trouble sleeping.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/girl-next-door-porkys-laws-of-attraction/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIdyllic weekend spent up in Louisville, relaxing away from the hustle and bustle of life. Lovely :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWatched quite a few movies:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0265208/\"\u003eThe Girl Next Door\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/81/65/28m.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGood, not great flick. All the players are B-list, aside from Elisha Cuthbert, but the story\u0026rsquo;s heartwarming and somewhat interesting. It\u0026rsquo;s an unoriginal rip-off of \u0026ldquo;Risky Business\u0026rdquo; in many ways.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0084522/\"\u003ePorky\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/63/15/51m.jpg\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nAh, the infamous Porky\u0026rsquo;s, the movie that reminds us why we\u0026rsquo;re really glad we\u0026rsquo;re not horny teenagers in 1950\u0026rsquo;s Florida. There is ONE scene that makes this movie watchable: The hilarious sex scene with a young Kim Catrall as Miss \u0026ldquo;Lassie\u0026rdquo; Honeywell. Aside from that, this is a diffuse, pointless, anacrhonistic period piece that tries to string together a series of moneyshot vingnettes (\u0026ldquo;Girls in the shower\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Having Honeywell in the morning\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Boys at the whorehouse\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m just a Jew\u0026rdquo;) with the merest hint of a unifying thread. It commits the only unforgivable sin of the teen sex romp\u0026ndash;It\u0026rsquo;s BORING!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Girl Next Door, Porkys, Laws of Attraction"},{"content":"Random \u0026ldquo;Apprentice\u0026rdquo; complaint:\nOkay, so you set-up the only woman with a molecule of leadership skill to fail, then you FIRE HER!?\nDisgusting.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/the-apprentice/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRandom \u0026ldquo;Apprentice\u0026rdquo; complaint:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, so you set-up the only woman with a molecule of leadership skill to fail, then you FIRE HER!?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDisgusting.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Apprentice"},{"content":"Props to William Randall, Esq. ( a.k.a. Bill-san ) for an awesome postcard with a cool picture of the Buddha of Todaiji Temple in Nara, Japan.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/bill-randall/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eProps to William Randall, Esq. ( a.k.a. Bill-san ) for an awesome postcard with a cool picture of the Buddha of Todaiji Temple in Nara, Japan.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.web.virginia.edu/asianarc/public/nara/Todaiji18.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bill Randall"},{"content":"This is the place where an inflammatory blog entry that would\u0026rsquo;ve gotten me fired once was.\nIf this had been an actual emergency, the announcement you just heard would\u0026rsquo;ve been followed by official news or instructions. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/demurring/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the place where an inflammatory blog entry that would\u0026rsquo;ve gotten me fired once was.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf this had been an actual emergency, the announcement you just heard would\u0026rsquo;ve been followed by official news or instructions. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Demurring"},{"content":"\nQuick reactions to the Vice Presidential debate last night:\nEdwards: Sharp, smooth, and effective throughout, thought at times he came across as the Southern Snake Oil Salesman. He spoke directly to Cheney, toe to toe, and his closing remarks were moving and they\u0026rsquo;ve stayed with me. He scored several blows, particluarly on health care, Iraq, Halliburton, and jobs, but none was a knockout. Honestly, I\u0026rsquo;d like to live in the America he described, a place of strong middle-class, consensus, health-care, good environment, and progress.\nCheney: Throughout, Cheney was the bitter herbs to Edwards saccharine. His job seemed to be reminding us of just how BAD things were right now in the world, implying that the two Democratic golden boys hadn\u0026rsquo;t a clue about really how to fix it. He didn\u0026rsquo;t scoff nervously the way Bush did in his first debate. Instead, he was measured in his defense of Bush/Cheney policies and in his attacks on the Senatorial voting records of Kerry and Edwards.\nOverall, had Bush been in that chair instead of Cheney, Edwards would\u0026rsquo;ve eaten him alive. Vivacious, candid, handsome, and a natural speaker, Edwards is the perfect foil for Bush. Cheney, though, wisely demurred direct exchange, choosing to focus on his agenda and let Edwards twitter about, expending energy and audience interest.\nOverall, a draw, but this Edwards guy is DANGEROUS. If Kerry gets in and gets re-elected in 08, look for Edwards in 2012.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/vp-debate/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/05/debate.main/top.debate.pool1.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQuick reactions to the Vice Presidential debate last night:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEdwards: Sharp, smooth, and effective throughout, thought at times he came across as the Southern Snake Oil Salesman. He spoke directly to Cheney, toe to toe, and his closing remarks were moving and they\u0026rsquo;ve stayed with me. He scored several blows, particluarly on health care, Iraq, Halliburton, and jobs, but none was a knockout. Honestly, I\u0026rsquo;d like to live in the America he described, a place of strong middle-class, consensus, health-care, good environment, and progress.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"VP Debate"},{"content":"Book of James in one sentence: \u0026ldquo;Have some self control, and do God\u0026rsquo;s work\u0026rdquo;.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know why, but I got up this morning with an urge to read the Bible. I made myself some coffee, turned off the radio + tv, and sat down to read whatever struck me. My marker from the last time I was at church was in James, so I began reading this tidy, direct book and it just floored me.\n\u0026ldquo;Desire fully conceived leads to sin, and sin fully conceived leads to death.\u0026rdquo; (James 1:15) Death not of the body, mind you, but of the spirit. This thing\u0026ndash;desire\u0026ndash;is the thing I struggle with most in my life. Work, cars, food, women\u0026hellip;at varying times throughout my life, all have consumed me so much that they\u0026rsquo;ve stolen my time away from God. And right now, while I\u0026rsquo;m not away from Him totally as I\u0026rsquo;ve been at times, things are somewhat distant.\nAnd, in general, the man who has self-control has an advantage. If he can back away from his natural instinct, he can get ahead in life, avoid trouble, think strategically. This is what I have touble doing.\nSo, anyway, dear readers, if you haven\u0026rsquo;t read James lately, go for it. It\u0026rsquo;s not a fun book by any means: James attacks the indolent, the proud, the rich, and the Epicureans equally, trying to motivate the Christians to season their faith with works. It\u0026rsquo;s a worthy read, if you need a little kick in the tail.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBook of James in one sentence: \u0026ldquo;Have some self control, and do God\u0026rsquo;s work\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t know why, but I got up this morning with an urge to read the Bible. I made myself some coffee, turned off the radio + tv, and sat down to read whatever struck me. My marker from the last time I was at church was in James, so I began reading this tidy, direct book and it just floored me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Great\u0026hellip;that annoying Mr. Dyson who invented the vacuum with per-fect suckshion was inspired by the Mini\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/mr-dyson/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGreat\u0026hellip;that annoying Mr. Dyson who invented the vacuum with per-fect suckshion \u003ca href=\"http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/10/04/explorers.jamesdyson/index.html\"\u003ewas inspired by the Mini\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mr Dyson"},{"content":"Haven\u0026rsquo;t been able to post from work for the past two days\u0026hellip;so here goes.\nCool Article on a MINI in a rally\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/minis-in-a-rally/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHaven\u0026rsquo;t been able to post from work for the past two days\u0026hellip;so here goes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/pw/04targanfld.htm\"\u003eCool Article on a MINI in a rally\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/pw/images/04targa_4.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MINIs in a Rally"},{"content":"I think they\u0026rsquo;ve blocked me from posting to blogger at work\u0026hellip;or else blogger is down.\nTesting 1\u0026hellip;2\u0026hellip;3\u0026hellip;.4\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI think they\u0026rsquo;ve blocked me from posting to blogger at work\u0026hellip;or else blogger is down.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTesting 1\u0026hellip;2\u0026hellip;3\u0026hellip;.4\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Joe, have a look at this.\nBasically, it\u0026rsquo;s Kodak (KODAK!) suing Sun Microsystems over a horribly generic patent they bought from Wang computers back in the 1990\u0026rsquo;s. It also means (depending how you read it) that every software system that uses dynamic-linked libraries, e.g. ALL OF THEM, infringe upon this patent.\nSoftware patents are insanity.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJoe, have a look at \u003ca href=\"http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/03/1352252\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, it\u0026rsquo;s Kodak (KODAK!) suing Sun Microsystems over a horribly generic patent they bought from Wang computers back in the 1990\u0026rsquo;s. It also means (depending how you read it) that every software system that uses dynamic-linked libraries, e.g. ALL OF THEM, infringe upon this patent.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSoftware patents are insanity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Rant I saw on slashdot this morning while I tried to avoid thinking about how utterly dead our project is:\n_\nWhat it does meen is I now have a legal basis for beating the cr@p out of the Starbucks clerk when he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand I just want plain black coffee.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s worse here in Israel, where the idea of coffee is synonymous with milk. Every time I go somewhere for coffee it\u0026rsquo;s a 5 minuet ordeal, that I am not caffinated enough to deal with.\n\u0026ldquo;Caffe, Shovar, ein Chalav, ein sukar\u0026rdquo; (Translation: Coffee, black. No milk, no Sugar)\n\u0026ldquo;Espresso\u0026rdquo;.\n\u0026ldquo;Lo Nescafe\u0026rdquo;,(Trans: no instant.)\n\u0026ldquo;Ah Nescafe Latte\u0026rdquo; (Trans: Oh, you must be wrong, and want Instant coffee mixed with steamed milk)\n\u0026ldquo;LO! Nescafe, im maim cham. Ze Oh.\u0026rdquo; (Trans: No you freaking moron. Put instant coffee in hot water, nothing else!)\n\u0026ldquo;Maim? oh Chalav?\u0026rdquo; (Trans: No one actually drinks coffee like that here. You want it with milk)\n\u0026ldquo;Look I\u0026rsquo;m a f@#$ing American. My hebrew sucks, and I know you speak 3 d@#$ languages so you can understand this. All I want is caffine in water. No milk, I\u0026rsquo;m lactose intolerant. No suggar I\u0026rsquo;m a diabetic. So unless you want me farting while I\u0026rsquo;m going through sugar shock on your floor, PUT INSTANT COFFEE IN HOT WATTER AND LET ME PAY YOU FOR IT!!\u0026rdquo;\nAh\u0026hellip; I feel better now.\n_\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/10/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRant I saw on slashdot this morning while I tried to avoid thinking about how utterly dead our project is:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e_\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat it does meen is I now have a legal basis for beating the cr@p out of the Starbucks clerk when he doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand I just want plain black coffee.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s worse here in Israel, where the idea of coffee is synonymous with milk. Every time I go somewhere for coffee it\u0026rsquo;s a 5 minuet ordeal, that I am not caffinated enough to deal with.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"viciously stolen from Fark:\nAlabama: Yes, We Have Electricity\nAlaska: 11,623 Eskimos Can\u0026rsquo;t Be Wrong!\nArizona: But It\u0026rsquo;s A Dry Heat\nArkansas: Literacy Ain\u0026rsquo;t Everything\nCalifornia: By 30, Our Women Have More Plastic Than Your Honda\nColorado: If You Don\u0026rsquo;t Ski, Don\u0026rsquo;t Bother\nConnecticut: Like Massachusetts, Only The Kennedys Don\u0026rsquo;t Own It Yet\nDelaware: We Really Do Like The Chemicals In Our Water\nFlorida: Ask Us About Our Grandkids\nGeorgia: We Put The \u0026ldquo;Fun\u0026rdquo; In Fundamentalist Extremism\nHawaii: Haka Tiki Mou Sha\u0026rsquo;ami Leeki Toru (Death To Mainland Scum, But Leave Your Money)\nIdaho: More Than Just Potatoes. Well Okay, Not Really, But The Potatoes Sure Are Real Good\nIllinois: Please Don\u0026rsquo;t Pronounce the \u0026ldquo;S\u0026rdquo;\nIndiana: 2 Billion Years Tidal Wave Free\nIowa: We Do Amazing Things With Corn\nKansas: First Of The Rectangle States\nKentucky: Five Million People; Fifteen Last Names\nLouisiana: We\u0026rsquo;re Not ALL Drunk Cajun Wackos, But That\u0026rsquo;s Our Tourism Campaign\nMaine: We\u0026rsquo;re Really Cold, But We Have Cheap Lobster\nMaryland: If You Can Dream It, We Can Tax It\nMassachusetts: Our Taxes Are Lower Than Sweden\u0026rsquo;s (For Most Tax Brackets)\nMichigan: First Line Of Defense From The Canadians\nMinnesota: 10,000 Lakes And 10,000,000,000,000 Mosquitoes\nMississippi: Come And Feel Better About Your Own State\nMissouri: Your Federal Flood Relief Tax Dollars At Work\nMontana: Land Of The Big Sky, The Unabomber, Right-Wing Crazies, And Very Little Else\nNebraska: Ask About Our State Motto Contest\nNevada: Whores and Poker!\nNew Hampshire: Go Away And Leave Us Alone\nNew Jersey: You Want A ##$%##! Motto? I Got Yer ##$%##! Motto Right Here!\nNew Mexico: Lizards Make Excellent Pets\nNew York: You Have The Right To Remain Silent, You Have The Right To An Attorney\nNorth Carolina: Tobacco Is A Vegetable\nNorth Dakota: We Really Are One Of The 50 States!\nOhio: At Least We\u0026rsquo;re Not Michigan\nOklahoma: Like The Play, Only No Singing\nOregon: Spotted Owl - It\u0026rsquo;s What\u0026rsquo;s For Dinner\nPennsylvania: Cook With Coal\nRhode Island: We\u0026rsquo;re Not REALLY An Island\nSouth Carolina: Remember The Civil War? We Didn\u0026rsquo;t Actually Surrender\nSouth Dakota: Closer Than North Dakota\nTennessee: The Educashun State\nTexas: Si\u0026rsquo; Hablo Ing\u0026rsquo;les (Yes, I Speak English)\nUtah: Our Jesus Is Better Than Your Jesus\nVermont: Yep\nVirginia: Who Says Government Stiffs And Slackjaw Yokels Don\u0026rsquo;t Mix?\nWashington: Help! We\u0026rsquo;re Overrun By Nerds And Slackers!\nWashington, D.C.: Wanna Be Mayor?\nWest Virginia: One Big Happy Family - Really!\nWisconsin: Come Cut The Cheese\nWyoming: Where Men Are Men (And The Sheep Are Scared)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/state-mottos/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eviciously stolen from Fark:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlabama: Yes, We Have Electricity\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlaska: 11,623 Eskimos Can\u0026rsquo;t Be Wrong!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eArizona: But It\u0026rsquo;s A Dry Heat\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eArkansas: Literacy Ain\u0026rsquo;t Everything\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCalifornia: By 30, Our Women Have More Plastic Than Your Honda\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eColorado: If You Don\u0026rsquo;t Ski, Don\u0026rsquo;t Bother\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConnecticut: Like Massachusetts, Only The Kennedys Don\u0026rsquo;t Own It Yet\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDelaware: We Really Do Like The Chemicals In Our Water\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFlorida: Ask Us About Our Grandkids\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGeorgia: We Put The \u0026ldquo;Fun\u0026rdquo; In Fundamentalist Extremism\u003c/p\u003e","title":"State Mottos"},{"content":"Moved to wretch about the latest TV disaster, LAX\nIt\u0026rsquo;s AWFUL!\nIt\u0026rsquo;d be one thing if they played it kitschy like they do on \u0026ldquo;Las Vegas\u0026rdquo; (Baywatch in a Casino, table for one?), but they\u0026rsquo;re playing this \u0026ldquo;drama\u0026rdquo; like it\u0026rsquo;s CSI or something\u0026hellip;\nOkay, let\u0026rsquo;s look at the facts:\n- Heather Locklear is past her prime, and couldn\u0026rsquo;t act when she was in her prime. And this material is just a bit heavier than \u0026ldquo;Melrose Place\u0026rdquo;\n- The cool thing about shows like this (CSI, ER, etc.) is they take a naturally interesting situation and reward you with exquisite attention to detail. I know very little about planes, but most of what I\u0026rsquo;ve seen on LAX seems ridiculous.\nExample: 757 is losing electrical systems one by one, including its radio. They can\u0026rsquo;t land it visually because of a cloud layer at 200 feet. So they send up a 1935-vintage DC-3 WITHOUT IFR INSTRUMENTS to \u0026lsquo;guide them in\u0026rsquo;. Gaa!\n* * *\nActually, most of this year\u0026rsquo;s shows seem like they won\u0026rsquo;t make it past November Sweeps.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/lax-is-awful/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMoved to wretch about the latest TV disaster, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nbc.com/nbc/LAX/\"\u003eLAX\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.nbc.com/photos/Primetime/LAX/1LAXauN04.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s AWFUL!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;d be one thing if they played it kitschy like they do on \u0026ldquo;Las Vegas\u0026rdquo; (Baywatch in a Casino, table for one?), but they\u0026rsquo;re playing this \u0026ldquo;drama\u0026rdquo; like it\u0026rsquo;s CSI or something\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOkay, let\u0026rsquo;s look at the facts:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Heather Locklear is past her prime, and couldn\u0026rsquo;t act when she was in her prime. And this material is just a bit heavier than \u0026ldquo;Melrose Place\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"LAX is AWFUL"},{"content":"Quote of the YEAR from the past weekend\u0026rsquo;s autocross:\nSince when do they invite 15 year old hookers to our events?\nAndrew Buck\u0026hellip;the man, the myth, the legend.\nIncriminating video of Mr. Coleman with said trollops\n* * *\nThis actually reminds me of something I wanted to Blog on: The differences between the three regions of SCCA I attend. Don\u0026rsquo;t worry, this will be to the point, I promise.\nLexington (CKR): A bunch of overgrown frat boys who are out for a good time. Mostly guys fleeing from their wives, jobs, and all responsibility to let it all hang out in their miatas. Laid-back, in general. Wives and gf\u0026rsquo;s only\u0026hellip;no groupies.\nLouisville (KYR): Fast \u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo; the Furious, Kentucky-style. Groupies. An inner circle in the club keeps everyone straight about not acting like idiots around the site.\nCincinnati (CincySCCA): take lexington, add 20 years to average age, subtract the miatas and add high dollar, high power cars galore: Corvettes , Loti, Porsches. Too laid-back: No control over participant behavior, and it shows.\nAnd lotsa groupies. Naaaasty groupies (ref. above video)(Lotsa money + expensive cars == women, apparently, even at 9 am on a Sunday at the seedy horseracing track)\nAll-in-all, each region has its own flavor, and its own charm. I really like the Louisville events: More people close to my age, if not my disposition. (Can\u0026rsquo;t say that I can party \u0026rsquo;til 3 am, then head down to the autocross 3 hours later\u0026hellip;)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/fifteen-year-old-hookers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eQuote of the YEAR from the past weekend\u0026rsquo;s autocross:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince when do they invite 15 year old hookers to our events?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Buck\u0026hellip;the man, the myth, the legend.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.emohn.net/modules/gallery/albums/USCC/Red5dapimp.wmv\"\u003eIncriminating video of Mr. Coleman with said trollops\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis actually reminds me of something I wanted to Blog on: The differences between the three regions of SCCA I attend. Don\u0026rsquo;t worry, this will be to the point, I promise.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLexington (CKR)\u003c/em\u003e: A bunch of overgrown frat boys who are out for a good time. Mostly guys fleeing from their wives, jobs, and all responsibility to let it all hang out in their miatas. Laid-back, in general. Wives and gf\u0026rsquo;s only\u0026hellip;no groupies.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fifteen Year-old Hookers?"},{"content":"Finally watched Tennessee Williams\u0026rsquo;s opus A Streetcar Named Desire. Highly affecting film. I\u0026rsquo;m calloused to drama these days: It takes an amazing story and great acting to hold my interest for long, because dramas are so darn depressing. I can make an exception.\n\u0026ldquo;Streetcar\u0026rdquo; was spellbinding. Brando is sheer masculinity, and Vivien Leigh embodies insanity. The movie\u0026rsquo;s not easy to watch, dealing as it does with rough people, obsession, prostitution, insanity, and rape, but it did hold me locked in place, awaiting Blanche\u0026rsquo;s next broken soliloquy and fearing Stanley\u0026rsquo;s next violent act.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s no one here to root for, except possibly the concept of love itself: Stanley is an ape. He\u0026rsquo;s every legers, brawn-over-brains stereotype of man. Stella is held in his thrall, weak and fleeting. Blanche is a deplorable person\u0026ndash;liar, parasite, prostitute\u0026ndash;but her wistful paeans to love still pluck that human string that resonates in us all. Still, her mad, twittering nature make us all sigh relief when she eventually leaves.\nEven well meaning Harold adds further support to my theory that anyone named \u0026lsquo;Harold\u0026rsquo; in a film must be, at best, a dupe, and at worst, a complete idiot. He wavers between the two.\nThe real star here is TW\u0026rsquo;s dialog and characterization. You can\u0026rsquo;t get much more unreal than some of these characters (How many mill-workers do you know that go quoting the Napoleanic Code?), but throughout the whole travail, it seems real right down to the SMELL of the place\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/a-streetcar-named-desire/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFinally watched Tennessee Williams\u0026rsquo;s opus \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0044081/\"\u003eA Streetcar Named Desire\u003c/a\u003e. Highly affecting film. I\u0026rsquo;m calloused to drama these days: It takes an amazing story and great acting to hold my interest for long, because dramas are so darn depressing. I can make an exception.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Streetcar\u0026rdquo; was spellbinding. Brando is sheer masculinity, and Vivien Leigh embodies insanity. The movie\u0026rsquo;s not easy to watch, dealing as it does with rough people, obsession, prostitution, insanity, and rape, but it did hold me locked in place, awaiting Blanche\u0026rsquo;s next broken soliloquy and fearing Stanley\u0026rsquo;s next violent act.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Streetcar Named Desire"},{"content":"You know what\u0026rsquo;s depressing? Working at something you have no control over whatsoever, really, and realizing part of the way through it, it\u0026rsquo;s not going to work and you should\u0026rsquo;ve known better to begin with.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/depressing/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou know what\u0026rsquo;s depressing? Working at something you have no control over whatsoever, really, and realizing part of the way through it, it\u0026rsquo;s not going to work and you should\u0026rsquo;ve known better to begin with.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Depressing"},{"content":"Drew won\u0026hellip;\nDear goodness\u0026hellip;make sure this is not the next MINI:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDrew won\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDear goodness\u0026hellip;make sure this is not the next MINI:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://motoringfile.com/pictures/mini_concept.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Jennifer / Nakomis shirt on the Jury:\n\u0026ldquo;What happens in Kentucky stays in Kentucky\u0026rdquo;\n:-)\nMy money\u0026rsquo;s on Cowboy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJennifer / Nakomis shirt on the Jury:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;What happens in Kentucky stays in Kentucky\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy money\u0026rsquo;s on Cowboy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Okay, it\u0026rsquo;s a Swedish movie (with subtitles) that describes a budding romance between two lesbian teenagers, but for some reason I love Show Me Love\nThe film\u0026rsquo;s a grainy wisp of a story, shot hand-held with no budget, but I find both the main characters captivating in their own way: Agnes, the misfit who\u0026rsquo;s a hopeless romantic, and the instensely beautiful, utterly bored Elin.\nI guess the film hits home with me because of the way I fell in love with my darling, on a long cold night nearly 5 years ago. We were from two intensely different worlds, destined for two different (yet reconvergent) paths, but I can still remember the shockwave that went through me when she told me she loved me.\nNo woman before or since ever had a key to my heart the way she did (and still does).\nSee this movie, even if you hate Sweden, lesbians, and adolescents in general.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/review-show-me-love/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, it\u0026rsquo;s a Swedish movie (with subtitles) that describes a budding romance between two lesbian teenagers, but for some reason I love \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0150662/\"\u003eShow Me Love\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe film\u0026rsquo;s a grainy wisp of a story, shot hand-held with no budget, but I find both the main characters captivating in their own way: Agnes, the misfit who\u0026rsquo;s a hopeless romantic, and the instensely beautiful, utterly bored Elin.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI guess the film hits home with me because of the way I fell in love with my darling, on a long cold night nearly 5 years ago. We were from two intensely different worlds, destined for two different (yet reconvergent) paths, but I can still remember the shockwave that went through me when she told me she loved me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: Show Me Love"},{"content":"Me paying the Stupid Tax:\nWhile taking my contacts out last night, I lost the right contact down the drain. Yup, had the water running for no good reason. I figured I\u0026rsquo;d do this at some point this year\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m a klutz. Didn\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;d be this soon, though.\nThat leaves me with 3 spares for my left eye, but only 1 for my right.\n:-) Fun times.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMe paying the Stupid Tax:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile taking my contacts out last night, I lost the right contact down the drain. Yup, had the water running for no good reason. I figured I\u0026rsquo;d do this at some point this year\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m a klutz. Didn\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;d be this soon, though.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat leaves me with 3 spares for my left eye, but only 1 for my right.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) Fun times.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Two Old Folks\u0026rsquo; Sausage buscuits and two cups of Sumatran later, I\u0026rsquo;m awake.\nMy object of lust du jour: The new John Cooper Works Suspension kit, available from MINI USA\nBasically, it\u0026rsquo;s a set of coil-over-shock units (springs and shocks in a single package), combined with heightened swaybars. Installing it would may my MINI handle even better than it does now, as well as lowering it the car 1 inch all around.\n:-) Only $1100, plus labor at a MINI dealer to install. Yikes.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/random/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwo Old Folks\u0026rsquo; Sausage buscuits and two cups of Sumatran later, I\u0026rsquo;m awake.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy object of lust du jour: The new John Cooper Works Suspension kit, available from MINI USA\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, it\u0026rsquo;s a set of coil-over-shock units (springs and shocks in a single package), combined with heightened swaybars. Installing it would may my MINI handle even better than it does now, as well as lowering it the car 1 inch all around.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Random"},{"content":"This has been probably the best literary week of my life, at least since I left college: I\u0026rsquo;ve read two software books and one pure pleasure book, a light football-theme paperback called The Way We Played the Game.\nThe book describes football in a small Michigan town in 1903, when it really was a deadly game: No pads, no face guards, no hard helmets, no neutral zone, no forward pass. It was a pure running sport, with a few lateral passes thrown-in. People died all the time from internal injuries, concussions, and the game itself was probably the most violent \u0026lsquo;sport\u0026rsquo; since the ancient Greek pankration.\nStill, little seems to have changed in the intervening years: High school boys straining to be men, communities that value bloodsport over education or even health, graft, gambling, cheating\u0026ndash;all were and still are part of football. The game is simple too violent, intense, and visceral to not have all those parts.\nIt was a quick, breezy read, based on true events, with dramatic license on characters and dialog. Definitely appropriate for the start of the madness and intensity of the football season. Heck, being a Kentucky fan, it was nice to just read about a well-coached, talented, winning team. All things UK is not.\n* * *\nOkay, the obligatory UK jokes:\nQ: How is UK not like the Taliban?\nA: The Taliban has a running game.\nQ: How many UK players does it take to win an SEC championship?\nA: Nobody knows\u0026hellip;\nQ: How\u0026rsquo;s the UK football team different from a dollar bill?\nA: You can get four good quarters out of a dollar bill.\nQ: What do you call 48 guys sitting watching the SEC championship game?\nA: The UK football team.\nQ: How do you know which UK player will be getting the ball on the next play?\nA: He\u0026rsquo;s the one crying when he comes out of the huddle.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/book-reviews/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis has been probably the best literary week of my life, at least since I left college: I\u0026rsquo;ve read two software books and one pure pleasure book, a light football-theme paperback called \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1570719411/\"\u003eThe Way We Played the Game\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1570719411.01._PE30_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book describes football in a small Michigan town in 1903, when it really was a deadly game: No pads, no face guards, no hard helmets, no neutral zone, no forward pass. It was a pure running sport, with a few lateral passes thrown-in. People died all the time from internal injuries, concussions, and the game itself was probably the most violent \u0026lsquo;sport\u0026rsquo; since the ancient Greek \u003ca href=\"http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Olympics/pankration.html\"\u003epankration\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Book Reviews"},{"content":"Ahh\u0026hellip;the weekend.\nFirst, a hand-clap of praise. Bella\u0026rsquo;s sister is better, but by no means is she certainly going to make it. As ever, it\u0026rsquo;s in God\u0026rsquo;s hands.\nLots of driving this weekend, over 500 miles\u0026rsquo; worth. Moved Bella\u0026rsquo;s parents temporarily into a tenement over in Ashland. Place reeks of cheap cigars and the scuz of years of neglect. It\u0026rsquo;s not in an awful neighborhood, but i still feel for them. Still, as a place to crash, it\u0026rsquo;s okay.\nWish they had a scuzzy car to drive to match the place, though\u0026hellip;that gleaming Mazda MPV that\u0026rsquo;s clean sticks out like a sore thumb.\n* * *\nHad a pretty awesome day today: Got to go horseback riding with Bella, who\u0026rsquo;s a hippophobe in the extreme. Still, she did well, even though her horse didn\u0026rsquo;t always follow the leader so well.\nInside joke: I had a horse named \u0026ldquo;Lips\u0026rdquo;!?\nWatched a thoroughly depressing martial arts film called Hero\nI really wanted to like the movie, but I found it too depressing. It\u0026rsquo;s certainly an artistic achievement, along the lines of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but it\u0026rsquo;s even more abstract: Whereas CTHD\u0026rsquo;s characters were characters in a fable, Hero\u0026rsquo;s characters are like pieces on a tragic chessboard, and they come off just as wooden.\nWhen the main swordsman reveals he\u0026rsquo;s from the Zhao kingdom, sworn to kill the Qin ruler, we really don\u0026rsquo;t care. He might as well be a mercenary for all the difference it\u0026rsquo;d really make in the story. The tragic lovestory of the two assassins, Broken Sword and Flying Snow is, well, tragic. But who cares? We know little of their past, and what is revealed is too fantastic for my tastes.\nContrast this with Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai from CTHD: We learn of their love for one another, as well as the social customs and fate that keeps them apart. They convey real emotion.\nAnother thing that really got on my nerves: Could they rip-off CTHD\u0026rsquo;s Yo-Yo Ma soundtrack any MORE? I mean, it was so blatant I was thinking of what SCENE in CTHD had the given music.\nBasically, if CTHD had never come out, Hero would be an awesome movie. As it is, it\u0026rsquo;s a pale (if beautiful) imitiation.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/the-weekend/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAhh\u0026hellip;the weekend.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, a hand-clap of praise. Bella\u0026rsquo;s sister is better, but by no means is she certainly going to make it. As ever, it\u0026rsquo;s in God\u0026rsquo;s hands.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLots of driving this weekend, over 500 miles\u0026rsquo; worth. Moved Bella\u0026rsquo;s parents temporarily into a tenement over in Ashland. Place reeks of cheap cigars and the scuz of years of neglect. It\u0026rsquo;s not in an awful neighborhood, but i still feel for them. Still, as a place to crash, it\u0026rsquo;s okay.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The weekend"},{"content":"WOOHOO, I\u0026rsquo;m published!\nActually, I just contributed some technical feasibility to this; none of the words there are mine.\nStill, good to see one\u0026rsquo;s name in lights, even if it is one the Evil Empire\u0026rsquo;s website.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/im-published/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWOOHOO, I\u0026rsquo;m \u003ca href=\"http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnglobspec/html/soap-over-udp.asp\"\u003epublished!\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eActually, I just contributed some technical feasibility to this; none of the words there are mine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, good to see one\u0026rsquo;s name in lights, even if it is one the Evil Empire\u0026rsquo;s website.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I'm Published"},{"content":"Spent some time reading my private blog this morning, just to review how profane and yet oddly funny I can be when I\u0026rsquo;m frustrated.\nI started blogging during Christmas of 2002-2003, and that blog became my private blog. I cuss a good deal in there, because it\u0026rsquo;s my \u0026ldquo;vent\u0026rdquo; place, kinda like my diary. Whereas this blog has my thoughts and dreams, that one has my nightmares\u0026ndash;petty jealousies, vitriolic complaints about work and all those there (okay, more vitriolic than the ones in this blog), and me generally shaking my fist at the heavens screaming \u0026lsquo;WHY?!\u0026rsquo;\nReading over there reminded me of just how low I\u0026rsquo;ve been at times throughout the past year. Life\u0026rsquo;s never very bland for me\u0026ndash;it\u0026rsquo;s either great or awful. Bipolar? Maybe.\n* * *\nRandom: There\u0026rsquo;s ONE comment that the Kerry campaign has made that\u0026rsquo;s struck home with me:\nJohn Kerry can rebuild alliances to help America defeat terrorists across the world with other countries\u0026rsquo; co-operation. George Bush has burnt so many bridges that he will force us to go it alone.\nThis is dead-on, people. George Bush is a unilateralist. When you\u0026rsquo;re the world\u0026rsquo;s only superpower, you can afford to be that way, but I don\u0026rsquo;t know that it\u0026rsquo;s getting us anywhere in the war on terror. Iraq is an America-only situation. If we brought the UN into it, the Iraqis might feel that they weren\u0026rsquo;t be occupied and run by a puppet gov\u0026rsquo;t.\nI\u0026rsquo;m dubious about waging a more \u0026lsquo;sensitive\u0026rsquo; war against terror, but seems like having more friends that just Britain and some little satellite nations\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m talking Russia, China, Australia, and some of the Arab states in this would be good. Bush is not going to get that.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/private-blog/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSpent some time reading my private blog this morning, just to review how profane and yet oddly funny I can be when I\u0026rsquo;m frustrated.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI started blogging during Christmas of 2002-2003, and that blog became my private blog. I cuss a good deal in there, because it\u0026rsquo;s my \u0026ldquo;vent\u0026rdquo; place, kinda like my diary. Whereas this blog has my thoughts and dreams, that one has my nightmares\u0026ndash;petty jealousies, vitriolic complaints about work and all those there (okay, \u003cem\u003emore\u003c/em\u003e vitriolic than the ones in this blog), and me generally shaking my fist at the heavens screaming \u0026lsquo;WHY?!\u0026rsquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Private Blog?"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Damn you Hal Mumme!\u0026rdquo;\nThis is the attack I caught as moving through my presets on the AM band on the way home tonight. The cause? Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s catastrophic loss last weekend to Louisville in the \u0026ldquo;Battle for the Governor\u0026rsquo;s Cup\u0026rdquo;, 28-0.\n28-nothing\n28-ZIP.\nBasically, the announcer\u0026rsquo;s assertion after his tirade was that Hal Mumme made the Kentucky fanbase believe that anything that was problematic needed a microwavable, need-it-yesterday solution.\nKentucky\u0026rsquo;s fanbase is fickle and pompus, with a superiority complex that needn\u0026rsquo;t be bothered by 5 losses in the last 6 to the Louisville Cardinals.\nWhatever, it\u0026rsquo;ll be a tough year to be a Kentucky fan, at least in football.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/damn-you-hal-mumme/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Damn you Hal Mumme!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the attack I caught as moving through my presets on the AM band on the way home tonight. The cause? Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s catastrophic loss last weekend to Louisville in the \u0026ldquo;Battle for the Governor\u0026rsquo;s Cup\u0026rdquo;, 28-0.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e28-nothing\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e28-ZIP.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, the announcer\u0026rsquo;s assertion after his tirade was that Hal Mumme made the Kentucky fanbase believe that anything that was problematic needed a microwavable, need-it-yesterday solution.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKentucky\u0026rsquo;s fanbase is fickle and pompus, with a superiority complex that needn\u0026rsquo;t be bothered by 5 losses in the last 6 to the Louisville Cardinals.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Damn you Hal mumme"},{"content":"All the nerds (or former nerds) out there read this by Paul Graham, nerd and tech evangelist. (No, it\u0026rsquo;s not programming gobblydygook\u0026hellip;READ it!)\nI don\u0026rsquo;t particularly like his writing style, nor his edification of the \u0026rsquo;nerd\u0026rsquo; as the proto-adult who misunderstands the endgame known as \u0026lsquo;popularity\u0026rsquo;, but his quotable quotes are amazing:\nAnother reason kids persecute nerds is to make themselves feel better. When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I\u0026rsquo;ve read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks.\nVery true: White trash *is* the most racist group, because if there\u0026rsquo;s no one below them, what do they have?\nUnpopularity is a communicable disease; kids too nice to pick on nerds will still ostracize them in self-defense.\nTrue also. People of uncertain social standing will NOT extend an olive branch.\nBut here\u0026rsquo;s the kicker:\nWhere I grew up, it felt as if there was nowhere to go, and nothing to do. This was no accident. Suburbs are deliberately designed to exclude the outside world, because it contains things that could endanger children.\nAs far as I can tell, the concept of the hormone-crazed teenager is coeval with suburbia. I don\u0026rsquo;t think this is a coincidence. I think teenagers are driven crazy by the life they\u0026rsquo;re made to lead. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance were working dogs. Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere.\nJust as with an essay on 2blowhards.com, this strikes home with me: Because of the idleness and meaninglessness of adolescence, we have generation after generation of nihilists. Moreover our current baby-boom hangover causes us to CELEBRATE this period for its freedom, not decry it for its uselessness.\nThe thing I want to take away from it is my wish to not make my kids endure the same fate.\n* * *\nAfter the diatribe that was this morning, I actually had a pretty good day at work. I finally figured out a bug that meant changing this SQL statement:\nSELECT 1\nto\nSELECT 1 FROM DUAL\nwhenever my server is talking to an Oracle database. Took me 3 hours to install Oracle 10g (640 meg download\u0026hellip;sheesh), configure it, and test it, but sure enough, that was the problem.\nAnd no meetings. I LOVE THAT. Just pure creativity (or, debugging, in this case).\nAnd I\u0026rsquo;m reading Paul Graham\u0026rsquo;s collected essays entitled Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas on the Computer Age\nEven moreso than Joel Spolsky, Graham is all over the place. Whereas Spolsky would temper his tech excitement with some business acumen, Graham is the Nerd Savant, making programming out to be an artistic enterprise that transcends its medium just as Michanelangelo transcends your average painting contractor in Fresno.\nHonestly, I don\u0026rsquo;t know if I buy it. What I know of programming as a practical, for-pay skill comes much closer to Spolsky\u0026rsquo;s no-nonsense attitudes. Basically, I\u0026rsquo;d love to look at some of Graham\u0026rsquo;s code, but I\u0026rsquo;d like to work for Spolsky.\nStill, reading both books back-to-back has been a great revelation.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAll the nerds (or former nerds) out there read \u003ca href=\"http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e by Paul Graham, nerd and tech evangelist. (No, it\u0026rsquo;s not programming gobblydygook\u0026hellip;READ it!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t particularly like his writing style, nor his edification of the \u0026rsquo;nerd\u0026rsquo; as the proto-adult who misunderstands the endgame known as \u0026lsquo;popularity\u0026rsquo;, but his quotable quotes are amazing:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnother reason kids persecute nerds is to make themselves feel better. When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I\u0026rsquo;ve read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Brilliant Dilbert-ness:\nPHB: \u0026ldquo;My keyboard is broken. It only types asterisks for passwords.\u0026rdquo;\nDogbert\u0026rsquo;s tech support: \u0026ldquo;Try changing your password to five asterisks.\u0026rdquo;\n(As an aside, I\u0026rsquo;m impressed our beloved PHB knew that those starry things were \u0026lsquo;asterisks\u0026rsquo;.)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBrilliant \u003ca href=\"http://www.dilbert.com\"\u003eDilbert\u003c/a\u003e-ness:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePHB: \u0026ldquo;My keyboard is broken. It only types asterisks for passwords.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDogbert\u0026rsquo;s tech support: \u0026ldquo;Try changing your password to five asterisks.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(As an aside, I\u0026rsquo;m impressed our beloved PHB knew that those starry things were \u0026lsquo;asterisks\u0026rsquo;.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"I so don\u0026rsquo;t enjoy coming-in to work these days\u0026hellip;same old problems, never fixed, same annoying people I\u0026rsquo;m forced to deal with. Same team lead who couldn\u0026rsquo;t lead his way out of a bag, but who\u0026rsquo;s emasculated enough by managment just to make sure he can\u0026rsquo;t. Same development processes spread across 10 timezones. Same lousy product with quality that only get worse.\nSame office with too much fluorescent light, too much chatter, too many people who ENJOY staying until 10 pm, so that they feel it\u0026rsquo;s necessary to spend three hours a day jawing.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a good job, but I\u0026rsquo;m not doing anything I believe in, I honestly feel management is clueless, and the general worthlessness of it all is killing me. At the base of it, I\u0026rsquo;m paid an obscene about of money (thank you, Norman Wirzba!) to program a product nobody uses. Well, at least, that nobody LIKES using.\nTo beat it all, I\u0026rsquo;m going to have to work very hard \u0026rsquo;til at least February just to try to heave the next stinking pile of poo that is my product out the door. Death March? It\u0026rsquo;s probably going to make our last release look like a picnic. The whole team has a general feeling of procrastination, because we don\u0026rsquo;t buy it. We don\u0026rsquo;t buy that it can be done.\nOr at least I don\u0026rsquo;t. Makes me sad every Monday (or Tuesday!) when I have to wade into the stinking cesspool again. I believe it will get better, but not for this product: It\u0026rsquo;s free, so the company places little more esteem on it than a party favor you get at a bad New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve bash.\nLooking back on my \u0026lsquo;blog, I probably write these little pissy \u0026ldquo;why me?\u0026rdquo; columns about once every two months or so. Egad\u0026hellip;is that to be the rest of my life? Hating the thing I do?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/cranky/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI so don\u0026rsquo;t enjoy coming-in to work these days\u0026hellip;same old problems, never fixed, same annoying people I\u0026rsquo;m forced to deal with. Same team lead who couldn\u0026rsquo;t lead his way out of a bag, but who\u0026rsquo;s emasculated enough by managment just to make sure he can\u0026rsquo;t. Same development processes spread across 10 timezones. Same lousy product with quality that only get worse.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSame office with too much fluorescent light, too much chatter, too many people who ENJOY staying until 10 pm, so that they feel it\u0026rsquo;s necessary to spend three hours a day jawing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cranky"},{"content":"Labor Day:\nI\u0026rsquo;m celebrating Labor Day by doing absolutely no labor. Today or yesterday:\n\u0026ldquo;I did nothing..and it was everything I thought it could be\u0026rdquo;\nWell, nothing is a bit of exaggeration. I\u0026rsquo;ve:\nRead Joel Spolsky\u0026rsquo;s latest tome on the ins and outs of software development. It\u0026rsquo;s hugely common-sense work written by a gay former Israel paratrooper who moved to this country, graduated from Yale, worked on Microsoft Excel for 3 years, and now runs his own for-profit, closed-source (GASP!) software company in New York.\nPlayed roughly 10 hours of Grand Turismo 3. I used to be addicted to this game and its predecessors, before I acquired a taste for autocross and other non-virtual forms of racing. Still, you can\u0026rsquo;t fault Gt3: It\u0026rsquo;s safe, it\u0026rsquo;s cheap, and it\u0026rsquo;s thrilling, if a huge time vacuum. I started playing yesterday at 7, stopping around 1 am, then playing another 4 hours today. Yikes.\nBought myself some new hiking boots to replace those that cracked in Colorado, making a tour of Lexington in doing so: Got the car washed at Jeff\u0026rsquo;s Carwash on Nicholasville road, at Joe Guillory\u0026rsquo;s recommendation.\nBuying shoes for me is always weird because my father\u0026rsquo;s phrase, \u0026ldquo;Ya need to getcha some shoes with some DAMN SUPPORT!\u0026rdquo; always ring in my ears. Shopping for shoes when I was a kid was a nightmare, especially with dad, because he always uttered that phrase about 5 minutes into the process. I have about 12 anecdotes that go with that, but they all follow a pattern: Dad trying to find me a decent pair of Redwing pull-on boots to match his.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll bottom line it for you: I finally found a pair of 10 1/2 EEEE boots when I was 21 years old. All the previous searches from age 8 to 18 were fruitless, and pretty darn painful for a father/son relationship.\n* * *\nOH! Almost forgot\u0026hellip;finally purchased \u0026ldquo;Songs about Jane\u0026rdquo; by Maroon5. Excellent CD\u0026hellip;great grooves and beats, reasonable lyrics. Really gets your head nodding. Buy it!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLabor Day:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m celebrating Labor Day by doing absolutely no labor. Today or yesterday:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://us.ent4.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/twentieth_century_fox/office_space/ron_livingston/ron.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;I did nothing..and it was everything I thought it could be\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, \u003cem\u003enothing\u003c/em\u003e is a bit of exaggeration. I\u0026rsquo;ve:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRead \u003ca href=\"http://www.joelonsoftware.com\"\u003eJoel Spolsky\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e latest \u003ca href=\"p://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1590593898/\"\u003etome\u003c/a\u003e on the ins and outs of software development. It\u0026rsquo;s hugely common-sense work written by a gay former Israel paratrooper who moved to this country, graduated from Yale, worked on \u003ca href=\"http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX010858001033.aspx\"\u003eMicrosoft Excel\u003c/a\u003e for 3 years, and now runs his own for-profit, closed-source (GASP!) software company in New York.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m well and truly stuck on this problem, so might as well blog for a sec\u0026hellip;\nMy MINI stinks as a long-distance cruiser (something I do more and more these days, it seems), so I\u0026rsquo;m coming-up with requirements for an interstate demon:\nMust haves:\n* Room for 4 adults, plus baggage for two + kids\n* Deep overdrive. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to be turning 4k rpm @ 80mph.\n* Resonably good handling\n* over 25 mpg on REGULAR gas (over 30 would be preferable)\n* low insurance costs\n* good safety record\n* cloth seats\nNice-to-haves:\n* manual transmission\n* tires that are over 60 in aspect ratio\n* color that\u0026rsquo;s easy to keep clean\nYeah, it\u0026rsquo;s an old-man\u0026rsquo;s car. Sue me.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/interstate-cruiser-requirements/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m well and truly stuck on this problem, so might as well blog for a sec\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy MINI stinks as a long-distance cruiser (something I do more and more these days, it seems), so I\u0026rsquo;m coming-up with requirements for an interstate demon:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMust haves:\u003cbr\u003e\n* Room for 4 adults, plus baggage for two + kids\u003cbr\u003e\n* Deep overdrive. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to be turning 4k rpm @ 80mph.\u003cbr\u003e\n* Resonably good handling\u003cbr\u003e\n* over 25 mpg on REGULAR gas (over 30 would be preferable)\u003cbr\u003e\n* low insurance costs\u003cbr\u003e\n* good safety record\u003cbr\u003e\n* cloth seats\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Interstate Cruiser Requirements"},{"content":"Stuck at work tonight until at least 6:30, so why not blog a bit?\nReality has hit me pretty hard since returning from my vacation\u0026hellip;work has been a succession of 10 hour days followed by exhaustion.\nYeah, I know\u0026hellip;wah, wah, wah\u0026hellip;everyone has to work. I accept that.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the thing: The one thing you fight a losing battle against in software development is entropy. No matter how brilliant the inital design, if you keep adding things to a given system, eventually you must throw the whole thing out. It\u0026rsquo;s sheer thermodynamics\u0026ndash;systems tend to move from order to disorder. As you get further and further down that slide, it requires more and more effort to maintain the status quo.\nSo, that\u0026rsquo;s where I\u0026rsquo;m stuck. We\u0026rsquo;ve change a few small things in our software concerning how it\u0026rsquo;s built, moving from the older nmake utility, which is better suited to compiling C and C++, to the snazzy new Ant tool, which is better for Java projects. It\u0026rsquo;s been a very positive comraderie experience, as we\u0026rsquo;ve all learned about how our product works, but it\u0026rsquo;s been hellish to implement.\nBasically, it\u0026rsquo;s been like trying to retool an 80 year old assembly line. There are three people we\u0026rsquo;ve had to go through to get this done, because we don\u0026rsquo;t control all the parts of the assembly line.\nWe knew it was going to be a pain, but not this much of a pain!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/09/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStuck at work tonight until at least 6:30, so why not blog a bit?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReality has hit me pretty hard since returning from my vacation\u0026hellip;work has been a succession of 10 hour days followed by exhaustion.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, I know\u0026hellip;wah, wah, wah\u0026hellip;everyone has to work. I accept that.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the thing: The one thing you fight a losing battle against in software development is entropy. No matter how brilliant the inital design, if you keep adding things to a given system, eventually you must throw the whole thing out. It\u0026rsquo;s sheer thermodynamics\u0026ndash;systems tend to move from order to disorder. As you get further and further down that slide, it requires more and more effort to maintain the status quo.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"If you\u0026rsquo;re on broadband, here\u0026rsquo;s a 10 meg Quicktime of our trip:\nMovie\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;re on broadband, here\u0026rsquo;s a 10 meg Quicktime of our trip:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/movies/Colorado.mov\"\u003eMovie\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"travelogue\ni\u0026rsquo;ve gotten ahead of myself, as usual, delving into the specific without giving my reader the outline. Our trip\u0026rsquo;s framework:\nWednesday the 25th\nWe left Louisville in my MINI for our non-stop flight out of Indianapolis. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s a bad flyer even under the best of circumstances, but her months of nightmares about our doom on our flight to Denver had her on a razor\u0026rsquo;s edge the whole day. Two hops to Tampa earlier in the year had nearly undone her, so I found a non-stop flight to Denver on upstart Frontier airlines. A discount carrier like Southwest or JetBlue, Frontier has new Airbus A318/319 planes with only coach-class seats. I was only impressed with their service, professionalism, and price.\nAnyway, our flight left out at 2:10 Indianapolis time. Indy doesn\u0026rsquo;t follow Daylight Savings time, so we had an extra hour to kill. We had some lunch at the TGI Friday\u0026rsquo;s on the concourse, then made it through security just in time for boarding.\nWe flew over a broad band of showers at 41,000 feet, above most turbulence, watching Secondhand Lions on my powerbook. After a two hour flight, we landed at the most beautiful airport I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen\u0026ndash;Denver International.\nOn the spur of the moment, I decided to upgrade from the Dodge Neon I had reserved at Thrifty to a Chysler 300 Touring. Calm down\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s not the V-8. But even with a 250 hp V-6, the big sedan was a complete pleasure throughout the trip, whether knifing through mountain passes or cruising at 80 on I-25.\nWe stayed at the Estes Park Holiday Inn throughout our stay, and we fell exhausted into bed at 9pm local time (11pm Louisville time).\nThursday the 26th\nThursday was our first day in Rocky Mountian National Park, which is directly west of Estes Park. Most of Colorado\u0026rsquo;s 14,000 foot peaks (the \u0026ldquo;Fourteeners\u0026rdquo;) are in this large park, and the scenery is breathtaking. We toured the main throughway of the park, first up a dirt road through Fall River pass to the summit visitor\u0026rsquo;s center, then down the Western slope of the Continental Divide to Grand Lakes, then back again to Estes park. Almost every bend in the road was a new vista, and we took pictures appropriately. Returning after 10 hours, we were exhausted.\nFriday the 27th\nFriday it rained. All day. Undaunted, we went to tour the Coors Brewry in Golden, Colorado just west of Denver. Pretty awesome; I\u0026rsquo;m all about industrial technology and scale, and a brewery is a perfect example of finesse and brute throughput: They ship 1.5 million gallons of beer per day.\nOn the way to Golden, we got to drive through Boulder. Even on a drive, you can tell the place is\u0026hellip;different. It\u0026rsquo;s like they exported the Highlands area of Louisville and expanded it to 1.5 million folks.\nOnce back in Estes Park, we went souvenir shopping. I got a nice long-sleeve shirt that screams \u0026ldquo;Got Oxygen?!\u0026rdquo;\nSaturday the 28th\nAnother blissful day in the park. We had a fruitless search for some horseback riding (needed reservations everywhere), but we did get to climb up Trail Ridge Road in the 300 again to see the sights, then taking a bus over to the clear Bear Lake, which we hiked around.\nThe trip back on Sunday was uneventful, except for us almost missing our flight because of delays going through security at Denver International. The flight couldn\u0026rsquo;t have been smoother, and the drive back was quick.\nSo, in outline, that\u0026rsquo;s our trip. More details (and pics) forthcoming.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/estes-park-2004/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003etravelogue\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\ni\u0026rsquo;ve gotten ahead of myself, as usual, delving into the specific without giving my reader the outline. Our trip\u0026rsquo;s framework:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWednesday the 25th\u003cbr\u003e\nWe left Louisville in my MINI for our non-stop flight out of Indianapolis. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s a bad flyer even under the best of circumstances, but her months of nightmares about our doom on our flight to Denver had her on a razor\u0026rsquo;s edge the whole day. Two hops to Tampa earlier in the year had nearly undone her, so I found a non-stop flight to Denver on upstart \u003ca href=\"http://www.frontierairlines.com\"\u003eFrontier\u003c/a\u003e airlines. A discount carrier like Southwest or JetBlue, Frontier has new Airbus A318/319 planes with only coach-class seats. I was only impressed with their service, professionalism, and price.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Estes Park 2004"},{"content":"Imagine a place with the best water you\u0026rsquo;ve ever tasted, not bottled, but flowing from every tap.\nImagine air, crisp and devoid of humditity. Imagine the most scenic vistas imaginable, of mountains and wildlife surrounding you in 360 degrees of God\u0026rsquo;s creation.\nImagine all this, and you\u0026rsquo;ll have Estes Park, Colorado, the place I\u0026rsquo;ve shared with elk, gray jay\u0026rsquo;s, fat chipmunks, and my darling for the past few days.\nYes, folks, I\u0026rsquo;ve been on VACATION! Having done the sea-level thing just a few months ago, we decided to try the opposite: Where St. Petersburg is developed, hot, and sea-level, the Rockies are wild, chilly, and relatively untouched. If you like nature at ALL, then go there.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s so much to say about the place! Each part\u0026ndash;the land, the water, the air, the people, the animals, the weather\u0026ndash;deserves its own blog entry. Hell, each of them deserve a treatise!\nBut just to begin\u0026hellip;\nThe Altitude\nGeorgetown, Kentucky is at ~900 feet above sea level. After one short flight on Frontier airlines out of Indianapolis and a 2 hr drive in a rented Chrysler 300 from Thrifty, Whitney and I were at seven thousand feet. The next day, on a small peak beside the Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain Nat\u0026rsquo;l Park, we were a smidge above 12,000 feet.\nAltitude like that does things to you. At 12,000 feet, you have only 60% of the oxygen you had at sea level, so you feel the effects\u0026ndash;gasping for breath at only mild exertion, confused thinking, and digestion problems.\nWhitney and I did really well. By our third day at altitude, we were conversing normally during walks along the ridge line at 11k-12k feet. I had a headache on the first night, but our appetites came back in full force by our first morning there.\nOn the flip side, returning to Georgetown has me feeling at once energized and yet draggy. The air here is dense, so I feel alert and energized, but it\u0026rsquo;s DENSE: It feels like I\u0026rsquo;m surrounded by a bog or marsh, the air cloying at me like I\u0026rsquo;m swimming through a pool. Also, there\u0026rsquo;s no humidity at altitude, but here the air\u0026rsquo;s super-saturated.\nThankfully, it\u0026rsquo;s still cool for August here in Georgetown (only high 70\u0026rsquo;s), but I\u0026rsquo;m still mostly cloistered indoors, with the air conditioning removing the humidity I can\u0026rsquo;t stand.\n* * *\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/estes-park-colorado/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eImagine a place with the best water you\u0026rsquo;ve ever tasted, not bottled, but flowing from every tap.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eImagine air, crisp and devoid of humditity. Imagine the most scenic vistas imaginable, of mountains and wildlife surrounding you in 360 degrees of God\u0026rsquo;s creation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eImagine all this, and you\u0026rsquo;ll have Estes Park, Colorado, the place I\u0026rsquo;ve shared with elk, gray jay\u0026rsquo;s, fat chipmunks, and my darling for the past few days.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, folks, I\u0026rsquo;ve been on VACATION! Having done the sea-level thing just a few months ago, we decided to try the opposite: Where St. Petersburg is developed, hot, and sea-level, the Rockies are wild, chilly, and relatively untouched. If you like nature at ALL, then go there.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Estes Park, Colorado"},{"content":"Sour grapes, table for one?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSour grapes, table for \u003ca href=\"http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/olympics/2004/gymnastics/08/22/bc.olympics.gymnastics.khorkina/index.html?cnn=yes\"\u003eone\u003c/a\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i.cnn.net/si/2004/olympics/2004/gymnastics/08/22/bc.olympics.gymnastics.khorkina/p1_khorkina.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"I think you\u0026rsquo;ve hit the nail. I consider myself lib\u0026hellip; Argus - Sep 3, 2006\nI think you\u0026rsquo;ve hit the nail. I consider myself liberal and do agree with your description of the different mindsets.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/fascinating-summary-of-liberals-v-comments/","summary":"\u003ch4 id=\"i-think-youve-hit-the-nail-i-consider-myself-lib\"\u003eI think you\u0026rsquo;ve hit the nail. I consider myself lib\u0026hellip;\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.blogger.com/profile/06552276595994836598\" title=\"noreply@blogger.com\"\u003eArgus\u003c/a\u003e - \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003eSep 3, 2006\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think you\u0026rsquo;ve hit the nail. I consider myself liberal and do agree with your description of the different mindsets.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e","title":"Fascinating Summary Of Liberals V (Comments)"},{"content":"fascinating summary of the liberals -v- conservative perspectives:\nRed Brains vs. Blue Brains:\nIn my mind, the main difference between liberals and conservatives is a preference for nature or nurture. This ties in to your idea abou the loss of free will. Disclaimer: I consider myself a conservative, athough I think I have a good understanding of how liberals think because a lot of my friends are liberals and I like to talk about politics. I\u0026rsquo;d love to hear feedback on this idea to see how valid it is.\nConservatives tend to believe that people behave in the way they do as a result of something about them in particular - their nature. Some people are just good and some people are just bad. Nothing can be done to change or fix the situation- it\u0026rsquo;s just how they are. Good people tend to obey the law, pay taxes, go to church and be good citizens. Bad people don\u0026rsquo;t. When a bad person does something bad, it\u0026rsquo;s because he\u0026rsquo;s a bad person and therefore likely to do bad things.\nLiberals, on the other hand, see everyone as more or less products of our environment - the way we are nurtured. We\u0026rsquo;re affected by what goes on around us and the things we see and experience. Bad people are bad not because of some intrinsic difference between them and good people; they\u0026rsquo;re bad because of their childhood or the atmosphere they live in. A bad person does something bad because there was some sort of external influence upon him, causing him to be bad.\nTo illustrate my point, consider gun control. Conservatives are generally against it - and this makes perfect sense considering their ideas on how people behave. Good people should be allowed to own guns becuase they\u0026rsquo;re good. They\u0026rsquo;ll only use them for self defense and as a result society will be safer. Bad people on the other had, don\u0026rsquo;t have any respect for the law. They\u0026rsquo;ll get their hands on guns regardless of the law, and use the guns to do bad things because they\u0026rsquo;re bad. To a conservative, gun control simply punishes good people and prevents them from defending themselves from the bad people.\nNow look at Gun control from the liberal perspective - people are influenced by the environment and the situation they\u0026rsquo;re. Since no one is inherently good or bad, gun control simply decreases the probablity that a given individual will be in possesion of a firearm. This is good because if you have a firearm, you\u0026rsquo;re probably more likely to shoot someone with it. Perhaps if you\u0026rsquo;re angry you wouldn\u0026rsquo;t normally hurt someone, but having a gun in your hand changes your mindset and makes you more likely to do something bad. Gun control legislation is an attempt to remove the external stimulus that can cause people to be bad - so most liberals support it.\nPoverty is another example of the difference. There is obviously some sort of connection between poverty and crime. Most of the nations involved in terrorism are not particularly wealthy, and crime is ramapant in poorer urban areas. Why?\nAsk a conservative, and most likely she\u0026rsquo;ll tell you that crime causes poverty. No one wants to start a buisness in a crime-ridden city. Because crime prevents economic activity, it causes poverty. To fix the poverty situation, just crack down on the crime. Once you\u0026rsquo;ve made the neighborhood safer, jobs will show up and poverty will go away. Note that no attempt is made to explain crime. The Conservative uses crime to explain poverty.\nAsk a liberal, and most likely he\u0026rsquo;ll tell you that the poverty causes the crime. If you grow up in a situation devoid of any opportunity for a job and a good life for yourself, you\u0026rsquo;ve got a good chance of turning to crime because of the hopelessness and despair of your situation. To fix the situation, you need to get rid of poverty. Try to lure companies in to provide jobs, and the crime will go away once the people have an opportunity for economic advancement. Unlike the conservative, the liberal uses poverty to explain why there\u0026rsquo;s crime.\nHow does this tie into free will? Conservatives make no effort or attempt to explain why bad people are bad. They just are. Ocaisonally you\u0026rsquo;ll hear talk of religion or evil or satan, but these ideas don\u0026rsquo;t have anything to do with free will. Bad people still choose to do bad things.\nGive the above options, I definitely find myself a conservative. I do think people are liable for their actions. I don\u0026rsquo;t necessarily buy into the \u0026lsquo;good people\u0026rsquo;/\u0026lsquo;bad people\u0026rsquo; or Calvinist \u0026rsquo;elect\u0026rsquo;/\u0026lsquo;damned\u0026rsquo; side of it\u0026ndash;I find that everyone has the capacity to choose the good or bad thing. There are \u0026lsquo;bad\u0026rsquo; people, that is, people with bad tendencies, who are good citizens, and there are \u0026lsquo;good\u0026rsquo; people who turn out as crack addicts and prostitutes.\nActually, I see it this way: We\u0026rsquo;re all born bad\u0026ndash;selfish, jealous, lazy, cowardly, angry. Some people manage to transcend that and merge into society. I\u0026rsquo;m not willing to reward the people who won\u0026rsquo;t do that, hence I\u0026rsquo;m a conservative. The more 50-year-old adolescents who\u0026rsquo;re addicted to OxyContin I can get off the welfare rolls, the better.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/liberals-v-conservatives/","summary":"\u003cp\u003efascinating summary of the liberals -v- conservative perspectives:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=119003\"\u003eRed Brains vs. Blue Brains:\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn my mind, the main difference between liberals and conservatives is a preference for nature or nurture. This ties in to your idea abou the loss of free will. Disclaimer: I consider myself a conservative, athough I think I have a good understanding of how liberals think because a lot of my friends are liberals and I like to talk about politics. I\u0026rsquo;d love to hear feedback on this idea to see how valid it is.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Liberals -v- Conservatives"},{"content":"I don\u0026rsquo;t know if I just have something for women with techno-orange hair, but Run Lola, Run was an amazing movie. Shot in realtime, we experience a frenetic run through the streets of Germany, following the main character as she tries to save her boyfriend from his destiny.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/run-lola-run/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t know if I just have something for women with techno-orange hair, but \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0130827/\"\u003eRun Lola, Run\u003c/a\u003e was an amazing movie. Shot in realtime, we experience a frenetic run through the streets of Germany, following the main character as she tries to save her boyfriend from his destiny.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://cooldirectors.imess.net/images/Tykwer%20images/lolarunfront.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Run Lola, Run"},{"content":"go here and set your faces to stunned (SFW):\nMat e a Car\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ego here and set your faces to stunned (SFW):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.worth1000.com/cache/contest/contestcache.asp?contest_id=3229\u0026amp;start=1\u0026amp;end=10\u0026amp;display=photoshop\"\u003eMat e a Car\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"If my splitting headache this morning is any indication, it\u0026rsquo;s going to rain today. Alot.\nWe had our monthly meeting of the Central Kentucky Region of SCCA yesterday, down at Jim Sawyer\u0026rsquo;s Bar and Grille, downtown where the old Civic Center shops used to be. These days, it\u0026rsquo;s mostly known as \u0026ldquo;That place at Main \u0026amp; Broadway where there\u0026rsquo;s a Starbucks\u0026rdquo;.\nSawyers is a great place, and the CKR members are great people. Mike Janssen is getting married to his sweetheart on Sept 3rd. There\u0026rsquo;s an Autocross on Sepetember 5th, so the honeymoon will likely be short. He\u0026rsquo;s trying to get his performance parts business off-the-ground, and he was trying to sell me some camber plates for my MINI, which would kick me out of stock and land me smack into STS or F Street Prepared, if I decided I still wanted to run on R-compound race tires.\nI mean, let\u0026rsquo;s peruse a site and see what kinda dough we\u0026rsquo;re talking about:\nCamber Plates: $600\nAdjustable rear swaybar: $200\nFull coil-over-shock suspension setup: $1900\nSet of 15x7 racing wheels: $1200\nSo, my dream setup with the above, plus tires and labor, would be $6k. Eek. How to make a small fortune in racing? Start with a large fortune.\nThe only *must haves* there would be the camber plates and the rear bar. Actually, I\u0026rsquo;m already competitive with our current region\u0026rsquo;s FSP crew, but that\u0026rsquo;s only Russell\u0026rsquo;s original Mini and a guy\u0026rsquo;s ratty old 1982 BMW 320i. I can beat \u0026rsquo;em with the Pup in basic H-Stock trim.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s money better-spent elsewhere, though. Mods are a complete money-losing proposition: They don\u0026rsquo;t increase the value on the car; instead, they make any potential buyer wary of purchase because you\u0026rsquo;ve flogged the car. Though, since I don\u0026rsquo;t ever plan on selling her\u0026hellip;:-)\n* * *\nI really wish my vacation started Monday instead of Wednesday\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m completely spent for some reason\u0026ndash;the lack of defined activity here at work, standard management B.S., and that general summer-is-ending malaise that comes every August are all contributing factors, I suppose.\nNot to jinx myself, but today is shaping-up to be quiet and low-stress. Now, if I can just find something MOTIVATING to do to knock my brain out of this funk it\u0026rsquo;s in\u0026hellip;.\n* * *\nIn other news: Hat\u0026rsquo;s off to Carly Patterson for winning the Women\u0026rsquo;s All-Aroung Gymnastics Gold medal yesterday in Athens. A cute, bubby, if slightly overwhelmed 16=year-old, Patterson followed teammate Paul Hamm\u0026rsquo;s model from the previous night, falling behind early, but finishing strong as her competition fell apart.\nI did feel sorry for Bob Costas last night as he tried to do an interview w/her:\nBob: So, at what moment did you know you\u0026rsquo;d won the Gold medal?\nCarly: Umm\u0026hellip;I just knew if I had a good floor exercise I\u0026rsquo;d be the winner.\nLOL\u0026hellip;totally matter-of-fact, like she\u0026rsquo;d just gone shopping at the mall and gotten some Baskin Robins.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf my splitting headache this morning is any indication, it\u0026rsquo;s going to rain today. Alot.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had our monthly meeting of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ckrscca.org\"\u003eCentral Kentucky Region\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://www.scca.org\"\u003eSCCA\u003c/a\u003e yesterday, down at Jim Sawyer\u0026rsquo;s Bar and Grille, downtown where the old Civic Center shops used to be. These days, it\u0026rsquo;s mostly known as \u0026ldquo;That place at Main \u0026amp; Broadway where there\u0026rsquo;s a Starbucks\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSawyers is a great place, and the CKR members are great people. Mike Janssen is getting married to his sweetheart on Sept 3rd. There\u0026rsquo;s an Autocross on Sepetember 5th, so the honeymoon will likely be short. He\u0026rsquo;s trying to get his performance parts business off-the-ground, and he was trying to sell me some camber plates for my MINI, which would kick me out of stock and land me smack into STS or F Street Prepared, if I decided I still wanted to run on R-compound race tires.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Just because what the world really needs is Caffeinated Soap:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust because what the world really needs is \u003ca href=\"http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/accessories/5a65/\"\u003eCaffeinated Soap\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/zoom/shower-shock.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"For the historically inclined, there\u0026rsquo;s a wonderful article in this Week\u0026rsquo;s (8/23) \u0026ldquo;New Yorker\u0026rdquo; by Adam Gopnik entitled \u0026ldquo;The Big One\u0026rdquo; that gives a magnificent precis of the First World War, current views on its causes and results, and a bit of editorializing about the nihilism of history.\nWorld War One was always a mystery to me, with no definite cause, no real \u0026ldquo;course of battle\u0026rdquo;, nor any real finish except the British + French exhaustion, Germans suing for peace, and the Russian Revolution. It\u0026rsquo;s like a three-million-death sideways step in human history, a transition between the Victorian to mechanized age, the time when mankind found-out how horrible war could really be. Americans had known this since the Civil War, of course, but Europe, as ususal, needed remedial classes.\nAfter all, these were the same bafoons who charged straight at longbowmen at Agincourt; why not tangle with the Six-hundred sixty-six rounds-per minute of a Maxim machine gun?\nThe article is provocative and well written, if somewhat long.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/world-war-i/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor the historically inclined, there\u0026rsquo;s a wonderful article in this Week\u0026rsquo;s (8/23) \u0026ldquo;New Yorker\u0026rdquo; by Adam Gopnik entitled \u0026ldquo;The Big One\u0026rdquo; that gives a magnificent precis of the First World War, current views on its causes and results, and a bit of editorializing about the nihilism of history.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWorld War One was always a mystery to me, with no definite cause, no real \u0026ldquo;course of battle\u0026rdquo;, nor any real finish except the British + French exhaustion, Germans suing for peace, and the Russian Revolution. It\u0026rsquo;s like a three-million-death sideways step in human history, a transition between the Victorian to mechanized age, the time when mankind found-out how horrible war could really be. Americans had known this since the Civil War, of course, but Europe, as ususal, needed remedial classes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"World War I"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m reading Evan Thomas\u0026rsquo;s eponymous biography of John Paul Jones (\u0026ldquo;Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy\u0026rdquo;) and came across a passage that reminded me of the phrase in English that I hate most of all:\nElders and Betters\nAs in, \u0026ldquo;Respect your elders and betters,\u0026rdquo; the corollary to the phrase \u0026ldquo;Children should be seen and not heard\u0026rdquo;.\nI have no problem with the \u0026lsquo;respect your elders\u0026rsquo; piece, but \u0026lsquo;betters\u0026rsquo; irks me. I hold, and always shall hold, that there is no one in this country intrinsically \u0026lsquo;better\u0026rsquo; than anyone else\u0026ndash;No lords, laidies, dukes, vicars, or kings, nor pope.\nI will gladly salute those who\u0026rsquo;ve earned my respect, but will utterly rebel against any notion that anyone is my \u0026lsquo;better\u0026rsquo;. Such feudal ideas died when we kicked the British out of this country (twice).\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/john-paul-jones/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m reading Evan Thomas\u0026rsquo;s eponymous biography of John Paul Jones (\u0026ldquo;Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy\u0026rdquo;) and came across a passage that reminded me of the phrase in English that I hate most of all:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eElders and Betters\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs in, \u0026ldquo;Respect your elders and betters,\u0026rdquo; the corollary to the phrase \u0026ldquo;Children should be seen and not heard\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have no problem with the \u0026lsquo;respect your elders\u0026rsquo; piece, but \u0026lsquo;betters\u0026rsquo; irks me. I hold, and always shall hold, that there is no one in this country intrinsically \u0026lsquo;better\u0026rsquo; than anyone else\u0026ndash;No lords, laidies, dukes, vicars, or kings, nor pope.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"John Paul Jones"},{"content":"Most useless food on the market:\nNot filling.\nHigh in calories.\nNot healthy.\nExpensive.\nI mean, I ate four of the blasted things yesterday\u0026hellip;that\u0026rsquo;s like 600 calories! Ugh\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re tasty, but ultimately very empty.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMost useless food on the market:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.quakerchewy.com/CHW_Products/Chewy/images/ProductChocolateChip_TopSpacer_NavProducts.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot filling.\u003cbr\u003e\nHigh in calories.\u003cbr\u003e\nNot healthy.\u003cbr\u003e\nExpensive.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI mean, I ate four of the blasted things yesterday\u0026hellip;that\u0026rsquo;s like 600 calories! Ugh\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re tasty, but ultimately very empty.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"The second day of olympics coverage and an interesting conversation with my beloved kept me up WAY past my bedtime, and caused me to be very tardy to work today\u0026ndash;9:45.\nThe olympics coverage has been excellent, though for once, I wish I had cable (MSNBC, CNBC, and Bravo) so that I could watch some of the other events. I\u0026rsquo;d really like to see some of the equestrian stuff, and I\u0026rsquo;ve heard good things about fencing this year. Matt Fagenbush (sp?), one of my autocross buddies, is a competitive fencer, and after he explained the sport to me (3 blades\u0026ndash;foil, epée, and saber), seems like it\u0026rsquo;d be amazing to watch.\n* * *\nSo that had me up late, as did a conversation with Whitney that brings-up and excellent blog topic: Should we treat all people equally? I pose the question not so much for an answer, but so that each reader might examine his reaction to the question.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s look closer. \u0026ldquo;Should we treat all people equally?\u0026rdquo; will invoke one of two responses:\nPolitically Correct/Pie in the sky: Of course we should. All people are God\u0026rsquo;s creation. All people have the same rights. All people deserve to be treated the same way\nmore common: Of course we shouldn\u0026rsquo;t. All people are different, and each must be treated individually. I\u0026rsquo;ll not treat a felon the same as a minister, nor a prostitute the same as a nun\nSince my conversion to Christianity, I\u0026rsquo;ve hoarded the former view\u0026ndash;All people are equal, similar, homogenous on some level, if only in that all are sinnners. However, it\u0026rsquo;s easy to disprove this assertion. All people are NOT equal: Citizens may vote, non-citizens may not; adults may drink, children may (should!) not; Laypeople can have sex, Catholic clergy may not. Equality is illusory.\nYes, we can subdivide and subdivide, saying \u0026ldquo;Well, within the group of WASPs living in Central Kentucky from 1940-1970, they\u0026rsquo;re all the same on issue \u0026lsquo;X\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo;. Consider, though, how disingenuous such subdivisions are. When we have 100,000 autonomous groups, isn\u0026rsquo;t it easier to just ditch the idea that people are all equal and admit to ourselves, they\u0026rsquo;re not.\nI do not posit this as an excuse for racism, elitism, or sexism. All three of those muddle the above two positions with a third position:\nThe stereotyper: Of course we should treat all people within \u0026ldquo;groups\u0026rdquo; equally. People within large racial/ethnic/socio-economic groups all behave the same (in general), hence they all deserve the same treatment. It\u0026rsquo;s just easier that way. In the above, what we\u0026rsquo;ve got is incomplete division: The stereotyper finds massive groups of society that he can treat as a single, individual unit. In a way, this extends natural human behavior: We\u0026rsquo;re amazingly good at perceiving, grouping, and filtering information, and the only way to do that is to create abstract structures in our mind for storing data. If we had to store every piece of minutiae about everything in our lives, we\u0026rsquo;d be helpless. By grouping, we can store more information without storing more actual data.\nExample: Imagine perceiving a building as each individual brick in the facade. Calling to mind the building would require a Herculean mental effort. Perceiving a whole city would be impossible.\nSo, basically, human beings try to group and \u0026ldquo;factor-out\u0026rdquo; as much information as we can so that we can hold it in our brains. However, when dealing with people, this can get us into trouble.\nI mean, I could go on and on here, but the point of our conversation was a tacit agreement: One must treat people as individuals. Not necessarily equally, but with simple human respect.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/olympics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe second day of olympics coverage and an interesting conversation with my beloved kept me up WAY past my bedtime, and caused me to be very tardy to work today\u0026ndash;9:45.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe olympics coverage has been excellent, though for once, I wish I had cable (MSNBC, CNBC, and Bravo) so that I could watch some of the other events. I\u0026rsquo;d really like to see some of the equestrian stuff, and I\u0026rsquo;ve heard good things about fencing this year. Matt Fagenbush (sp?), one of my autocross buddies, is a competitive fencer, and after he explained the sport to me (3 blades\u0026ndash;foil, epée, and saber), seems like it\u0026rsquo;d be amazing to watch.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Olympics"},{"content":"Stayed-up WAY too late last night watching the Olympics coverage. I\u0026rsquo;m having a very productive morning (after blowing-off my 8am VC with India)\n* Went by the post office to return Whitney\u0026rsquo;s too-small hat that I\u0026rsquo;d bought for her. Typical 15 minute wait.\n* Went to the credit union to deposit a check from the Breathitt County Public library. Seeing a 5-car line in the drive-thru, I went inside, hoping it\u0026rsquo;d be faster. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t.\n* Shopped at Wal-Mart for some Blueberry pop-tarts and granola bars, that I might break my accursed addiction to our snack machine (Eighty cents for POP TARTS!)\nFinally arrived by 8:45. Glorious :D\n* * *\nI fell off the cold-turkey no-coffee wagon this weekend. Hard. Two glorious days of home-brewed Starbucks. Nummy. I\u0026rsquo;m enjoying some fresh-ground french roast right now\u0026hellip;.mmmmmmmmmmm\u0026hellip;.\n* * *\nLooks to be a very busy week. Lots of things will probably hit the fan, but it\u0026rsquo;s to be expected: Things were *way* too quiet last week.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/olympics/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eStayed-up WAY too late last night watching the Olympics coverage. I\u0026rsquo;m having a very productive morning (after blowing-off my 8am VC with India)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Went by the post office to return Whitney\u0026rsquo;s too-small hat that I\u0026rsquo;d bought for her. Typical 15 minute wait.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* Went to the credit union to deposit a check from the Breathitt County Public library. Seeing a 5-car line in the drive-thru, I went inside, hoping it\u0026rsquo;d be faster. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Olympics"},{"content":"Had a wonderful, restful weekend up in Louisville. Got more than 10 hours of sleep each night, played a little tennis on Saturday afternoon, and had some amazing food: Bourbon-flavored pork chops, some yummy pizza, and today a good meal with Whitney\u0026rsquo;s parents over some lasagna.\nOverall, it\u0026rsquo;s just what I needed after all the recent craziness.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHad a wonderful, restful weekend up in Louisville. Got more than 10 hours of sleep each night, played a little tennis on Saturday afternoon, and had some amazing food: Bourbon-flavored pork chops, some yummy pizza, and today a good meal with Whitney\u0026rsquo;s parents over some lasagna.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOverall, it\u0026rsquo;s just what I needed after all the recent craziness.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Okay, Pulp Fiction: What\u0026rsquo;s the big hairy deal? I mean, it\u0026rsquo;s okay, but why edify the movie?\nQuentin Tarantino is Martin Scorsese on bad drugs. A true movie nerd, he packs more inside jokes, puns, and movie references into this profane, unintelligible pile of self-aggrandizement than any director has a right to do, save Francis Ford Coppola. Ballsy, but somewhat hollow.\nUma Thurman has never been more unattractive. I mean, we\u0026rsquo;re supposed to believe this drugged-out waste of 6 feet of bone is sexy enough for a man to die (or, get thrown out a window) for?\nIt\u0026rsquo;s the movie that saved John Travolta\u0026rsquo;s career. And all the Scientologists said \u0026lsquo;yay\u0026rsquo;. Personally, I *liked* Look Who\u0026rsquo;s Talking Now\nIf Samuel L. Jackson weren\u0026rsquo;t in this film, it would be a total waste. His delivery, character, and the change he undergoes from detached killer to pseudo-savior fascinate me.\nOkay, okay, there are more quotable quotes in this film than all those from the 1980\u0026rsquo;s put together. How can you hate a flick that put \u0026ldquo;Gonna get medieval on yo\u0026rsquo; ass\u0026rdquo; on the map?\nDid I mention profane? 271 usages of the word \u0026ldquo;fuck\u0026rdquo; + all variants thereof (Source: IMDB\u0026hellip;.I did NOT sit there with a counter and click \u0026rsquo;em off). This movie is so profane you go past the point of desensitization, actually making you feel hollow when you hear people talking without cussing. Even in church.\nAll-in-all, the director is the real star of this \u0026lsquo;high-concept\u0026rsquo; vehicle, and it mostly works, but it\u0026rsquo;s tiresome. I enjoyed Paul Thomas Anderson\u0026rsquo;s Boogie Nights more, even without the backwards plot and biblical references.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/pulp-fiction/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/\"\u003ePulp Fiction\u003c/a\u003e: What\u0026rsquo;s the big hairy deal? I mean, it\u0026rsquo;s okay, but why edify the movie?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQuentin Tarantino is Martin Scorsese on bad drugs. A true movie nerd, he packs more inside jokes, puns, and movie references into this profane, unintelligible pile of self-aggrandizement than any director has a right to do, save Francis Ford Coppola. Ballsy, but somewhat hollow.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUma Thurman has never been more unattractive. I mean, we\u0026rsquo;re supposed to believe this drugged-out waste of 6 feet of bone is sexy enough for a man to die (or, get thrown out a window) for?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pulp Fiction"},{"content":"This is how addicting autocross is:\nI would like to modify my MINI. Specifically, I\u0026rsquo;d like to put a different wheel and tire combination on it (some 15x7 wheels with some WIDE Hoosiers) and a rear swaybar, and maybe some suspension work (a slight lowering)\nIf I do that, I\u0026rsquo;d be in FSP, the same class my friend Russell Long is in in his Morris Mini Cooper S, a 1967. It\u0026rsquo;s kindof a ripe class for picking around here. No one who\u0026rsquo;s nationally competitive seems ot be running in that class. I\u0026rsquo;d probably get beat alot if I went anywhere else, but\u0026hellip;on the bright side, I\u0026rsquo;d be out of HS class for good. One rear swaybar and that\u0026rsquo;s it.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s insanity folks, really. Don\u0026rsquo;t ever start autocrossing. It\u0026rsquo;s addictive as heck, and more expensive than most other thrill sports, it lasts for like 5 whole minutes per event, and it keeps you out on Sundays. Bad all around\u0026hellip;\nBut I do love it so.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/autocross-addiction/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is how addicting autocross is:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would like to modify my MINI. Specifically, I\u0026rsquo;d like to put a different wheel and tire combination on it (some 15x7 wheels with some WIDE Hoosiers) and a rear swaybar, and maybe some suspension work (a slight lowering)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf I do that, I\u0026rsquo;d be in FSP, the same class my friend Russell Long is in in his Morris Mini Cooper S, a 1967. It\u0026rsquo;s kindof a ripe class for picking around here. No one who\u0026rsquo;s nationally competitive seems ot be running in that class. I\u0026rsquo;d probably get beat alot if I went anywhere else, but\u0026hellip;on the bright side, I\u0026rsquo;d be out of HS class for good. One rear swaybar and that\u0026rsquo;s it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Autocross Addiction"},{"content":"This is just INSANE:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is just INSANE:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.motoringfile.com/pictures/mini_xxl_a.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Watched Stargate last night. I\u0026rsquo;ve seen it before, of course, but it seemed like a neat addition to my Netflix queue.\nI watched the \u0026lsquo;Ultimate Edition\u0026rsquo;, and it should\u0026rsquo;ve been called \u0026ldquo;They didn\u0026rsquo;t edit anything\u0026rdquo; edition. Scenes dragged on and on, but overall a very worthy movie to watch if you happen to come across it on basic cable.\nSide note: You can see the wires they used to \u0026ldquo;fly\u0026rdquo; the model flying machines around during the blue screen scenes at the end.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/stargate/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWatched \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0111282/\"\u003eStargate\u003c/a\u003e last night. I\u0026rsquo;ve seen it before, of course, but it seemed like a neat addition to my Netflix queue.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI watched the \u0026lsquo;Ultimate Edition\u0026rsquo;, and it should\u0026rsquo;ve been called \u0026ldquo;They didn\u0026rsquo;t edit anything\u0026rdquo; edition. Scenes dragged on and on, but overall a very worthy movie to watch if you happen to come across it on basic cable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSide note: You can see the wires they used to \u0026ldquo;fly\u0026rdquo; the model flying machines around during the blue screen scenes at the end.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Stargate"},{"content":"From the horrible names file\u0026hellip;\nYou know, I\u0026rsquo;ve never met a girl named \u0026ldquo;Chastity\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Chasity\u0026rdquo; that was chaste. Not in the slightest.\nDuring my cool-down from my evening jog, I happened to see front license plate like I used to have on Little Green (but in an even more gaudy gold/bronze finish), and the thought struck me.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrom the horrible names file\u0026hellip;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know, I\u0026rsquo;ve never met a girl named \u0026ldquo;Chastity\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Chasity\u0026rdquo; that was chaste. Not in the slightest.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDuring my cool-down from my evening jog, I happened to see front license plate like I used to have on Little Green (but in an even more gaudy gold/bronze finish), and the thought struck me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"The Big Mo\u0026rsquo;\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know why I think this, but I believe John Kerry\u0026rsquo;s Presidential campaign is gathering steam. Bush is static, while Kerry and Edwards (particularly Edwards) seem dynamic and vibrant.\nKerry has done well to include Edwards on the campaign. Vigorous, engaging, and personable, Edwards softens Kerry enough to make the ticket appealing in the heartland. Combine that with Americans worried their jobs are going overseas, and we may have a repeat of 1992: People voting their pocketbooks.\nIn all honesty, aside from abortion, taxation, and the \u0026ldquo;welfare state\u0026rdquo;, I find Kerry and Edwards appealing, too. Bush is an absolute dullard; strong and moral, yes, but he\u0026rsquo;s not a natural leader, he\u0026rsquo;s poorly spoken, and he makes America look bad. Cheney *is* a strong Alpha-male type, but he\u0026rsquo;s ever-tainted as a corporate shill.\nMake no mistake: I\u0026rsquo;m still voting Republican. I just don\u0026rsquo;t think we\u0026rsquo;ll win this time.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Big Mo\u0026rsquo;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t know why I think this, but I believe John Kerry\u0026rsquo;s Presidential campaign is gathering steam. Bush is static, while Kerry and Edwards (particularly Edwards) seem dynamic and vibrant.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKerry has done well to include Edwards on the campaign. Vigorous, engaging, and personable, Edwards softens Kerry enough to make the ticket appealing in the heartland. Combine that with Americans worried their jobs are going overseas, and we may have a repeat of 1992: People voting their pocketbooks.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"This is day 3 of me quitting coffee. I have splitting headaches and irritability. The smell of coffee itself is both arousing and sickening to me, because I can\u0026rsquo;t have any.\nWhy do this to myself? Really, it comes out of my reading of The Simple Living Guide by Janet Luhrs, who publishes Simple Living magazine.\nA dense, wordy tome, the book talks about all sorts of way to simplify your life, live better, have lower stress, feel more fulfilled, be more \u0026ldquo;in the moment\u0026rdquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s about 100 pages worth of advice slopped into 400 pages of dull prose and hippy \u0026ldquo;case histories\u0026rdquo; about people who\u0026rsquo;ve applied these techniques. There are some gems there, but it\u0026rsquo;s work finding them.\nAnyway, several sections on the book talk about purging your system and drinking more water. Since my daily liquid diet is usually coffee and diet sodas, I took this to heart. By coincidence, I got a good night\u0026rsquo;s sleep up at Carrollton on Saturday, and so didn\u0026rsquo;t need coffee to get going for autocross on Sunday. It struck me that this might be a good time to try and break my coffee addiction, so I\u0026rsquo;ve continued my cold-turkey. So far I\u0026rsquo;m on day 3.\nI can\u0026rsquo;t say I\u0026rsquo;m enjoying it, but it does seem like the days have been more even, and my body glad to not be seeping caffiene from every pore. I don\u0026rsquo;t know how long I can take it, but it seems a worthy exercise, if only to show my addiction who\u0026rsquo;s boss.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/quitting-coffee/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is day 3 of me quitting coffee. I have splitting headaches and irritability. The smell of coffee itself is both arousing and sickening to me, because I can\u0026rsquo;t have any.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy do this to myself? Really, it comes out of my reading of \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553067966/\"\u003eThe Simple Living Guide\u003c/a\u003e by Janet Luhrs, who publishes \u003cem\u003eSimple Living\u003c/em\u003e magazine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0553067966.01._PE30_PIdp-schmooS,TopRight,7,-26_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA dense, wordy tome, the book talks about all sorts of way to simplify your life, live better, have lower stress, feel more fulfilled, be more \u0026ldquo;in the moment\u0026rdquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s about 100 pages worth of advice slopped into 400 pages of dull prose and hippy \u0026ldquo;case histories\u0026rdquo; about people who\u0026rsquo;ve applied these techniques. There are some gems there, but it\u0026rsquo;s work finding them.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quitting Coffee"},{"content":"And now some gloss to go with the illustrations.\nMy weekend in Sparta. Two days of autocross, or \u0026ldquo;How burnt-out can you be?\u0026rdquo;\nI\u0026rsquo;ve autocrossed for the last 6 weeks. I haven\u0026rsquo;t been to my home church for a regular Sunday service since May 9th. \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo; It\u0026rsquo;s something I love, but it\u0026rsquo;s really taking over my life.\n\u0026hellip;and I didn\u0026rsquo;t do so hot at the races, either. Not being whiney, just realizing that I feel like I\u0026rsquo;m driving the wheels off my MINI, but I\u0026rsquo;m still not catching Scott. Beating him requires consistent excellence and a bit of luck, and I\u0026rsquo;ve only done it once. With the condition of my Victoracers, that\u0026rsquo;s probably not happening again, at least not this year.\nSo, looks like I\u0026rsquo;ll be campaigning only with CKR for the rest of the year. I\u0026rsquo;ll probably be on withdrawl the first few weeks, but I\u0026rsquo;m tired, my car\u0026rsquo;s tired, and my tires are shot. It\u0026rsquo;s time to limp on in, I guess.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/autox-2004/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnd now some gloss to go with the illustrations.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy weekend in Sparta. Two days of autocross, or \u0026ldquo;How burnt-out can you be?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve autocrossed for the last 6 weeks. I haven\u0026rsquo;t been to my home church for a regular Sunday service since May 9th. \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo; It\u0026rsquo;s something I love, but it\u0026rsquo;s really taking over my life.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;and I didn\u0026rsquo;t do so hot at the races, either. Not being whiney, just realizing that I feel like I\u0026rsquo;m driving the wheels off my MINI, but I\u0026rsquo;m still not catching Scott. Beating him requires consistent excellence and a bit of luck, and I\u0026rsquo;ve only done it once. With the condition of my Victoracers, that\u0026rsquo;s probably not happening again, at least not this year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"AutoX 2004"},{"content":"Pics from early August\nThe other day, I was an honest-to-goodness spy photographer\nThat\u0026rsquo;s a lightly disguised 2005 Ford Mustang.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/aug2004/aug2004.html\"\u003ePics from early August\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other day, I was an honest-to-goodness spy photographer\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/aug2004/aug2004-Images/3.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s a lightly disguised 2005 Ford Mustang.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"\nShe\u0026rsquo;s got huuuuge\u0026hellip;..tracts of land\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/jaguar/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.autoextremist.com/roadamerica04/Jaguar.jpg\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eShe\u0026rsquo;s got huuuuge\u0026hellip;..tracts of land\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jaguar"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s been a very\u0026hellip;uneven\u0026hellip;week here in the Bluegrass.\nFirst, a comment on the weather (yes, it\u0026rsquo;s going to be one of *those* blogs): Though the week began with sweltering temps in the high 80\u0026rsquo;s with lots of humidity, it was chilly this morning. I\u0026rsquo;m talking 60 degrees F, in AUGUST. It feels like late September out there.\nThe cool weather has been a boon to my exercise. I\u0026rsquo;ve jogged 2.5 miles each of the past two days, and I\u0026rsquo;ve drunk plenty of water, and I feel marvelous.\n* * *\nWork has been, well, not so good this week. I\u0026rsquo;ve figured-out what gets me about my co-workers in India: Complete lack of initiative. They see a problem, they identify it, they study it, but they don\u0026rsquo;t FIX it. Basically, on my side of the project, I run on a very simple rule: No broken windows. If you see a problem in our server, don\u0026rsquo;t jot a note down, don\u0026rsquo;t waste 2 weeks trying to explain to some poor schmuck in America (i.e. ME!) how to fix it or why to fix it. Just fix it. Feel empowered, because that\u0026rsquo;s the only way we can churn out software.\nBut they\u0026rsquo;re not doing that.\nNope, it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;oh my gosh, this thing is broken\u0026rdquo;, or \u0026ldquo;why does XYZ not work\u0026rdquo;. I mean, it\u0026rsquo;s like they\u0026rsquo;re afraid they\u0026rsquo;re going to piss-off someone by changing his code. Listen, none of it is OUR code. It all belongs to the company, which means its all a great big Sandbox for all of us to play in. All it requires is initiative, and they demonstrate a decided lack thereof.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;m known for having grandiose opinions about all things political, social, and economic, but I\u0026rsquo;m rather spent at the moment. In the past few weeks, my world has gotten smaller and simpler, as I\u0026rsquo;ve concentrated upon those things close and important to me: Friends, family, work obligations, exercise, food, and taking life as it comes.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know that this makes me disengaged so much as taking a breather. Political coverage bombards us so much that it\u0026rsquo;s noise. I plan to have a look at the Party Platforms right after the Republican convention, but aside from that I couldn\u0026rsquo;t care less at this moment.\n* * *\nThis weekend looks to be somewhat tiring. Whitney and I are headed-up to Sparta for a two-day autcross, our Tri-region tournament. After that, no more autocross for the remainder of August for me. This will make 6 straight weekends of it, and while it\u0026rsquo;s been great fun, that\u0026rsquo;s just too much time, driving, expense, tire wear, wear\u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo;tear on the Pup, etc.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s been a very\u0026hellip;uneven\u0026hellip;week here in the Bluegrass.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, a comment on the weather (yes, it\u0026rsquo;s going to be one of *those* blogs): Though the week began with sweltering temps in the high 80\u0026rsquo;s with lots of humidity, it was \u003cem\u003echilly\u003c/em\u003e this morning. I\u0026rsquo;m talking 60 degrees F, in AUGUST. It feels like late September out there.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe cool weather has been a boon to my exercise. I\u0026rsquo;ve jogged 2.5 miles each of the past two days, and I\u0026rsquo;ve drunk plenty of water, and I feel marvelous.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"In the past 3 days, I\u0026rsquo;ve driven roughly 500 miles.\nSaturday, Susan needed me to come down and fix their wireless router so that it would interoperate with their library card catalog server. Basically, the way I had it set-up, there was a D-link 614 4-port switch that sat between their DSL modem and their network, doing Network Address Translation (NAT) and defining a private network 192.168.2.0 with a netmask of 255.255.255.0. On THAT network, I had their wireless router sitting on 192.168.2.5, also doing NAT and defining its own private network for wireless clients 192.168.0.0, netmask 255.255.255.0.\nBasically, the issue came down to editing two .ini files on two laptops, and making sure the stuff was installed. No big shakes, so I didn\u0026rsquo;t bother billing \u0026rsquo;em for the time.\nSunday was autocross down in sunny Richmond, Kentucky. Yes, another slick, tight EKU course, and it was SO MUCH FUN! I arrived with Whitney and the Green Dragon in train and parked with my normal crew, and facing a beautiful Scion Xa and Xb. We had about 80 entrants; Scott conned David Patrick into letting us run second instead of first, so that the track (er\u0026hellip;parking lot) would have time to heat-up and get some rubber on it. It paid-off, for both of us.\nAs usual, I was chasing tire pressures. After last week\u0026rsquo;s fiasco up in Louisville, I started off with 42f/40r, ending the day as high as 47f/41r, and the car seemed to respond magnificently: Of my 6 runs, aside from a blown shift to 1st in the 4th run, my times got consistently lower:\n33.277\n32.986\n32.951\n33.161 \u0026lt;--blown shift\n32.521\n32.782\nScott, however, was on another planet from there. He got better throughout, finishing on his last run with a 31.3, good for 1st place in overall index time for the day. As one of my buddies from work said later, \u0026ldquo;Dude, if I were you, I\u0026rsquo;d be looking for the turbo that Civic has hidden somewhere!\u0026rdquo;\nThing is, I know where I could\u0026rsquo;ve gotten down into the 31\u0026rsquo;s easily: There were two spots towards the end where I was consistently overshooting my braking zone, resulting in lots of understeer trying to go into the final two S-turns. Other than that, I was right with Scott, and even with those miscues, I was still 9th overall in index times, ahead of the vaunted Jim Moore from Louisville, even.\nIt was a really good time; other random reports:\nWhitney\u0026rsquo;s caught the bug in a BAD way. She wants to co-drive at an event soon, maybe even the tri-region :-)\nRobin had an excellent day, pulling-out 2nd in GSL over Gail Reynolds. I powwow\u0026rsquo;d with them using my course map for their last run, and all 3 of them improved their times using some techniques I suggested, which was pretty gratifying.\nSome of my co-workers turned out for their second autocross: Ben Pullen in his Nissan Maxima and Darren Black in his Nissan 240SX, both in GS. They never had a chance against Ron\u0026rsquo;s MCS + Hoosier A3S04\u0026rsquo;s, but Ben was a joy to watch as he got consistently lower times throughout his runs.\nThe Reynolds may be getting a Scion Xb for Mark to use as a daily driver. The MCS really doesn\u0026rsquo;t get very good mileage: 25mpg, realistically.\nWhitney seemed hugely enamoured of the Scion Xa, which looks for all the world like a Japanese 4-door MINI. Roomy for such a small car, it has a quality feel and an attractive price\u0026ndash;well-equipped, it\u0026rsquo;s $3k less than a base MC. Pics:\nAnd then yesterday\u0026hellip;\nMy weekends tend to catch-up to me around Monday at noon, and, boy, did this one ever do that. I had a headache and \u0026ldquo;A bad case of the Mondays\u0026rdquo;. Nothing seemed to improve my mood. And then, the other shoe dropped: Susan IM\u0026rsquo;d me after lunch to say their wireless was cutting in and out on them at 5-minute intervals. We tried every piece of witchcraft I could think of until I finally found out that the Dlink DI-624 has a bug with the new firmware. They insisted I get them a new wireless router, so I didn\u0026rsquo;t screw-around: I burned it down to CompUSA and got them exactly what I bought for myself: The Buffalo Wireless WBR-54:\nThey don\u0026rsquo;t look like much, but they\u0026rsquo;ve gotten rave reviews from all the magazines, they\u0026rsquo;re feature rich, with all the latest wireless security standards. A banzai run in the Pup had me through Lexington traffic and down to Jackson by 7. By 8, I had replaced both their switch/firewall and wireless router with the single unit you see above on the left. All that was left was for Susan to come in and verify the function with their laptops. Did a bit more miscellaneous work, and left by 9.\nMom plied me with more food than I could deal with and sent me to bed. Rising this morning at 5:30 (okay\u0026hellip;5:45 using the age-old \u0026ldquo;Just 15 more minutes, mom!\u0026rdquo; snooze bar), I was to work by 8.\nAnd now, I can crash, because I think the coffee just\u0026hellip;wore\u0026hellip;.off\u0026hellip;.ZZZZZZZZZZZ\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/08/weekend-that-was/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the past 3 days, I\u0026rsquo;ve driven roughly 500 miles.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaturday, Susan needed me to come down and fix their wireless router so that it would interoperate with their library card catalog server. Basically, the way I had it set-up, there was a D-link 614 4-port switch that sat between their DSL modem and their network, doing Network Address Translation (NAT) and defining a private network 192.168.2.0 with a netmask of 255.255.255.0. On THAT network, I had their wireless router sitting on 192.168.2.5, also doing NAT and defining its own private network for wireless clients 192.168.0.0, netmask 255.255.255.0.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weekend that Was"},{"content":"A retrospective on my day off.\n(sorry\u0026hellip;first a pic)\nVW of America is totally clueless, and the legion of people that bought cars in 1998-2002 have pretty much rotated out of \u0026rsquo;em. Bad build quality, terrible customer serice, and hearing the answer \u0026ldquo;Oh they all do that [leak oil, fail to start, creak, groan, ride like a buick, blow ignition coils, flake off their paint]\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nAnyway, I arose yesterday surrounded by the insane mess of my apartment, and then I smelled the 57 degree air outside and I had a Ferris Bueller moment, \u0026ldquo;Cameron, I\u0026rsquo;m TAKING THE DAY OFF\u0026rdquo;. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s dad\u0026rsquo;s offer of free tix to the Louisville Bats (Triple A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds) sealed the deal. Three phone calls later, I was off for the day.\nMade some yummy Pilsbury Cinnamon rolls \u0026amp; a quart of pure Sumatran coffee, and then I made my todo list + shopping list. Won\u0026rsquo;t bore you with the details, but my proudest moment came as I sewed buttons on two different shirts. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s jealous.\nOverall, a very restorative, Zen sort of day. The Bats game was good; not great, but good. Like the venue; stole some seats right behind home plate as the usher wasn\u0026rsquo;t looking.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/first-day-off/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA retrospective on my day off.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(sorry\u0026hellip;first a pic)\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://images.snapfish.com/33%3B42%3B%3A323232%7Ffp63%3Dot%3E232%3B%3D%3B37%3D%3B%3A8%3DXROQDF%3E2323593%3B7789%3Aot1lsi\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVW of America is totally clueless, and the legion of people that bought cars in 1998-2002 have pretty much rotated out of \u0026rsquo;em. Bad build quality, terrible customer serice, and hearing the answer \u0026ldquo;Oh they all do that [leak oil, fail to start, creak, groan, ride like a buick, blow ignition coils, flake off their paint]\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, I arose yesterday surrounded by the insane mess of my apartment, and then I smelled the 57 degree air outside and I had a Ferris Bueller moment, \u0026ldquo;Cameron, I\u0026rsquo;m TAKING THE DAY OFF\u0026rdquo;. Whitney\u0026rsquo;s dad\u0026rsquo;s offer of free tix to the Louisville Bats (Triple A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds) sealed the deal. Three phone calls later, I was off for the day.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"First Day Off"},{"content":"Harvid brainfart moment of the day:\nSo, I\u0026rsquo;m coding up this fix that AT\u0026amp;T is demanding, and I\u0026rsquo;ve solved the problem with a little hack WAY down inside this one module. Without going into too much detail, what I have to do is invert the array that I was returning from this one function (I said it was a hack!)\nIn java, to do that, you need to use a java.util.Comparator class inside the Arrays.sort() method call. Inside the comparator, I need to change the sign of the return value of the java.lang.String class\u0026rsquo;s compareTo() method.\nSo, genius me, I\u0026rsquo;m sitting here for like 15 minutes trying to figure this out, so I code-up something like this:\nint ordinal = fileName1.compareTo(fileName2); switch( ordinal ) { case -1: return 1; case 1: return -1; case 0: return 0; } Which is just about the most ridiculous code I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen\u0026hellip;.so I say to Patrick: \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s the easiest way to flip the sign of an integer?\u0026rdquo; and he goes: \u0026ldquo;Uhh\u0026hellip;multiply by negative 1?\u0026rdquo;\nYup. Monstrous code becomes nice and neat:\nreturn -1 \\* fileName1.compareTo(fileName2); ","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/brainfart-of-the-day/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHarvid brainfart moment of the day:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, I\u0026rsquo;m coding up this fix that AT\u0026amp;T is demanding, and I\u0026rsquo;ve solved the problem with a little hack WAY down inside this one module. Without going into too much detail, what I have to do is invert the array that I was returning from this one function (I said it was a hack!)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn java, to do that, you need to use a java.util.Comparator class inside the Arrays.sort() method call. Inside the comparator, I need to change the sign of the return value of the java.lang.String class\u0026rsquo;s compareTo() method.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Brainfart of the Day"},{"content":"GAA! National Faggot Week?\nWarning: British false cognate content!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGAA! \u003ca href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2698507.stm\"\u003eNational Faggot Week?\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWarning: British false cognate content!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"The weekender blog:\nSpent most all of this weekend up in and around Louisville. Friday night, I went up for dinner with Whitney and Joey, then Saturday we found ourselves in sunny New Haven, KY:\nWhere we found ourselves at the Kentucky Railway Museum to ride Thomas the Tank Engine on his tour of America.\nThe start of Saturday was a disaster; Joey hid Whitney\u0026rsquo;s keys inside the laundry and we didn\u0026rsquo;t leave until a few minutes after 11, when we had tickets for the 12:20 train. It takes a little over an hour to get to New Haven via US 31E through Bardstown. On the bright side, we got to take the Pup and the drive was a blast with Whitney and Joey in his car seat in the back.\nGratuitous cute kid pic:\nAnyway, we got to the railway museum and it was really fun. We got to ride on the train, with Thomas sitting at the front. It was actually a faux engine, but looked convincing enough. I was rather impressed\u0026ndash;very kid-friendly environment, and not too commercial. Other than tickets, we didn\u0026rsquo;t spend a dime there.\nThe magician guy was incredibly awful. Thirty minutes of my life gone for 3 tricks that BARELY fooled a gaggle of 3 year olds.\nAs we were so close to Loretto, home of Maker\u0026rsquo;s Mark, we decided to make a side-trip to catch the last tour of the day at 3:30. Fabulous, though Joey wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite up to it. Lacking a nap, he didn\u0026rsquo;t want to do the walking tour. :-)\n* * *\nSunday\u0026rsquo;s autocross was really fun, but it kinda stank. Got 2nd again, nearly 3 seconds behind Scott and his Civic. The course had four tight 180-degree turns, three of which were in succession and which led onto a straightaway. I was total dogmeat against that VTEC Civic. More of a Corvette course than anything.\nTo beat it all, I had the wrong pressures throughout. I mistakenly dropped my fronts to 40 psi, and that had them feeling completely unresponsive on turn-in, and pushing terribly on corner exit.\nFor my last run, I upped the pressures to 44f/40r, and that felt marvelous; I took 1.5 seconds off my previous best to finish with a 56.3. Too bad Scott had a 54.xxx\nBut it was fun, and Whitney \u0026amp; Joey came out to watch, which meant a lot to me. They were supportive throughout, even when I was freaking-out because I couldn\u0026rsquo;t find any air for my ailing front tires.\n* * *\nEnded-up being so wiped after Sunday that I stayed over on Sunday night, driving back to Lexington this morning; oddly, I was 20 minutes EARLY for my 8 am meeting. Work is terifically silly and stupid these days, but que sera sera\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/weekend/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe weekender blog:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpent most all of this weekend up in and around Louisville. Friday night, I went up for dinner with Whitney and Joey, then Saturday we found ourselves in sunny New Haven, KY:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://mq-mapgend.websys.aol.com:80/mqmapgend?MQMapGenRequest=FDR2dmwjDE%3byt29%26FDJnci4Jkqj%2cMMCJ%3aHOEvq%3bat0dzy%3a%29r8shu2%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%408%3aqyb%3al4b%3aTD%15JFE%3aHOHQJ%3bat0dzy%3a%29r8shu2%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40%24x9%40\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhere we found ourselves at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.kyrail.org/\"\u003eKentucky Railway Museum\u003c/a\u003e to ride Thomas the Tank Engine on his tour of America.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe start of Saturday was a disaster; Joey hid Whitney\u0026rsquo;s keys inside the laundry and we didn\u0026rsquo;t leave until a few minutes after 11, when we had tickets for the 12:20 train. It takes a little over an hour to get to New Haven via US 31E through Bardstown. On the bright side, we got to take the Pup and the drive was a blast with Whitney and Joey in his car seat in the back.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Weekend"},{"content":"\nPics of the EKU autocross\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/eku20040718/autocross-Images/3.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/eku20040718/autocross.html\"\u003ePics of the EKU autocross\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Suddenly, Central Kentucky is the Scottish Highlands:\nThe high today was ~70, with tonight\u0026rsquo;s low expected to be 61 degrees, and a low cloudlayer blankets everything with a diffuse, gray light, and a mist hangs low.\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;cue the Hound of the Baskervilles. :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSuddenly, Central Kentucky is the Scottish Highlands:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe high today was ~70, with tonight\u0026rsquo;s low expected to be 61 degrees, and a low cloudlayer blankets everything with a diffuse, gray light, and a mist hangs low.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026gt;\u0026gt;cue the Hound of the Baskervilles. :D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Some hellacious thunderstorm blew through Georgetown at around 6am. I was so desperate for sleep that I put my pillow over my head to muffle the thunder and turned off my alarm.\nSo, after getting up at the crack of 9 am, I didn\u0026rsquo;t make it to work until around 10. \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo;\nTotally spent today\u0026hellip;\nHand clap of praise: I was a good boy and went jogging last night around the subdivision across from my apartment house. Only got chased by one dog, and a little pug at that :-)\nMade it to Bible study last night (late, as usual).\nSleepy\u0026hellip;so sleepy\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome hellacious thunderstorm blew through Georgetown at around 6am. I was so desperate for sleep that I put my pillow over my head to muffle the thunder and turned off my alarm.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, after getting up at the crack of 9 am, I didn\u0026rsquo;t make it to work until around 10. \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTotally spent today\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHand clap of praise: I was a good boy and went jogging last night around the subdivision across from my apartment house. Only got chased by one dog, and a little pug at that :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"From the automotive newsletter that I read every Wednesday:\nLessons you learn in life\nFav quote:\nSuffice to say, Nadine is my \u0026ldquo;ex\u0026rdquo; - the fiery redhead with an equally fiery temper who is comfortable around firearms and who, in a drunken rage, inadvertently shot me, twice, when she found out I was leaving her for Ms. Jolene.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the automotive newsletter that I read every Wednesday:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.autoextremist.com/page5.shtml#RoadKill\"\u003eLessons you learn in life\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFav quote:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuffice to say, Nadine is my \u0026ldquo;ex\u0026rdquo; - the fiery redhead with an equally fiery temper who is comfortable around firearms and who, in a drunken rage, inadvertently shot me, twice, when she found out I was leaving her for Ms. Jolene.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Sleep is such a good thing.\nAnd such a bad thing when you\u0026rsquo;re not getting enough.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSleep is such a good thing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd such a bad thing when you\u0026rsquo;re not getting enough.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Kudos to my wondermous girlfriend who, after hearing about the powerlessness and depression of my team at work, set us a snack basket with 10 pounds of junk food: 3 kinds of pringles, gummy worms, doritos, devil\u0026rsquo;s food cookies, hard candies, salsa + chips. I asked her if she ordered the \u0026ldquo;Programmer\u0026rsquo;s Special\u0026rdquo; :-)\nWay to go, honey!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKudos to my wondermous girlfriend who, after hearing about the powerlessness and depression of my team at work, set us a snack basket with 10 pounds of junk food: 3 kinds of pringles, gummy worms, doritos, devil\u0026rsquo;s food cookies, hard candies, salsa + chips. I asked her if she ordered the \u0026ldquo;Programmer\u0026rsquo;s Special\u0026rdquo; :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWay to go, honey!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Let\u0026rsquo;s face it, Morning Drive is a time of extremes for radio listeners in America today: You\u0026rsquo;re stuck in your car for a few fleet minutes or monotonous hours as you and 10,000 of your closest friends who eschew public transportation wind your way to work. To escape, you flick on your radio and you get the complete spectrum from Howard Stern to Bible-thumping Baptists to Classic Rock.\nAnd so much of it is just crap, isn\u0026rsquo;t it? Most of the Howard Stern wannabes continue to disgust us, and shows like Bob and Tom feature the same tired jokes and made-up group dynamics year after year. NPR is a respite from the canned laughter and naked lesbians, though it seems broadcast from Communist China.\nSo, I expect very little from my morning commute, but the other day on the \u0026ldquo;Rick \u0026lsquo;N\u0026rsquo; Bubba\u0026rdquo; show on 101.5 here in Lexington, I heard a genuinely provocative topic: Judges are the new lawmakers of America. Think about it: With the president busy with foreign policy and the bureaucracy of the excecutive branch, and the gridlock and pork of the executive branch, the judicial branch is now taking care of the monumental policy decisions of America.\nExamples:\n\u0026ldquo;Under God\u0026rdquo; in the Pledge of Allegiance\nGay marriage. In Massachusetts, their Supreme Court has all but written the outline of the law they DEMAND the Mass. Legislature pass!\nAbortion rights\nAt the national level, judges have no accountability to the American people, and that\u0026rsquo;s scary. Granted, there are times this sort of power has been a good thing: Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark case, providing results that never would have been possible to push through the Senate.\nMy real concern is how broken the checks and balances in the government seem to be: The president seems to have carte blanche to spend our money in whatever way he sees fit, and wage war wherever he feels like it, though neither of these powers are his in the Constitution. The legislature seems to have dropped the ball completely; we have 535 representatives whose sole purpose is to get as much pork from the shank of the government as they can. (Mitch McConnell, are you listening? Senator Byrd?)\nI don\u0026rsquo;t really blame the judiciary: Nature abhors a vacuum, and they\u0026rsquo;ve expanded to fill it. I do think something should be done to make some guidelines that the Judical Branch is there solely to interpret the laws and the constitution, not make policy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/politics-in-2004/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s face it, Morning Drive is a time of extremes for radio listeners in America today: You\u0026rsquo;re stuck in your car for a few fleet minutes or monotonous hours as you and 10,000 of your closest friends who eschew public transportation wind your way to work. To escape, you flick on your radio and you get the complete spectrum from Howard Stern to Bible-thumping Baptists to Classic Rock.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd so much of it is just crap, isn\u0026rsquo;t it? Most of the Howard Stern wannabes continue to disgust us, and shows like \u003ca href=\"http://www.bobandtom.com\"\u003eBob and Tom\u003c/a\u003e feature the same tired jokes and made-up group dynamics year after year. NPR is a respite from the canned laughter and naked lesbians, though it seems broadcast from Communist China.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Politics in 2004"},{"content":"Heard complaints lately that the \u0026lsquo;Blog is a real bitter pill to swallow. As in, \u0026ldquo;Harold, you\u0026rsquo;re frickin\u0026rsquo; depressing, man!\u0026rdquo;\nSo, my hand-clap of praise for the day: My mom found the watch I \u0026ldquo;lost\u0026rdquo;, my Eddie Bauer watch that was a graduation present from my father. Awesomeness!\nAlso, a small report from the autocross at EKU yesterday. Short course, with lots of sweeper elements and good flow. Not very technical. With the low turn-out we had 3 heats with 6 runs apiece. (I would have pics, but Whitney absconded with my Nikon digicam.)\nList of times \u0026amp; tire pressures\n34.7 (45f/40r)\n34.4 \u0026quot;\u0026quot;\n34.6 (45f/36r) [ misread my tire gauge ]\n35.4 \u0026quot;\u0026quot; Whitney\u0026rsquo;s ride-along run\n33.9 (42f/40r) Found the right pressures for good turn-in\n33.4 \u0026quot;\u0026quot;\nEven with that, I was 3rd for the day in H-Stock. Scott \u0026amp; his co-driver beat me by .3 and ~.15, respectively. So, out of the money for my 2nd home-region event in a row. On the bright side, the three of us were numbers 8, 9, and 10 in overall index time. :-)\nStill, good fun, and got to give my baby a ride in the Pup. She\u0026rsquo;s wanting to be a driver now, and get this: She doesn\u0026rsquo;t want to do H-Stock Ladies\u0026hellip;she wants to run H-Stock with the GUYS!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/on-the-lighter-side/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHeard complaints lately that the \u0026lsquo;Blog is a real bitter pill to swallow. As in, \u0026ldquo;Harold, you\u0026rsquo;re frickin\u0026rsquo; depressing, man!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, my hand-clap of praise for the day: My mom found the watch I \u0026ldquo;lost\u0026rdquo;, my Eddie Bauer watch that was a graduation present from my father. Awesomeness!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlso, a small report from the autocross at EKU yesterday. Short course, with lots of sweeper elements and good flow. Not very technical. With the low turn-out we had 3 heats with 6 runs apiece. (I would have pics, but Whitney absconded with my Nikon digicam.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the lighter side"},{"content":"What follows is me whining about my job. You\u0026rsquo;ve been warned.\nI am so bored with my job. It has a crushing sameness that I cannot escape, and when I do, it seems like the inertia of this corporate black-hole pulls me right back. I\u0026rsquo;ve done exactly the same job for 3+ years, without much variation nor change in skill set. Got a new machine yesterday, and tried to go against the grain and install SuSE Linux 9.1 on it. Well, because genius me ordered it with a windows-only hard drive controller (Promise FastTrack\u0026hellip;don\u0026rsquo;t go anywhere near it, people!) I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get it to work.\nSo, here I am, stuck developing on Windows, which I hate with a passion and have to patch at least twice a week to stay ahead of worms and virii. It\u0026rsquo;s INSANE!\nYes, I\u0026rsquo;ve had plenty of \u0026lsquo;wins\u0026rsquo; in the last 3 years for my software. I\u0026rsquo;ve designed its plugin architecture, I\u0026rsquo;ve shepherded countless screwed-up things through when no one else could, and that\u0026rsquo;s gratifying, but there are days when it just doesn\u0026rsquo;t turn my crank anymore, and that scares me.\nI guess it\u0026rsquo;s all this corporate B.S. I\u0026rsquo;m no longer the way I used to be, thinking that my company was \u0026lsquo;different\u0026rsquo; or that it was \u0026lsquo;better\u0026rsquo;. No, now I see the corporate pissing contests more and more each day, but that\u0026rsquo;s not my issue; that\u0026rsquo;s reality. I guess my thing is, I see my group getting pissed-on constantly, and neither my manager nor my team lead possess the acumen to move us out of the warm, yellow stream that\u0026rsquo;s flowing downhill.\n(End belabored metaphor)\n(Hey, Kathy, if the rumors are true and you guys are reading everything we send across the corporate firewall: ::raspberry::)\nI don\u0026rsquo;t necessarily care what I work on, but lately around here it seems that everyone has a say in what we developers do, and that\u0026rsquo;s killing me. It\u0026rsquo;s all political B.S., and the pointlessness of it all. We can\u0026rsquo;t arrest the slide of my software into mediocrity, and no one cares. I\u0026rsquo;m beginning to think the OpenSource model is right: Have a rather meaningless day-job that\u0026rsquo;s not too mentally taxing (UPS man, bookstore clerk, etc.) and then work on software on your own time, when you can take as much time as you need to have it done \u0026rsquo;the right way\u0026rsquo;, and where you can cooperate with people across the world to do it. No lawyers to fight, no manager to report to, no one to explain yourself to but your peers.\nBut yeah, I\u0026rsquo;ve been doing the same thing (pretty much) for 3 years, and it sucks. I get paid well, I\u0026rsquo;ve got benefits, and they don\u0026rsquo;t make us work too hard, but it\u0026rsquo;s killing my creativity, dang it! With our new process, I\u0026rsquo;ve filled-out more duplicate paperwork to placate management than I\u0026rsquo;ve coded, tested, or thought about coding. Now, while I have stellar typing skills and can express myself, this creative part of my personality frustrates quickly. In essence, the ideas aren\u0026rsquo;t flowing, and they haven\u0026rsquo;t for the last month, and I can only say it\u0026rsquo;s this stupid environment of B.S. that they\u0026rsquo;ve created.\n* * *\nI want at least 1/4 of a year where members of my team can investigate new technologies. I see it as a win-win: The developers get to recharge their batteries, and the company gets to learn new technologies. Their current model is hardly efficient: Hire someone with all the skills you need, work them unceasingly until they leave because they\u0026rsquo;re becoming obsolete, then hire someone with the new skills you need. Lather, rinse, repeat. It\u0026rsquo;s a loser\u0026rsquo;s game.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s just stupid. Turnover hurts everyone, and in at least one case here, it\u0026rsquo;s killed an entire project.\nI really just feel like complaining on and on, so I\u0026rsquo;ll close. Just really feel down-trodden at this point.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/whining-about-my-job-again/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat follows is me whining about my job. You\u0026rsquo;ve been warned.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am so bored with my job. It has a crushing sameness that I cannot escape, and when I do, it seems like the inertia of this corporate black-hole pulls me right back. I\u0026rsquo;ve done exactly the same job for 3+ years, without much variation nor change in skill set. Got a new machine yesterday, and tried to go against the grain and install SuSE Linux 9.1 on it. Well, because genius me ordered it with a windows-only hard drive controller (Promise FastTrack\u0026hellip;don\u0026rsquo;t go anywhere near it, people!) I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get it to work.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Whining about my job (again)"},{"content":"Submitted for your approval: Godzilla, the 1998 remake of the 1954 monster-movie classic.\nIt was awful\u0026hellip;I somehow avoided seeing this disaster during the summer between my Freshman \u0026amp; Sophomore year of college, but I thought, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve got Netflix, so why not?\u0026rdquo; In any case, I can now join in the complaints about this movie that promised so much, but delivered so little.\nMy main problem with the film is its unoriginality: In changing nearly everything about the classic Godzilla, you\u0026rsquo;d think they\u0026rsquo;d come-up with some original stuff. Instead, you see stolen bits from other movies here: The eggs in Madison Square Garden, reminiscent of \u0026ldquo;Aliens\u0026rdquo;, the desperate escape from young that they lifted wholesale from \u0026ldquo;Jurassic Park\u0026rdquo;. And why is it raining the WHOLE TIME? I felt sorry for Matthew Broderick having to endure 6 weeks of shooting under rain machines.\nThe lone bright spot for me is Jean Reno as the French Secret Service officer that doesn\u0026rsquo;t take himself too seriously. It might have been better had the rest of the cast, directors, and writers done the same.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/godzilla/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSubmitted for your approval: \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0120685/\"\u003eGodzilla\u003c/a\u003e, the 1998 remake of the 1954 monster-movie classic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was awful\u0026hellip;I somehow avoided seeing this disaster during the summer between my Freshman \u0026amp; Sophomore year of college, but I thought, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve got Netflix, so why not?\u0026rdquo; In any case, I can now join in the complaints about this movie that promised so much, but delivered so little.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy main problem with the film is its unoriginality: In changing nearly everything about the classic Godzilla, you\u0026rsquo;d think they\u0026rsquo;d come-up with some original stuff. Instead, you see stolen bits from other movies here: The eggs in Madison Square Garden, reminiscent of \u0026ldquo;Aliens\u0026rdquo;, the desperate escape from young that they lifted wholesale from \u0026ldquo;Jurassic Park\u0026rdquo;. And why is it raining the WHOLE TIME? I felt sorry for Matthew Broderick having to endure 6 weeks of shooting under rain machines.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Godzilla"},{"content":"Random Slashdot quip of the day :D\nSlashdot | Can Your Car Get 1,700 MPG?: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not impressed. The Spanish in the 15th century in their voyages to the New World and back were getting thousands of miles per galleon.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRandom Slashdot quip of the day :D\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/13/2330207\"\u003eSlashdot | Can Your Car Get 1,700 MPG?\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not impressed. The Spanish in the 15th century in their voyages to the New World and back were getting thousands of miles per galleon.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"The Autocross\nYes, that\u0026rsquo;s a Ford Festiva with a motor-swap.\nLast Sunday was my first autocross with the Cincinnati Sports Car Club, also known as The Guys Who want to Autocross, but Can\u0026rsquo;t Follow the Rules. Basically, this is a parallel group to the Cincy Region of SCCA, but they do their own thing at the deathtrap of a site known as Scarlett Oaks.\nThe site\u0026rsquo;s on the northside of Cincy, just East of I-75 on I-275. There\u0026rsquo;s no way SCCA\u0026rsquo;d allow an event there: The course cuts between buildings, beside big ditches, and it\u0026rsquo;s rimmed with 3\u0026quot; concrete curbs. You get off-line, you kill your car. (On the bright side, LOTS of good accident stories while you\u0026rsquo;re in grid.)\nStock classes ran first, and it was the usual battle between me and Scott in his Civic. I lost, but I acquitted myself well\u0026ndash;I kept getting better on each run. Thought I did pretty well for my first time there.\nSo, I ran 1st and worked the 3rd of 3 heats as the undefined \u0026lsquo;Spotter\u0026rsquo; position, it was hellish: I the timing equipment was off, and nobody knew what they were doing. Then some punks with A-Modified cars from UC blew an engine, and NOBODY FLAGGED THE FRIGGIN\u0026rsquo; CAR. I was at the end of the course, and nobody thought \u0026ldquo;Hey, he\u0026rsquo;s probably spewing oil across the track. We should tell him to stop\u0026rdquo;. Then the guy was a real ass whenever we told him to turn off the track. Frickin\u0026rsquo; primadonna.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the kicker. There\u0026rsquo;s no oildry, the kitty-litter stuff you put on an oil spill to soak it up. How in the world do you run an event w/o OILDRY?!\nWe didn\u0026rsquo;t get out of there until after 6. Did get to hang-out with Scott, David, Chris, and Adam afterwards.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Autocross\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.cincyautox.org/images/2002/images/20020609-0420-festiva_JPG.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes, that\u0026rsquo;s a Ford Festiva with a motor-swap.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast Sunday was my first autocross with the \u003ca href=\"http://cincyautox.org/\"\u003eCincinnati Sports Car Club\u003c/a\u003e, also known as The Guys Who want to Autocross, but Can\u0026rsquo;t Follow the Rules. Basically, this is a parallel group to the Cincy Region of SCCA, but they do their own thing at the deathtrap of a site known as Scarlett Oaks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe site\u0026rsquo;s on the northside of Cincy, just East of I-75 on I-275. There\u0026rsquo;s no way SCCA\u0026rsquo;d allow an event there: The course cuts between buildings, beside big ditches, and it\u0026rsquo;s rimmed with 3\u0026quot; concrete curbs. You get off-line, you kill your car. (On the bright side, LOTS of good accident stories while you\u0026rsquo;re in grid.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"It was a fun, exciting, and tiring weekend for me.\nSaturday saw Whitney, Joey, and I head up in the Green Dragon to Joe Huber Family Farm, just north of Louisville in Starlight, Indiana.\nHuber\u0026rsquo;s is a Louisvillian tradition, apparently, though I\u0026rsquo;d never heard of it. (Gotta say I love the name more than Georgetown\u0026rsquo;s own Double Stink Hog Farm) Anyway, Joe Huber has invented the best racket since Tom Sawyer himself: He gets thousands of city folk per year to PAY HIM to harvest his own produce. But hey, when in Rome, right?\nKidding aside, the Blackberries we harvested and peaches we bought were both delicious. Oh, and while you\u0026rsquo;re in the fields, you get to eat all the blackberries you want right off the bush. I consumed roughly half my weight in blackberries in 45 minutes\u0026rsquo; time. (Warning, blackberries are about 30% indigestible material\u0026hellip;YMMV)\nAfter the pickin\u0026rsquo; (my \u0026lsquo;g\u0026rsquo; mysteriously goes away whenever I\u0026rsquo;m in the country\u0026hellip;go figure), we settled-up with the cashier for the fruit and some apple-butter, then hit the wine shop (YEAH!), the gift shop (somewhat disappointing), and the petting zoo.\nAt the petting zoo, I had my first experience with the terror associated with parenting. Namely, I came close to seriously injuring Joey. Here\u0026rsquo;s the deal.\nWe were having a great time at the petting zoo/playground; Joey was a little afraid of the animals, but he was really enjoying chasing the flock of geese. We had reservations for dinner at the restaurant 1/2 mile down the road for 4, and it was time to go. Whitney called him, and he didn\u0026rsquo;t come, so I set after the little guy. He didn\u0026rsquo;t notice me running behind him, and I scooped him up, intending to surprise/scare/delight him. (Wild ideas\u0026hellip;the kid inspires me, what can I say?)\nWell, my good fortune ran out the second I got Joey off his feet. The ground beneath me went from grass to a paved walkway suddenly and somehow my feet got tangled up. I was out of balance for a step or two and my cerebellum finally understood: You\u0026rsquo;re falling, pal.\nI had maybe a split second to do something before I squashed Joey, so I thrust him out in front of me horizontally, landing him on his side in the grass on the other side of the walkway. After that, I came down on my side like a sack of potatoes, my Voigtlander camera clattering beside us.\nJoey was scared to death, but pretty-much unhurt. He was back to his normal self by the time we got to the restaurant. Well, by that point, I wasn\u0026rsquo;t.\nUnderstand, I\u0026rsquo;ve had nightmares for months now where Joey\u0026rsquo;s in my charge and he gets hurt or killed: Car accidents, falls, etc. In each case, I\u0026rsquo;m completely helpless to stop it, but vaguely at fault, and Whitney never speaks to me again. Doesn\u0026rsquo;t take Sigmund Freud to figure that one out\u0026ndash;I\u0026rsquo;m afraid of hurting the little guy. I\u0026rsquo;m a klutz.\nSo, for a while there at the restaurant, I was really shaken. And shaking. I\u0026rsquo;m 6'2\u0026quot; pushing 240\u0026hellip;if I\u0026rsquo;d landed on him\u0026hellip;\nBut, he made it through just fine, and by the end of the day when we were over at Stu and Cathy\u0026rsquo;s house, he was saying \u0026lsquo;You didn\u0026rsquo;t mean to\u0026hellip;it was an accident.\u0026quot; Yikes\u0026hellip;what kind of world is it when the 3 year old is trying to encourage the man 8 times his age?\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt was a fun, exciting, and tiring weekend for me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaturday saw Whitney, Joey, and I head up in the Green Dragon to \u003ca href=\"http://www.joehubers.com\"\u003eJoe Huber Family Farm\u003c/a\u003e, just north of Louisville in Starlight, Indiana.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.joehubers.com/images/photos/restaurant_2.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHuber\u0026rsquo;s is a Louisvillian tradition, apparently, though I\u0026rsquo;d never heard of it. (Gotta say I love the name more than Georgetown\u0026rsquo;s own \u003ca href=\"http://www.doublestink.com/\"\u003eDouble Stink Hog Farm\u003c/a\u003e) Anyway, Joe Huber has invented the best racket since Tom Sawyer himself: He gets thousands of city folk per year to PAY HIM to harvest his own produce. But hey, when in Rome, right?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Wonderful site that Joel Jirak just showed me: 2BlowHards. Don\u0026rsquo;t worry, it\u0026rsquo;s very Safe For Work (SFW).\nEverything a blog should be: Incisive, personal, devil-may-care, provocative.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/2blowhards/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWonderful site that Joel Jirak just showed me: \u003ca href=\"http://www.2blowhards.com/\"\u003e2BlowHards\u003c/a\u003e. Don\u0026rsquo;t worry, it\u0026rsquo;s very Safe For Work (SFW).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEverything a blog should be: Incisive, personal, devil-may-care, provocative.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2BlowHards"},{"content":"Forgive me\u0026hellip;just can\u0026rsquo;t get enough:\n- The requirements you give your real estate agent are (in order of importance):\n8 car climate controlled garage with an attached shop. Outside parking for 6 cars, a motorhome, a crew cab dualie, a 28\u0026rsquo;enclosed trailer and a 34\u0026rsquo; 5th wheel. 3 phase 220V outlets in the garage for your welder. A grease pit. Convenient to a hazardous waste disposal site. Deaf neighbors. Across the street from a paint and body shop. Some sort of house with a working toilet and shower on the property somewhere -or- hookups for the motorhome. ROFL!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eForgive me\u0026hellip;just can\u0026rsquo;t get enough:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- The requirements you give your real estate agent are (in order of importance):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e8 car climate controlled garage with an attached shop.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOutside parking for 6 cars, a motorhome, a crew cab dualie, a 28\u0026rsquo;enclosed trailer and a 34\u0026rsquo; 5th wheel.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e3 phase 220V outlets in the garage for your welder.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA grease pit.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eConvenient to a hazardous waste disposal site.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDeaf neighbors.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAcross the street from a paint and body shop.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSome sort of house with a working toilet and shower on the property somewhere -or- hookups for the motorhome.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eROFL!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"LOL!! THIS IS ME!\nI particularly like:\n- Your email address refers to your race car rather than to you.\n- You have car parts in your cubicle at work.\n- After your answer to \u0026ldquo;What did you do this weekend?\u0026rdquo; the next question is always: \u0026ldquo;And you do this for fun? Right?\u0026rdquo;\n- Your first date involves asking her to crew for you.\n- A neighbor asks if you have any oil, to which you query, \u0026ldquo;Synthetic or organic?\u0026rdquo; and they reply, \u0026ldquo;Vegetable or corn.\u0026rdquo;\n- Everywhere you go, you try to find the fastest line through the turn.\n- You always do a toe \u0026amp; heel downshift while whoever might be your passenger gives you a real funny look.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/signs-youre-an-autocrosser/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.louisvillestreets.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34709\"\u003eLOL!! THIS IS ME!\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI particularly like:\u003cbr\u003e\n- Your email address refers to your race car rather than to you.\u003cbr\u003e\n- You have car parts in your cubicle at work.\u003cbr\u003e\n- After your answer to \u0026ldquo;What did you do this weekend?\u0026rdquo; the next question is always: \u0026ldquo;And you do this for fun? Right?\u0026rdquo;\u003cbr\u003e\n- Your first date involves asking her to crew for you.\u003cbr\u003e\n- A neighbor asks if you have any oil, to which you query, \u0026ldquo;Synthetic or organic?\u0026rdquo; and they reply, \u0026ldquo;Vegetable or corn.\u0026rdquo;\u003cbr\u003e\n- Everywhere you go, you try to find the fastest line through the turn.\u003cbr\u003e\n- You always do a toe \u0026amp; heel downshift while whoever might be your passenger gives you a real funny look.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Signs you're an Autocrosser"},{"content":"viz\n\\Viz\\, adv. [Contr. fr. videlicet.] To wit; that is; namely.\n[Try Merriam-Webster Unabridged.]\nSource: Webster\u0026rsquo;s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.\nI always thought viz. was short for \u0026lsquo;vis-a-vis\u0026rsquo;, but I was totally wrong. My guys in India use this abbreviation all the time, and for like 2 years I had no idea what they meant.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/viz/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eviz\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\\Viz\\, adv. [Contr. fr. videlicet.] To wit; that is; namely.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[Try Merriam-Webster Unabridged.]\u003cbr\u003e\nSource: Webster\u0026rsquo;s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI always thought viz. was short for \u0026lsquo;vis-a-vis\u0026rsquo;, but I was totally wrong. My guys in India use this abbreviation all the time, and for like 2 years I had no idea what they meant.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Viz"},{"content":"From Slashdot:\nwhen the economy is good treat your company with the level of loyalty and respect that they showed to you.\nThis is typical American neurotic thinking (I\u0026rsquo;m American too, I\u0026rsquo;m not trying to flame you here).\nLoyalty is to other people. Respect is something you show other people. It is nonsense to be \u0026ldquo;loyal\u0026rdquo; to a company, or to \u0026ldquo;respect\u0026rdquo; a company. This idea is simply American corporate brainwashing.\nCompanies are incorporeal entities, not deserving of loyalty or respect. Be loyal to yourself and your employer (your employer is a person, not a corporation). Think nothing of this vaporous concept called \u0026ldquo;the company.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;The company\u0026rdquo; can go f*ck itself.\n:-) Amen. The checks keep clearing, I\u0026rsquo;m there. Otherwise, fuggetaboutit.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ca href=\"http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/07/2019243\"\u003eSlashdot:\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ewhen the economy is good treat your company with the level of loyalty and respect that they showed to you.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is typical American neurotic thinking (I\u0026rsquo;m American too, I\u0026rsquo;m not trying to flame you here).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLoyalty is to other people. Respect is something you show other people. It is nonsense to be \u0026ldquo;loyal\u0026rdquo; to a company, or to \u0026ldquo;respect\u0026rdquo; a company. This idea is simply American corporate brainwashing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"\n\u0026ldquo;All your base are belong to us!\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.kmov.com/slideshows/040706_vwstormshots_slideshow_files/slide0032_image008.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;All your base are belong to us!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"The next trip has been (re)scheduled:\nWhitney and I will be heading to Rocky Mountain Nat\u0026rsquo;l Park via a non-stop Frontier Airlines flight from Indianapolis to Denver on August 25th, returning August 29th.\nI\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to it greatly\u0026hellip;getting to be Out West again, if only for a few days, at altitude, enjoying nature. I really liked Colorado on my abbreviated trip through in 2000, and I think I\u0026rsquo;ll enjoy spending more time there, visiting some sights, my lady Love in tow :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/first-trip-to-estes-park/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe next trip has been (re)scheduled:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhitney and I will be heading to \u003ca href=\"http://www.coloradoguide.com/rmnp/frame1.htm\"\u003eRocky Mountain Nat\u0026rsquo;l Park\u003c/a\u003e via a non-stop \u003ca href=\"http://www.frontierairlines.com/index.asp\"\u003eFrontier Airlines\u003c/a\u003e flight from Indianapolis to Denver on August 25th, returning August 29th.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to it greatly\u0026hellip;getting to be Out West again, if only for a few days, at altitude, enjoying nature. I really liked Colorado on my abbreviated trip through in 2000, and I think I\u0026rsquo;ll enjoy spending more time there, visiting some sights, my lady Love in tow :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"First Trip to Estes Park"},{"content":"\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo;\nI have no idea why today feels like such a bad day, but it just\u0026hellip;does.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure if there\u0026rsquo;s some conspiracy against IM traffic here at work, but neither Trillian nor MSN Messenger will connect through our firewall. I\u0026rsquo;ve always predicted they\u0026rsquo;d block \u0026rsquo;em, but it would seem they\u0026rsquo;re finally following through.\nI just feel unmotivated somehow, which is not a very good feeling. Guess it\u0026rsquo;s just the wear and tear from running all weekend from Louisville to Jackson and back. Did very much enjoy it, though. :-D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/melancholy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have no idea why today feels like such a bad day, but it just\u0026hellip;does.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not sure if there\u0026rsquo;s some conspiracy against IM traffic here at work, but neither Trillian nor MSN Messenger will connect through our firewall. I\u0026rsquo;ve always predicted they\u0026rsquo;d block \u0026rsquo;em, but it would seem they\u0026rsquo;re finally following through.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI just feel unmotivated somehow, which is not a very good feeling. Guess it\u0026rsquo;s just the wear and tear from running all weekend from Louisville to Jackson and back. Did very much enjoy it, though. :-D\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Melancholy"},{"content":"\nWell, it\u0026rsquo;s official: Kerry/Edwards \u0026lsquo;04 is off and running.\nMeh.\nBest suggestion I\u0026rsquo;ve heard all day: \u0026ldquo;Why doesn\u0026rsquo;t Cheney resign and let John McCain jump on the Republican ticket.\u0026rdquo; Heck yeah! Remove the greatest objection to the Bush/Cheney ticket (Cheney\u0026rsquo;s corporate connections + general creepiness), then add the most compelling Republican since Ronald Reagan. Makes sense to me\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/kerry/edwards/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/06/kerry.vp/top.1.kerry.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, it\u0026rsquo;s official: \u003ca href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/06/kerry.vp/index.html\"\u003eKerry/Edwards \u0026lsquo;04\u003c/a\u003e is off and running.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeh.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBest suggestion I\u0026rsquo;ve heard all day: \u0026ldquo;Why doesn\u0026rsquo;t Cheney resign and let John McCain jump on the Republican ticket.\u0026rdquo; Heck yeah! Remove the greatest objection to the Bush/Cheney ticket (Cheney\u0026rsquo;s corporate connections + general creepiness), then add the most compelling Republican since Ronald Reagan. Makes sense to me\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kerry/Edwards"},{"content":"On Blogs with comments enabled:\n(or \u0026ldquo;Harry\u0026rsquo;s Blog Comment Manifesto\u0026rdquo;)\nSome blogs allow readers to comment on the articles. Mine does not, and will not. I can\u0026rsquo;t say this in a way that doesn\u0026rsquo;t come off as mean: I think they\u0026rsquo;re stupid. (er\u0026hellip;\u0026lsquo;silly\u0026rsquo;, for those households that have banned the use of stupid.)\nWhy do you \u0026lsquo;Blog? I think in essence, it\u0026rsquo;s to get your views on life out there for others to see, and to express yourself, be introspective, practice your writing, and comment on the course of your life and the world in general. (and given that last sentence, it also allows one to be highly redundant\u0026hellip;)\nOne hopes his blog entries are provacative, well-written, and interesting, of course, but at the heart of it, I don\u0026rsquo;t blog because I care what other people think. I blog because I want to say what *I* think, and to Hell with everything else. Some of my friends read this Blog; my whole purpose in starting it was to keep people informed about my life because I\u0026rsquo;m such a hopeless correspondent, phone-tagger, and lunch-doer. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to become the next Fark (though I love Drew + the gang), or the next Slashdot.\nIf you want to discuss something I blog about, email me. I love finding new friends with similar (or dissimilar!) interests. If you want to grandstand, flirt, be an ass, or otherwise engage in the group masturbatory exercise that I find most blog comments to be, piss off.\nAnd now back to your regularly scheduled Blogging\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/on-blogs-with-comments-enabled/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn Blogs with comments enabled:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(or \u0026ldquo;Harry\u0026rsquo;s Blog Comment Manifesto\u0026rdquo;)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome blogs allow readers to comment on the articles. Mine does not, and will not. I can\u0026rsquo;t say this in a way that doesn\u0026rsquo;t come off as mean: I think they\u0026rsquo;re stupid. (er\u0026hellip;\u0026lsquo;silly\u0026rsquo;, for those households that have banned the use of stupid.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy do you \u0026lsquo;Blog? I think in essence, it\u0026rsquo;s to get your views on life out there for others to see, and to express yourself, be introspective, practice your writing, and comment on the course of your life and the world in general. (and given that last sentence, it also allows one to be highly redundant\u0026hellip;)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Blogs with Comments Enabled"},{"content":"Just a moment to mark the passing of Marlon Brando. Renowned as a Method actor, Brando means just one thing to me: Don Corleone.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/marlon-brando/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust a moment to mark the passing of \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0000008/\"\u003eMarlon Brando\u003c/a\u003e. Renowned as a Method actor, Brando means just one thing to me: Don Corleone.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Marlon Brando"},{"content":"Random, bawdy, offensive bumper-sticker\u0026hellip;\nRacing: The only sport that requires TWO balls.\n:-) Kinda silly, but made me smile.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRandom, bawdy, offensive bumper-sticker\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRacing: The only sport that requires TWO balls.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) Kinda silly, but made me smile.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Latest Neflix:\nDr. Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)\nKubrick\u0026rsquo;s satiric masterpiece, aided by Peter Sellers (a.k.a. Inspector Clouseau), George C Scott, and the unforgettable Slim Pickins, the movie delights and terrifies. Though we face a world fraught with terrorism and uncertainty, this movie is a window into the time of Mutually Assured Destruction, when the only certainty was the concept of global annihilation in 30 minutes or less.\nThe Bridge over the River Kwai\nOkay, so I\u0026rsquo;m watching this masterpiece thinking \u0026ldquo;Use the Force, Luke!\u0026rdquo; Honestly, I\u0026rsquo;ve watched this film so many times on TBS, heard that damnable tune they whistle, that the true message of the movie gets lost one me in the wake of \u0026ldquo;Bridge blows up real good\u0026rdquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s a wonderful movie, carefully done, with great characterization. We really grow along with the characters, and one can say that about few movies.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/dr.-strangelove-bridge-over-the-river-kwai/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLatest Neflix:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/\"\u003eDr. Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKubrick\u0026rsquo;s satiric masterpiece, aided by Peter Sellers (a.k.a. Inspector Clouseau), George C Scott, and the unforgettable Slim Pickins, the movie delights and terrifies. Though we face a world fraught with terrorism and uncertainty, this movie is a window into the time of Mutually Assured Destruction, when the only certainty was the concept of global annihilation in 30 minutes or less.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dr. Strangelove \u0026 Bridge Over the River Kwai"},{"content":"The process chronicles, day 27:\nPerhaps the most preposterous thing in our overworked, self-involved world is going to work and being told not to work, but that\u0026rsquo;s where we are. After three meetings today, each resembling a \u0026rsquo;talking to\u0026rsquo; from a teacher to a relucant, whiny pupil, my manager rolled-over and said, \u0026ldquo;My people won\u0026rsquo;t do the work you promised them they could do? SATISFIED?!\u0026rdquo;\nI feel let-down. It\u0026rsquo;s not that I don\u0026rsquo;t have other stuff to do; rather, it\u0026rsquo;s that for once it seemed we had opportunity and approval to do things \u0026ldquo;The Right Way\u0026rdquo;. Seemed a *little* too good to be true, and it is.\nJust like planes, decent conversation, and most threads on the Usenet, the process has been hijacked by those jackass managers. Our project dangles on a string while those managers who understand the political game maneuver into stronger and stronger positions, while we stay sill or move backwards. Listen, fokls, altruism is great, but sometimes you have to see opportunity and sieze it.\nConfrontation is the price of leadership.\n* * *\nIt\u0026rsquo;s my favorite day of the month: My new issue of Car and Driver is here. I\u0026rsquo;ve been reading C\u0026amp;D since I was 8; I still remember the first article I read: A gag piece on how a GMC Syclone truck could beat a Ferrari 348 in the 1/4 mile. Understand, Mom had never seen me ENJOY reading before. :-) Been hooked since then.*\nJust renewed for 3 more years.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/07/the-process-chronicles-day-27/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe process chronicles, day 27:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePerhaps the most preposterous thing in our overworked, self-involved world is going to work and being told not to work, but that\u0026rsquo;s where we are. After three meetings today, each resembling a \u0026rsquo;talking to\u0026rsquo; from a teacher to a relucant, whiny pupil, my manager rolled-over and said, \u0026ldquo;My people won\u0026rsquo;t do the work you promised them they could do? SATISFIED?!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI feel let-down. It\u0026rsquo;s not that I don\u0026rsquo;t have other stuff to do; rather, it\u0026rsquo;s that for once it seemed we had opportunity and approval to do things \u0026ldquo;The Right Way\u0026rdquo;. Seemed a *little* too good to be true, and it is.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Process Chronicles, Day 27"},{"content":"A story for all you frappuchino lovers\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA story for all you \u003ca href=\"http://www.komotv.com/stories/31940.htm\"\u003efrappuchino lovers\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"You know what jealousy is?\nIt\u0026rsquo;s walking up to your truck and two spots down from you, you see one of these puppies:\nI love working here, but I hate working here, because someone has this sexy beast and I don\u0026rsquo;t.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a Caddy CTS-V. Basically, it\u0026rsquo;s a somewhat sporty rear-wheel-drive Cadillac sedan, with the engine, transmission, and brakes from a Corvette Z06. 348 cubic inches, producing 400 horespower.\nOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooh, Monica! ;-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/jealousy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou know what jealousy is?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s walking up to your truck and two spots down from you, you see one of these puppies:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com//pictures/VEHICLE/2004/Cadillac/100362867/027960-E.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI love working here, but I hate working here, because someone has this sexy beast and I don\u0026rsquo;t.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a Caddy CTS-\u003cem\u003eV\u003c/em\u003e. Basically, it\u0026rsquo;s a somewhat sporty rear-wheel-drive Cadillac sedan, with the engine, transmission, and brakes from a Corvette Z06. 348 cubic inches, producing 400 horespower.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jealousy"},{"content":"Best euphemism I\u0026rsquo;ve ever heard for being blessed with many children: \u0026ldquo;overrun with nose-miners\u0026rdquo;.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;ve felt awful all morning, but after the torrential rain passed-through and I took 2 Advil, I\u0026rsquo;m feeling better.\nI have a brand new picture pasted to my office wall to the right of my cubicle:\n***\nI feel a wave of relaxation and good feeling coming over me today; three of us on the team are doing neat things with our code, and we\u0026rsquo;re doing them \u0026ldquo;The right way\u0026rdquo;. No shortcuts, no hacks, just right. Let\u0026rsquo;s see how long that lasts.\nMy day yesterday was wonderful: I got to code some, and I made something work by 7 pm that as recently as noon I\u0026rsquo;d said \u0026ldquo;No freaking way is this gonna work.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s when I get scared of my job, folks: Not when I hate it, not when I think I\u0026rsquo;m going to be outsourced to India, not when there\u0026rsquo;s more work than we can possibly do. No, I get scared when I\u0026rsquo;m absolutely LOVING my job, because that\u0026rsquo;s when I lose all balance with it. There are other aspects to life, you see: Friends, family, housecleaning, hobbies, personal and spiritual health. When I\u0026rsquo;m loving my job, I\u0026rsquo;m coding for 8, 10, 12, 14 hours a day, and not complaining. LOL\u0026hellip;It\u0026rsquo;s what I *like* doing. Alas, to find balance, you need to be coding 5-8 hours a day, doing office tasks the rest of the time, and have a personal life.\nNot to belabor the point, but I need to remind myself of that during these times especially.\n* * *\nThe reason the three of us are so frantic is rather ironic: For years, software development in our shop has lacked any sort of formalized process. We\u0026rsquo;ve generally known how to do this the right way, but we can\u0026rsquo;t say for sure that any given project will complete on time (or at all), because we have no metrics or workflows. Everything is ad hoc, and this makes sense because everything here is based around the cult of personality. Individual products or areas aren\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;the firmware team\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;MVP\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;printers\u0026rdquo;, they\u0026rsquo;re denoted by the people that head them. For instance, the firmware team is \u0026ldquo;Watrous\u0026rsquo;s Group\u0026rdquo;, etc. Therefore, much of our \u0026ldquo;process\u0026rdquo; was one guy calling another and asking a question. Simple enough, but not formalized, and we\u0026rsquo;ve had some really big issues whenever a person goes on vacation, leaves the company, or dies. No crosstraining or documentation is a huge hit.\nSo, for years, we\u0026rsquo;ve screamed \u0026ldquo;PROCESS! We want PROCESS! Formal Requirements! Design Reviews! Code Reviews!\u0026rdquo;. Too many times, the person responsible from marketing has just thrown us something over the wall and said \u0026ldquo;figure it out\u0026rdquo;, and crappy products resulted. We wanted to formalize that, so that worse case scenario, we could CYA when some customer complains that a given function is useless, buggy, or both. :-)\nWell, in the truest case of \u0026ldquo;be careful what you wish for\u0026rdquo;, we got more process than we can handle. Management went overboard, figuring if a little control was good, then turning our manual processes into a Gulag must be better. All changes to our product down to Bug Fixes are going to have to go through a Change Control Board, or CCB. Yes, ladies and gents, the greatest threat to a product is apparently THE PEOPLE WHO WORK ON IT! \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo;\nThis wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be bad, in and of itself, as we\u0026rsquo;ve had this sort of thing informally for years. Whenever you make a change, the lead architect of that component looks it over. However, they want this on a project-wide scale for every product through ONE change control board.\nOkay, an example: I made a change last night that touched 227 individual pieces of code. The change was minute, making all inner classes package-private instead of private so we comply with Java 1.4\u0026rsquo;s language specification. However, given that a technically competent person can read code at the rate of about 1 class per 10 minutes or so (and that\u0026rsquo;s being generous), that\u0026rsquo;s thirty-eight man-hours of code reviewing that each member of the CCB would have to do. So, assuming they didn\u0026rsquo;t drink coffee, have meetings, and worked 8 hrs/day solid, I could have the okay of the CCB for my 1 change group in a little over a week.\nYeah, sure. :-) Gridlock and bureaucracy on a monumental scale.\nBut anyway, we\u0026rsquo;re trying to make as many necessary system-wide changes as possible under-the-radar before the CCB\u0026rsquo;s Draconian reign begins.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBest euphemism I\u0026rsquo;ve ever heard for being blessed with many children: \u0026ldquo;overrun with nose-miners\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve felt awful all morning, but after the torrential rain passed-through and I took 2 Advil, I\u0026rsquo;m feeling better.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have a brand new picture pasted to my office wall to the right of my cubicle:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/formula1/formula1-02.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI feel a wave of relaxation and good feeling coming over me today; three of us on the team are doing neat things with our code, and we\u0026rsquo;re doing them \u0026ldquo;The right way\u0026rdquo;. No shortcuts, no hacks, just right. Let\u0026rsquo;s see how long that lasts.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"MINI Cabrio ad:\n\u0026ldquo;Immer offen\u0026rdquo; is German for \u0026ldquo;Always Open\u0026rdquo;.\nDriving home the other day, I really could see owning one of these little girly beasts. I\u0026rsquo;ve never thought of the MINI as girly (though I\u0026rsquo;ve often thought of the similar New Beetle that way). It\u0026rsquo;s not bulbous or effeminate; rather, it\u0026rsquo;s curvy in front but squared-off, well proportioned, and hunkered-down. Whereas a New Beetle looks ready to roll over, pod-like, when it\u0026rsquo;s turning, a MINI just looks hunkered-down. One of these would be even moreso.\nSadly, this is one trifle even I couldn\u0026rsquo;t justify. I mean, maybe as a 4th car or something, an in addition to that Blue/Black MCS w/the autocross suspension that I lust after, my BigRedTruck, and a minivan ;-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/mini-cabrio/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMINI Cabrio ad:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://bridger.us/mini/pictures/cabrio/cabrio_ad/cabrio_ad1.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Immer offen\u0026rdquo; is German for \u0026ldquo;Always Open\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDriving home the other day, I really could see owning one of these little girly beasts. I\u0026rsquo;ve never thought of the MINI as girly (though I\u0026rsquo;ve often thought of the similar New Beetle that way). It\u0026rsquo;s not bulbous or effeminate; rather, it\u0026rsquo;s curvy in front but squared-off, well proportioned, and hunkered-down. Whereas a New Beetle looks ready to roll over, pod-like, when it\u0026rsquo;s turning, a MINI just looks hunkered-down. One of these would be even moreso.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MINI Cabrio"},{"content":"LOL\u0026hellip;Aeron, the Cadillac of chairs:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/aeron-chairs/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLOL\u0026hellip;\u003ca href=\"http://www.hermanmiller.com/CDA/SSA/Product/0,1592,a10-c440-p8,00.html\"\u003eAeron\u003c/a\u003e, the Cadillac of chairs:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.hermanmiller.com/hm/content/product/image/P_AER_L122.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Aeron Chairs"},{"content":"Sleepy, tired, sleepy, and HUNGRY\u0026hellip;gaa\u0026hellip;\nGot up this morning at 6, promptly reset my alarm for 7, snoozed \u0026rsquo;til 7:09, and was utterly famished from then until I\u0026rsquo;d consumed 16oz of Sumatran, 2 Blueberry non-frosted PopTarts, and a sausage/egg/cheese biscuit from Burger King.\nNo idea why I was so ravenouse; maybe because I only ate leftovers and granola last night for dinner.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSleepy, tired, sleepy, and HUNGRY\u0026hellip;gaa\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGot up this morning at 6, promptly reset my alarm for 7, snoozed \u0026rsquo;til 7:09, and was utterly famished from then until I\u0026rsquo;d consumed 16oz of Sumatran, 2 Blueberry non-frosted PopTarts, and a sausage/egg/cheese biscuit from Burger King.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo idea why I was so ravenouse; maybe because I only ate leftovers and granola last night for dinner.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Can\u0026rsquo;t (or won\u0026rsquo;t) sleep\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCan\u0026rsquo;t (or won\u0026rsquo;t) sleep\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"\nAccording to the SelectSmart.com Belief System Selector, my #1 belief match is CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN/PROTESTANT.\nWhat do you believe?\nVisit SelectSmart.com/RELIGION\nLOL\u0026hellip;some probably won\u0026rsquo;t believe the above, as I\u0026rsquo;m an old-earth creationist, which is sufficient heresy, I suppose.\nmy (modified) Creed:\nI believe the Earth is millions, or possibly billions, of years old. Do I find that this challenges my Christianity or my faith in God? Not a bit. Even in the fossil record, humans have only come about in the last 10,000 years, which jives with Genesis nicely. Even the most jaded scientist will admit that.\nI\u0026rsquo;m sorry, but attacking the creation story of Genesis is a non-event for me. Go right ahead. It explains little up until the creation of Man, and from my reading it isn\u0026rsquo;t intended to. We might just as well deny the existence of Aborigines in Australia because the Bible doesn\u0026rsquo;t mention them.\nThe main thing is, I\u0026rsquo;m not one of these Christians trying to explain every miracle, event, and passage in the Bible through science. I believe no matter how strong an effort you make in that endeavor, you\u0026rsquo;re still going to have to make a faith-based choice to believe or not believe. No, all I\u0026rsquo;m trying to do is reconcile that God\u0026rsquo;s creation is so much more than what\u0026rsquo;s in Genesis. It\u0026rsquo;s DNA and Dinosaurs, Plate Techtonics and planetessimals in the Kuiper Belt, and I want to integrate that in my appreciation of God the Father, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.\nThe peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, and may His blessings follow you this day, and all the days of your life. Amen.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://selectsmart.com/RELIGION\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.SelectSmart.com/imagelinks/jesus.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccording to the SelectSmart.com Belief System Selector, my #1 belief match is \u003cstrong\u003eCONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN/PROTESTANT.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nWhat do you believe?\u003cbr\u003e\nVisit \u003ca href=\"http://www.SelectSmart.com/RELIGION\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"http://www.SelectSmart.com/RELIGION\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eSelectSmart.com/RELIGION\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLOL\u0026hellip;some probably won\u0026rsquo;t believe the above, as I\u0026rsquo;m an old-earth creationist, which is sufficient heresy, I suppose.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003emy (modified) Creed:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI believe the Earth is millions, or possibly billions, of years old. Do I find that this challenges my Christianity or my faith in God? Not a bit. Even in the fossil record, humans have only come about in the last 10,000 years, which jives with Genesis nicely. Even the most jaded scientist will admit that.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Getting more than a little pic-heavy here, but pics of formula1\nSchumacher won, of course, but the drive from Takuma Sato was truly inspiring. In his Honda-powered machine, he passed more cars than the rest of the field combined (or so it seemed).\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGetting more than a little pic-heavy here, but \u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/formula1/\"\u003epics of formula1\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/formula1/formula1-03.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSchumacher won, of course, but the drive from Takuma Sato was truly inspiring. In his Honda-powered machine, he passed more cars than the rest of the field combined (or so it seemed).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Put your hand on my boob and shut up\u0026rdquo;\nQuote for the day :-D\n* * *\nHeading for Indianapolis for the Formula 1 race tomorrow @ 6.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/sometimes-you-shut-up/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Put your hand on my boob and shut up\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQuote for the day :-D\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHeading for Indianapolis for the Formula 1 race tomorrow @ 6.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sometimes, you shut up"},{"content":"Tampa Bay, day 2.\nAfter deciding that we had to have a rental car, I rented a Mitsubishi Lanzer OZ Rally Edition from Thrifty:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s red w/a spoiler, and looks for all the world like an Evolution 8, but with none of the engine, suspension, chassis, and 4wd tweaks.\nStill, it\u0026rsquo;s been an unexpected pleasure, with a smooth ride, good steering, and great brakes. However, it\u0026rsquo;s an automatic, and the engine + tranny combo is just not up to moving the car; I find myself in 3rd gear under all circumstances except freeway, and 2nd in many situations on the street.\nI wouldn\u0026rsquo;t mind having an Evo 8, though, given the goodness of the chassis, even in this neutered form.\n* * *\nSo, with my new (rented) wheels, I headed-out to explore St. Petersburg a bit. St. Pete, Clearwater, and various other municipalities all occupy this teardrop-shaped peninusla that juts into the Gulf of Mexico. The streets + avenues follow a very well-designed grid (are you listening, Lexington?!), and it\u0026rsquo;s easy to get around, though the area lacks many expressways, so it\u0026rsquo;s a ponderous trip from Gulf to Bay.\nUrban sprawl \u0026amp; \u0026ldquo;Generica\u0026rdquo; abound here: Houses are poorly made, and it\u0026rsquo;s a strip-mall hell. Nothing has much of a sense of permanence, save the industry north of town. I\u0026rsquo;m beginning to understand Doug\u0026rsquo;s statement, \u0026ldquo;Next Hurricane that comes through dere is gonna wipe St. Petersburg right off the map.\u0026rdquo; No way this town would survive a category 5 or strong category 4. Amazingly, new hotel construction is everywhere on the gulf-facing barrier islands, 10-20 story highrises, condos, etc. How do these people get insurance?\nAfter my sojourn around town, I came back to enjoy the sundeck and read some more of Airport by Aurther Hailey. Many have probably seen the movie with Burt Lancaster, but the book is still awesome. Basically, it\u0026rsquo;s the story of an international airort in the late 1960\u0026rsquo;s, and as such provides not only a picture of air travel\u0026rsquo;s logistics and failings, but also a snapshot of gender roles during that time. Hailey\u0026rsquo;s stewardesses are the demure yet self-confident sexpots we\u0026rsquo;ve all read about from that time, and the pilots are the rake-hells that all men would like to be. Through it all, threads of humanity entwine: The broken marriage, the workaholic attraction, the guilt of responsibility for so many lives, the battle against nature.\nThe novel breaks no new ground, but in context, it\u0026rsquo;s pleasingly dense, enthralling, and informative. Hailey was the Tom Clancy of his era.\nLater, we went out with one of Whitney\u0026rsquo;s friends from Certegy named Layla and her two kids, Tonya (13), and Ubi (nee \u0026ldquo;Ayubi\u0026rdquo;?), 11. We had a delightful dinner of burgers and beer at Ale House off Martin Luther King St.\n* * *\nSo, today, I\u0026rsquo;m heading for the Salvidor Dali museum in downtown St. Pete, and then to the beach and boardwalk to see what\u0026rsquo;s to come.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/tampa-bay-day-2/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTampa Bay, day 2.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter deciding that we had to have a rental car, I rented a Mitsubishi Lanzer OZ Rally Edition from Thrifty:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/StPete/StPete-07.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s red w/a spoiler, and looks for all the world like an Evolution 8, but with none of the engine, suspension, chassis, and 4wd tweaks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, it\u0026rsquo;s been an unexpected pleasure, with a smooth ride, good steering, and great brakes. However, it\u0026rsquo;s an automatic, and the engine + tranny combo is just not up to moving the car; I find myself in 3rd gear under all circumstances except freeway, and 2nd in many situations on the street.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tampa Bay, Day 2"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s said the bloggers are so compulsive that they\u0026rsquo;ll blog in the middle of the night, at people\u0026rsquo;s houses during dinner parties, and on their vacation.\nWell, count me in. This is Day 1 in Tampa, and here\u0026rsquo;s my report.\nWe awoke yesterday at 6 to make it to SDF by our 9:45 flight. We found ourselves on a \u0026ldquo;Delta Connection\u0026rdquo; flight on a Canadair regional jet from Louisville to Cincy. Total flight time: 22 minutes. Seems kinda wasteful, really, when there\u0026rsquo;s a Southwest Airlines flight from Louisville direct to Tampa twice a day. But oh well. :-)\nAfter a 2 hour layover in Cincy during which we watched the first bit of \u0026ldquo;The Godfather\u0026rdquo; on Whitney\u0026rsquo;s laptop, we had a 2 hour flight on a 737 down to Tampa. This was the longest flight of my life, but at least it was on a relatively spacious 737. They even threw 8oz of Coke and a bag of pretzels at us.\nOnce we got to Tampa International (TPA), we got our bags and got on the shuttle van to the Radisson in record time, got our room and took a long nap. :-)\nSo here\u0026rsquo;s the thing: This hotel is in the middle of an industrial area with no eateries, restaurants, nor so much as a McDonalds within walking distance. It\u0026rsquo;s also as far from a beach as you\u0026rsquo;re likely to get in Tampa. \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo; So, for last night at least we were trapped here as the monsoon raged outside. I\u0026rsquo;m heading back to TPA on the shuttle van @ 9 to get a rental car from Thrifty. Thought we could forego it, but it looks to be an absolute necessity.\nOn the bright side, the weather today is beautiful, and I\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to a long afternoon of relaxing and working on a bit of a tan.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/tampa-day-1/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s said the bloggers are so compulsive that they\u0026rsquo;ll blog in the middle of the night, at people\u0026rsquo;s houses during dinner parties, and on their vacation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, count me in. This is Day 1 in Tampa, and here\u0026rsquo;s my report.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe awoke yesterday at 6 to make it to SDF by our 9:45 flight. We found ourselves on a \u0026ldquo;Delta Connection\u0026rdquo; flight on a Canadair regional jet from Louisville to Cincy. Total flight time: 22 minutes. Seems kinda wasteful, really, when there\u0026rsquo;s a Southwest Airlines flight from Louisville direct to Tampa twice a day. But oh well. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Tampa, Day 1"},{"content":"Exercise reports: Jogged most of the way around the site today, finally slowing to a cooldown walk when I was 100 yards from my building. Felt just awesome! I didn\u0026rsquo;t go fast at all, but the equilibrium I felt moving, sweating, pumping, breathing was nice.\nDidn\u0026rsquo;t overdo, and treated myself to some nummy protein\u0026ndash;Double w/cheese from Wendy\u0026rsquo;s\u0026ndash;afterwards.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll probably be sore, but I\u0026rsquo;m trying to develop a good habit of jogging M-W-F. Definitely wanting to lose some weight and get back into the shape I was in 1999-2000, when I was cycling 10 miles a day and running for 50 minutes at a time. Hard to believe, looking at me now :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/exercise/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eExercise reports: Jogged most of the way around the site today, finally slowing to a cooldown walk when I was 100 yards from my building. Felt just awesome! I didn\u0026rsquo;t go fast at all, but the equilibrium I felt moving, sweating, pumping, breathing was nice.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDidn\u0026rsquo;t overdo, and treated myself to some nummy protein\u0026ndash;Double w/cheese from Wendy\u0026rsquo;s\u0026ndash;afterwards.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll probably be sore, but I\u0026rsquo;m trying to develop a good habit of jogging M-W-F. Definitely wanting to lose some weight and get back into the shape I was in 1999-2000, when I was cycling 10 miles a day and running for 50 minutes at a time. Hard to believe, looking at me now :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Exercise"},{"content":"Key learning from my 45-minute ordeal putting my contacts in this morning: It helps a great deal to aim for the spot just below your iris and then blink the contact into place once it\u0026rsquo;s actually on your eyeball.\nI must\u0026rsquo;ve dropped/wrinkled/turned inside-out both my contacts at least a dozen times before this (rather obvious) technique came to me. I remember Whitney doing it with her gas-perms, so that reminded me.\nMy eyes feel a little dry with \u0026rsquo;em in today; not painful just a mild irritation in the right one. I\u0026rsquo;m wondering if I got the darn thing inside-out\u0026hellip; The left one feels very comfortable, by contrast. \u0026lsquo;Course I did poke at my right eye about twice as much as my left trying to get \u0026rsquo;em in there. :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKey learning from my 45-minute ordeal putting my contacts in this morning: It helps a great deal to aim for the spot just below your iris and then blink the contact into place once it\u0026rsquo;s actually on your eyeball.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI must\u0026rsquo;ve dropped/wrinkled/turned inside-out both my contacts at least a dozen times before this (rather obvious) technique came to me. I remember Whitney doing it with her gas-perms, so that reminded me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Said goodbye to an old, dear friend just now.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s not dead, just excommunicated.\nKinda sad that we humans must be that way sometimes, but as adults we must know our boundries, our circles of influence, of friends, and of love. And certain people must be excluded from them for us to survive.\nKnow that I miss this guy, world; I have since the day of our falling-out. (Well, really the year of our falling out, as it \u0026rsquo;twas a long spiral of mutual loathing\u0026hellip;). But I had a friend once, a person who knew all my secrets, possibly too many for one not bound to me by blood or covenant. And such was my personal downfall, the end of our friendship.\nSorry to be dramatic, but I feel like there should be some sort of ceremony here\u0026hellip;something somber, something appropriate, but our society lacks any such thing. Had one of us died, there\u0026rsquo;d be mourning, but that something so wonderful died bears not a mention\u0026ndash;that just seems WRONG!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/goodbye-to-dear-friend/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSaid goodbye to an old, dear friend just now.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe\u0026rsquo;s not dead, just excommunicated.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKinda sad that we humans must be that way sometimes, but as adults we must know our boundries, our circles of influence, of friends, and of love. And certain people must be excluded from them for us to survive.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKnow that I miss this guy, world; I have since the day of our falling-out. (Well, really the year of our falling out, as it \u0026rsquo;twas a long spiral of mutual loathing\u0026hellip;). But I had a friend once, a person who knew all my secrets, possibly too many for one not bound to me by blood or covenant. And such was my personal downfall, the end of our friendship.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Goodbye to Dear Friend"},{"content":"Okay, addendum to the below: could my ears be ANY bigger? Big nose, big ears, head like a watermelon\u0026hellip;.dude!\nYeah, not big on self-portraits\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, addendum to the below: could my ears be ANY bigger? Big nose, big ears, head like a watermelon\u0026hellip;.dude!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, not big on self-portraits\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Stay tuned for a message from the big, giant head\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\n(apologies for a not-so-bright look on my face and severe 5 o\u0026rsquo;clock shadow)\nToday was the first time since I was in 3rd grade that I\u0026rsquo;ve been able to see my own face in a mirror without eyeglasses. It was a really, really altering experience.\nI went to the optometrist at 3, and he put two of the daily-wear soft contacts in my eye and then told me to go sit in the waiting room for 15 minutes. They didn\u0026rsquo;t hurt, but I got a weird headache immediately. I figured-out what it was: Unused to having peripheral vision, my mind was trying to process much more information than I was used to.\nBasically, my eyes are so bad w/myopia and astigmatism that I have about a 6 inch window right in front of my nose that I can see. As I age and acquire far-sightedness, I\u0026rsquo;ll lose even that. However, with the contacts in I could SEE!\nIt\u0026rsquo;s still a little weird. I wore them for 4 hours today and then took them out, per their instructions, and my eyes feel a bit irritated, but not bad overall. They don\u0026rsquo;t like looking through glasses anymore, apparently, because I got that same sort of \u0026ldquo;Why are you screwing with me?\u0026rdquo; headache as soon as I put my old glasses back on.\nI\u0026rsquo;m a bit nervous: The contacts are flimsy little things that can turn inside-out and they have to last me for a year at least. This next week is basically a try-before-you-buy, and I\u0026rsquo;m wondering how much unreimbursed cost these bad boys will cost me\u0026hellip;.\u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo;\nBut, for the ability to buy a real pair of stylish sunglasses and wear them, I\u0026rsquo;ll gladly pay it :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/contacts/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;Stay tuned for a message from the big, giant head\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/misc/contacts.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(apologies for a not-so-bright look on my face and severe 5 o\u0026rsquo;clock shadow)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday was the first time since I was in 3rd grade that I\u0026rsquo;ve been able to see my own face in a mirror without eyeglasses. It was a really, really altering experience.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI went to the optometrist at 3, and he put two of the daily-wear soft contacts in my eye and then told me to go sit in the waiting room for 15 minutes. They didn\u0026rsquo;t hurt, but I got a weird headache immediately. I figured-out what it was: Unused to having peripheral vision, my mind was trying to process much more information than I was used to.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Contacts"},{"content":"The blogging is going to be pretty random today\u0026hellip;my brain is mush and even coffee isn\u0026rsquo;t helping.\nFirst of all, thank you all for your well-wishes and prayers; Norie is set to go home from the hospital today. She had a successful operation to clear her lungs of blood late Friday night, and spent Saturday and Sunday in the CCTVU, whatever that is, is St. Joseph\u0026rsquo;s hospital.\nMom\u0026rsquo;s H-P Laptop (yeah, i know\u0026hellip;how could she get an H-P!) has had a hard drive meltdown, so I shipped her home my old (but still rather speedy) 866Mhz Pentium 3 Dell tower w/its 19\u0026quot; monitor. :-)\nAutocross was fun but frustrating yesterday. Overdrove the course, ending-up third. And my tires are sort of dying\nDid I mention I was sleepy?\nRonald Reagan died on Saturday. Sadly, I\u0026rsquo;ve missed most of the coverage and mourning. Internally, I don\u0026rsquo;t feel much mourning: The man lived an awesome, long life, accomplished much, and he\u0026rsquo;s moved on (Whitney/Stu term, but I feel it\u0026rsquo;s ap) to a place where Alzheimer\u0026rsquo;s can no longer touch him. We should all aspire to do 1/10th as much with our lives as Reagan did with his: Good father, leader, churchmember, defeater of Communism, restorer of faith in America, comforter during the Challenger disater, world representative, and ultimate cheerleader for the ideal of \u0026ldquo;America\u0026rdquo;. He\u0026rsquo;ll be missed, but he can go to his rest knowing he\u0026rsquo;s done more for America than any person since FDR.\nSmarty Jones lost. Meh. My theory on this: Thoroughbred bloodlines are so inbred and the horses themselves are so fragile (compare a thoroughbred\u0026rsquo;s legs to those of a quarterhorse and you\u0026rsquo;ll see what I mean), that running the Belmont is too much for \u0026rsquo;em. Bright moment: Seeing Rock Hard Ten exposed for the loser he is. That horse is magnificent, sleek, and powerful, yet he has no will to win.\nRandom read from the NYT today: Las Vegas is the fastest growing metropolis in America. Makes perfect sense to me; no water and no surrounding food supplies. Heck yeah, let\u0026rsquo;s put 10 million people there! :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe blogging is going to be pretty random today\u0026hellip;my brain is mush and even coffee isn\u0026rsquo;t helping.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst of all, thank you all for your well-wishes and prayers; Norie is set to go home from the hospital today. She had a successful operation to clear her lungs of blood late Friday night, and spent Saturday and Sunday in the CCTVU, whatever that is, is St. Joseph\u0026rsquo;s hospital.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMom\u0026rsquo;s H-P Laptop (yeah, i know\u0026hellip;how could she get an H-P!) has had a hard drive meltdown, so I shipped her home my old (but still rather speedy) 866Mhz Pentium 3 Dell tower w/its 19\u0026quot; monitor. :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":":) for those of you not big on melancholy, I have happier, more involving posts than this is likely to be.\nFor some reason, I\u0026rsquo;m lonely tonight. Truly, the Christian is never alone, washed as he is in God\u0026rsquo;s love, but in the dark watches of the night, witnessing the glorious sunset as I did today, and yet seeing the frailty of life as I also did today, it makes one yearn for his loved ones to enclose him, their love a talisman against death and solitude.\nI always remember a quote about Dante\u0026rsquo;s Inferno, about limbo the level of hell that contains the virtuous pagans like Socrates, Plato, et al. Theirs was an eternity without pain, but it was also an eternity away from God, and that was the real torture. Hidden in that reflection is a truth: Humans are creatures of group, of belonging, of allegiance.\nMy Love is far away from me now, vacationing in Tennessee. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t expecting to hear from her tonight, but she called. It was wonderful, and it was also painful: It reminded me of the distance between us. Somehow, this distance seems so much more biting than the normal 85 miles that separates our daily lives. I miss her :-) There I said it. Shoot me.\nFurther, my Aunt Norie. Poor dear lost her lifelong wager with gravity on Memorial Day, falling 12 feet from a barn loft, breaking 7 ribs on her left side. She lay immoble on the stall floor for over an hour until help came. This led to bleeding inn her lungs, leading in turn to a trip from the backwater\u0026rsquo;s of medicine to St. Joseph\u0026rsquo;s in Lexington. She\u0026rsquo;s due for surgery to remove the blood in her lungs tomorrow \u0026lsquo;round 6 pm. For those of you so inclined, a few prayers would be most welcome. She breathes only painfully, but remains fiesty as ever.\nI guess the thing that has me so down is her accident\u0026rsquo;s reminder to me of how fragmented and torn my Mother\u0026rsquo;s family is and ever will be. And over what? Money, jealousy, vendetta one for another. Good reasons, I suppose. And yet, how is it that people sprung from the same womb could turn on one another like hyenas?\nI have no idea, but I pray whatever blood of theirs within me stays dormant forever.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/melancholy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e:) for those of you not big on melancholy, I have happier, more involving posts than this is likely to be.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor some reason, I\u0026rsquo;m lonely tonight. Truly, the Christian is never alone, washed as he is in God\u0026rsquo;s love, but in the dark watches of the night, witnessing the glorious sunset as I did today, and yet seeing the frailty of life as I also did today, it makes one yearn for his loved ones to enclose him, their love a talisman against death and solitude.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Melancholy"},{"content":"Can I just say, getting your pupils dilated is not cool! The process itself is not painful, but having to go out into the BRIGHT SUNSHINE AND DRIVE HOME WITHOUT KILLING YOURSELF is.\nSo, looks like I\u0026rsquo;m a go for contacts as soon as they come in next week, no glaucoma, no cateracts, and my corneas look good.\nNow, I\u0026rsquo;m going to a dark room to hide for a couple hours.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/eye-exam/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCan I just say, getting your pupils dilated is not cool! The process itself is not painful, but having to go out into the BRIGHT SUNSHINE AND DRIVE HOME WITHOUT KILLING YOURSELF is.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, looks like I\u0026rsquo;m a go for contacts as soon as they come in next week, no glaucoma, no cateracts, and my corneas look good.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow, I\u0026rsquo;m going to a dark room to hide for a couple hours.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Eye Exam"},{"content":":) Such a lovely spring morning in\u0026hellip;June :-)\nI guess the one thing we can thank the storms for is some very pleasant, dry air that\u0026rsquo;s descended upon Kentucky in tha past few days. Yestderday was beautiful weather for any sort of outdoor activity, and last night was so cool and clear that I slept with the windows open and just my fan on, and I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to get up!\nDid get the Pup washed yesterday; after weeks of hard autocrossing, she surely deserved it. I\u0026rsquo;m going for my eye exam today, and I\u0026rsquo;m thinking of trying contacts. I know\u0026hellip;GAA! Harold in contacts! My eyes are funky; highly astigmatic, I\u0026rsquo;ve never been a good candidate for contacts in the past, but supposedly there are new contacts out that can work w/astigmatism. Basically, technology advances and I ask about contacts every 5 years or so. Usually, I\u0026rsquo;m turned down.\nI must say, i\u0026rsquo;d love to not have to get special sunglasses anymore. Wouldn\u0026rsquo;t mind one of those $300 pairs of Raybans\u0026hellip;\nWork\u0026rsquo;s quiet still this morning; I\u0026rsquo;m intentionally not looking at my email for fear of what has beset us. This company is like most, I suspect: Leading-up to long weekends or holidays, little work gets done as most employees use company time to goof-off or make arrangements via telephone, but after the holiday the avalanchr of work descends.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/06/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e:) Such a lovely spring morning in\u0026hellip;June :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI guess the one thing we can thank the storms for is some very pleasant, dry air that\u0026rsquo;s descended upon Kentucky in tha past few days. Yestderday was beautiful weather for any sort of outdoor activity, and last night was so cool and clear that I slept with the windows open and just my fan on, and I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to get up!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Shots of A rather stormy ft. knox (Pics courtesy of Whitney)\nHad a fair to middlin\u0026rsquo; day: Kept chanting \u0026ldquo;Look a-head\u0026hellip;Look a-head\u0026rdquo; to myself throughout the course, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t seem to put all the pieces together. DNF\u0026rsquo;d or coned every run; just wasn\u0026rsquo;t that much fun doing that. We had 3 heats, with 5 runs each (before the last heat was shortened to 3 runs b/c of weather), HS was in the 2nd heat.\nWe had a huge class\u0026hellip;like 9 drivers. most were newbies, but three of us were there with race tires: Scott, Joey, and myself, and I ended-up 2nd. I was very close to Scott\u0026rsquo;s times, and had my head been in the game and all, I could\u0026rsquo;ve challenged him.\nHad a bit of fun after that regarding a call to AAA from a guard shack to get a certain Green Ford Taurus containing all my necessary worldly belongings unlocked before the tornado hit. But that\u0026rsquo;s another story. In short, we got the car unlocked, and thanks to Scott, David, Todd, and myself, we got my tires changed before the severe weather hit.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve started using my cordless drill to help with putting the lug bolts on and off, and its an order of magnitude faster, and it makes for less strain on my back. Don\u0026rsquo;t know if 13.2V is going to cut-it, though\u0026hellip;it was petering-out on me by the end of the day.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/storms-at-fort-knox/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eShots of \u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/20040530ftknox/\"\u003eA rather stormy ft. knox\u003c/a\u003e (Pics courtesy of Whitney)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/20040530ftknox/ftknox6.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHad a fair to middlin\u0026rsquo; day: Kept chanting \u0026ldquo;Look a-head\u0026hellip;Look a-head\u0026rdquo; to myself throughout the course, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t seem to put all the pieces together. DNF\u0026rsquo;d or coned every run; just wasn\u0026rsquo;t that much fun doing that. We had 3 heats, with 5 runs each (before the last heat was shortened to 3 runs b/c of weather), HS was in the 2nd heat.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Storms at Fort Knox"},{"content":"So much for my fancy-schmancy Palm Tungsten T. It\u0026rsquo;s hosed. i\u0026rsquo;m staring at a blank screen that just says \u0026lsquo;Reset\u0026rsquo;, but whenever I reset it, it brings me back to the blank screen.\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo; this is me paying the stupid tax for buying a device I really didn\u0026rsquo;t need.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/rip-palm-tungsten-t/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo much for my fancy-schmancy Palm Tungsten T. It\u0026rsquo;s hosed. i\u0026rsquo;m staring at a blank screen that just says \u0026lsquo;Reset\u0026rsquo;, but whenever I reset it, it brings me back to the blank screen.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo; this is me paying the stupid tax for buying a device I really didn\u0026rsquo;t need.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RIP Palm Tungsten T"},{"content":"Today on the Netflix bandwagon: Chicago\nFull disclosure: Whitney hates this movie, and has been very vocal about it, so that\u0026rsquo;s probably colored my view here.\nWhat we have here is an opera/musical that centers around Roxie Hart, philandering wife of a lowly mechanic who figures to sleep her way to a shot at Vaudeville fame. When her lover comes clean about being a furniture salesman who fed her a line to bed her, she shoots him in a jealous rage. The plot describes her time in prison, the environment of 1920\u0026rsquo;s Chicago, and the role of media in justice (or, in this case, injustice).\nRoxie is an anti-hero: Unhappy with her lot in life, she uses every conniving trick imaginable from the traditional (sleeping with a benefactor) to the trite (pretending to be pregnant to curry sympathy) in her quest for fame. Her husband Amos is the perfect, if dull, foil: Madly in love with Roxie, he tries to take the blame for the killing, hocks all his goods for her defense, and STILL takes her back in the end.\nThe movie draws inevitable comparisons to Moulin Rouge. Both are trippy musicals with name stars doing their best to muddle through the song and dance numbers. (The question of whose singing is worse, Ewan McGreggor\u0026rsquo;s or Richard Gere\u0026rsquo;s, is left to the reader). On the whole, though, Chicago is a bad tequilla hangover to Moulin\u0026rsquo;s acid trip: Here the characters are a little too real, the social satire a little too biting. One could walk out of Moulin distantly acknowledging such tragic love is real but innocuous. After watching Chicago, we\u0026rsquo;re reminded of other maniuplations of justice, like the O.J. trial, Ted Kennedy\u0026rsquo;s Chappaquiddic acquittal, etc.\nTaken on its own merits, the movie is uneven. Queen Latifah delights as \u0026ldquo;Mama\u0026rdquo;, the grafting head guardess of the women\u0026rsquo;s block in Cook county jail, but Catherine Zeta-Jones disappoints, chosen for the part seemingly for the way she can smoke a cigarette and look good in fisnet stockings and dramatic eye makeup. Gere seems lost throughout, unsure of whether to ham up his scenes (yes) or try to be dramatic with a terrible Chicago accent (no!). Most of the scenes are visually intersting (see \u0026ldquo;Moulin Rouge\u0026rdquo;), but one is tremendous: The \u0026ldquo;Puppetmaster\u0026rdquo; number transcends the movie to social and political commentary, and should make any viewer squirm in his seat. After all, who\u0026rsquo;s pulling your strings?\nSome random comments:\nUsing the bandleader as analog the Greek choragus: Inspired!\nNo doubt using Richard Gere was a foregone conclusion, but did he have to be such a ham?\nI\u0026rsquo;m torn as to Rene Zelwegger\u0026rsquo;s body type for her character: She\u0026rsquo;s much too toned for a 1920\u0026rsquo;s era woman, but her thinness is apt for the flapper era. I found it distasteful.\nOn the whole, lovely film, but just a fine adaptation of what Broadway has been doing for 50 years.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/chicago/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.netflix.com/\"\u003eNetflix\u003c/a\u003e bandwagon: \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0299658/\"\u003eChicago\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/86/63/53m.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFull disclosure: Whitney hates this movie, and has been very vocal about it, so that\u0026rsquo;s probably colored my view here.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat we have here is an opera/musical that centers around Roxie Hart, philandering wife of a lowly mechanic who figures to sleep her way to a shot at Vaudeville fame. When her lover comes clean about being a furniture salesman who fed her a line to bed her, she shoots him in a jealous rage. The plot describes her time in prison, the environment of 1920\u0026rsquo;s Chicago, and the role of media in justice (or, in this case, injustice).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chicago"},{"content":"Thanks to NetFlix I\u0026rsquo;ve seen one of the best films ever made: The Godfather\nWords really don\u0026rsquo;t do justice to the mastery of this film. From the first moment at the Corleone wedding, Coppola presents us with dozens of interesting, round characters. He captures not only the story, but also several picturesque locations: 1946 New York, Sicily. Color, texture, and smell flow from the screen to your cortex.\nThe main thread of the story involves the Corleone family, most prominent of organized crime\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;5 Families\u0026rdquo;. As the story opens we see Brando as Don Corleone, aged patriarch, founder of the family. His three sons, hot-head Sonny (James Caan), simpleton Fredo, and college-kid-cum-war-hero Michael (Al Pachino) lead the magnificent cast of surrounding characters. Mainly, we see the story through Michael\u0026rsquo;s eye, his feelings of duty, honor, loss, rage. As he becomes first a pawn, then a killer, then a victim, then a calculating leader, we go through the changes with him. By then end, I was scheming with him.\nMichael Corleone is the most developed character I\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen. Coppola transcends even Shakespeare here, IMHO. Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, each transitions through two or possibly three emotional waypoints in his respective tragedy. For Michael, it\u0026rsquo;s at least four reinventions of himself, and yet more to come in the sequel.\nUnbelievably good film; novel cinematography, compelling storytelling, dramatic irony, foreshadowing, genuine suprises throughout.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/the-godfather/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThanks to \u003ca href=\"http://www.netflix.com\"\u003eNetFlix\u003c/a\u003e I\u0026rsquo;ve seen one of the best films ever made: \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/\"\u003eThe Godfather\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWords really don\u0026rsquo;t do justice to the mastery of this film. From the first moment at the Corleone wedding, Coppola presents us with dozens of interesting, round characters. He captures not only the story, but also several picturesque locations: 1946 New York, Sicily. Color, texture, and smell flow from the screen to your cortex.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe main thread of the story involves the Corleone family, most prominent of organized crime\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;5 Families\u0026rdquo;. As the story opens we see Brando as Don Corleone, aged patriarch, founder of the family. His three sons, hot-head Sonny (James Caan), simpleton Fredo, and college-kid-cum-war-hero Michael (Al Pachino) lead the magnificent cast of surrounding characters. Mainly, we see the story through Michael\u0026rsquo;s eye, his feelings of duty, honor, loss, rage. As he becomes first a pawn, then a killer, then a victim, then a calculating leader, we go through the changes with him. By then end, I was scheming with him.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Godfather"},{"content":"I need to find a new apartment, or a house, or something. Paying my rent every month is KILLING ME.\nSat down tonight (yeah, Friday night, all by my lonesome \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo;) and took a serious look at my finances, considering the extra expenses of gasoline and autocross every other (or every!) weekend. The short end of it, it\u0026rsquo;s not great. I really need to pare-down some spending or get some more income, which is patently absurd, because I feel I\u0026rsquo;m OVERPAID.\nI\u0026rsquo;m anticipating a raise (effective in August), but until then, i\u0026rsquo;m at a point of depressing equilibrium\u0026hellip;\nOn the bright side, I\u0026rsquo;m having quite a bit of fun. Dave would not be especially proud of me, but as I\u0026rsquo;ve acquired all the toys I\u0026rsquo;d lusted after, maybe I can rachet-down the spending and save a bit.\n* * *\nThere are some\u0026hellip;interesting\u0026hellip;houses in the outlying areas around G\u0026rsquo;town and Paris that are going for like $60k-$100k. Probably not sexy houses, but hey :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI need to find a new apartment, or a house, or something. Paying my rent every month is KILLING ME.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSat down tonight (yeah, Friday night, all by my lonesome \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo;) and took a serious look at my finances, considering the extra expenses of gasoline and autocross every other (or every!) weekend. The short end of it, it\u0026rsquo;s not great. I really need to pare-down some spending or get some more income, which is patently absurd, because I feel I\u0026rsquo;m OVERPAID.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Well, wish me luck, guys. Big red is in the shop for its midlife crisis\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;service\nJust dropped-it-off on 2nd Street at Auto Tech Service for every maintenance service known to mankind, short of an engine + transmission rebuild.\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo; It\u0026rsquo;s only money, right? Heck, cheaper than buying a new truck. Or a 300C\n* * *\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t said this in almost 3 years of working here: Today is looking pretty darn boring. I\u0026rsquo;ve got some documentation to work on, but until I get some questions answered via email, I\u0026rsquo;m kinda stuck on my big workitems. Breezed through two technical books in the past two days:\nBitter Java\nThis book is basically a diatriabe about anti-patterns. Just as with all intelligent life, programmers find rules-of-thumb about how to do certain repetitive things in our code. We call these \u0026ldquo;Patterns\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Design patterns\u0026rdquo;. Well, in true thesis/antithesis form, Bruce Tate and his cronies came-up with this book to discuss anti-patterns, things not to do when designing/building/maintaining software. Worthy book, but very self-indulgent, wordy, breezy, and dense (much like this review :-) ).\nCoder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software\nDon\u0026rsquo;t waste your money. This book is utter plaigarism of other people\u0026rsquo;s ideas: Whole chapters are stolen without attribution, and none of the concepts are new. I need not buy this book to learn about brainstorming, mind-mapping, source-code control, unit testing, and how evil the guys in Marketing are. Essentially, this book is an overblow \u0026lsquo;blog entry about one fellow\u0026rsquo;s experience developing c#. There are some valuable best practices here, but it\u0026rsquo;s just not worth the price of admission. It\u0026rsquo;s not staying in my collection.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/servicing-a-gmt800/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, wish me luck, guys. Big red is in the shop for its midlife crisis\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;\u003cem\u003eservice\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust dropped-it-off on 2nd Street at \u003ca href=\"http://www.autotechservice.com/\"\u003eAuto Tech Service\u003c/a\u003e for every maintenance service known to mankind, short of an engine + transmission rebuild.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo; It\u0026rsquo;s only money, right? Heck, cheaper than buying a new truck. Or a \u003ca href=\"http://www.chrysler.com/300/index.html?context=homepage\u0026amp;type=bottomImage\"\u003e300C\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI haven\u0026rsquo;t said this in almost 3 years of working here: Today is looking pretty darn boring. I\u0026rsquo;ve got some documentation to work on, but until I get some questions answered via email, I\u0026rsquo;m kinda stuck on my big workitems. Breezed through two technical books in the past two days:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Servicing a GMT800"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;For Some, the Blogging Never Stops\u0026rdquo;\nThat\u0026rsquo;s right, cyber-citizens! Put down that laptop with the wireless connection, stop recording your thoughts, and back away slowly with your hands in the air! The intelligensia are freaked-out by people expressing themselves en masse.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/blogging-never-stops/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/technology/circuits/27blog.html?th\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;For Some, the Blogging Never Stops\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s right, cyber-citizens! Put down that laptop with the wireless connection, stop recording your thoughts, and back away slowly with your hands in the air! The intelligensia are freaked-out by people expressing themselves en masse.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Blogging Never Stops"},{"content":"defining moment: going sideways down the entrance ramp onto New Circle Rd after I goosed the throttle in Big Red. I countersteered and got out of the throttle, and the rear-end came back into line, but that was a real pucker moment.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/driving-a-pickup-truck/","summary":"\u003cp\u003edefining moment: going sideways down the entrance ramp onto New Circle Rd after I goosed the throttle in Big Red. I countersteered and got out of the throttle, and the rear-end came back into line, but that was a real pucker moment.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Driving a pickup truck"},{"content":"Lots of randomness today:\nLearned that the reality TV phenomenon is likely to continue, as it\u0026rsquo;s sheer economics: Whereas scripted programs must be rerun in order to recoup production costs, networks can make a profit on a single showing of a reality program (no pesky writers or actors to pay\u0026hellip;). I wonder how long it\u0026rsquo;ll take us to get to the \u0026ldquo;Jumping For Dollars\u0026rdquo; scene in The Running Man, where some hapless contestent grasps for $100 bills as Rotweilers nip at his heels.\n* * *\nDiscovered some really cool software, and not all of it just good for writing programs. One particular one I like is a brainstorming tool called FreeMind. Screen shot:\nKinda cool way to develop thought-trees, complete with HTTP links, icons, pictures, whatever.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been avoiding writing about my latest reads, but I guess I should record that I actually read these two novels by Orson Scott Card:\nEnder\u0026rsquo;s Game\nEnder\u0026rsquo;s Shadow\nThe premise of both books is a future after two invasions from an alien race, the Buggers. In both cases, humanity had just barely survived. The stress had unified the three major alliances on Earth into one confederacy to prepare for the inevitable 3rd invasion. In addition to building a fleet and developing new weapons, the confederacy is looking for the new Napolean, Caesar, or Alexander, and they\u0026rsquo;re looking in Grade School. \u0026ldquo;Ender\u0026rsquo;s Game\u0026rdquo; follows Andrew \u0026ldquo;Ender\u0026rdquo; Wiggins as he\u0026rsquo;s identified as a military genius, sent to a space station called Battle School where they play a zero-g game of capture the flag. \u0026ldquo;Ender\u0026rsquo;s Shadow\u0026rdquo; follows the same timeline with a different character.\nThe books were intriguing for one simple reason: They cast everything as a struggle for survival, a game where strategy, reading people, and excellence were all that matters. For some reason, the book \u0026lsquo;clicked\u0026rsquo; with me. My life has always been about avoiding games. It\u0026rsquo;s not so much that I hate to lose, I just never saw much point in playing.\nThese books cast everything in a completely different light. Play the games! Recognize people\u0026rsquo;s strategy, their strengths and weaknesses, and always, always be cognizant of what\u0026rsquo;s really going on. That\u0026rsquo;s what I did at the autocross on Sunday. I knew Scott was overlooking the threat I posed to him; he\u0026rsquo;d beaten me handily in the past 4 events. His sights were set on ever higher prey, and I came in below his radar and beat him.\n* * *\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a night of strong thunderstorms here in Kentucky. I pray God keeps us all safe as nature rends itself apart outside.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/enders-game-enders-shadow/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLots of randomness today:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLearned that the reality TV phenomenon is likely to continue, as it\u0026rsquo;s sheer economics: Whereas scripted programs must be rerun in order to recoup production costs, networks can make a profit on a single showing of a reality program (no pesky writers or actors to pay\u0026hellip;). I wonder how long it\u0026rsquo;ll take us to get to the \u0026ldquo;Jumping For Dollars\u0026rdquo; scene in \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0093894/\"\u003eThe Running Man\u003c/a\u003e, where some hapless contestent grasps for $100 bills as Rotweilers nip at his heels.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ender's Game \u0026 Ender's Shadow"},{"content":"autocrosstraining: n. (colloquial)\nThe act or enterprise of exercising muscle groups heterogeneously to participate in the activity of autocross :-) Some neologisms are a little too good to pass-up.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eautocrosstraining:\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cem\u003en.\u003c/em\u003e (colloquial)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe act or enterprise of exercising muscle groups heterogeneously to participate in the activity of autocross\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:-) Some neologisms are a little too good to pass-up.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m so spent I can barely hold my eyes open to write this.\nbut I WON! I WON! No voodoo, no tricks, no luck. I was up at Kentucky Speedway at Sparta, and I ran 5 clean runs without hitting a single cone, knocking .2-.6 of a second off each pass up until I won my class. The sense of accomplishment and satisfaction was enough to get me home alive.\nI was so dirty and grimy, I left a ring in my tub after I took a bath. Blech.\n* * *\nOn a completely mundane note, I\u0026rsquo;m bidding farewell to my first Discover card tonight. Having had it three years, they expired my previous card and sent me a new one. In my catatonic state, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t find the card in the packaging; instead, I only found the hated \u0026lsquo;Discover2Go\u0026rsquo; thing that\u0026rsquo;s not-quite-a keychain. Bleary eyed and incensed (though clean) I called customer service, where a sweet-voiced girl named Miranda calmly told me to look harder in the packaging. I would\u0026rsquo;ve been embarrassed, but that\u0026rsquo;d have required energy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/that-time-i-won/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m so spent I can barely hold my eyes open to write this.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ebut I WON! I WON! No voodoo, no tricks, no luck. I was up at Kentucky Speedway at Sparta, and I ran 5 clean runs without hitting a single cone, knocking .2-.6 of a second off each pass up until I won my class. The sense of accomplishment and satisfaction was enough to get me home alive.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"That time I won"},{"content":"\n\u0026ldquo;Horny?\u0026rdquo;\nI LOVE THE ZOO!\nIt smells, it\u0026rsquo;s hot, it\u0026rsquo;s hilly, but it\u0026rsquo;s neat! Went to the zoo on Sunday (yes, after hanging-out with mom and dad after my long day buying susan\u0026rsquo;s Escape, below)\n****\nRandom: me and my father.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/zoo/zoo14.jpg\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u0026ldquo;Horny?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI LOVE THE ZOO!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt smells, it\u0026rsquo;s hot, it\u0026rsquo;s hilly, but it\u0026rsquo;s neat! Went to the zoo on Sunday (yes, after hanging-out with mom and dad after my long day buying susan\u0026rsquo;s Escape, below)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e****\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRandom: me and my father.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/misc/dadandI.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"I went with Susan on Saturday to buy her new truck:\nSusan\u0026hellip;to put that in your blog, cut and paste the following into blogger:\nWhat a day\u0026hellip;I drove down to Jackson to talk to Steve and Susan about the Library\u0026rsquo;s needs for new server, and then Susan, her mom Flo (nee \u0026ldquo;Flo-Bess\u0026rdquo;), and I were going to go to Hazard to buy her an Escape. We left for Hazard a little after 11. She had her mind set on one with a moonroof, V6, 4WD, and the works.\nWell, we got to hazard, found the truck she loved, and they wouldn\u0026rsquo;t budge on price. We figured-out she had to have a 2005, and they had a $1k rebate on \u0026rsquo;em. These trucks were listing for $27k or so, but we were offering $24-$24.5 to start. No joy in Hazard.\nI thought that would be it, honestly. :-) I was wrong.\nSo, then we went to West Liberty, to the same dealership where Dad and I bought that monstrous Black-on-Gray 1991 Ford F-250 with the ultra-weak 5.8L V8 (whopping 220 hp) and the even-weaker E4OD transmission. Gave me the chills. We were there for over an hour, getting the hardest sell I\u0026rsquo;ve ever dealt with. I felt like I needed a shower to rinse-off the grime from the place.\nThen we drove from West Liberty to Mt. Sterling via US460. I was getting a little nauseated, because I spent most of the time trying to figure-out what sort of prinicple Susan could afford to get the payment she wanted.\nGot to Mt. Sterling, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t have any Escapes that beckoned so we drove to Winchester. Understand, now, we\u0026rsquo;re like 150 miles into this trip :-)\nSo we hit Cole Ford in Winchester, arriving 5 minutes before 5, to find only salesman Curt who desperately wanted to sell his 3rd car of the day to earn his $50 bonus. So, she bought the truck you see above.\nI got to drive her Focus home behind her and her Mom in the Escape.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/buying-a-car-with-a-friend/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI went with Susan on Saturday to buy her new truck:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/misc/susans_truck.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSusan\u0026hellip;to put that in your blog, cut and paste the following into blogger:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat a day\u0026hellip;I drove down to Jackson to talk to Steve and Susan about the Library\u0026rsquo;s needs for new server, and then Susan, her mom Flo (nee \u0026ldquo;Flo-Bess\u0026rdquo;), and I were going to go to Hazard to buy her an Escape. We left for Hazard a little after 11. She had her mind set on one with a moonroof, V6, 4WD, and the works.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Buying a Car with a Friend"},{"content":"Well, found a way to sign-up for google\u0026rsquo;s new Email Service. Instead of the paltry 2MB you get at hotmail or 4MB at yahoo, they give you a whole GIGABYTE of mail storage.\nmy new address: miniharryc1978@gmail.com\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/first-day-on-gmail/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, found a way to sign-up for google\u0026rsquo;s new \u003ca href=\"http://gmail.google.com\"\u003eEmail Service\u003c/a\u003e. Instead of the paltry 2MB you get at hotmail or 4MB at yahoo, they give you a whole GIGABYTE of mail storage.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003emy new address: \u003ca href=\"mailto:miniharryc1978@gmail.com\"\u003eminiharryc1978@gmail.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"First Day on Gmail"},{"content":"Ahh\u0026hellip;the first evidence that the automotive driving public is coming to its senses.\nThe Hummer H2 is starting its long, welcome sales slide into oblivion. The 11mpg behemoth, the symbol of American largess seems soon to join the Ford Excursion, whose porcine mass would seem to preclude any sort of excursion whatsoever, in the automotive junkyard.\nPerhaps, finally, America will wise-up and choose more efficient options for taking Timmy to soccer practice. Seventy-five dollars per bi-weekly fillup will do that to ya.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAhh\u0026hellip;the first evidence that the automotive driving public is \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/17/business/17HUMM.html\"\u003ecoming to its senses\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hummer H2 is starting its long, welcome sales slide into oblivion. The 11mpg behemoth, the symbol of American largess seems soon to join the Ford Excursion, whose porcine mass would seem to preclude any sort of excursion whatsoever, in the automotive junkyard.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePerhaps, finally, America will wise-up and choose more efficient options for taking Timmy to soccer practice. Seventy-five dollars per bi-weekly fillup will do that to ya.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Scan of the Evolution School coursemap from last Friday.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a bit confusing, from the map above, but let me esplain:\nStart-out at the lower left, pointing towards the slalom. Enter the constant-distance slalom on the right and alternate until you get tothe 5th gate. Trip the timing light and that ends segment 1.\nTake the 360 going clockwise first time. Exit heading towards the top of the map. As you exit, trip the light again, and this ends segment 2.\nGo up to the top of the course and do a 90-degree bend to the left, arc-ing back towards the starting line. when you get back there, do a 90 turn into the sweeper, and trip the light, ending segment 3.\nContinue your arc up to the top left of the course, and switchback through the Chicago Box, taking a (now gentle) right-hand towards the 360-degree turn. As you trip the lights, again, that\u0026rsquo;s segment 4.\nFinally, exhausted, take the 360 counter-clockwise. When you trip the lights again on your exit, segment 5 and your run are complete.\nFun, fun course! liked it very much. Hard on tires, though.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eScan of the Evolution School coursemap from last Friday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/evo/course.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a bit confusing, from the map above, but let me esplain:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStart-out at the lower left, pointing towards the slalom. Enter the constant-distance slalom on the right and alternate until you get tothe 5th gate. Trip the timing light and that ends segment 1.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTake the 360 going clockwise first time. Exit heading towards the top of the map. As you exit, trip the light again, and this ends segment 2.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"As the world has passed me by in the intervening days, I\u0026rsquo;ve sought some sort of response to its events. For some reason, it\u0026rsquo;s been like another 9/11 for me, my eyes dimmed, my heart sad. May God grant me just a moment to get out what burdens my heart:\nI am no dove, understand. I believe war is a sad reality that will be with us until humanity\u0026rsquo;s life is snuffed out. As has been said, a person may be intelligent, empathic, and willing to compromise, but people on the whole are xenophobic, scared, and violent. People wish to acquire as many resources and as much power as they can, which is just peachy until encountering another such group. Thus, war is reality.\nNicholas Berg died this week, in full color, on tape. I have not seen the footage, but from descriptions, he was forced to make a statement to a camera before his hooded captors, and then he was beheaded. This was no guillotine or headsman\u0026rsquo;s axe: His head was sawn from his body by a knife, slowly, then shown to the camera as proof. Like Daniel Pearl, he\u0026rsquo;s a victim of a minority trying to scare an opponent with no stomach for war, a people divided against their own leaders.\nAnd they are succeeding, by most accounts. The United States is at once the epitome of power, and yet the essence of impotence. Unlike Persia, Alexander, Shaka Zulu, or Castillian Spain, we fight our place in the world: We are de-facto hegemon of this planet, and yet we hate ourselves for it. We think ourselves better and more enlightened than our current station.\nThus comes my message: Suck it up. Until such power comes upon the world stage that it drags America into hell itself, it\u0026rsquo;s time we lost these illusions. This is the 21st century, closing on 200 years since the Monroe Doctrine, and it\u0026rsquo;s time we added another corollary: If you pose a threat to us, we\u0026rsquo;re coming after you.\nBerg died horribly. Yet, so did soldiers on the American frontier, skinned alive, disemboweled, and left to die in the hot sun, the stench of their own rotting flesh their sole companion to eternity. So did the Boers of South Africa at their first encounter with the Zulu. So did the soldiers in Bataan. And Andersonville. And in the deserts of ancient Egypt when Pharoh ordered 10,000 men\u0026rsquo;s penises cut off and cast into a pile.\nThis is WHO WE ARE, people. Is it horrible? Yes. Is it profane against God? Yes. And yet, any society that has endured to the present has endured and inflicted the very same in its struggle for survival. Did not the children of Israel lay waste to Canaan? Land, resources, and freedom is rarely free for the taking, and likely won\u0026rsquo;t be again until we colonize other planets.\nMake no mistake: I grieve for this man. I bemoan the state of humanity. And yet, if we are to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, we must find the resolve to absorb such horror as the price of our survival.\nWe *must* deal with it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs the world has passed me by in the intervening days, I\u0026rsquo;ve sought some sort of response to its events. For some reason, it\u0026rsquo;s been like another 9/11 for me, my eyes dimmed, my heart sad. May God grant me just a moment to get out what burdens my heart:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am no dove, understand. I believe war is a sad reality that will be with us until humanity\u0026rsquo;s life is snuffed out. As has been said, a \u003cem\u003eperson\u003c/em\u003e may be intelligent, empathic, and willing to compromise, but \u003cem\u003epeople on the whole\u003c/em\u003e are xenophobic, scared, and violent. People wish to acquire as many resources and as much power as they can, which is just peachy until encountering another such group. Thus, war is reality.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Well, an altogether disappointing last few hours.\nI got home and hand a hankering for some atmosphere, coffee, and internet connection, so I decided to head for the Lock and Key. Got an extremely disappointing cup of Kenyan coffee for $2. Okay, consider: a whole POUND of the stuff might cost $10. That\u0026rsquo;s a pound of whole beans. I don\u0026rsquo;t mind paying for exceptional coffee, but $1 to $1.50 sounds more reasonable to me. On top of that, the coffee tasted under-strength, like they\u0026rsquo;re trying to stretch their profits a bit. \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo;\nThe Sumatran the other day was excellent, so maybe this was just an abberation.\nThen, enjoying my cup of bland, overpriced coffee, I was chatting with my mom when their router went belly-up. Tried everything from my end, but to no avail.\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo;\n* * *\nI was a good boy today; got to the gym immediately after class let out and did 20 minutes on the StairMaster, work of Satan that it is. After about 10 minutes, I hit my stride. 256 Calories, 66 floors worth of stairs. Nummy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/lock-and-key/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, an altogether disappointing last few hours.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI got home and hand a hankering for some atmosphere, coffee, and internet connection, so I decided to head for the Lock and Key. Got an extremely disappointing cup of Kenyan coffee for $2. Okay, consider: a whole POUND of the stuff might cost $10. That\u0026rsquo;s a pound of whole beans. I don\u0026rsquo;t mind paying for exceptional coffee, but $1 to $1.50 sounds more reasonable to me. On top of that, the coffee tasted under-strength, like they\u0026rsquo;re trying to stretch their profits a bit. \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lock and Key"},{"content":"Finally got some pics from Derby Breakfast in Frankfort on May 1st.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFinally got some pics from \u003ca href=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/derbyBfast/\"\u003eDerby Breakfast\u003c/a\u003e in Frankfort on May 1st.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/derbyBfast/derbyBfast1.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"For some reason, this picture is autocross for me; it\u0026rsquo;s the anticipation, the course, the car, the man, the weather.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/autocross-in-a-picture/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor some reason, this picture \u003cem\u003eis\u003c/em\u003e autocross for me; it\u0026rsquo;s the anticipation, the course, the car, the man, the weather.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/misc/ft_knox.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Autocross in a Picture"},{"content":"Well, I\u0026rsquo;ve finally (re)joined the information age at full speed:\nGot my cable modem set-up last Tuesday and I waited a whole 6 hours after that to get my wireless router/firewall setup. Now, i\u0026rsquo;ve got both my powerbook and my dell running through it wirelessly on 1.5 Mbps connection to the internet. Nummy :D\nAlso, in the package I get 10mb of web hosting, so guess what\u0026rsquo;s going there? PICTURES! For the past few weeks I\u0026rsquo;ve had a trial .Mac account, but that\u0026rsquo;s proven to be cumbersome, considering I have all the photo storage/editing/upload stuff I need right here in my powerbook. So, i\u0026rsquo;m going to drop that when the 60 days runs out and migrate my pics over to my new adelphia hosting. don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ll bother with an actual site w/them. My blog keeps me busy enough as is.\nWeekend has gone famously so far. Evolution school (see below) and then yesterday wtih Whitney up in Louisville. I was utterly exhausted after my day on Friday out in the heat, but we managed to get to Kentucky Kingdom to pick-up our Season Passes. Loooks like there\u0026rsquo;s quite a bit of Chang, Thunder Run, and T2 in my future.\nHeading home today to give my her present: A Rowenta DM-520 Iron.\nMore after I return. I\u0026rsquo;m feeling talkative.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/cable-modem/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, I\u0026rsquo;ve finally (re)joined the information age at full speed:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/misc/cableModem.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGot my cable modem set-up last Tuesday and I waited a whole 6 hours after that to get my wireless router/firewall setup. Now, i\u0026rsquo;ve got both my powerbook and my dell running through it wirelessly on 1.5 Mbps connection to the internet. Nummy :D\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlso, in the package I get 10mb of web hosting, so guess what\u0026rsquo;s going there? PICTURES! For the past few weeks I\u0026rsquo;ve had a trial .Mac account, but that\u0026rsquo;s proven to be cumbersome, considering I have all the photo storage/editing/upload stuff I need right here in my powerbook. So, i\u0026rsquo;m going to drop that when the 60 days runs out and migrate my pics over to my new adelphia hosting. don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ll bother with an actual site w/them. My blog keeps me busy enough as is.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cable Modem"},{"content":"Some pics from the evolution school I took on Friday:\nAhh..nothing like MINIs in the sunrise\nA little symmetry as Ron (left) and Mark (right) change their street tires for Khumho Ecsta V700\u0026rsquo;s. Rons would delaminate from the heat by the end of the day.\nThis is Ron\u0026rsquo;s MINI about to head out on course. We had two parallel courses, both exactly the same, so both groups compared times against one another. I was the fastest MINI, but Mark was right behind me.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/evolution-school/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome pics from the evolution school I took on Friday:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAhh..nothing like MINIs in the sunrise\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/evo/evomini.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA little symmetry as Ron (left) and Mark (right) change their street tires for Khumho Ecsta V700\u0026rsquo;s. Rons would delaminate from the heat by the end of the day.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/evo/evomini2.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is Ron\u0026rsquo;s MINI about to head out on course. We had two parallel courses, both exactly the same, so both groups compared times against one another. I was the fastest MINI, but Mark was right behind me.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://users.adelphia.net/~miniharryc1978/images/evo/evomini3.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Evolution School"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s good to be loved:\n_\nI tested out the scenario with your modified version of code and it seems to work great! Tremendous effort!\nI am contemplating whether I should propose Oxford to include a new word \u0026lsquo;Harold\u0026rsquo; in their latest version of English Dictionary which would mean \u0026lsquo;Rock Solid\u0026rsquo;!\n_\nFrom my co-worker and friend in India, Subrata. I love that guy; I\u0026rsquo;d work with him anywhere, anytime.\n* * *\nEdit: Like Harvid needs a bigger ego\u0026hellip;lol\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s good to be loved:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e_\u003cbr\u003e\nI tested out the scenario with your modified version of code and it seems to work great! Tremendous effort!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am contemplating whether I should propose Oxford to include a new word \u0026lsquo;Harold\u0026rsquo; in their latest version of English Dictionary which would mean \u0026lsquo;Rock Solid\u0026rsquo;!\u003cbr\u003e\n_\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom my co-worker and friend in India, Subrata. I love that guy; I\u0026rsquo;d work with him anywhere, anytime.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Life is what happens during the pauses:\nThe pause when a suckling babe looks at his mother and smiles\nThe split second your realize, yes, your dad\u0026rsquo;s let go of the bike and you\u0026rsquo;re riding on your own\nAfter making love when you gaze at your beloved\nThe time when the sun\u0026rsquo;s setting and you gaze at your land, and your home\nThat second after an exceptional performance, right before the audience explodes in applause\nThe moment on the autocross course when you\u0026rsquo;ve just had an awesome run, and you haven\u0026rsquo;t even looked at the clock yet and you just go \u0026ldquo;YEEEEHA!\u0026rdquo;\nThe main idea here is \u0026ldquo;pause\u0026rdquo;. Take a moment to reflect, and it staunches that feeling of \u0026ldquo;life is passing me by\u0026rdquo;. I\u0026rsquo;ve done much more of that in the past month, and I\u0026rsquo;ve seen tremendous dividends.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/05/life-is-what-happens-in-the-pauses/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLife is what happens during the pauses:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe pause when a suckling babe looks at his mother and smiles\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe split second your realize, yes, your dad\u0026rsquo;s let go of the bike and you\u0026rsquo;re riding on your own\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter making love when you gaze at your beloved\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe time when the sun\u0026rsquo;s setting and you gaze at your land, and your home\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat second after an exceptional performance, right before the audience explodes in applause\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Life is What Happens in the Pauses"},{"content":"Well, long time and no blog.\nTonight, I find myself blogging from Georgetown, Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s first cyber cafe, \u0026ldquo;Lock and Key Coffee House\u0026rdquo;, in the old JC Penny\u0026rsquo;s building, which then was a bank, which then was\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;something. Now it\u0026rsquo;s a coffee house. they\u0026rsquo;ve got a website, but I can\u0026rsquo;t seem to resolve the name. i\u0026rsquo;m sure i\u0026rsquo;ll be back, so I\u0026rsquo;ll post pics then.\nHonestly, it\u0026rsquo;s too cool for G\u0026rsquo;town.\n* * *\nLet\u0026rsquo;s see, what\u0026rsquo;s going on?\nSusan is buying a new SUV, it would seem. She\u0026rsquo;s tired of her Focus. Can\u0026rsquo;t say I blame her, though goodness knows I see enough hot Foci in H-Stock. Good chassis, bad build quality. Had one for a week as a loaner while the Problem Child (My old jetta, may it rest in pieces) was getting the hood repainted. Hated it. They do drive rather nicely, though.\n* * *\nWell, I\u0026rsquo;ve had it with getting beat at autocross\u0026hellip;i\u0026rsquo;m taking the Evolution school up in Louisville next Friday. It\u0026rsquo;s kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing, but i need practice, and 5 runs per day just isn\u0026rsquo;t cutting it. at the Evo school, they give you 35 to 40 runs in a day, plus feedback from pro drivers and Nat\u0026rsquo;l champ autocrossers.\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;m kinda excited about this weekend, though it\u0026rsquo;s s\u0026rsquo;posed to be a rainy one: Going to Derby Breakfast with Joe and company on Saturday morning. For those who don\u0026rsquo;t know, Derby Breakfast is a huge pork-barrel (literally!) political event where the governor of the state feeds breakfast to whomever arrives at the capital. We\u0026rsquo;re talking good, old fashioned Kentucky breakfast: Bacon, eggs, gravy, biscuits\u0026hellip;mmm\u0026hellip;\nThen sunday, i\u0026rsquo;m heading over past louisville to Ft. Knox for an autocross on an old Air National Guard runway. Big, smooth expanse of concrete. Course is s\u0026rsquo;posed to be long and fast. I almost hope it rains; never done an autocross in the rain\n* * *\nWent out and jogged on KY 32 for about 1/2 a mile tonight before I came to the coffeehouse. Nothing too fast, but it was defintely fun and restorative. my legs seem a little out of place on my torso\u0026hellip;they\u0026rsquo;re muscular and ready to go, but they\u0026rsquo;ve gotta lug along about 175 lbs of torso.\n* * *\nLast but certainly not least: Props to my gai-jin (is that the right word?) friend, Bill Randall who sent me an awesome postcard from his vacation. i\u0026rsquo;ll try to get a scan of it and post.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/long-time-no-blog/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, long time and no blog.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTonight, I find myself blogging from Georgetown, Kentucky\u0026rsquo;s first cyber cafe, \u0026ldquo;Lock and Key Coffee House\u0026rdquo;, in the old JC Penny\u0026rsquo;s building, which then was a bank, which then was\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;something. Now it\u0026rsquo;s a coffee house. they\u0026rsquo;ve got a website, but I can\u0026rsquo;t seem to resolve the name. i\u0026rsquo;m sure i\u0026rsquo;ll be back, so I\u0026rsquo;ll post pics then.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHonestly, it\u0026rsquo;s too cool for G\u0026rsquo;town.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Long time No Blog"},{"content":"Well, after an hour-and-a-half at the dentist\u0026rsquo;s office and an hour nap, I\u0026rsquo;m conscious again.\nMan, is the dentist HORRIBLE! I mean, they do the best they can (tons of novacaine) but the combination of the close-quarters, the medieval looking instruments, and the sounds and smells. Gaa\u0026hellip;\nAnyway, I just had one small filling that had to be redone w/a tooth-color filling, so it was relatively simple.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/dentist/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, after an hour-and-a-half at the dentist\u0026rsquo;s office and an hour nap, I\u0026rsquo;m conscious again.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMan, is the dentist HORRIBLE! I mean, they do the best they can (tons of novacaine) but the combination of the close-quarters, the medieval looking instruments, and the sounds and smells. Gaa\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, I just had one small filling that had to be redone w/a tooth-color filling, so it was relatively simple.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Dentist"},{"content":"Random thought I had while doing laundry:\nEverything takes longer than you estmate.\nPersonally, I\u0026rsquo;m late to most everything. It\u0026rsquo;s rather a personality trait (thanks, honey!), and it puzzles me. I used to be spot on time (or early) to everything, but then I realized: I wasn\u0026rsquo;t, my PARENTS were. My mom was my chauffer everywhere, and she\u0026rsquo;s always early.\nAnyway, I suck at estimating how long something\u0026rsquo;s going to take. From brushing my teeth to housecleaning, combine my proclivity for procrastination with my bad estimating skills, and i\u0026rsquo;m chronically late.\nGoing to try to do better tomorrow.\n::crosses fingers::\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/on-estimation/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRandom thought I had while doing laundry:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEverything takes longer than you estmate.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePersonally, I\u0026rsquo;m late to most everything. It\u0026rsquo;s rather a personality trait (thanks, honey!), and it puzzles me. I used to be spot on time (or early) to everything, but then I realized: I wasn\u0026rsquo;t, my PARENTS were. My mom was my chauffer everywhere, and she\u0026rsquo;s always early.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, I suck at estimating how long something\u0026rsquo;s going to take. From brushing my teeth to housecleaning, combine my proclivity for procrastination with my bad estimating skills, and i\u0026rsquo;m chronically late.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Estimation"},{"content":"\nNew MINI colors (or \u0026lsquo;colours\u0026rsquo; ) for 2005. (Top: Hyper Blue. Bottom: Cool Blue)\nMeh. Give me Indigo Blue (\u0026ldquo;indy blue\u0026rdquo;) any day of the week.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://motoringfile.com/pictures/2005_MCS_3.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://motoringfile.com/pictures/2005_MCS_cabrio_1.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNew MINI colors (or \u0026lsquo;colours\u0026rsquo; \u003c!-- raw HTML omitted --\u003e) for 2005. (Top: Hyper Blue. Bottom: Cool Blue)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeh. Give me Indigo Blue (\u0026ldquo;indy blue\u0026rdquo;) any day of the week.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"don\u0026rsquo;t ask why\u0026hellip;here are the lyrics to \u0026ldquo;Pop Goes the Weasel\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003edon\u0026rsquo;t ask why\u0026hellip;here are the \u003ca href=\"http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Cottage/3192/Weasel.html\"\u003elyrics to \u0026ldquo;Pop Goes the Weasel\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Well, if you want to buy that Mitsu Evo, better do it quick\nMitsubishi is in deep trouble, though I\u0026rsquo;m not suprised. Aside from the Evolution 8, they have no interesting product: The Galant is an also-ran, as are the lancer, the Ascender, etc. No product == no sales == no profits == no company.\nRecently, an affiliate, Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus, had announced a recall after a series of accidents caused by wheels flying off moving vehicles. In one widely reported case, a young woman was struck and killed by a runaway truck wheel. Mitsubishi Fuso was a division of Mitsubishi Motors in 2002, when the accidents occurred; it later sold much of its stake to DaimlerChrysler, which owns 65 percent of the truckmaker.\nYeah, combine that with the story from a few years back where customer complaints got stuffed inside a locker at corporate headquarters, never to be addressed.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/rip-mitubishi-evolution/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, if you want to buy that Mitsu Evo, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/23/business/worldbusiness/23daimler.html?th\"\u003ebetter do it quick\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com//pictures/VEHICLE/2003/Mitsubishi/100083178/022135-E.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMitsubishi is in deep trouble, though I\u0026rsquo;m not suprised. Aside from the Evolution 8, they have no interesting product: The Galant is an also-ran, as are the lancer, the Ascender, etc. No product == no sales == no profits == no company.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eRecently, an affiliate, Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus, had announced a recall after a series of accidents caused by wheels flying off moving vehicles. In one widely reported case, a young woman was struck and killed by a runaway truck wheel. Mitsubishi Fuso was a division of Mitsubishi Motors in 2002, when the accidents occurred; it later sold much of its stake to DaimlerChrysler, which owns 65 percent of the truckmaker.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RIP Mitubishi Evolution"},{"content":"Incredibly incisive New York Times article on how America is losing to foreign nations because of our lack of focus on innovation.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re doomed, folks. Enjoy it while it lasts: While America is the elephant, a million gnats in the form of India, China, and East Asia are nipping away at our effectiveness. Sure, our vast natural resources and productive economy have enabled us to be the big dogs for comming-up on a century, but times change. While we might churn-out 100k top-level engineers in this country per year, China can output a million.\nSorry, not everyone can be a football, basketball, or movie star. Some people have to work for a living, and America\u0026rsquo;s getting bad at that. The children of 3 generations\u0026rsquo; worth of wealth are indolent, and why shouldn\u0026rsquo;t they be? As Dr. Wirzba once said, we have an OBSCENE standard of living in this country. We have to scratch and claw for nothing, so why should we individuals acquire the tools to do so?\nSo long as we can go home, watch our 65\u0026quot; plasma screen with our Tivo, sponge off 2 generations of built-up wealth, be the only passenger in a Ford Excursion getting 6 mpg, we don\u0026rsquo;t care enough to be literate, political, or intellectual in this country.\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/were-doomed-part-1337/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIncredibly \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/22/opinion/22FRIE.html?th\"\u003eincisive New York Times article\u003c/a\u003e on how America is losing to foreign nations because of our lack of focus on innovation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re doomed, folks. Enjoy it while it lasts: While America is the elephant, a million gnats in the form of India, China, and East Asia are nipping away at our effectiveness. Sure, our vast natural resources and productive economy have enabled us to be the big dogs for comming-up on a century, but times change. While we might churn-out 100k top-level engineers in this country per year, China can output a million.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"We're Doomed, part 1337"},{"content":"Now, this is cool\u0026hellip;.profiles of your neighborhood\u0026rsquo;s demographics\napparently G\u0026rsquo;town is not as bad as you\u0026rsquo;d think\u0026hellip;\nJackson\u0026rsquo;s a total hell-hole, but then ya knew that\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow, this is cool\u0026hellip;.\u003ca href=\"http://realestate.yahoo.com/re/neighborhood/\"\u003eprofiles of your neighborhood\u0026rsquo;s demographics\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eapparently G\u0026rsquo;town is not as bad as you\u0026rsquo;d think\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJackson\u0026rsquo;s a total hell-hole, but then ya knew that\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Long, cautionary tale about how Offshoring and bad software killed AT\u0026amp;T Wireless\nThe company became sharkbait for acquisition by Cingular.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLong, cautionary tale about \u003ca href=\"http://www.cio.com/archive/041504/wireless.html\"\u003ehow Offshoring and bad software killed AT\u0026amp;T Wireless\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe company became sharkbait for acquisition by Cingular.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Article on the recovery of ancient greek fighting vessels, the triremes:\nVery Cool\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/ancient-greek-triremes-discovered/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eArticle on the recovery of ancient greek fighting vessels, the triremes:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/20/science/20SHIP.html?th\"\u003eVery Cool\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ancient Greek Triremes Discovered"},{"content":"Tired. Burnt. Sleepy. How else should one begin a Monday? :D\nPatrick\u0026rsquo;s being friendly (which in my current state of mind is just annoying), and I haven\u0026rsquo;t even had coffee yet. I need a 1 week sabbatical just to sleep, I think.\n* * *\nLooks like my neighbors have wised-up and locked-down their wireless connection. Tired of me downloading 150mb applications overnight, I suppose :)\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been looking and Adelphia has a plan for $45/month where you don\u0026rsquo;t have to subscribe to their cable service, and you get the cable modem for free. Plus, no contract.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll mull it over, but I\u0026rsquo;ll probably go with it; with my new laptop, dialup is just PAINFUL. Serviceable, but painful.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/apartment-life/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTired. Burnt. Sleepy. How else should one begin a Monday? :D\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePatrick\u0026rsquo;s being friendly (which in my current state of mind is just annoying), and I haven\u0026rsquo;t even had coffee yet. I need a 1 week sabbatical just to sleep, I think.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLooks like my neighbors have wised-up and locked-down their wireless connection. Tired of me downloading 150mb applications overnight, I suppose :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve been looking and Adelphia has a plan for $45/month where you don\u0026rsquo;t have to subscribe to their cable service, and you get the cable modem for free. Plus, no contract.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Apartment Life"},{"content":"My new truck:\nSpecs:\n4.8L V-8 Engine (code: l4R): 275hp, 285 ft-lbs torque\n4L60E transmission (w/a .70 overdrive)\nDry weight: 4246lbs\n108,000 miles\nDad bought himself a new 2004 GMC Sierra 1/2 ton pickup. 5.3L v8, automatic tranny, decent option level. Sticker was $28k, and he got it for $19.6k, after all discounts. So, in a fit of amazing generosity, he\u0026rsquo;s *giving* me his old truck.\nYeah, it\u0026rsquo;s the anti-mini. Been a pack-a-day smoker\u0026rsquo;s car for 3 years, so it pretty much reeks inside. But it\u0026rsquo;s got a \u0026lsquo;Murican V-8, baby. Needs just a bit of work:\nbrakes have never been done\nTranny is a bit slushy\nThere\u0026rsquo;s some highly annoying squeak in the left side of the cab\ncoolant: never changed\nnever had a tuneup\nseats are excruciatingly uncomfortable\nHad a wonderful day on Saturday w/Mom and Dad, really. and I brought home a new member to the stable. Might call it \u0026ldquo;big red,\u0026rdquo; but I haven\u0026rsquo;t decided\u0026hellip;\n* * *\nToday was, well, okay.\nI awoke at 6 to leave at 7 for Kentucky Speedway in sunny (and deserted) Sparta, KY. Sparta is about 30 mins South of Cincinnati on I-71, and I made the trip in a little over an hour, after stopping at a truck-stop to fill my 135 psi portable air tank.\nThe day was kind of bad from the beginning: I got side-tracked chit-chatting w/my guys I know at the autocross, and only walked the course twice. It was a wide-open course laid-out before the main gate of the speedway.\nMy class was pretty full (7 drivers) and I ended-up 3rd, behind Scott from our region and a guy named Brian from Cincy. Get this, though: Brian had a MINI w/Street tires. Yeah. Basically, I made good, quick runs, but hit cones on EVERY ONE. I had one clean run, but it was desperately slow. Fastest time in my class (Scott) was 42.6, and my fastest clean run was 45.3 My other runs were closer (in the 43\u0026rsquo;s) but each w/2 cones.\nWe got 5 runs and ran 3 heats. I lucked out (yay!) in that I worked 1st heat and ran 2nd heat, so I could slink out the back after my embarrasment. \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo; Yeah, went into this year thinkin\u0026rsquo; I was gonna be the car to beat in HS in the 3 regions, and i\u0026rsquo;m turning into an also-ran. Frustrating.\nOn the bright side, had a wonderful drive back from Sparta, eschewing the interstate for US 127 and KY 227, which runs from Owenton, through Stamping Ground, directly to G\u0026rsquo;town. I took out some of my frustration on that narrow ribbon of uneven asphalt, and it felt good. The Pup is a wonderful vehicle, really. It\u0026rsquo;s just the nut behind the wheel that needs tightening.\nGot back in time to attend Northside Christian for the 1st time in 6 weeks; as ever Dwight\u0026rsquo;s evening sermon about Ecclesiastes Cptrs 4+5 was edifying an moving, as well as educational. I\u0026rsquo;d always seen Ecclesiastes as a very, very depressing, morbid work of the aged Solomon. Dwight framed it in terms of a man who was powerful, rich, and wise, but empty: He had no direct heir, no good works, and his greed had left him hungry for more, despite his \u0026lsquo;fullness\u0026rsquo;.\nSo yes, maybe all is vanity.\n* * *\nOn another note, Keenland had its highest-attendance day ever: 31,000 on Saturday. the great weather and derby tuneup contenders brought the Lexintonians out.\n* * *\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/big-red/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy new truck:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://homepage.mac.com/hcombs0/.Pictures/Photo%20Album%20Pictures/2004-04-18%2018.47.32%20-0700/Image-1328061691A311D8.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpecs:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4.8L V-8 Engine (code: l4R): 275hp, 285 ft-lbs torque\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4L60E transmission (w/a .70 overdrive)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDry weight: 4246lbs\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e108,000 miles\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDad bought himself a new 2004 GMC Sierra 1/2 ton pickup. 5.3L v8, automatic tranny, decent option level. Sticker was $28k, and he got it for $19.6k, after all discounts. So, in a fit of amazing generosity, he\u0026rsquo;s *giving* me his old truck.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYeah, it\u0026rsquo;s the anti-mini. Been a pack-a-day smoker\u0026rsquo;s car for 3 years, so it pretty much reeks inside. But it\u0026rsquo;s got a \u0026lsquo;Murican V-8, baby. Needs just a bit of work:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Big Red"},{"content":"I love this pic. Sue me.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI love this pic. Sue me.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.ihateaol.co.uk/misc/galleries/show.php/640x640//funnypics/bunny.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Okay, I\u0026rsquo;m a gadget freak, but anyone that pays $15k for a cell phone needs their head examined:\nNY Times article (registration req\u0026rsquo;d)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, I\u0026rsquo;m a gadget freak, but anyone that pays $15k for a cell phone needs their head examined:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/technology/circuits/15sony.html?th\"\u003eNY Times article\u003c/a\u003e (registration req\u0026rsquo;d)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Also, note to self: There are certain people who hate the word concubine, apt though it may be.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/on-the-word-concubine/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlso, note to self: There are certain people who hate the word \u003ca href=\"http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=concubine\"\u003econcubine\u003c/a\u003e, apt though it may be.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the Word \"Concubine\""},{"content":"I know, I know\u0026hellip;long time no blog. This is amazing, considering the amount of time I\u0026rsquo;ve spent on my new powerbook in the past week.\nToday is my powerbook\u0026rsquo;s first (and, likely, only!) trip to work with me to show off to the guys\nSaw Matrix: Revolutions for the second time last night at Whitney\u0026rsquo;s place, and I must say it\u0026rsquo;s better on the second viewing. After the overblown, quasi-Zen philosphy of Matrix: Reloaded, Revolutions was a let-down when I saw it in the theatre. Mainly, I was pissed-off that Revolutions had wasted 2 hrs of my life, b/c the 3rd picture basically discarded all the stuff from the second.\nActually, the first and third movies together make a pretty good, continuous storyline.\n* * *\nExcited as the Central Kentucky Region SCCA is downtown tonight @ Sawyer\u0026rsquo;s Grille and bar; enjoy some Bass beer with the guys :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/matrix-revolutions/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI know, I know\u0026hellip;long time no blog. This is amazing, considering the amount of time I\u0026rsquo;ve spent on my new powerbook in the past week.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday is my powerbook\u0026rsquo;s first (and, likely, only!) trip to work with me to show off to the guys\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSaw \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0242653/\"\u003eMatrix: Revolutions\u003c/a\u003e for the second time last night at Whitney\u0026rsquo;s place, and I must say it\u0026rsquo;s better on the second viewing. After the overblown, quasi-Zen philosphy of Matrix: Reloaded, Revolutions was a let-down when I saw it in the theatre. Mainly, I was pissed-off that Revolutions had wasted 2 hrs of my life, b/c the 3rd picture basically discarded all the stuff from the second.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Matrix: Revolutions"},{"content":"Cue the Hallelujah Chorus, people! Dave\u0026rsquo;s out sick so BOTH of my rather pointless meetings are cancelled today!\nI\u0026rsquo;m feeling random \u0026amp; sleepy, so this might be a *bit* diffuse\u0026hellip;\nThere is something just so pastoral and pleasing about making coffee. Granted, here at work, the machine does it all for you, but seeing it created is just\u0026hellip;nice :-)\nSo anyway, my weekend:\nFriday was a totally wasted day at work; Dave\u0026rsquo;s been out since Tuesday and I\u0026rsquo;m nursing our server along, looking for bugs popping-up in our log file and logging them as Problem Tracking Reports (PTRs). It\u0026rsquo;s about as fun as watching paint dry, but if this release is to have any hope of success, we\u0026rsquo;d better trace-down every bug we can find BEFORE our users get to do that for us.\nAnyway, Friday night was lovely; Whitney came down and we watched one of my favorite movies of all time: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon\nIf you haven\u0026rsquo;t seen this one, rent the DVD and go for it. It\u0026rsquo;s in Mandarin Chinese (w/subtitles) and it\u0026rsquo;s a tragedy, so steel yourself. However, it\u0026rsquo;s powerful, evocative, and deep, like a Shakespearean tragedy about lost love and duty, with amazing fight scenes thrown into the mix.\nSaturday was quiet, except for Squeeze and I having a wonderful meal at Outback and me getting my Powerbook. It\u0026rsquo;s just SO cool\u0026hellip;.\nHad a nice dinner out with Dad @ the Family Diner in Jackson (Pork Tenderloin for both of us)\nSunday was glorious: A bearable service at the family church (only 2 1/2 hours), followed by a wonderful meal at Arch\u0026rsquo;s new\u0026hellip;.um\u0026hellip;.\u0026ldquo;modular home\u0026rdquo;. Afterwards, Dad and I finished what we\u0026rsquo;d started the previous summer, watching Open Range. It\u0026rsquo;s a simple movie, but fun, and Dad loves westerns.\nGot lost somewhere between Winchester and Georgetown on the trip back, trying to take the shortcut that I never can find when going North\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCue the Hallelujah Chorus, people! Dave\u0026rsquo;s out sick so BOTH of my rather pointless meetings are cancelled today!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m feeling random \u0026amp; sleepy, so this might be a *bit* diffuse\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is something just so pastoral and pleasing about making coffee. Granted, here at work, the machine does it all for you, but seeing it created is just\u0026hellip;nice :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo anyway, my weekend:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFriday was a totally wasted day at work; Dave\u0026rsquo;s been out since Tuesday and I\u0026rsquo;m nursing our server along, looking for bugs popping-up in our log file and logging them as Problem Tracking Reports (PTRs). It\u0026rsquo;s about as fun as watching paint dry, but if this release is to have any hope of success, we\u0026rsquo;d better trace-down every bug we can find BEFORE our users get to do that for us.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"},{"content":"No sleep. been traveling, hanging-out with loved ones, and enjoying my new powerbook :-)\nHave to get some sleep, but can I just say THIS THING IS SO COOL! :)\n[ferris bueler]If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up[/ferris]\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/loving-my-powerbook-g4/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNo sleep. been traveling, hanging-out with loved ones, and enjoying my new powerbook :-)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHave to get some sleep, but can I just say THIS THING IS SO COOL! :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[ferris bueler]If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up[/ferris]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Loving my Powerbook G4"},{"content":"Piece of \u0026ldquo;Office Space\u0026rdquo; fiddle-faddle:\nQ: How do you know you\u0026rsquo;ve been working at an office for too long?\nA: You\u0026rsquo;ve memorized the numbers on the snack machine and have a Pavlovian response whenever you see those numbers:\nmmmmm\u0026hellip;..33\u0026hellip;..Snickers bar\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/when-you-memorize-the-snack-machine/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePiece of \u0026ldquo;Office Space\u0026rdquo; fiddle-faddle:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQ: How do you know you\u0026rsquo;ve been working at an office for too long?\u003cbr\u003e\nA: You\u0026rsquo;ve memorized the numbers on the snack machine and have a Pavlovian response whenever you see those numbers:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003emmmmm\u0026hellip;..33\u0026hellip;..Snickers bar\u0026hellip;.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e","title":"When you memorize the snack machine"},{"content":"Well, saw my lovely last night and we went to see Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. Thoughts:\nWhy in the world does everyone expect thoughts to be in a bulletted-list? Is this the \u0026ldquo;POWERPOINT EFFECT\u0026rdquo;? :D\nAnyway, I thought it was a decent film, if utterly pointless. I had quite a bit of fun, and there\u0026rsquo;s more there than the PG rating would imply: Fart jokes, skimpy outfits from the two female leads. Lots of guilty pleasures here, mostly revolving around SMG doing a Buffy-esque fight with the Black Knight Ghost, and Linda Cardellini\u0026hellip;.well, all of Linda Cardellini.\nOn a related note, Thelma is not a Lesbian, as we\u0026rsquo;d all surmised.\nI believe we all know who Sara Michelle Gellar is, but here\u0026rsquo;s Linda C:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/scooby-doo-2/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, saw my lovely last night and we went to see \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0331632/\"\u003eScooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed\u003c/a\u003e. Thoughts:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhy in the world does everyone expect thoughts to be in a bulletted-list? Is this the \u0026ldquo;POWERPOINT EFFECT\u0026rdquo;?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:D\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, I thought it was a decent film, if utterly pointless. I had quite a bit of fun, and there\u0026rsquo;s more there than the PG rating would imply: Fart jokes, skimpy outfits from the two female leads. Lots of guilty pleasures here, mostly revolving around SMG doing a Buffy-esque fight with the Black Knight Ghost, and Linda Cardellini\u0026hellip;.well, \u003cem\u003eall\u003c/em\u003e of Linda Cardellini.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scooby-Doo 2"},{"content":"This is me swearing for the gazillionth time I won\u0026rsquo;t have two cups of Sumatran at 6pm. I\u0026rsquo;m just about to crash, but I\u0026rsquo;ve been on a bender from 6 until 12\u0026hellip;mind racing, doing housework, blogging, talking on the phone\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is me swearing for the gazillionth time I won\u0026rsquo;t have two cups of Sumatran at 6pm. I\u0026rsquo;m just about to crash, but I\u0026rsquo;ve been on a bender from 6 until 12\u0026hellip;mind racing, doing housework, blogging, talking on the phone\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Okay, folks, here\u0026rsquo;s where I\u0026rsquo;ll be on June 20th:\nI\u0026rsquo;ll be in the Northwest Vista watching 30 screaming Formula 1 racers duel at the world\u0026rsquo;s greatest racetrack.\n:) nummy.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/f1-race-tickets/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, folks, here\u0026rsquo;s where I\u0026rsquo;ll be on June 20th:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://imstix.brickyard.com/inettix/images/map_images/f1_map.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ll be in the Northwest Vista watching 30 screaming Formula 1 racers duel at the world\u0026rsquo;s greatest racetrack.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e:) nummy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"F1 Race Tickets"},{"content":"Behold the successor to the civic as the new tuner standard, folks:\nThat\u0026rsquo;s right, it\u0026rsquo;s a Scion tC (née Toyota), it\u0026rsquo;s got a supercharger-friendly engine, and it\u0026rsquo;s only 15k. The xA and xB scions are really, weird, but I find this coupe oddly handsome. If it has good dynamics (and it should) I see kids running to \u0026rsquo;em in droves.\nSo, when you see one fly by with neon lights on the undercarriage, a wing fit for a b-52, and an exhaust bigger than a Folger\u0026rsquo;s can, at least you\u0026rsquo;ve been warned :-)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/scion-tc/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBehold the successor to the civic as the new tuner standard, folks:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://t.wieck.com/PV/2003/12/31/TYT2003123152088_PV.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s right, it\u0026rsquo;s a Scion tC (née Toyota), it\u0026rsquo;s got a supercharger-friendly engine, and it\u0026rsquo;s only 15k. The xA and xB scions are really, weird, but I find this coupe oddly handsome. If it has good dynamics (and it should) I see kids running to \u0026rsquo;em in droves.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, when you see one fly by with neon lights on the undercarriage, a wing fit for a b-52, and an exhaust bigger than a Folger\u0026rsquo;s can, at least you\u0026rsquo;ve been warned :-)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scion tC"},{"content":"Looks like the Jeep Liberty is going to have a diesel engine + manual transmission available next year:\nThe diesel Jeep Liberty will be powered by a 2.8-liter common rail turbo-diesel engine produced by DaimlerChrysler. It will be available with a manual or automatic transmission, as well as two- or four-wheel drive. It is expected that the diesel-powered Liberty will have up to a 30 percent improvement in fuel economy, versus a comparable gasoline-powered Liberty.\nI have to hand it to Daimler-Chrysler, this is a smart move: It\u0026rsquo;ll up their CAFE, and should prove to be a popular model. The Liberty is already a good truck, and this engine should make it better. Imagine, an SUV that gets 30mpg.\npic:\n(BTW, why can\u0026rsquo;t *I* take pics like that\u0026hellip;.light, good composition\u0026hellip;out of practice, I guess\u0026hellip;.)\nIt\u0026rsquo;s odd: I have no inclination to buy an SUV, but if I did, the Liberty would be at the top of my list.\n* * *\nWell, just got my bank statement for the end of March, and I realized: The year is 1/4 over, already. It\u0026rsquo;s trite to say, but it\u0026rsquo;s flown by\u0026hellip;between work, work, and\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;work, I haven\u0026rsquo;t really experienced much of it. Life seems to have settled into a nice rhythm now, what with the time change. I\u0026rsquo;m seeing more light at the end of each day, and that seems to be improving my mood.\nOn the bright side, I\u0026rsquo;ve got lots of plans for the rest of this year: A trip out to the Rockies in September, a jaunt to Florida in June, an appearance at the US Grand Prix in June, as well, and autocrosses in between. I plan to stay busy, though we\u0026rsquo;ll see how my bank account likes it.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/jeep-liberty/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLooks like the Jeep Liberty is going to have a diesel engine + manual transmission available next year:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe diesel Jeep Liberty will be powered by a 2.8-liter common rail turbo-diesel engine produced by DaimlerChrysler. It will be available with a manual or automatic transmission, as well as two- or four-wheel drive. It is expected that the diesel-powered Liberty will have up to a 30 percent improvement in fuel economy, versus a comparable gasoline-powered Liberty.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jeep Liberty"},{"content":"Okay, since I spent most of my childhood flat of my hind-end watching cartoons, this is just AWESOME:\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, since I spent most of my childhood flat of my hind-end watching cartoons, \u003ca href=\"http://www.80scartoons.net/index.html\"\u003ethis\u003c/a\u003e is just AWESOME:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Cold, windy, and I lost.\nBut I had an amazing time at our little (only 54 entrants) autocross today! And the weather is so beautiful and sunny outside, I can\u0026rsquo;t be sad that I lost.\nWell, maybe just a little.\nThe morning dawned cold, cloudy and early. What with the time change last night, it felt like I\u0026rsquo;d barely slept. So, I loaded-up the car, scarfed some McD\u0026rsquo;s + coffee, and arrived around 9 or so.\nMy class was rather full, with four entrants, two of which were serious comptetition for me:\nScott, driving an \u0026lsquo;03 Civic EX (street tires)\nTerry, driving a Focus Sedan (street tires)\nBasicallly, I got whipped by Scott, a more experienced driver. While I slowly edged my way down during each run (first was a 39.xx, then a 35.xx), Scott was ripping off 35\u0026rsquo;s then 33 second runs after that. While I did turn a 33.8 eventually (on my 4th run), I just could\u0026rsquo;t keep enough heat in the tires to get any faster. On the bright side, I did have a spectacular slide on my 5th run when I was chasing Scotts class-winning 33.1 time. Right after the start, I\u0026rsquo;d spun my tires, putting heat in the fronts, but the rears were still chilly. I breezed the throttle in the first dogleg-left, expecting that to tighten my line. Instead, the rear-end stepped-out about 30 degrees in split second; I countersteered, saved it, and ended-up with a decent run: 34.58. I even got props from the announcer on the PA system :)\nWith only 50 or so drivers, we only had 2 heats; I ran first heat and worked second. I found myself radioman in turn 2, right by the slalom. Slaloms seems to have the most work of any of the elements, but it turned-out to be not too bad; probably 10 cones out of 150 passes in the heat total. Really enjoyed talking with one of my fellow courseworkers though: Young-to-middle-age BMW mechanic, slightly portly, but very knowledgeable about all things Porsche, BMW, and Audi.\nThe Best part: After the 2nd heat was over at 2:30, we got to do fun runs. I did 7 passes in my MINI, paying $1 each pass. Got my times down to 32.3. It\u0026rsquo;s truly amazing how much easier it is to drive when there\u0026rsquo;s no competitive aspect to it\u0026ndash;I wasn\u0026rsquo;t psyched-out trying to best someone\u0026rsquo;s time, and I just did better: I looked ahead, I was smoother, the car just naturally came to me. It was a dance partner, instead of a wrestling adversary.\nSo, at the end of the day, I got 2nd. Fun times :)\nIn all fairness, it had warmed quite a bit and become sunny between the 1st heat and 2:30; the course had heat and rubber, and grip was manageable. Big lessons I take from this:\n1. Mental toughness + reaction to comptetition. I kinda beat myself with memories of my failure at the previous cold autocross at this track, I had a loser\u0026rsquo;s attitude, instead winning positive thoughts. And, lo and behold, I lost.\n2. Relax, and look ahead. Driving tense gets you spectacular spins and slides, but not good times.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/undefined/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCold, windy, and I lost.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut I had an amazing time at our little (only 54 entrants) autocross today! And the weather is so beautiful and sunny outside, I can\u0026rsquo;t be sad that I lost.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, maybe just a little.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe morning dawned cold, cloudy and early. What with the time change last night, it felt like I\u0026rsquo;d barely slept. So, I loaded-up the car, scarfed some McD\u0026rsquo;s + coffee, and arrived around 9 or so.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"undefined"},{"content":"Kill me, I\u0026rsquo;m a man:\n\u0026ldquo;The Producers\u0026rdquo; was hilarious and very up-beat. Great fare for a matinee, and our seats were excellent. We arrived late and missed the opening number, but from what I\u0026rsquo;ve read that\u0026rsquo;s no loss.\nMy personal favorite: Ulla Basically, a Swedish chick that\u0026rsquo;s like 7 feet tall, stacked, and, as Whitney remarked, \u0026ldquo;Do those legs ever stop?\u0026rdquo; Stole the show, IMHO.\n* * *\nSome random thoughts I had for websites or blog topics:\nThe Analog Devolution: Everything is going digital, but as my research into VoIP (Voice over IP, or \u0026ldquo;internet phones\u0026rdquo;) indicates, some of this stuff is just overkill. There may come a time when there\u0026rsquo;s a backlash against computers and digital stuff, particularly in two areas: Books and pictures. Digital books are a non-starter; people prefer the permanence and tactile experience of reading a book. Digital photos for the masses\u0026hellip;.I think there may be a backlash when people lose their entire photo album because of a hard-drive failure. Having an actual print (or slide) of a picture is archival; 20 or 100 years from now it\u0026rsquo;s still instantly decipherable. Digital format is not; we can\u0026rsquo;t read the data tapes from the Apollo missions and that was only 30 years ago. How much good is a hard drive 100 or 200 years from now?.\nLife after Software: The flip-side of outsourcing The tech boom has found its denoument as many technical people can\u0026rsquo;t find work (jobs outsourced) and still more (like me) see it as a dead-end, soul-sucking profession. Where do we go from here? Essentially, let\u0026rsquo;s say your 20-40 and you\u0026rsquo;ve been working in tech since college. What sorts of careers could you fall into and get ahead? It\u0026rsquo;s a thought-experiment that I do with myself, and I haven\u0026rsquo;t found any answersr yet.\nIf I lost my job Monday, I have no idea what I\u0026rsquo;d do; not pure programming, that\u0026rsquo;s for sure. Any monkey can program, and that level of salary (\u0026lsquo;bananas\u0026rsquo;) is pretty-much the level of competition (India, Philippeans). My mentor, Nathan, has said the real market is in domain knowledge. Perhaps go back to school \u0026amp; get a tied-in field: Financial analysis, bioinformatics, human factors. If and when I do leave this job, I think my attitudes are going to change from being idealistic (\u0026ldquo;I want to write perfect code\u0026rdquo;) to being market-driven (I want a good paycheck w/decent hours. Computer work a plus.)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/review-the-producersontour/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eKill me, I\u0026rsquo;m a man:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Producers\u0026rdquo; was hilarious and very up-beat. Great fare for a matinee, and our seats were excellent. We arrived late and missed the opening number, but from what I\u0026rsquo;ve read that\u0026rsquo;s no loss.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy personal favorite: \u003ca href=\"http://www.producersontour.com/html/bios/king.html\"\u003eUlla\u003c/a\u003e Basically, a Swedish chick that\u0026rsquo;s like 7 feet tall, stacked, and, as Whitney remarked, \u0026ldquo;Do those legs ever stop?\u0026rdquo; Stole the show, IMHO.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome random thoughts I had for websites or blog topics:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Review: The producersontour"},{"content":"Well, I\u0026rsquo;m offically poor.\nI finally took the plunge and got myself my gadget-of-all-gadgets, a 15\u0026quot; Mac Powerbook:\nAfter using our Dual Processor Powermac at work all week, I just had to break down and get one. I love everything about these things:\nThe operating system is unix-based, so it\u0026rsquo;s got 25 years of development and tens of millions of man-hours of refinements in it\nThe user interface is unparalleled in its user-friendliness\nThe machine itself is a marvel: 1\u0026quot; thick, 5lbs, tough aluminum casing\nIt comes complete with all the tools one needs to develop applications.\nUnlike Linux distributions, it has a whole company behind it to ensure compatibility and integration\nSome specs:\n15.2\u0026quot; screen, huge bright and clear.\n80 Gigabyte 5400 rpm hard drive (most laptops only have 4200rpm drives\u0026hellip;)\nSuperdrive: Will read and write both CDs and DVDs\nFirewire\nWireless 802.11(b) and 802.11(g) integrated\nbluetooth is integrated\nShould have it in ~2 weeks. I also sprung for the 3-year extended warranty, because I\u0026rsquo;ve heard these things do have problems from time to time\n* * *\nFeels so good to do nothing this morning. Made coffee and some delicious pancakes; heading to Louisville this afternoon to watch The Producers at KCA. Had the tix since January; amazing how time flies!\nFull report to follow\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/powerbook-g4/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, I\u0026rsquo;m offically poor.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI finally took the plunge and got myself my gadget-of-all-gadgets, a 15\u0026quot; Mac Powerbook:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://a248.e.akamai.net/7/248/2041/526/store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/beautyshotpowerbook15_0903.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter using our Dual Processor Powermac at work all week, I just had to break down and get one. I love everything about these things:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe operating system is unix-based, so it\u0026rsquo;s got 25 years of development and tens of millions of man-hours of refinements in it\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe user interface is unparalleled in its user-friendliness\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Powerbook G4"},{"content":"Well, with another autocross this weekend, I guess I should probably talk about the last one:\nPics:\nGot first in my class, but it was a slaughter: No one else had race tires, nor any experience autocrossing. Capture of my times:\n40.186(1)\n40.604(1)\n37.637\n37.375\n38.955(1)\nBest time: 37.375\nI had the victoracers running at 50/45 psi throughout the first 4 runs, and then had a wild ride on the last run with 40/45 pressures.\nEnded up 26th overall, out of 134 drivers after the PAX\u0026rsquo;ing.\nThe track was a mid-30 second track, but FAST. UPS\u0026rsquo;s Grade Lane parking lot, right beside the airport. I don\u0026rsquo;t have a link to a coursemap (Louisville Region doesn\u0026rsquo;t believe in \u0026rsquo;em), but here\u0026rsquo;s a general description:\nYou start out right beside grade lane, pointing south, parallel to I-65, you start off flat-out, into a quick right and left. Shift into 2nd at redline into the dogleg, and bend (too fast) into a tight 180 degree, but with a broad exit. Pour on the throttle as you go past 180 degrees and let it straighten-out. Drift wide right into the dogleg and go across the drainage grate as it upsets the suspension slightly. Brake not yet not yet not yet\u0026hellip;NOW. Threshold brake, then lift a bit to turn-in to the left-hand sweeper that takes you 180 degrees back to South and you enter a 20-pace increasing radius slalom on the right. Breeze the throttle to settle and get into the rhythm of the gates. Don\u0026rsquo;t get behind! Crap, you just hit the middle cone!\nExit the slalom, and the chassis is pointing 25 degrees left of where you want it, so edge your way to the apex of the next 180-degree sweeper and kiss the brakes for the last time; from here on out, you\u0026rsquo;ll have the throttle flat on the floor. As the power goes down, unwind the wheel towards the track-out point, \u0026rsquo;til your pointing directly north again. Flick the wheel right, then left to get through the chicane and lean-in to the finish.\nThat was your 30 seconds on the autocross course. Now get to grid, raise the hood, check the pressures, and try to wipe the grin from your face. You\u0026rsquo;ve got 4 more runs to go faster.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/04/autocross/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, with another autocross this weekend, I guess I should probably talk about the last one:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePics:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://members.aye.net/~racerx/hs-haroldcombs1-04.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://members.aye.net/~racerx/hs-haroldcombs2-04.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://members.aye.net/~racerx/hs-haroldcombs3-04.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGot first in my class, but it was a slaughter: No one else had race tires, nor any experience autocrossing. Capture of my times:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e40.186(1)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e40.604(1)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e37.637\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e37.375\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e38.955(1)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBest time: 37.375\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had the victoracers running at 50/45 psi throughout the first 4 runs, and then had a wild ride on the last run with 40/45 pressures.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Autocross"},{"content":"Seen on a Wendy\u0026rsquo;s drive-thru window:\n\u0026ldquo;Picture menus available on request\u0026rdquo;\nergo, \u0026ldquo;If you can\u0026rsquo;t read this message, we have menus you can use.\u0026rdquo;\nAnother famous one:\n\u0026ldquo;Can\u0026rsquo;t read? Call 1-800-\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/drivethru/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSeen on a Wendy\u0026rsquo;s drive-thru window:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Picture menus available on request\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eergo, \u0026ldquo;If you can\u0026rsquo;t read this message, we have menus you can use.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnother famous one:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Can\u0026rsquo;t read? Call 1-800-\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"DriveThru"},{"content":"Muhahahaha\u0026hellip;.PEEPS!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/peeps-season-arrives/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMuhahahaha\u0026hellip;.PEEPS!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/afp/20040330/capt.sge.cyh67.300304212353.photo00.default-387x255.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"PEEPS Season Arrives"},{"content":"Dictionary.com/quotidian\nEveryday; commonplace: “There\u0026rsquo;s nothing quite like a real\u0026hellip; train conductor to add color to a quotidian commute” (Anita Diamant).\nRecurring daily. Used especially of attacks of malaria.\n\u0026ldquo;Anglo-Saxon is a livlier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words\u0026rdquo; (Strunk + White, p77).\nStill, cool word Laura!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/quotidian/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2\u0026amp;q=quotidian\"\u003eDictionary.com/quotidian\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col start=\"2\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryday; commonplace: “There\u0026rsquo;s nothing quite like a real\u0026hellip; train conductor to add color to a quotidian commute” (Anita Diamant).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRecurring daily. Used especially of attacks of malaria.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Anglo-Saxon is a livlier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words\u0026rdquo; (Strunk + White, p77).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill, cool word Laura!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quotidian"},{"content":"Okay, from the same article:\nWow, imagine that\u0026ndash; students making rational decisions. So of course policy makers should be worried.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s see, you can:\na) Work your ass off for 4-5 years in, what is usually, a very difficult academic program. Then you can, if you are super lucky, find an engineering job where your employers will work you to death. You will live under the cloud of being reminded that your salary is 5X higher than those equally talented people from 3rd world countries, any one of which could be brought in on a moments notice to occupy your chair (h1b, L1), should you stumble. Of course, since there is an near infinite supply of technical labor available to US companies, you will have zero salary mobility. Well, ok I\u0026rsquo;m exagerating, you won\u0026rsquo;t have *zero* salary mobility\u0026ndash; you\u0026rsquo;ll have some *nagative* salary mobility, which is what is currently happening to most of the engineers I know.\nAs you get older, if you are stupid enought to not switch careers, your peers will not get older with you. You will constantly be surrounded by 25-30 year old 3rd world engineers, as management continuously rotates in \u0026ldquo;fresh blood\u0026rdquo;. Better not even think about having a family and working sane hours. All of your peers will be virtual slaves (h1b and L1 visa holders) who are forced to work up to 80 hours/week without any extra compensation for the overtime. That\u0026rsquo;s because non-resident \u0026ldquo;guest\u0026rdquo; workers wouldn\u0026rsquo;t dare complain about any request made of them from management\u0026ndash; if they did, they would be on the first boat back to Katmandu!\nThen if you manage to survive to your mid-thirties as a practicing engineer, it\u0026rsquo;s time to start thinking about a new career. Except for a handful of superstars, there is no such thing as a 40+ year old software engineer in the United States. You are regarded as a fossil by age 40. Just when your friends in other fields such as academia, law, medicine, business, are reaching their peak earnings and career potential, your career will be winding down. If you are lucky, you can maybe make the jump to management. However, you\u0026rsquo;ll be at a competitive disadvantage against those who started earlier on the business track. In fact, those who skip the engineering altogether and go straight to business school are much more likely to get jobs managing engineers than engineers rising through the ranks. That\u0026rsquo;s because US companies don\u0026rsquo;t not require engineering degrees for the vast majority of their engineering management positions.\nb) You can go to medical/dental/law/business/plumbing school. You will not have to perpetually compete with 25 year olds from China. That\u0026rsquo;s because all of these \u0026ldquo;professions\u0026rdquo; are protected by guild systems. How many doctors hop off a boat from Bangalore to immedidately start practicing medicine in the US? Precisely 0.0. That\u0026rsquo;s because it\u0026rsquo;s illegal to practice medicine, law, or plumbing in the US without the appropriate guild credentials and licensing. That\u0026rsquo;s because these professions are protected by powerful political lobbies that would never allow their golden egg laying geese to be killed.\nIn these professions you will have a *career*. There will be a recognizable career trajectory that can actually last past the age of 40! You can spend time with your family, have people work for you, have time to date.\nTough choice.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/the-engineering-career-dilemma/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, from the same article:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWow, imagine that\u0026ndash; students making rational decisions. So of course policy makers should be worried.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s see, you can:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ea) Work your ass off for 4-5 years in, what is usually, a very difficult academic program. Then you can, if you are super lucky, find an engineering job where your employers will work you to death. You will live under the cloud of being reminded that your salary is 5X higher than those equally talented people from 3rd world countries, any one of which could be brought in on a moments notice to occupy your chair (h1b, L1), should you stumble. Of course, since there is an near infinite supply of technical labor available to US companies, you will have zero salary mobility. Well, ok I\u0026rsquo;m exagerating, you won\u0026rsquo;t have *zero* salary mobility\u0026ndash; you\u0026rsquo;ll have some *nagative* salary mobility, which is what is currently happening to most of the engineers I know.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Engineering Career Dilemma"},{"content":"Daily wisdom from slashdot\nJoe was an engineer. He worked hard, studied hard and took pride in his work. He was also faithful to his wife, raised two children to be solid members of the community and attended church every Sunday.\nFinally after a full life Joe died in his sleep one night.\nOn awakening he found himself facing St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. Peter looks in his book, and finds that Joe is not in the Authorized list. He looks at Joe and says, sorry!, pulls the trapdoor lever and Joe starts falling. Joe yells \u0026ldquo;Wait there must be some Missstaaakeeee\u0026rdquo;.\nA few hundred years later God is auditing the Big Book and finds that Joe should have been listed as Authorized. We, he goes on a rampage, thunder and lighting, assorted Vengeful God stuff. After calming down God picks up the cellphone and rings up the Devil.\nGod: Hey Dev, remember Joe, that Engineer I sent you a few hundred years ago?\nDevil: Yeah, I sure do. I want to thank you for sending him down here. He\u0026rsquo;s got the A/C fixed, and we now get broadband and digital cable. He\u0026rsquo;s now working on beer-on-tap. Whatta guy!\nGod: (Pissed Off) Hey! You have got to send him up here. He should have never been sent down to you. He belongs up here.\nDevil: Yeah Right. Finders Keepers. No way am I letting him go!\nGod: (Really Pissed Off) I\u0026rsquo;LL SUE!!!\nDevil: (ROTFL) HA HA Where are you getting a lawyer HA HA.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/daily-wisdom-from-slashdot/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDaily wisdom from \u003ca href=\"http://www.slashdot.org\"\u003eslashdot\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJoe was an engineer. He worked hard, studied hard and took pride in his work. He was also faithful to his wife, raised two children to be solid members of the community and attended church every Sunday.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFinally after a full life Joe died in his sleep one night.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn awakening he found himself facing St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. Peter looks in his book, and finds that Joe is not in the Authorized list. He looks at Joe and says, sorry!, pulls the trapdoor lever and Joe starts falling. Joe yells \u0026ldquo;Wait there must be some Missstaaakeeee\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Daily Wisdom from Slashdot"},{"content":"Back in the halcyon days of high school (\u0026raquo;shudder\u0026laquo;), I had a friend name Shannon Bradley. Shannon was a somewhat portly, though pretty blonde girl who was in French class with me for 3 years. At least once a week, she would sit down just across from my secret crush Amy Roberts swivel around to me (sitting right behind my Valkyrie Mountain Goddess Amy, natch!) and say:\nHarold I\u0026rsquo;m going to complain\nShannon, or \u0026ldquo;Bob\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Shannon-Bob\u0026rdquo; (as everyone from Eastern Kentucky must have a suitable middle name to even-out the abruptness of their first name), was a complainer, you see. She didn\u0026rsquo;t whine or wheedle, but she did complain about those things that irked her. And so, I warn you:\nDear reader, I\u0026rsquo;m about to complain.\nAllergies have returned with a vengeance. Since my sojourn in the cold on Sunday, I\u0026rsquo;ve had constant post-nasal drip, a dry throat, and general lethargy\nCold medication makes you drowsy\nNot sleeping makes you drowsy. Sleep debt isn\u0026rsquo;t something I\u0026rsquo;ve dealt with much since 1999, but it\u0026rsquo;s back. The bank is open, and I\u0026rsquo;m borrowing much more than I\u0026rsquo;m depositing.\nNot getting to your weekly PTR review @ 9am makes baby Jesus cry. For some reason, I thought this mtg was @ 10, and so I sat in my office for half-an-hour until I realized\u0026hellip;hmmm\u0026hellip;wonder where everyone is?\nOn the whole, work is actually fine. I got a glowing performance review from my former manager (\u0026ldquo;Role Model\u0026rdquo;), so that should mean a decent raise for my salary, from \u0026ldquo;overpaid\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;truly obscene\u0026rdquo;, and maybe another promotion, which would mean me getting my own office (if an 8x12 postage stamp can be called a decent office).\nBeen reading quite a bit lately, trying to catch-up on my \u0026ldquo;New Yorker\u0026rdquo; backlog. The managing editor\u0026rsquo;s weekly anti-Bush diatribes notwithstanding, I still find the magazine to be provocative, well written (of course), and good mental food. I recommend a subscription to anyone who desires writing above the pulp found in \u0026ldquo;Time\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Newsweek\u0026rdquo;. Plus, the cartoons are delightful, if often obscure.\nOn the book front, I\u0026rsquo;m working on Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester. The book\u0026rsquo;s more a history of the entire region both before and after the cataclysmic explosion of Krakatoa in 1883. Like many history tomes, some sections warrant in-depth reading, while others only a brief scan. The various peons the Dutch East India company sent to establish the Batavia colony are, well, boring. On the whole, glad I got this one from the library instead of ordering from Amazon.\n* * *\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt; begin melodramatics \u0026laquo;\nFeeling rather sad today. Life seems very, very still at the moment, as though no forward progress is being made. I think I\u0026rsquo;m going to have to plan some sort of daily regiment of exercise, self-improvement, and positive tasks that are going to get me out of this funk. Moveover, I need to define a goal.\nSeriously, this is an issue for me: My whole life was the pursuit of a goal set for me by my parents (specifically, my Mom)\u0026ndash;Get out of Eastern Kentucky, get an education, and establish a life of my own. Well, for the most part (minus a house, a wife, and children), that\u0026rsquo;s accomplished. Thus the question: Now what? Life is a marathon, not a sprint, and I find myself rather ahead of the pack after the first 5 miles, but facing the next however-many miles with little drive or direction.\nIn sum, I\u0026rsquo;ve always been a very driven individual, but find myself without any drive, being reactive instead of proactive. I have goals: a house, a family, various material possessions (cars I love, gadgets), but (except for the family part) it feels incredibly hollow and unfulfilling somehow.\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt; end melodramatics \u0026laquo;\n* * *\nOn the bright side, I bought a pound of Sumatran beans from Coffee Corner in Georgetown yesterday, and the coffee is bold, smooth, and delicious. Maybe a bit of caffiene is just what I need for this particular funk.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/complaints-progress-and-coffee/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBack in the halcyon days of high school (\u0026raquo;shudder\u0026laquo;), I had a friend name Shannon Bradley. Shannon was a somewhat portly, though pretty blonde girl who was in French class with me for 3 years. At least once a week, she would sit down just across from my secret crush Amy Roberts swivel around to me (sitting right behind my Valkyrie Mountain Goddess Amy, natch!) and say:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHarold I\u0026rsquo;m going to complain\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Complaints, Progress, and Coffee"},{"content":"My compliments to Autoextremist.com for making my day:\nBLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.\nSEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.\nASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.\nSALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.\nCUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.\nPRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people\u0026rsquo;s heads pop up over the walls to see what\u0026rsquo;s going on.\nMOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation\u0026rsquo;s answer to the couch potato.\nSITCOMS: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.\nSTRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiney.\nSWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.\nXEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one\u0026rsquo;s workplace.\nIRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials and Michael Jackson\u0026rsquo;s affairs are examples.\nPERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.\nADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.\n404: Someone who\u0026rsquo;s clueless. From the World Wide Web error message \u0026ldquo;404 Not Found,\u0026rdquo; meaning that the requested document could not be located.\nGENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, etc.\nOHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you\u0026rsquo;ve just made a BIG mistake.\nWOOFYS: Well Off Older Folks.\nCROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously passing gas while passing thru a cube farm, then enjoying the sounds of dismay and disgust.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/buzzwords/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy compliments to Autoextremist.com for making my day:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Buzzwords"},{"content":"Great! The biggest competitor for the MINI comes from\u0026hellip;.BMW ITSELF:\nInterior:\nBasically, what you have here is a rear-drive MINI, folks: A premium small car (priced in the low $20k\u0026rsquo;s).\nBMW swears it\u0026rsquo;s not going to bring the car here, because it feels it will \u0026ldquo;dilute the brand image\u0026rdquo;. Okaaaaay\u0026hellip;.a MINI shares about 50% of its mechanical \u0026amp; electrical parts with a 3-series Beamer (the 5-link rear suspension is basically identical, minus the driveline). Has that \u0026lsquo;diluted the brand\u0026rsquo;. What I read here is: \u0026ldquo;We don\u0026rsquo;t want to deal with the plebian VW crowd.\u0026rdquo;\nLook, a BMW dealership is in the business of selling cars at $35k and above; they may advertise the 3-series at around $30k, but rest assured, you\u0026rsquo;ll never find such an animal on their lot. And, honestly, places like The BMW Store in Cincinnati are chock-full of BMWs already, so where are they going to put this new line (which would have high volume and need high inventories)\nOn the bright side, rear-wheel drive (RWD) is making a comeback in America. GM is coming out with the new Kappa platform for the Pontiac Solstice and derivatives, all on a new RWD, all-aluminum platform. Can\u0026rsquo;t wait to rock one of these new generation of RWD small sedans around an autocross course.\nKappa-platform concepts:\nThe Nomad, particularly, is like a RWD MINI.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/the-2-series/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGreat! The biggest competitor for the MINI comes from\u0026hellip;.BMW ITSELF:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://motoringfile.com/1series/images/P0014296.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInterior:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.topgear.com/content/news/cars_coming_soon/27/bigImages/img02.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBasically, what you have here is a rear-drive MINI, folks: A premium small car (priced in the low $20k\u0026rsquo;s).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBMW swears it\u0026rsquo;s not going to bring the car here, because it feels it will \u0026ldquo;dilute the brand image\u0026rdquo;. Okaaaaay\u0026hellip;.a MINI shares about 50% of its mechanical \u0026amp; electrical parts with a 3-series Beamer (the 5-link rear suspension is basically identical, minus the driveline). Has that \u0026lsquo;diluted the brand\u0026rsquo;. What I read here is: \u0026ldquo;We don\u0026rsquo;t want to deal with the plebian VW crowd.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The 2 Series"},{"content":"As I got up this morning, I heard an interview on abc \u0026ldquo;Good Morning America\u0026rdquo; with Richard A. Clarke, former Whitehouse advisor on counter-terrorism. Clarke alleges that immediately after 9/11, the Bush Whitehouse was looking for a way to go into Iraq, using Iraq as a scapegoat.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know why, but above the din of pundits and allegations, I found this man compelling. In interests of balance, GMA had Condolezza Rice on immediately afterwards to allow equal time for rebuttal. Rice\u0026rsquo;s statements were diffuse, ad hominem, and I got the distinct impression she was lying.\nI\u0026rsquo;m withholding judgment at the moment, but if this does come out to be true, if Iraq was just the execution of the Bush agenda, then I\u0026rsquo;m not voting for Bush. No way, no how.\nArticle about it (from fox news, of all people\u0026hellip;)\n* * *\nThings I learned this weekend:\nRacing slicks don\u0026rsquo;t like it when it\u0026rsquo;s only 35 degrees outside\n400Mhz Pentium 2\u0026rsquo;s with 64 MB of ram can run Windows XP quite effectively.\nYou can function quite effectively on 9 hours of sleep in 3 days\nUAB can beat Kentucky\nFriday, I took a blessed day of vacation to clean-up my apartment and wash + wax my MINI. I used the Zaino wax system, which is expensive, but very high quality. Instead of a wax applicator, they recommend you melt the wax in the palm of your hand and apply it to the car with your bare hands. So, basically, it felt like I was giving my MINI a massage :) Very nice, pastoral experience that was relaxing in an odd way. Only bad thing: Including a polish step, a reconditioning of my plastic underpanels, and the wax itself, it took me 4 hours and quite a few contortions.\nSaturday was working at the Breathitt County Library, rebuilding machines and doing random hacking + sysadmin work. Got \u0026rsquo;em squared away, but it took from 9am \u0026rsquo;til 10 pm and I was totally exhausted. I had planned on driving back to G\u0026rsquo;town that night, but the rain and my exhaustion conspired to keep me in Lee County for the night. Thankfully, the Pup was inside an empty spot in Dad\u0026rsquo;s equipment building, safe from the rain that would\u0026rsquo;ve ruined my uncured wax job. I drove his red truck all that day.\nSunday: Rising at 5 am, I dashed back to G\u0026rsquo;town to get my race-tires, jack, pressure guage, and various other things to head for the autocross @ Legends stadium; I wanted to get there by 8am. I had a message on my cell-phone that my friend Robin had tied-one-on the previous night and had left her car in Lexington, so I had to load all that crap up, pick her up, get to Christ the King (where she had her Accord) and get to Legends stadium by 8. Made it by 8:30.\nNow, understand: Autocross is an amazing sport, but when there are snow flurries and it\u0026rsquo;s 35 degrees F with a northerly wind @ 10 mph, it gets pretty un-fun. We had 60 total entrants; my class had 4 guys: Terry Ashley in a Focus, me, a guy from Louisville in a Triumph Spitfire, and a guy in a 1988 Fiero. We got six runs per heat, and I was in the first heat, grid number 5.\nI totally sucked. I\u0026rsquo;d never driven on my Victoracers before and at 36 degrees, they had all the adhesion of a polyurethane roller-skate wheel. I slid through the first turn, then did a 540 coming out of the slalom into the final 90-degree bend. Not good. I was having real trouble keeping the back-end in line, and hit a cone on every run. During my third run, for one heart-stopping moment, I was heading broadside into a lightpole before I caught the slide with a counter-steer.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve had courses kick my ass before (EKU, especially), but I never felt mentally \u0026lsquo;into\u0026rsquo; this course. I tried desperately to juggle tire pressures and lines through the corners, but never had a run where I \u0026lsquo;got it\u0026rsquo;. \u0026raquo;sigh\u0026laquo; Essentially, I beat myself.\nResults Sheet (look @ H-Stock)\nThen Kentucky lost, as I looked-on in a stupor. Euthanasia for a sub-par year, IMHO. I like March Madness, and I\u0026rsquo;ve participated in my office pool, but I just didn\u0026rsquo;t feel it this year for Kentucky. I liked last year\u0026rsquo;s team (what\u0026rsquo;s not to like? Underfeated in the SEC!) alot better.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/richard-clarkes-9/11-claims-and-weekend-adventures/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs I got up this morning, I heard an interview on abc \u0026ldquo;Good Morning America\u0026rdquo; with Richard A. Clarke, former Whitehouse advisor on counter-terrorism. Clarke alleges that immediately after 9/11, the Bush Whitehouse was looking for a way to go into Iraq, using Iraq as a scapegoat.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t know why, but above the din of pundits and allegations, I found this man compelling. In interests of balance, GMA had Condolezza Rice on immediately afterwards to allow equal time for rebuttal. Rice\u0026rsquo;s statements were diffuse, \u003cem\u003ead hominem\u003c/em\u003e, and I got the distinct impression she was lying.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Richard Clarke\"s 9/11 Claims and Weekend Adventures"},{"content":"\nThank you, fark!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/discovery-image-from-fark/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.frosp.com/discovery.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThank you, \u003ca href=\"http://www.fark.com\"\u003efark\u003c/a\u003e!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Discovery Image from Fark"},{"content":"Requiem for a contractor:\nOffshoring has taken an interesting twist, as those who seem most vulnerable at the moment are not the expensive regular employee\u0026rsquo;s you\u0026rsquo;d expect, but rather their cheaper, domestic contractor bretheren:\n\u0026ldquo;Seems like if you\u0026rsquo;ve been a contractor around here long enough, they either hire you on full time or fire you. Paying you by the hour is too expensive, when India\u0026rsquo;s an option\u0026rdquo;\nMaung, I hope you land on your feet, you happy little man. Keep reading those books, and don\u0026rsquo;t worry: America will come to her senses one day.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/requiem-for-a-contractor/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRequiem for a contractor:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOffshoring has taken an interesting twist, as those who seem most vulnerable at the moment are not the expensive regular employee\u0026rsquo;s you\u0026rsquo;d expect, but rather their cheaper, domestic contractor bretheren:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;Seems like if you\u0026rsquo;ve been a contractor around here long enough, they either hire you on full time or fire you. Paying you by the hour is too expensive, when India\u0026rsquo;s an option\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaung, I hope you land on your feet, you happy little man. Keep reading those books, and don\u0026rsquo;t worry: America will come to her senses one day.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Requiem for a Contractor"},{"content":"Okay this is just cool: Google has a new application where you can find businesses and people who live around you: local.google.com\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/local.google.com/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay this is just cool: \u003ca href=\"http://www.google.com\"\u003eGoogle\u003c/a\u003e has a new application where you can find businesses and people who live around you: \u003ca href=\"http://local.google.com/\"\u003elocal.google.com\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"local.google.com"},{"content":"Okay, so I\u0026rsquo;ve had car fever since the blasted auto show on Saturday, so in hopes of assuaging the Gods of Capitalism, I\u0026rsquo;ve weaned myself down from wanting to buy a new Toyota Tacoma:\n(I will have one of these puppies one day, folks: Utterly reliable, simple, easy-to-work-on, efficient, and still with that simple truck image. These little workhorses aren\u0026rsquo;t poseurs. They need to make \u0026rsquo;em with a diesel engine from their European Yaris. Imagine, a little workhorse like this getting 40 mpg, with gobs of torque)\nTo a new iBook / Powerbook (can\u0026rsquo;t DECIDE!!)\n(Same disclaimer: I want one, but I can\u0026rsquo;t justify one. They\u0026rsquo;re overpriced, but even used ones on ebay run $1k or more.)\nto a rice cooker.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s $15k down to $30 folks. That\u0026rsquo;s pretty darn good :)\n* * *\nYes, yes, I\u0026rsquo;m gadget crazy: I\u0026rsquo;ve got a manual-drip coffee system, an iPod, a Palm TungstenT, the Nikon you see below, and now a rice maker. (And a kickass Rowenta iron, if you want to get technical about it). Plus, accoutrements for my Car aplenty. But hey, you can\u0026rsquo;t take it with you, I save like 50% of my take-home pay as it is, between my 401(k) and savings account. If I want to blow a little money, so be it\u0026hellip;\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s the lesson here? Don\u0026rsquo;t let Harold see 500 cars in 2 hours. Hilarity will result.\n* * *\nOh, why a rice cooker, you ask? Simple: Whitney \u0026amp; I went to a very nice Japanese restaurant on Hurstborne Lane on Sunday afternoon \u0026amp; stuffed ourselves with Steak Teriyaki and Chicken Teriyaki, plus sushi. They also gave us hand-sized bowls of sweet, sticky rice that was easy to eat w/chopsticks.\n\u0026ldquo;Wow\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;ve never had rice like this!\u0026rdquo; I said.\n\u0026ldquo;Get good rice and a rice cooker\u0026rdquo; she said. So, like my coffee kick, I think I\u0026rsquo;m going on a rice kick. I mean, heck, it\u0026rsquo;s cheap, it\u0026rsquo;s filling, it\u0026rsquo;s healthy, it keeps like 3 Billion people alive every day. Where\u0026rsquo;s the downside? Apparently with one of these little things you get perfect rice every time, and it keeps it at perfect temperature for like 5 hours afterwards. Going to have to ask around @ work to see where all my Asian co-workers get their rice for cheap :)\n* * *\nI\u0026rsquo;ve put in to take Friday off. What with my upcoming work at the Breathitt County Library on Saturday and the autocross on Sunday, I\u0026rsquo;m swamped, and besides, I haven\u0026rsquo;t had a day off since the first of the year, and it seems like a good time.\n* * *\nAlso, apparently, the CompSci department at Georgetown College is in steep decline. The only full-time professor\u0026rsquo;s left for greener pastures @ Centre (where no doubt they\u0026rsquo;ll give him lots of funding \u0026amp; support), and all that\u0026rsquo;s left is the one mediocre associate prof and some temps (hey, maybe they need ME to teach? I could do a really good semester on software engineering in the real world). And to beat it all: Prof. Crawley\u0026rsquo;s coming back in the fall\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/car-fever/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOkay, so I\u0026rsquo;ve had car fever since the blasted auto show on Saturday, so in hopes of assuaging the Gods of Capitalism, I\u0026rsquo;ve weaned myself down from wanting to buy a new Toyota Tacoma:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com//pictures/VEHICLE/2002/Toyota/100003153/010261-E.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(I will have one of these puppies one day, folks: Utterly reliable, simple, easy-to-work-on, efficient, and still with that simple truck image. These little workhorses aren\u0026rsquo;t poseurs. They need to make \u0026rsquo;em with a diesel engine from their European Yaris. Imagine, a little workhorse like this getting 40 mpg, with gobs of torque)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Car Fever"},{"content":"Well, I\u0026rsquo;m about to join the ranks of the digital revolution. (::sigh::)\nFinally going to buckle-down and get a digital camera. Normally I\u0026rsquo;d go whole-hog and get a digital SLR, but they\u0026rsquo;re pricey ($1500 to $10k) and I just like shooting w/film, especially my Voigtlander rangefinder.\nAnyway, got one off ebay for pretty cheap: A Nikon Coolpix 3500. Here\u0026rsquo;s a pic of one:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s 3.2 Megapixel, which is reasonably high-res for my use.\nShould be here next week, so maybe the \u0026lsquo;blog will have some original pics :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/first-digital-camera/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, I\u0026rsquo;m about to join the ranks of the digital revolution. (::sigh::)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFinally going to buckle-down and get a digital camera. Normally I\u0026rsquo;d go whole-hog and get a digital SLR, but they\u0026rsquo;re pricey ($1500 to $10k) and I just like shooting w/film, especially my Voigtlander rangefinder.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnyway, got one off ebay for pretty cheap: A Nikon Coolpix 3500. Here\u0026rsquo;s a pic of one:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.digital-cameras.info/images/nikon-coolpix-3500.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s 3.2 Megapixel, which is reasonably high-res for my use.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"First Digital Camera"},{"content":"MotoringFile:\nA little plagiarism is good for the soul (from Gabe Bridger\u0026rsquo;s site):\nMini designer Frank Stephenson explains what a can of Budweiser and the new MINI have in common: \u0026ldquo;We worked a number of 24-hour days trying to get the full-sized clay model completed for presentation to the board of directors,\u0026rdquo; says Stephenson. \u0026ldquo;So when we finished the job with just hours to spare, I thought it appropriate that the team have a beer or two to celebrate. That\u0026rsquo;s when I spotted the problem.\u0026rdquo;\nThat problem was the complete absence of an exhaust tip on the otherwise complete clay. Thinking quickly, Stephenson stripped the paint from his beer can, punched a hole in the bottom, and fixed it in place on the model.\nIt wasn\u0026rsquo;t long before he was called on the carpet by his boss at BMW. \u0026ldquo;It wasn\u0026rsquo;t the shape (of the tip),\u0026rdquo; he says, \u0026ldquo;everybody liked it because it was unique yet oddly familiar. He was concerned that I had wasted a modeler\u0026rsquo;s time milling the piece when his time could be better spent elsewhere. That was when I felt the need to confess.\u0026rdquo;\nThat confession got him stunned silence followed by nearly uncontrollable laughter.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/the-minis-beer-can-exhaust-tip-story/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.motoringfile.com/\"\u003eMotoringFile\u003c/a\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\nA little plagiarism is good for the soul (from Gabe Bridger\u0026rsquo;s site):\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMini designer Frank Stephenson explains what a can of Budweiser and the new MINI have in common: \u0026ldquo;We worked a number of 24-hour days trying to get the full-sized clay model completed for presentation to the board of directors,\u0026rdquo; says Stephenson. \u0026ldquo;So when we finished the job with just hours to spare, I thought it appropriate that the team have a beer or two to celebrate. That\u0026rsquo;s when I spotted the problem.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The MINI\"s Beer Can Exhaust Tip Story"},{"content":"Quick one:\nQ: What\u0026rsquo;s the difference between a porcupine and a BMW?\nA: A porcupine has pricks on the outside.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/porcupines-and-bmws/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eQuick one:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQ: What\u0026rsquo;s the difference between a porcupine and a BMW?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA: A porcupine has pricks on the outside.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Porcupines and BMWS"},{"content":"it seems odd to me, but George W Bush is seeming more and more the sacrificial lamb of America. Caught betwixt corporate interest, ultra-conservative isolationists, and his fundamentalist Christian supporters, his policies can\u0026rsquo;t cover all the bases. If oil prices and inflation rise, he\u0026rsquo;s one misstep away from being the Republican Jimmy Carter: Well meaning but inept, swept aside for the politician of the moment. In Carter\u0026rsquo;s case, that was Ronald Reagan, who seduced the people with his eternal optimism, hard-line Cold War tactics, and military reinvigoration. The Good Son of the moment would seem to be Kerry, who appeals (if secretly) to many in the electorate, for several reasons:\nHe\u0026rsquo;s liberal. It\u0026rsquo;s easier to be relativistic during tough times; after all, what\u0026rsquo;s more important, Gay marriage, or the war on terror? I\u0026rsquo;d argue equal importance in different ways, but in simple rhetoric, Kerry has an edge here. [sarcasm]And really, those hard morality questions are, well, hard, so let\u0026rsquo;s not deal with them\u0026hellip;[/sarcasm]\nHe\u0026rsquo;s the scion of the Clinton era. We all remember the 90\u0026rsquo;s: Jobs, money, booming economy, relative peace. We all want to be back there, surely! Elect a democrat and forget the ugliness of Bush. Yeah, more like \u0026ldquo;Sign your soul away for the easy way out\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo;\nHe\u0026rsquo;s pro-labor. If anything, this will win him the election. Outsourcing is killing or maiming Bush\u0026rsquo;s consitutency: Upper middle class, white-collar folks who live comfortably doing jobs they thought were secure. Kerry has come-out against outsourcing and I find this attractive. If Bush would do it, I\u0026rsquo;d carry his banner to the highest tree. As is, it seems he\u0026rsquo;s more pro-corporation than pro-worker. The election will swing on whether these people vote conscience or pocketbook, and we know what happened in \u0026lsquo;92.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s a powerful speaker. From Pericles on, oration has been the key to any form of representative government One must rally support to policies, ideals, causes, and here Kerry and Bush are opposites. While Kerry speaks well but has poor follow-through, Bush speaks badly, but has good policies\nConservative backlash. IMHO, the tide of conservative America is ebbing: As the staunch conservatives (who used to be liberals, BTW) age, the backfill of voters are relativistic slackers who can\u0026rsquo;t get past their Playstations and BlingBling. Further, conservative media is becoming a constant din of strawman and yellow journalism: Rush, Shawn Hannity, Michael Savage, et al. find new ways to be not so much conservatives as Anti-Liberals. It\u0026rsquo;s a turn-off to me. I much prefer Bill O\u0026rsquo;Reilly, though he has his own agenda. Upshot: The vocal and motivated are now the Liberals and Democrats, not the Republicans.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/george-w-bush/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eit seems odd to me, but George W Bush is seeming more and more the sacrificial lamb of America. Caught betwixt corporate interest, ultra-conservative isolationists, and his fundamentalist Christian supporters, his policies can\u0026rsquo;t cover all the bases. If oil prices and inflation rise, he\u0026rsquo;s one misstep away from being the Republican Jimmy Carter: Well meaning but inept, swept aside for the politician of the moment. In Carter\u0026rsquo;s case, that was Ronald Reagan, who seduced the people with his eternal optimism, hard-line Cold War tactics, and military reinvigoration. The Good Son of the moment would seem to be Kerry, who appeals (if secretly) to many in the electorate, for several reasons:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"George W Bush"},{"content":"Depressing blog of the day:\nMy dreams have been trending towards the apocalyptic lately\u0026hellip;no real idea why: Last night I was reading on fark about some pending announcement from NASA about a \u0026ldquo;significant\u0026rdquo; event in the solar system. So, of course, some fellas are making cracks about some comet or asteroid being inbound and them not wanting to tell us about it.\nSo, I promptly go to sleep (well, at 1:30 am, but more on that later) and have this ultra-vivid dream about the End of the World: For some reason, I was at work, and the skies were dark and ominous. We were all looking out the window of Building 082 towards the south, and I got hints of conversation:\n\u0026ldquo;They say it\u0026rsquo;s going to hit Texas\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;They split it in two with those nuclear missiles, but it was too late\u0026rdquo;. (Obviously, mangled references from the highly disposable movie: \u0026ldquo;Armageddon\u0026rdquo;).\nSo, for some reason we went outside to the parking garage (note: 082 doesn\u0026rsquo;t HAVE a parking garage) and then brimstone (yeah, as in \u0026lsquo;fire and\u0026hellip;\u0026rsquo;) starts raining down upon the garage. A piece conked me in the head, and I woke-up.\nJust call me Harold, prophet of doom. :-)\n* * *\nAnyway: so I got reading more on my book Going Faster! Mastering the Art of Race Driving\nInsanely detailed book. Chapters on all aspects of racing: Preparation, cornering, braking, passing, racing etiquette. Meant more for the road-course racer than autocrossers, but all the same ideas apply.\nSo, around 12:30 last night, I\u0026rsquo;m reading a chapter on shifting. I figure I\u0026rsquo;m an expert on manual trannies, as I can double-clutch downshift + revmatch in my sleep. However, I learned something new: You can shift WITHOUT using a clutch, both up-shifts and downshifts. You just have to be orders of magnitude more precise about matching the revs of input shaft and output shaft. Basically, during each upshift and downshit, there\u0026rsquo;s a split-second where the transmission has no load on it from the engine or wheels and at that split second you can slide the gear selector out of the gear with just your fingertips.\nNow, this is a very cool concept, but apparently the MINI transmission doesn\u0026rsquo;t like it too much. I tried it both on an upshift \u0026amp; downshift, and\u0026hellip;uh\u0026hellip;.I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ll be doing that again.\nBesides, the book mentions that it\u0026rsquo;s a technique more for use in endurance racing where your clutch may be going away at the end of a 12 or 24 hour stint.\nStill, it\u0026rsquo;s a marvelous book, and I think its suggestions on cornering are going to pay huge dividends this year in autocross\u0026hellip;\n* * *\nWell, as for this weekend, I headed-up to the Great Louisvillian Autoshow. Was on car overload from the first 10 seconds. Saw and sat in more cars in a 3 hour period than I did all last year. Saw one of these babies on a stand:\nFord GT. 550 hp of pure sex. Instant classic. Can hand any thing under $650k (a.k.a. a Ferrari Enzo) its tail end, using basic \u0026lsquo;Murican parts. I was 2 feet away from it and I have the slides to prove it. Long, low, sleek, fast, yet oddly classy and understated. Very much a modern interpretation of the GT40 from the 1960\u0026rsquo;s, though I\u0026rsquo;m sure with much better road manners.\nWhitney\u0026rsquo;s favorite:\nThe Toyota Prius. This is one truly amazing machine, a marvel of internal packaging efficiency and technology. And, surprisingly, a roomy, practical car. I don\u0026rsquo;t understand why they don\u0026rsquo;t junk the Camry and start producing these things with both conventional and hybrid powertrains. The car gives up nothing for its efficiency; on the contrary, its hatchback and cab-forward design maximize internal space. At heart, it\u0026rsquo;s a Corolla-sized car with the room of a Camry. I\u0026rsquo;m anxious to find-out how one drives.\nOur unexpected love of the show:\nVolvo S60\nYeah, I know, I know\u0026hellip;big VOLVO sedan, right? What\u0026rsquo;s to love? Well, for my widening behind and yen for long-distance travel, quite a bit. Let\u0026rsquo;s start with a great interior, extraordinarily comfortable seats, and handsome styling. Roomy, without being truly massive, classy without being too much of a yuppie marque (Hello, BMW and Mercedes?), I\u0026rsquo;m going to follow these for a few years to come. I could definitely see myself with a used one as a long-distance cruiser to supplant the MINI as daily driver and around-town car.\nFor my father, we looked at most of the trucks at the show, and we\u0026rsquo;re in agreement: The Nissan Titan is the real deal. Interior, exterior, and overall quality would seem to blow-away any of the current offerings from GM. The only real competition here is the new F-150, though it\u0026rsquo;s overlarge for my tastes: I remember the days when a single-cab, 2 wheel drive truck was not a 5000lb behemoth.\nGet the Nissan, Dad. Once they start dealing on \u0026rsquo;em at end-of-model-year, a Titan at $20k would be a great deal, GM card be damned.\n* * *\nBefore I close, I must write a small review of the book I just finished called Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield\nThe book is historical fiction based around the battle of Thermopylae (Greek for \u0026ldquo;Hot Gates\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Gates of Fire\u0026rdquo;), the desperate delaying action a suicide division of Spartans, Thebans and minor local tribes fought against the (reputed) 2 million man Persion force of Xerxes in 480 B.C., from which we get this quote:\nGo tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.\nEven in a historybook, it\u0026rsquo;s a moving story. Pressfield\u0026rsquo;s dramatic license makes it epic.\nTold in medias res by a fictionallized squire named Xeones (or just \u0026lsquo;Xeo\u0026rsquo;), survivor of the initial slaughter, the story arcs from the time just before the invasion when Sparta and her Greek allies are readying for war to an extremely visceral tale of the battle itself. It amazes me that a book that tells about a known event could be so riveting: I read the last 200 pages at a sitting last Thursday night, and it affects me even today.\nFor a man, the thing we want most is purpose, honor, and belonging. Thus, the Spartan life, though incredibly harsh, bloody, and fatalistic, is attractive: Whereas modern society separates us, removes our humanity, and imbues \u0026ldquo;citizenship\u0026rdquo; by birth, Spartans were about altruism, giving up their lives eagerly to defend their way of life. One could not be a true Citizen or \u0026ldquo;Peer\u0026rdquo;, unless one took up the sword and defended his nation. Odd parallel here: The same concept is present in the novel Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein.\nThe main thing I took away from the novel is how giving and selfless these men were. Instead of ignoring their emotions and fears, they acknowledged them and mastered them. Discipline, even unto death, was their creed. Not coincidentally, it\u0026rsquo;s discipline that I need in my life, and that America needs as a whole. It\u0026rsquo;s hollow to be running amok, exacting your will upon everyone because it\u0026rsquo;s your \u0026ldquo;right,\u0026rdquo; when that right wounldn\u0026rsquo;t exist in the first place without the discipline to carve it from the chaos that is the world at large. This is a lesson that humanity has learned and relearned throughout its history.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/depression/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDepressing blog of the day:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy dreams have been trending towards the apocalyptic lately\u0026hellip;no real idea why: Last night I was reading on \u003ca href=\"http://www.fark.com\"\u003efark\u003c/a\u003e about some pending announcement from NASA about a \u0026ldquo;significant\u0026rdquo; event in the solar system. So, of course, some fellas are making cracks about some comet or asteroid being inbound and them not wanting to tell us about it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, I promptly go to sleep (well, at 1:30 am, but more on that later) and have this ultra-vivid dream about the End of the World: For some reason, I was at work, and the skies were dark and ominous. We were all looking out the window of Building 082 towards the south, and I got hints of conversation:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Depression"},{"content":"Life after the Video Game Crash:\nGaming simply can\u0026rsquo;t survive that way. There\u0026rsquo;s a reason why you can still see a motion picture a century after they hit the scene, but Vaudeville shows are extinct. There\u0026rsquo;s a reason why people still go to operas while live gladiator contests and public witch burnings are both rare and poorly-attended. In the entertainment world there are wives and then there are mistresses, long-term relationships and drunken one-night stands.\nOur culture is married to the cinema. Gaming is a series of flings with continually younger, prettier partners.\nVery incisive analysis of why you should sell your Nintendo stock asap.\nMore:\nA 10 year-old can come home from school in the afternoon and devote the rest of the day to the task of memorizing the exact sequence of finger twitches that will get him past the dark forces of the Empire. A college kid can do the same, often while high. Most employed and married adults cannot.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/life-after-the-video-game-crash/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/crash.html\"\u003eLife after the Video Game Crash\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGaming simply can\u0026rsquo;t survive that way. There\u0026rsquo;s a reason why you can still see a motion picture a century after they hit the scene, but Vaudeville shows are extinct. There\u0026rsquo;s a reason why people still go to operas while live gladiator contests and public witch burnings are both rare and poorly-attended. In the entertainment world there are wives and then there are mistresses, long-term relationships and drunken one-night stands.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Life after the Video Game Crash"},{"content":"\nI WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo; Haven\u0026rsquo;t even driven the darn thing today.\n* * *\nIn other news, a bomb went off yesterday in Madrid during morning rush hour, killing 170 and wounding 600+. Several Islamic terrorist groups have emailed claiming responsibility.\nThis is a true wake-up call for Europe, IMHO. By and large, complacent European attitudes of appeasement regarding terrorism have led them to this low day. The EU (particularly Germany and France) don\u0026rsquo;t seem to care that the war on terrorism is a global war, a zero-sum-game of civilization versus anarchy.\nHonestly, what we have here is a delaying action, a phoney war waged with conventional arms piecemeal. The real endgame begins when Al Qaeda acquires Chemical, Biological, or (God forbid) nuclear weapons, at which point they can annihilate by the millions to their \u0026ldquo;glorious\u0026rdquo; self defeating, cause.\n* * *\nForgive me if I seem like a kook, but here it is in summation: Global energy reserves are waning, and our current population levels are unsustainable long-term. Essentially, we\u0026rsquo;re at the very peak of the greatest civilization the world has ever known, but like all those before it: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hellenic Greece, the Hellenistic Middle East, and Rome, if you remove the small threads that weave it together (in our case transportation, communication, and social order), it will collapse. Civilizations are not immune to certain natural laws.\nI look at it in terms of entropy: A system tends towards disorder. Simple law of thermodynamics. The only way to overcome that is through a vast input of energy and resources. Thus, Civilization builds order out of choas by harnessing several inputs: Human endeavor, natural resources, and a sense of altruism: Citizens sacrificing of themselves (either willingly or by compulsion) for the common good. However, remove any of these from a given civilization, and that civilization is doomed. Time and time again, a combination of natural changes, complacency, or civil unrest has done-in otherwise stable civilizations.\nThis is a (probably hackneyed) dissertation topic, but the parallels of modern Western civilization (particularly America) to that of the latter Roman empire are staggering. In both cases, a complacent, decadent populace in an empire that had lost its national identity in favor of \u0026ldquo;The Me Generation\u0026rdquo; found itself unable to fend off divisive forces. For Rome, it everything collapsed under its own weight, and that seems the inevitable conclusion. Here\u0026rsquo;s a basic course of events:\nEconomic collapse. Before any actual problems arise (e.g. we run out of oil), world economies that teeter on anticipating the future will have anticipated the occurrance and collapsed. Imagine: Gas, heating fuel, and jet fuel at 10 times their current cost. Consider: Everything you eat or buy at the store is delivered by truck. Thus, ripple the costs through the economy and the inevitable inflation, and you get a negative feedback loop that will lead to economic ruin on a Great Depression scale.\nSocial breakdown. I just don\u0026rsquo;t think our country can weather another Great Depression w/o a breakdown of fundamental services. We\u0026rsquo;re so overburdened with people that are absolutely useless (people on the dole) that getting people to fend for themselves for a few years while the government reacts (e.g. what happend in 1929-1934) will be much more damanging this time around\nFamine. If America is poorly suited to deal with such troubles, what about the rest of the world? India, with nearly a Billion people? Africa, which is just a mess even today? This is just a shot-from-the-hip guess, but I\u0026rsquo;m thinking 2 to 3 billion dead from the famine after the economic collapse.\nWar. This is utterly predictable: Few remaining resources + people with nothing to lose = war. Rather than starve to death, many will spit themselves on the stake of war. Likely, large countries and regional governments will split-up into small fiefdoms around powerful military centers. This is what happened following the fall of Rome.\nKnowledge drain (or as some SciFi novelists call it \u0026ldquo;The Knowledge Crash\u0026rdquo;). Given the above, people will be more worried about survival than writing that snazzy C++ program or curing cancer. Inevitably, this will cause us to lose knowledge and intellectual vitality over several generations. Literacy will disappear in some areas. Our reliance on electronic media (rather than permanet storage like paper or stone tables) will compound this. Where is the human genome mapped-out? On hard drives. What good are hard drives without 12 Volts of DC current an an IDE/ATA cable + computer? Paperweights.\nBasically, look for a no-resources-left version of the Dark Ages: Trade at a standstill, small pockets of humanity, bandits + crime rampant, human populations that plummet initially and then maintain a reasonable level after that.\nFor the life of me, I can\u0026rsquo;t understand what\u0026rsquo;s compelled me to write the apocalyptic you read above, but I guess the Madrid attacks (and the larger terrorism problems we\u0026rsquo;re seeing) remind me that our civilization is basically at its crest, and there\u0026rsquo;s a long to fall once entropy takes command again\u0026hellip;\n* * *\nAnd, I still want a 300C :D\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/the-300c-madrid-attacks-and-civilizations-future/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.thecarconnection.com/images/gallery/tmb/7851_image.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The 300C, Madrid Attacks, and Civilization\"s Future"},{"content":"Really tough teacher walks into her class one day and announces no one\u0026rsquo;s getting out of the mid term the next day, not even \u0026ldquo;for grave illness\u0026rdquo;\nJock in the back yells: \u0026ldquo;What about sexual exhaustion?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Write with your other hand.\u0026rdquo;\n* * *\nWell, it\u0026rsquo;s good to be missed when you don\u0026rsquo;t blog. I have a very small cadre of readers (no pun intended, honey!) but they seem loyal. Anyway, work been hell for the past few days. Don\u0026rsquo;t really want to go into it for fear of enraging tech-savvy management who might google for this blog, but I can give it to you in outline:\nI develop software, which falls somewhere on the difficulty scale between building the Golden Gate bridge and herding cats. Under the best of circumstances, it\u0026rsquo;s a long, trying process that can come out badly. This release, sadly has not had the best of circumstances.\nYour humble correspondent is 12 hours/day as a rule, 14 hrs/day on Mondays. (For some reason, everyone has an epiphany that requires a 2 page long email during the weekend. Hence, Mondays I feel like my fingers are going to fall off\u0026hellip;.)\nMy product\u0026rsquo;s a really good product, but it\u0026rsquo;s getting crufty. Cruft is just entropy. No system is immune to it, and the longer a system goes on or the more complex it is, the more of your time is spent fighting it. Or, in my case, 110% of your time is spent fighting it.\nMy product had one guy start this release (he got promoted), another guy do the schedule (he got reassigned), and another guy try and finish it. Not exactly a recipe for success. Don\u0026rsquo;t get me wrong, I like all three of these guys (well, one less than the others\u0026hellip;If you guys find this, figure out which of you I don\u0026rsquo;t like\u0026hellip;)\nso yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s freaky. But it\u0026rsquo;s fun, folks. God help me, I\u0026rsquo;ve been loving my job for the past month (since my nervous breakdown) so incredibly much, and I\u0026rsquo;ll tell you why: I get to make stuff work. For all the people out there who shuffle paper, deal with smarmy customers, and shovel the crap that keeps civilization afloat, I wish you knew the joy of making things. Dreaming up a design in your head, sitting at your computer, and watch it come to life, doing exactly as you\u0026rsquo;d imagined (once your Unit Tests all pass, that is.)\nIt\u0026rsquo;s kind of indescribable, but it\u0026rsquo;s neat, let\u0026rsquo;s leave it at that.\n* * *\nRandom experience today: I\u0026rsquo;m going to be on KET\u0026rsquo;s telethon on Friday night from 6 to 11, so I trekked over to the Human resources office to pick-up my Lexmark-official, made in Taiwan, gonna-shrink-the-first-time-ya-wash-it shirt. Now, you know you work for a sprawling evil empir\u0026hellip;uh\u0026hellip;CORPORATION when it takes you 10 minutes of concerted effort to go from your particular Ivory Tower to the dungeonlike confines of Human Resources.\nBut it was a nice day outside, so I thought I\u0026rsquo;d take a shortcut.\neschewing my normal route by the main cafeteria I headed for the whole in the plant where an old building had been, walking up the sole remnant of that building, it\u0026rsquo;s old cracked sidewalk. Once I got inside I knew:\nI was lost.\nLexmark used to be a main manufacturing facility for IBM Typewriters. If your mom or aunt had one of those battleship things on her desk like they had in 9 to 5, it was probably made there. Something like 10 acres under roof. Yeah, big, scary, empty building, that\u0026rsquo;s what remains. So, I struck out due west and a hoped for the best.\nSo, what would be a 10 minute jaunt turned into a 30 minute \u0026ldquo;where the freak am I\u0026rdquo; excursion by lots of old printers, shrinkwrapped AIOs, and scary looking doors that said \u0026ldquo;Authorized personnel Only\u0026rdquo;. Eventually, though, I made my way to the HR person\u0026rsquo;s office to find\u0026hellip;\n..she was out to lunch\u0026hellip;\nI feel like I\u0026rsquo;m telling Josh Sheffel\u0026rsquo;s famous \u0026ldquo;Blue Marble\u0026rdquo; joke (I\u0026rsquo;d give a link, but for all my googling, I can\u0026rsquo;t find the text\u0026hellip;)\n* * *\nWhich brings me to my next topic. The perfect lunch, served at Lexmark\u0026rsquo;s cafeteria: The Mexican Haystack. Far from a swarthy band of gardeners from Meh-Hee-Co, this delicious combination comes our way every-other Wednesday. Used to be every Wed, but then engineers started dying\u0026hellip;.\nanyways, it\u0026rsquo;s nachos by any other name, served in heaping portions:\nTake an 8\u0026quot;x8\u0026quot; Styrofoam to-go box (no partitions!)\nfill the bottom with tortilla chips\nadd taco meat\nadd refried beans\nput on a layer of shredded lettuce and tomatoes\nadd lotsa salsa\nput on some jalepeno slices\ntop with sour cream\nOkay, it weighs about a pound when you\u0026rsquo;re going through the checkout and it takes ~20 minutes to eat if your shoveling it hand over fist, but it\u0026rsquo;s GREAT!\n* * *\nSo, after my haystack, I got my shirt. Yeah, no climax for the rising action. Welcome to the last 3 years of my life ;-)\n* * *\nVolkswagen is apparently in deep trouble. The automaker that was nearly defunct in this country in 1993 is once again on the ropes, as sales have plummeted. All I can say is they sold their soul (good, solid transportation, German engineering) in exchange for short-term profits. Who wants a $90k, 12-cylinder Volkswagen?\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo; I mean, I like cars, but my \u0026lsquo;Dub had no soul. It was a good car, if rather unsporting and inefficient on interior space: Fast, stable at speed, decent mileage. But there was just no personality there to love. As the problems mounted and the trips to the dealer became a regular event, I just wanted rid of it.\npic for old times\u0026rsquo; sake:\n* * *\nRandom: Guilty pleasures (food)\nSpaghetti, freshly boiled, w/Ragu sauce\nA cookie-dough blizzard from Dairy Queen\nChipotle Chicken Strips from O\u0026rsquo;Charley\u0026rsquo;s\nRamen noodles\nFriday\u0026rsquo;s Jack Daniel\u0026rsquo;s Chicken strips\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/slice-of-life/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eReally tough teacher walks into her class one day and announces no one\u0026rsquo;s getting out of the mid term the next day, not even \u0026ldquo;for grave illness\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJock in the back yells: \u0026ldquo;What about sexual exhaustion?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Write with your other hand.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, it\u0026rsquo;s good to be missed when you don\u0026rsquo;t blog. I have a very small cadre of readers (no pun intended, honey!) but they seem loyal. Anyway, work been hell for the past few days. Don\u0026rsquo;t really want to go into it for fear of enraging tech-savvy management who might google for this blog, but I can give it to you in outline:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Slice of life"},{"content":"Extreme Overclocking �-�Samsung ML-1710 Monochrome Laser Printer Review - Page: 1 - Tweaking PC Hardware To The Max: \u0026ldquo;Lasers, Not Just For Removing Unsightly Hair:\u0026rdquo;\nGotta love a true laser printer for like $150. 17 pages per minute. Not color, but DANG! $150 for the printer, plus a 6000 page toner cartridge (and toner cartridges don\u0026rsquo;t dry-out like ink cartridges do).\nIf you printed that much w/a conventional inkjet printer that\u0026rsquo;s probably $1k worth of printer + ink cartridges.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/laser-printer-cheap/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/printers/Samsung_ML1710_1.html\"\u003eExtreme Overclocking �-�Samsung ML-1710 Monochrome Laser Printer Review - Page: 1 - Tweaking PC Hardware To The Max\u003c/a\u003e: \u0026ldquo;Lasers, Not Just For Removing Unsightly Hair:\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGotta love a true laser printer for like $150. 17 pages per minute. Not color, but DANG! $150 for the printer, plus a 6000 page toner cartridge (and toner cartridges don\u0026rsquo;t dry-out like ink cartridges do).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you printed that much w/a conventional inkjet printer that\u0026rsquo;s probably $1k worth of printer + ink cartridges.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Laser Printer, cheap"},{"content":"_\nI miss you terribly tonight, my little darling.\nI long for you as the seabird longs for the wind,\nThat he may be carried up above the waves to heaven.\nThat he may fly around the world on a single, sweet breeze,\nTasting life in each cloud.\nSuch is your love to me.\n_\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/love-poem-the-seabirds-longing/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e_\u003cbr\u003e\nI miss you terribly tonight, my little darling.\u003cbr\u003e\nI long for you as the seabird longs for the wind,\u003cbr\u003e\nThat he may be carried up above the waves to heaven.\u003cbr\u003e\nThat he may fly around the world on a single, sweet breeze,\u003cbr\u003e\nTasting life in each cloud.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuch is your love to me.\u003cbr\u003e\n_\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Love Poem: The Seabird\"s Longing"},{"content":"Why do women hate Hamburger Helper?\nGod knows the box is friendly enough:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a quick easy way to add protein, carbs, and nummy sodium to your daily intake of cold slop, vending machine slop, and coffee.\nWhy, then, do women hate it? Hate it so much that they will starve before consuming it\u0026hellip;.?\nMysteries of life\u0026hellip;\n* * *\nToday was pretty darn productive, but I\u0026rsquo;m beside myself about tomorrow. I went to Phil\u0026rsquo;s Rally School, which consisted of a class held around the kitchen table of his split-level off Harrodsburg Road. Rallying is like the older, more genteel side of Sports Car Club of America, predating most of the amateur events we do (specifically, autocross or \u0026ldquo;Solo II\u0026rdquo; as it\u0026rsquo;s sometimes known).\nUnlike the violence, squealing tires, sizzling brakes, and adrenaline of autocross, RoadRally is held, well, on a regular road, and you have to follow a set course at a set speed, entering/exiting various checkpoints. The one who crosses the last checkpoint with the fewest number of time penalties usually wins (some gimmick rallies have diff\u0026rsquo;t rules, but I\u0026rsquo;ll leave them off here.)\nRoadRally is in decline. In some local clubs (like Louisville and Cincinnati) it doesn\u0026rsquo;t even exist, at least as far as the Autocross heads are concerned, and that\u0026rsquo;s really a pity. RoadRally is car clubbing at its purest: Enjoying your machine outside on a spring, summer, or fall day, in friendly (yet not life threatening) competition against your fellow auto enthusiasts, ending-up with a hearty meal and war-stories of your 50 to 100 mile trek through the boonies, getting lost, catching-up. My stories usually involve an argument or two with Robin, my navigator. :-)\nAnyway, so that consumed most of the morning into the early afternoon, after which I went and bought a 5-gallon compressed air tank @ Sears:\nThat way, I can add and remove air during my autocross runs while in-grid. Couldn\u0026rsquo;t really do that last year :)\nGot my snowtires changed-out for my extra set of Continental tires today, and man is the car riding SMOOTH! Not glassy (no MINI is, nor should it be), but it definitely is a quieter, better handling ride. When this set wears out (in\u0026hellip;er\u0026hellip;.40k miles, I hope), I\u0026rsquo;ll get a set of true summer tires in 195/50R15. \u0026raquo;salivating\u0026laquo;\nAlso, in my consumerist tear, I bout a new pair of New Balance 608 shoes, size 10 1/2 4E (yeah, I have hobbit feat, as Whitney would say\u0026hellip;)\n* * *\nSo yeah, the first autocross of the season in Cincy is tomorrow, but A) it\u0026rsquo;s gonna be coolish weather. B) I have work to do :(\n\u0026gt;\u0026gt;sigh\u0026laquo; I am itching to try-out those Victoracers, though\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/hamburger-helper/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhy do women hate Hamburger Helper?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGod knows the box is friendly enough:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.walgreens.com/dbimagecache/71919.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a quick easy way to add protein, carbs, and nummy sodium to your daily intake of cold slop, vending machine slop, and coffee.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy, then, do women hate it? Hate it so much that they will starve before consuming it\u0026hellip;.?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMysteries of life\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday was pretty darn productive, but I\u0026rsquo;m beside myself about tomorrow. I went to Phil\u0026rsquo;s Rally School, which consisted of a class held around the kitchen table of his split-level off Harrodsburg Road. Rallying is like the older, more genteel side of Sports Car Club of America, predating most of the amateur events we do (specifically, autocross or \u0026ldquo;Solo II\u0026rdquo; as it\u0026rsquo;s sometimes known).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hamburger Helper"},{"content":"Amazing how a small change is one routine machine can galvanize an office. Take, for instance, a coffee machine. What could be more pedestrian than a coffee machine? Well, to my amazement, a new Cuisinart coffee grinder + coffee machine has occupied our floor for most of the morning:\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a pic of what we got:\n12 cup, glass carafe, grinder + permanent filter brewer.\nPlus, we got some quality coffee beans and we\u0026rsquo;ve been enjoying all day.\n* * *\nOn a personal note, I got a new 3/4 lb bag of Sumatran beans from Coffee Express in Georgetown, plus a 16oz ToGo mug of Kenyan pure (God, I sound like a Cocaine addict\u0026hellip;.\u0026ldquo;Columbian Pure man\u0026hellip;.one kilo!\u0026rdquo;). I\u0026rsquo;ll enjoy having a full thermos of that come tomorrow.\n* * *\nIt may just be the coffee talking, but I\u0026rsquo;m insanely happy today. I\u0026rsquo;m working like a dog, but I feel confident in the work and the results I\u0026rsquo;m seeing, and I\u0026rsquo;m really inside our sourcecode rooting around finding and fixing problems. I\u0026rsquo;ve been doing the strict TODO list thing: Write down what you intend to do and check-off each thing as you do it, never allowing one TODO to carry-over to the next day. That brings with it a good sense of accomplishment, something I\u0026rsquo;ve been sorely lacking in the last few months.\nAlso, India has been (largely) taking care of itself for the past week, and I haven\u0026rsquo;t had any field issues to deal with, which allows me to work on my own stuff. Also, Dave\u0026rsquo;s given me a task to oversee and I\u0026rsquo;m trying to do a good job of shepherding it through\u0026hellip;.\n* * *\nAnd SCCA season\u0026rsquo;s about to start! Many regions around us are having their first \u0026lsquo;Cobweb shaker\u0026rsquo; autocrosses this Sunday, and our region is hosting a RoadRally school. It\u0026rsquo;s not as balls-out fun as Autocross, but it\u0026rsquo;s just as intense, and it\u0026rsquo;s a team event.\n* * *\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/new-coffee-machine-and-workplace-joy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAmazing how a small change is one routine machine can galvanize an office. Take, for instance, a coffee machine. What could be more pedestrian than a coffee machine? Well, to my amazement, a new Cuisinart coffee grinder + coffee machine has occupied our floor for most of the morning:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s a pic of what we got:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://store1.yimg.com/I/cafemaison_1783_3142126\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e12 cup, glass carafe, grinder + permanent filter brewer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePlus, we got some quality coffee beans and we\u0026rsquo;ve been enjoying all day.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Coffee Machine and Workplace Joy"},{"content":"Ah yes, it\u0026rsquo;s that time of year again, and Satan has concocted a new treat to destroy our waistlines:\nThat\u0026rsquo;s right\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m the proud renter of 4 boxes of GIRL SCOUT COOKIES! two of the new Pinatas and two of Samoas. The Pinatas are a new flavor, and they\u0026rsquo;re very tasty: Sweet, not too heavy, and (unlike Samoas) they don\u0026rsquo;t make you want to eat 15 at a time.\n* * *\nAnd now, for posterity, the Saga of me, The Pup, and the brake pads.\nEveryone knows I love autocross. It\u0026rsquo;s fun, it\u0026rsquo;s addictive, and it\u0026rsquo;s not TOO hard on your car (first one in Lex is March 21st, mark your calendars!) Anyway, I compete in a very restrictive class, H-stock. Basically, you can\u0026rsquo;t change much on your car except for wear items: Tires, shocks, clutch, and brake pads. Anything else, and you\u0026rsquo;re bound for STS or Street Prepared, classes where a regular MINI\u0026rsquo;s going to get its butt handed to it in short order.\n\u0026lsquo;Newaz, the brake pads that come with MINIs from the factory are alright (they survived 10 autocrosses last year and were only 1/2 worn-out), but they make an inordinate amount of brake dust. BMW chooses \u0026rsquo;em b/c they\u0026rsquo;re very soft, quiet, and good when cold. However, they just don\u0026rsquo;t cut it much when hot. So, I got a spanking new set of these babies:\nNo dust, and they\u0026rsquo;re better when hot.\nNow, I\u0026rsquo;ve never changed-out brakes before, but how hard could I be, right? :) Well, this was last Thursday. I was taking my MINI up to Cincinnati on Saturday for its 25,000 mile inspection (yup\u0026hellip;had it like 1.5 years and already 25k\u0026hellip;.), so I wanted to get the pads changed before then. I had also worked a 14 hour day on Thursday, so I was in JUST the frame of mind to be working under a car using one dim lightbulb in my garage that has no power outlets (yet another reason I NEED A HOUSE!)\nSo I follow this procedure, and other than fogetting to torque-down the floating caliper (had to take the wheel off again and do it\u0026hellip;), everything went famously.\nThen I take the brakes out on the highway and discover a couple of things:\nMy car doesn\u0026rsquo;t like to stop\nWhen it does stop, it makes an ungodly amount of noise\nRealize: I\u0026rsquo;m tired, high on brake cleaner, and grimy. And my car\u0026rsquo;s busted. I\u0026rsquo;ve tinkered with cars a bit over the past few years, but I\u0026rsquo;ve never felt completely defeated. At that point, I felt like I\u0026rsquo;d been kicked in the nuts. I had this vision of me walking into S\u0026amp;S Tire in G\u0026rsquo;town and begging them to fix what I\u0026rsquo;d done\u0026hellip;.\n. . . .\nBut, of all my qualities, I\u0026rsquo;m more stubborn than anything. So, I ditched work at 3 the next day (I\u0026rsquo;d already worked 57 hours that week\u0026hellip;), asked for help from the powers that be at NAM and gone by the auto parts store. Their advice was twofold:\nRough-up the rotors a bit so that the pads can bed-in properly\nput some anti-squeal coating on the backs of the pads\nSo, I took the whole works apart (familiar territory by now\u0026hellip;I even figured-out how to use a jackstand as a afro-engineered \u0026lsquo;brake caliper holder\u0026rsquo;), and did as I said. Didn\u0026rsquo;t cure the squeal, but it did help the pads bed-in. She stops like a champ now.\n* * *\nGod help me when I get ahold of that rear swaybar I\u0026rsquo;m wanting. I\u0026rsquo;ll probably destroy the whole rear subframe trying to get that installed\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/girl-scout-cookies-and-brake-pad-adventures/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAh yes, it\u0026rsquo;s that time of year again, and Satan has concocted a new treat to destroy our waistlines:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.girlscoutcookiesabc.com/XSiteShared/cookieImages/box-pinata.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat\u0026rsquo;s right\u0026hellip;I\u0026rsquo;m the proud renter of 4 boxes of \u003ca href=\"http://www.girlscoutcookiesabc.com\"\u003eGIRL SCOUT COOKIES!\u003c/a\u003e two of the new Pinatas and two of Samoas. The Pinatas are a new flavor, and they\u0026rsquo;re very tasty: Sweet, not too heavy, and (unlike Samoas) they don\u0026rsquo;t make you want to eat 15 at a time.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Girl Scout Cookies and Brake Pad Adventures"},{"content":"Can I just say Seabiscuit got robbed? Come ON people\u0026hellip;I know LOTR is the uber-movie, but for Cinematography at least, Seabiscuit deserved the oscar. LOTR was done mostly CGI, for goodness\u0026rsquo; sake!\nI think 2003 will go down as a year of embarrassing riches. Four movies (At least!) that were worthy contenders in any category.\n* * *\nOn a personal note, Squeeze and I have made plans to head for Rocky Mountain National Park September 1st through 5th. Really, really excited. Plane Tickets, car reservation, and hotel reservation (Holiday Inn). My compliments to my little love: She\u0026rsquo;s a great planner\u0026ndash;meticulous, single-minded, thorough.\nDefinitely looking forward to it!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/03/oscar-thoughts-and-rocky-mountain-plans/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCan I just say \u003ca href=\"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0329575/\"\u003eSeabiscuit\u003c/a\u003e got robbed? Come ON people\u0026hellip;I know LOTR is the uber-movie, but for Cinematography at least, Seabiscuit deserved the oscar. LOTR was done mostly CGI, for goodness\u0026rsquo; sake!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think 2003 will go down as a year of embarrassing riches. Four movies (At least!) that were worthy contenders in any category.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn a personal note, Squeeze and I have made plans to head for \u003ca href=\"http://estes.on-line.com/rmnp/\"\u003eRocky Mountain National Par\u003c/a\u003ek September 1st through 5th. Really, really excited. Plane Tickets, car reservation, and hotel reservation (Holiday Inn). My compliments to my little love: She\u0026rsquo;s a great planner\u0026ndash;meticulous, single-minded, thorough.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Oscar Thoughts and Rocky Mountain Plans"},{"content":"The Car Connection [ The Web\u0026rsquo;s Automotive Authority ]:\nConsumer confidence dropped in February, as persistent worries about jobs undercut optimism about future prospects, according to the Conference Board, which reported its consumer confidence index dropped more than nine points to 87.3, following a rise in January to a revised reading of 96.4. \u0026ldquo;Consumers began the year on a high note, but their optimism has quickly given way to caution,\u0026rdquo; said Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board\u0026rsquo;s Consumer Research Center. \u0026ldquo;Consumers remain disheartened with current economic conditions, and at the core of their disenchantment is the labor market.\u0026rdquo; The lack of confidence also appears to have helped slow car sales, which fell below expectations in January and are sluggish again in February. Gary Lapidus, Goldman Sachs analyst, said in a note the shortfall in sales is pushing up both incentives and inventories sitting unsold on dealer lots. -Joe Szczesny\nUmm\u0026hellip;yeah. Awfully hard to rock that new Escalade for $50k in that service-economy job you had to get after your manufacturing and engineering jobs went to some other country. People have NO concept of how the economy works. Reasons my hometown is a wasteland: No primary employment. The only good jobs there are government jobs, and those don\u0026rsquo;t provide fresh funds for the economy.\nI work for a primary employer. I complain about it daily, but I\u0026rsquo;m proud to say we make things and sell them. If all those companies\u0026rsquo; jobs go offshore, we\u0026rsquo;ll be in a death spiral in this country, especially for the middle class.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/02/car-prices-insane/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.thecarconnection.com/index.asp?article=6887\u0026amp;sid=173\u0026amp;n=156\"\u003eThe Car Connection [ The Web\u0026rsquo;s Automotive Authority ]\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConsumer confidence dropped in February, as persistent worries about jobs undercut optimism about future prospects, according to the Conference Board, which reported its consumer confidence index dropped more than nine points to 87.3, following a rise in January to a revised reading of 96.4. \u0026ldquo;Consumers began the year on a high note, but their optimism has quickly given way to caution,\u0026rdquo; said Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board\u0026rsquo;s Consumer Research Center. \u0026ldquo;Consumers remain disheartened with current economic conditions, and at the core of their disenchantment is the labor market.\u0026rdquo; The lack of confidence also appears to have helped slow car sales, which fell below expectations in January and are sluggish again in February. Gary Lapidus, Goldman Sachs analyst, said in a note the shortfall in sales is pushing up both incentives and inventories sitting unsold on dealer lots. -Joe Szczesny\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Car Prices: Insane"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s nothing wrong with being at work at 5 o\u0026rsquo;clock in the morning, per se. However, it does feel a bit weird:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s 4pm in India\nIt\u0026rsquo;s 5 hours before most of the othe programmers on this floor arrive\nIt\u0026rsquo;s 7 hours until lunch.\nRobin asked me if I could get her to the airport for her 6:15 flight, so that req\u0026rsquo;d me picking-her-up at 4:15am. I\u0026rsquo;m usually not through my first REM cycle by 4:15 am.\nSo, on the bright side, at least I have a pleasant, other-worldy feeling.\n* * *\nRandom observation: How annoying is it for people to talk on a cellphone in the supermarket? Situation: I\u0026rsquo;m shopping for meager supplies the other day in Kroger (beans, oatmeal, salt pork, etc.), and come across a mother/daughter pair. The mom looked to be about 40: Squat, overdone, over-coiffed, overtan. The jailbait looked about 15, apparently in love with whatever it took to get her hair that unnatural blonde color.\nNow, we\u0026rsquo;ve all done that thing where you lace your way through the aisles of the supermarket in such a way that you encounter the same people over and over again, as they\u0026rsquo;re making the same progress through the store (i.e. right to left, just as God intended), but for some reason, you skipped an aisle they went down so you\u0026rsquo;re out-of-phase. Symptom: Ya meet EXACTLY in the middle of the aisle, just as the stockboy is restocking the Ramen noodles, so you have to negotiate some sort of Panama Canal-esque treaty for passage of your jumbo-mega shopping carts.\nWell, as this was the situation, I got to observe both this woman and her daughter yakking on their cellphones for the ENTIRE length of the store. By the time we reached the milk section, I wanted to run up to her and say, \u0026ldquo;Yes, your friend\u0026rsquo;s husband is an idiot! Why do I care? \u0026lsquo;Cuz I\u0026rsquo;ve heard about it for the last 25 minutes. Also, I\u0026rsquo;m glad your test results came back negative. And yes, I think Atkins would work well for you. And it is indeed a tragedy that Victor\u0026rsquo;s gettting older on Y\u0026amp;R. \u0026quot;\n::Swivels to aforementioned Jailbait::\n[mocking]\n\u0026ldquo;Oh, and, like, I was like \u0026lsquo;Shutup\u0026rsquo;, and you were all like \u0026rsquo;nuh-uh\u0026rsquo;, and he was all like \u0026lsquo;fer shure\u0026rsquo;! And ohmigosh I can\u0026rsquo;t believe you just went and told Courtney [Q: Why are all annoying women named Courtney?] that!\u0026rdquo;\n[/mocking]\nThe upshot: Be a good citizen. Keep your cellphone conversations under 1 minute when you\u0026rsquo;re in a place like that. (Okay, if you\u0026rsquo;re one of those pathetic guys who goes to the store alone only to re-re-reconfirm with your spouse every item on the shopping list, you get one exemption per month. Us guys gotta stick together.)\n* * *\nWell, as I\u0026rsquo;m here, I should probably do some work :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/02/at-work-early/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s nothing \u003cem\u003ewrong\u003c/em\u003e with being at work at 5 o\u0026rsquo;clock in the morning, per se. However, it does feel a bit weird:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s 4pm in India\u003cbr\u003e\nIt\u0026rsquo;s 5 hours before most of the othe programmers on this floor arrive\u003cbr\u003e\nIt\u0026rsquo;s 7 hours until lunch.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRobin asked me if I could get her to the airport for her 6:15 flight, so that req\u0026rsquo;d me picking-her-up at 4:15am. I\u0026rsquo;m usually not through my first REM cycle by 4:15 am.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"At Work Early"},{"content":"Folks, here\u0026rsquo;s an example of how not to be:\nI beat myself up when I don\u0026rsquo;t know something at work. No matter how obscure, minute, weird, odd, or undocumented a factoid there is, I feel like I should know it. It\u0026rsquo;s just frickin\u0026rsquo; impossible. Just as an architect need not know every bolt in the building, I don\u0026rsquo;t need to know every line of my server.\nI realize that on an intellectual level. Just can\u0026rsquo;t internalize it at all\u0026hellip;.\nLink to my product: MarkVision Professional\nWe lovingly call it MVP :)\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/02/hard-on-myself/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFolks, here\u0026rsquo;s an example of how not to be:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI beat myself up when I don\u0026rsquo;t know something at work. No matter how obscure, minute, weird, odd, or undocumented a factoid there is, I feel like I should know it. It\u0026rsquo;s just frickin\u0026rsquo; impossible. Just as an architect need not know every bolt in the building, I don\u0026rsquo;t need to know every line of my server.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI realize that on an intellectual level. Just can\u0026rsquo;t internalize it at all\u0026hellip;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Hard on Myself"},{"content":"Now, we all know that basketball is a religion in this state, but it would seem Centre College, that bastion of endowment and imbibing from Danville, has confirmed it via its curriculum.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/02/basketball-as-religion-at-centre-college/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow, we all know that basketball is a religion in this state, but it would seem Centre College, that bastion of endowment and imbibing from Danville, has confirmed it via its \u003ca href=\"http://www.courierpress.com/ecp/religion/article/0,1626,ECP_782_2635647,00.html\"\u003ecurriculum.\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Basketball as Religion at Centre College"},{"content":"In deference to someone very close to me, I\u0026rsquo;m moved to speak again on the Special Election:\nI was flip before. I apologize. I am not glad that Chandler won. In the grand scheme of things, Forgy-Kerr\u0026rsquo;s platform suits my political leanings closely, and it would\u0026rsquo;ve been better had she won.\nTHAT BEING SAID, if political candidates continue to treat their potential constituents as imbeciles, running negative campaign ad after campaign ad, the process is going to grind to a screeching halt. Given the tenor of the ads, I\u0026rsquo;m surprised that Ben Chandler\u0026rsquo;s penis size wasn\u0026rsquo;t called into question. (Though, generally, I\u0026rsquo;d argue Alice Forgey-Kerr has bigger balls, regardless). I\u0026rsquo;m normally immune to the mud slung betwixt the aisles, but in this instance, it got to me, mainly because I realized how much of it was coming from the Washington Political Machines of both parties. Call me old-fashioned, but House races are all about constituents and issues close to home. Few if any were raised between these two similar puppets.\nThe upshot for me and my vote was this:\n1. Everyone should vote in every election. That\u0026rsquo;s why I voted in this one, out of sheer obligation to those men and women who are dying every day in this world so that insignificant little me might have a voice in my government.\n2. Everyone should take it upon themselves to become informed about the candidates and their relative stances on issues important to them. In that I failed miserably, and I apologize.\n3. My distaste for this campaign was so palpable that had there been a \u0026rsquo;neither of the above\u0026rsquo; option, I would\u0026rsquo;ve gladly taken it. As there wasn\u0026rsquo;t, I voted for Gailey.\n* * *\nAnd, my stance, in general: If you vote a straight ticket as a matter of course, you\u0026rsquo;re an imbecile. Republican or Democrat. If you examine all the candidates and all the candidates you vote for just HAPPEN to be on one side of the voting machine, so be it, but always go into that voting booth with your mind in gear.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t really do that on Tuesday, and for that I\u0026rsquo;m sorry\u0026hellip;.\n(Mitch McConnell Exemption: If they\u0026rsquo;re for all you\u0026rsquo;re issues but you think they\u0026rsquo;re a power-hungry cog in a political machine, feel free to vote against them at your leisure :P )\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/02/special-election/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn deference to someone very close to me, I\u0026rsquo;m moved to speak again on the Special Election:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was flip before. I apologize. I am not glad that Chandler won. In the grand scheme of things, Forgy-Kerr\u0026rsquo;s platform suits my political leanings closely, and it would\u0026rsquo;ve been better had she won.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTHAT BEING SAID, if political candidates continue to treat their potential constituents as imbeciles, running negative campaign ad after campaign ad, the process is going to grind to a screeching halt. Given the tenor of the ads, I\u0026rsquo;m surprised that Ben Chandler\u0026rsquo;s penis size wasn\u0026rsquo;t called into question. (Though, generally, I\u0026rsquo;d argue Alice Forgey-Kerr has bigger balls, regardless). I\u0026rsquo;m normally immune to the mud slung betwixt the aisles, but in this instance, it got to me, mainly because I realized how much of it was coming from the Washington Political Machines of both parties. Call me old-fashioned, but House races are all about constituents and issues close to home. Few if any were raised between these two similar puppets.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Special Election"},{"content":"Blog topics this morning:\nDisney buys Muppets As they say, resistence is futile\nMy cameras \u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo; stuff\nNot much to say about Mickey\u0026rsquo;s hostile takeover of Kermit, really. I just hope that Miss Piggy isn\u0026rsquo;t starstruck with affection for that uber-powerful mouse. Dang mice, taking all our good, decent pigs!\n* * *\nCameras. Photography.\nI guess you could say I\u0026rsquo;ve got a fetish here more than a hobby. I love photography, but I\u0026rsquo;m one of those photogs who\u0026rsquo;s pretty-much as into his photo equipment as his pictures. I\u0026rsquo;ve got several lenses that exist just b/c I though they were neat. I have two basic systems: One uses a lensmount from the 1960\u0026rsquo;s, the other from the 1930\u0026rsquo;s. Yes, I\u0026rsquo;m a luddite when it comes to equipment.\nMy SLR (Single Lens Reflex) system is based around good, old Pentax glass, made by Ashai optics in Japan. Back in the day, Pentax was THE hobby brand to have, but the auto-focus, auto-everything revolution seems to have hit them very hard, as they didn\u0026rsquo;t have the technical resources of Minolta, Cannon, or Nikon to develop auto-focus hardware. They\u0026rsquo;re still trailing in this arena, as well as in computerized metering.\nBut the glass is still good, and as I have only manual-focus Pentax cameras, their poor autofocus performance isn\u0026rsquo;t an issue. My system:\n28mm f/2.8 Every photog should have one of these primes, mines from the 1970\u0026rsquo;s and its the old, solid \u0026ldquo;brass and glass\u0026rdquo; construction\n40mm f/2.8 This is the famous \u0026lsquo;pancake\u0026rsquo; lens, which is so thin front-to-back that it barely has room for the camera\n50mm f/1.7 Great lens, if a bit light and platicky. Fast \u0026amp; excellent for interior available-light shots, and pin-sharp when stopped down to f/4.\n70-210mm f/4-5.6 Sigma Lens is total plastic crap, but it\u0026rsquo;s all I\u0026rsquo;ve got to cover the long end of the spectrum from back in High School when I had a PZ-1 pentax that autofocsed. Sigma lenses are *okay*, but you def. get what you pay for. Go on eBay and find what you want, don\u0026rsquo;t pay retail for this garbage\nMy real darling these days is my Voigtlander series Bessa R rangefinder\nI LOVE THIS CAMERA! Got interested in Rangefinders on a lark a couple of years ago, but the only ones available were Leicas, and while the Swiss watch of cameras, they were $2500 for a new body alone, and each lens ran $800-$2000. Rangefinders handle and work differently than SLRs. Not better, just different. The lenses are itty-bitty, and the lensmount is the 39mm Leica Thread Mount (LTM) first invented in the 1930\u0026rsquo;s. So, you can mount lenses from about 8 different decades on this camera w/o problems.\nLenses for this system:\n15mm f/2.5 That\u0026rsquo;s right, 15mm\u0026hellip;this is one REALLY wide-angle lens, and I\u0026rsquo;m still experimenting to get its full potential. Not a fisheye or anything\u0026ndash;this is full frame.\n35mm f/3.5 Lens came with the camera, and I enjoy it, though I\u0026rsquo;d like a 24mm, too.\n50mm f/1.8 This is an old Cannon camera. It\u0026rsquo;s older than my parents, but works like an absolute jewel. It\u0026rsquo;s not multi-coated so you have to be careful when using it in bright sunlight (lots of in-lens flare!)\n135 f/2.8 Great portrait lens or medium telephoto. A long telephoto w/a Rangefinder is kinda pointless (since you use the viewfinder instead of looking through the lens as with an SLR), so this is probably as long as I\u0026rsquo;ll go w/my lens system\nSo, that\u0026rsquo;s about it. A modest system on both accounts, but for the stuff I like shooting: Landscapes, interiors, people, it works just great. And slide film just ROCKS!\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/02/disneys-muppet-purchase-and-my-camera-collection/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBlog topics this morning:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.muppetcentral.com/news/2004/021704.shtml\"\u003eDisney buys Muppets\u003c/a\u003e As they say, resistence is futile\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy cameras \u0026rsquo;n\u0026rsquo; stuff\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot much to say about Mickey\u0026rsquo;s hostile takeover of Kermit, really. I just hope that Miss Piggy isn\u0026rsquo;t starstruck with affection for that uber-powerful mouse. Dang mice, taking all our good, decent pigs!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* * *\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCameras. Photography.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI guess you could say I\u0026rsquo;ve got a fetish here more than a hobby. I love photography, but I\u0026rsquo;m one of those photogs who\u0026rsquo;s pretty-much as into his photo equipment as his pictures. I\u0026rsquo;ve got several lenses that exist just b/c I though they were neat. I have two basic systems: One uses a lensmount from the 1960\u0026rsquo;s, the other from the 1930\u0026rsquo;s. Yes, I\u0026rsquo;m a luddite when it comes to equipment.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Disney\"s Muppet Purchase and My Camera Collection"},{"content":"On the special Election:\nLooks like Ben Chandler won the special election for the 6th Distict Congressional seat.\nI\u0026rsquo;m a Republican, but I\u0026rsquo;m glad Chandler won. Forgy-Kerr ran a negative, despicable campaign that reeked of Washington influence, particularly that of Rich Mitch McConnell. Didn\u0026rsquo;t distinguish herself as a candidate, nor did she deem it necessary to show up for the only formal debate on the issues.\nBTW, I voted Libertarian, a vote in protest of both of these losers.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/02/on-the-special-election/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn the special Election:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLooks like Ben Chandler won the special election for the 6th Distict Congressional seat.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m a Republican, but I\u0026rsquo;m glad Chandler won. Forgy-Kerr ran a negative, despicable campaign that reeked of Washington influence, particularly that of Rich Mitch McConnell. Didn\u0026rsquo;t distinguish herself as a candidate, nor did she deem it necessary to show up for the only formal debate on the issues.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBTW, I voted Libertarian, a vote in protest of both of these losers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On the Special Election"},{"content":"Quite alot to \u0026lsquo;blog about today\u0026hellip;\nFirst, saw an excellent debate last night on KET (Kentucky Educational Television) regarding the issue of Same-Sex marriage. Honestly, I\u0026rsquo;m not for it. Barring the religious, moral implications of redefining marriage as a union between consenting adults, sanctioned by the gov\u0026rsquo;t, it seems like a willful attack on an institution that works: Union between a man and a woman that they might raise children with influence from both the male and female, the Yin and Yang, the Venus and Mars. Forgive me for being trite, but seems like there\u0026rsquo;s nothing like the nuclear family (or, even the Eastern Kentucky version, the Thermonuclear 12-member-plus-35-member-extended-family family). I\u0026rsquo;m glad to have grown up with the influence of a mother and a father, and think any child would benefit from such.\nI\u0026rsquo;m conservative. Sue me.\nRandom: The poor, elderly minister from the Lexington Theological Seminary who was on there DEFENDING homosexuality and same-sex marriage\u0026hellip;I respect the man, but his position seems untennable. He\u0026rsquo;s far from fundamentalist, but his frank relativism makes Christianity seem pointless: If you don\u0026rsquo;t establish some \u0026lsquo;right\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;wrong\u0026rsquo; behavior, why did Christ have to die for people\u0026rsquo;s sins? After all, wasn\u0026rsquo;t the fall of man precipitated by a \u0026ldquo;Choice between Consenting Adults\u0026rdquo;?\n* * *\nReading extensively this week:\nFirst up is a tome from the 1920\u0026rsquo;s on personal finance and investing (yes, written BEFORE the crash) called The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason.\nVery light, yet touching book, full of parables supposedly taken from cuneiform tablets around the city of Babylon. Total fabrication of course, but a good quick read.\nSummary of the tenets:\nPay yourself the first 10% of everything you earn. This is the first step towards building wealth Totally agree here\u0026hellip;if you spend everything you make, you\u0026rsquo;ll be a slave to your lifestyle. This doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean be a miser, either\u0026hellip;just save some money!\nInvest \u0026amp; let your savings grow through compound interest \u0026amp; some speculation. Let your money work for you\u0026hellip;don\u0026rsquo;t hide it under a mattress.\nOwn your own home\u0026hellip;Yeah, yeah\u0026hellip;I hate mowing grass\ninvest for retirement\u0026hellip;.umm\u0026hellip;Duh!?\nTake opportunity as you find it Basically, \u0026ldquo;Make your own luck\u0026rdquo;. If you keep saving money, you\u0026rsquo;ll have wads of cash available when the time is right to go after that good deal, good investment, or whatever.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t put money in an investment whre you\u0026rsquo;re gonna lose principal God, if only they\u0026rsquo;d done that in 1929\u0026hellip;.\nInsurance, insurance, insurance! Protect against catastrophic loss and you\u0026rsquo;re eventual demise (if you\u0026rsquo;ve got a family).\nInvest in yourself Kaizen, for the Flapper era.\nSo, like I said, very common-sense stuff. Not worth your money to buy, honestly, but a good, affirming read from all the Dave Ramsey stuff I consume.\n* * *\nHeard a really good discussion of Coffee and etc. the other day, so I decided to get serious. I\u0026rsquo;m starting to understand the difference between your average Maxwell House crap and good quality Starbucks, so why not get some literature.\nGot this:\nCoffee Basics by Kevin Knox. All you really ever wanted to know about coffee. I\u0026rsquo;m already all about doing a manual-drip brewing (did some creative modifications to my poor 4-cup Mr. Coffee to give it a try and it\u0026rsquo;s a REVELATION!), and I\u0026rsquo;ve ordered a 1-quarter Nissan Thermos and filter cup attachment so that I can do it. \u0026lsquo;Twould seem my coffee grinder is in for some daily duty, finally.\n(Random: Even @ $13/lb, your average cup of home-brewed coffee costs a whopping $.33. Given that McDonalds brews using crappy Robusta beans, they\u0026rsquo;re making a FORTUNE on coffee alone.)\nAnother tidbit I learned from the book today: Basically, no auto-drip coffee maker makes coffee properly, at least none under $150. Basically, you have to brew a certain amount (2 tablespoons per 6 oz cup) of coffee for the right amount of time (4 minutes) at the right temperature (190-205 degrees F) to make great coffee. This formula is unquestioned by any professional coffee brewer or taster or roaster, and yet commercial drip coffee makers don\u0026rsquo;t do it. They take like 10 minutes to brew coffee, and it\u0026rsquo;s always bitter because it\u0026rsquo;s over-extracted. To make the coffee palatable, you must use less coffee in the filter than you need, so it\u0026rsquo;s got the weird combination of being too strong (bitter) and too weak-bodied, all at the same time.\nAnd as for espresso, don\u0026rsquo;t waste your time: The right equipment and skill is just too expensive. Go out for latte, cappucino, and the like.\nAs you can well tell, an interesting read all around. I highly recommend it if you\u0026rsquo;re into coffee at all.\n* * *\nWeather report: It\u0026rsquo;s s\u0026rsquo;posed to be in the upper 50\u0026rsquo;s here in Lexington this week, and I can smell spring in the air already. I\u0026rsquo;m tempted to shed my snow tires and put-on my dormant set of all-seasons, switching the snow-tires to race tires on that set of rims.\nGot a new set of brakes for my MINI in anticpation of the start of autocross season. EBC Greenstuff brakes\u0026ndash;good bite, no dust.\nDang\u0026hellip;Scrubs is on\u0026hellip;\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/02/blogging/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eQuite alot to \u0026lsquo;blog about today\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, saw an excellent debate last night on \u003ca href=\"http://www.ket.org\"\u003eKET\u003c/a\u003e (Kentucky Educational Television) regarding the issue of Same-Sex marriage. Honestly, I\u0026rsquo;m not for it. Barring the religious, moral implications of redefining marriage as a union between consenting adults, sanctioned by the gov\u0026rsquo;t, it seems like a willful attack on an institution that works: Union between a man and a woman that they might raise children with influence from both the male and female, the Yin and Yang, the Venus and Mars. Forgive me for being trite, but seems like there\u0026rsquo;s nothing like the nuclear family (or, even the Eastern Kentucky version, the Thermonuclear 12-member-plus-35-member-extended-family family). I\u0026rsquo;m glad to have grown up with the influence of a mother and a father, and think any child would benefit from such.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Blogging"},{"content":"TheWB.com - Press Release:\nWell, looks like the Buffyverse is finally dead, that creation of Joss Whedon\u0026rsquo;s mind that spawned nerd-heaven \u0026ldquo;Buffy the Vampire Slayer\u0026rdquo; will at least go into dormancy with the end of \u0026ldquo;Angel\u0026rdquo;, Los Angeles-based spinoff from the earlier \u0026ldquo;Buffy\u0026rdquo; series.\nThese shows represented consistent creative writing, acting, and characterization in an increasingly homogenized television landscape. Though not an \u0026ldquo;Angel\u0026rdquo; fan myself, I\u0026rsquo;ll mark its passing with respect.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/02/the-wb/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.thewb.com/PressRelease/Index/0,8341,156980,00.html\"\u003eTheWB.com - Press Release\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, looks like the Buffyverse is finally dead, that creation of Joss Whedon\u0026rsquo;s mind that spawned nerd-heaven \u0026ldquo;Buffy the Vampire Slayer\u0026rdquo; will at least go into dormancy with the end of \u0026ldquo;Angel\u0026rdquo;, Los Angeles-based spinoff from the earlier \u0026ldquo;Buffy\u0026rdquo; series.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese shows represented consistent creative writing, acting, and characterization in an increasingly homogenized television landscape. Though not an \u0026ldquo;Angel\u0026rdquo; fan myself, I\u0026rsquo;ll mark its passing with respect.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The WB"},{"content":"I drive a MINI Cooper. I race a MINI Cooper in Autocross. Here\u0026rsquo;s a pic of me doing so:\nAnd I thought I\u0026rsquo;d hate the new Mini Cabrio with a passion, but I kinda like it.\nReally opens-up the car and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look as chunky \u0026amp; girly as I thought it would.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/02/mini-coopers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI drive a MINI Cooper. I race a MINI Cooper in Autocross. Here\u0026rsquo;s a pic of me doing so:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://lee.jeepaholics.com/AutoX-03/Apr13/3/_l_2003_0413_142756AA.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I \u003cem\u003ethought\u003c/em\u003e I\u0026rsquo;d hate the new Mini Cabrio with a passion, but I kinda like it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://bridger.us/mini/cabrio/images/conv_19_1600.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReally opens-up the car and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look as chunky \u0026amp; girly as I thought it would.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MINI Coopers"},{"content":"While blogging is a great, cleansing, theraputic thing, it can be uncomfortable for your friends to read about the machinations of your current relationship, sexual escapades, personal trials and troubles, and your co-workers. So, it\u0026rsquo;s good to have more than one \u0026lsquo;blog, I think. One you can give to your friends and comrades in arms. Something that\u0026rsquo;s more like a journal and less like a diary.\nThis one\u0026rsquo;s named after \u0026lsquo;Harvid\u0026rsquo;, my personality with the most book sense. The other parts of me are fun and interesting, but not necessarily for public consumption (at least by those people who know me and/or have to work with me.)\nThis is where I plan to write about the issues that affect my life, sans those things so personal to me that they warrant being in my private blog. The tone will vary from formal to trashy, depending upon mood and subject matter.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t have much to say currently, but here are some of the topics I\u0026rsquo;m itching to talk about:\nTechnology I\u0026rsquo;m a tech geek. Work with computers 8 to 12 hours a day.\nOutsourcing, offshoring My business is flowing to the 3rd world (particularly India) Reports on that from a man in the trenches.\nPolitics Somewhat disgusted with politics at this point. Might be able to scrounge-up enough interest to do a story every so often\nAutos: Total hobby of mine\u0026hellip;all things automotive. I\u0026rsquo;ve thought about doing a \u0026lsquo;Blog devoted to my MINI and our collective escapades, but I think this will be enough. The automotive minutiae might get a little thick, but that\u0026rsquo;s okay :)\nPhotography: I\u0026rsquo;m an avid photo buff, but I haven\u0026rsquo;t made the jump to digital. Actually, I\u0026rsquo;ve REGRESSED, going from SLRs to a Rangefinder camera\u0026hellip;:-) Might change that soon enough, if I ever get a MAC\u0026hellip;.\n","permalink":"https://www.devharryc.com/2004/02/starting-a-new-blog/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhile blogging is a great, cleansing, theraputic thing, it can be uncomfortable for your friends to read about the machinations of your current relationship, sexual escapades, personal trials and troubles, and your co-workers. So, it\u0026rsquo;s good to have more than one \u0026lsquo;blog, I think. One you can give to your friends and comrades in arms. Something that\u0026rsquo;s more like a journal and less like a diary.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis one\u0026rsquo;s named after \u0026lsquo;Harvid\u0026rsquo;, my personality with the most book sense. The other parts of me are fun and interesting, but not necessarily for public consumption (at least by those people who know me and/or have to work with me.)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Starting a New Blog"}]