Saw an ‘87 Porsche 924S on craigslist available fo…

Jeff Roberts - Jun 5, 2008

Saw an ‘87 Porsche 924S on craigslist available for trade…

:-)

(Later that night, Jeff’s front door slams open and there stands Whitney, fuming…)

okay, and here’s a list of some things i want:

`new running shoes
`pants that fit
`clothes that fit that arent a size Large
`to lose weight instead of gain it when I spend two hours a day working out
`not to be used as a human napkin
`dyson
`new washer/dryer
`new dishwasher
`new refrigerator
`cabinets that arent taller than i am
`new cabinets
`tilework
`in-wall double oven
`gas cooktop
`hardwood
`new paint
`wood blinds
`solar panel
`compost pile
`locally sold Allen’s Naturally
`Local Whole Foods or similar
`no fireplace
`basement

So, Kung Fu Panda

This 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.

The 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–and Tai Lung, the leopard on steroids.

You did not just review “Kung-Fu Panda”.

Chuck Fouts - Jun 1, 2008

You did not just review “Kung-Fu Panda”.

Yep. Tomorrow, “The Rainbow Brite Movie”

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 “vacation” during that time. To give him a send-off this year, we took a mini vacation down to my Mom & Dad’s Friday through Sunday.

I had a very good time, though I did eat nonstop. Mom’s house is a little like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory–lots of omnipresent chocolate goodness. What’s not chocolate is sugary or sugar-free (Dad’s Type 2 diabetic).

- “Your situation reminds me of that Spaceballs line, ‘…evil will always triumph because good is dumb.’”

- “You’ll work yourself to death by being a nice guy”

(Upon being told there was a purpose in life)
- “Yes, there is: Helping people, and this has nothing to do with that.”

- “Did you forget your Teflon suit in that last meeting?”

* * *

I wonder: Am I equipped to handle this amount of B.S.?

I like #3, that’s classic. Has a bit of an Airpla…

Jeff Roberts - Jun 3, 2008

I like #3, that’s classic. Has a bit of an Airplane-ish “but that’s not important right now” flavor.

The weekend was a blur–running Joey up to Louisville, taking Maria down to Mom & Dad’s Saturday, and lunching with the church at the Cane Ridge Shrine Sunday afternoon. The weather powers-that-be missed the forecast–each day was beautiful in Georgetown.

Today, I’ve too many meetings, and much too much to do…yep, must be back in 082.

* * *

Coolest part of the weekend? Working on a New Holland Hay Baler with my Dad. Just like old times…grease everywhere, gears, chains, clutches. I’m just a tad more mechanically capable than I used to be. That was my Father’s Day present…hanging out with my Dad.

Well, after 10 months, I’m right back on the same floor in the same building I was in for 6 years. I’m sharing a 12’x12’ office with a boisterous guy, Patrick, and have a terrific view out the window onto “downtown” Lexington (such as it is).

This building also shares a parking lot with Del’s building, so we don’t have to drive to pick one another up. Good all around, though I’m now much farther away from the other guys on the printer I need to be working with.

Welcome back. Now we’ll see if I get sent to the …

Jeff Roberts - May 5, 2008

Welcome back. Now we’ll see if I get sent to the 4th floor or what.

muhahaha

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.

Ten 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’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.

Ah, yes. They’re talking about a 25-year reunion t…

Jeff Roberts - May 3, 2008

Ah, yes. They’re talking about a 25-year reunion this year, and one friend is trying to arrange an alternative reunion…I just. Don’t. Care. Anymore.

or “Man, do I need a swaybar”

Six runs on a ~70 second course where you hit 60mph before a 10mph right-hand hairpin. YEEEEEEHAW.

It was a good day, except: I came in second, I forgot to pack lunch, and I forgot to pack sunscreen. I’ve a nice beet-red thing going on on my arms, legs, and face.

I think a front swaybar (at minimum) is in my future, if not a full STX-compliant wheel & tire package. I’m a tad tired of playing on (and destroying) my all-seasons.

Let’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.

It’s also great fun, laugh-out-loud funny in places, well-paced, and genuinely exciting. It doesn’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.

We had a share-session on Polyglot programming the other day, after Mark returned from SDWest 2008.

Tonight, I had an evil thought:

Half of these languages are ones most in the audience have neither seen nor played with–what if you added some “trick” language names to the slides to see how full of crap your audience was. It’s a play on the same allegory from “The Emperor’s New Clothes”:

“…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.”

Too funny. I helped a few with CS101 homework, to …

Jeff Roberts - May 2, 2008

Too 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’t compile?

Pretty awesome (if mundane) weekend:

Saturday, we went to Sam’s Club and filled two carts in supplies for our new Chest Freezer (thank you, Tax Rebate!) Then, I mowed & trimmed the yard while doing an oil change on the Odyssey. Pretty quiet, stress-free day.

Sunday was just…perfect. Church was great–our pastor preached a message on how unbiblical debt is (unless for urgent necessities), complete with a “come forward and shred your credit card” alter call. (only 1 person did). Then, Maria and I cruised down (at 55mph!) to Mom & Dad’s in the Camry.

…it’s all just smoke and mirrors?

Ultimately, 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.

Atop that, we’ve layered: Subroutines, Modules, Functional Programming, Structured Programming, Object-Orientation (Objects, Inheritance, Polymorphism, Composition/Aggregation), Closures, Atoms, Processes, Multithreading, Semaphores, etc.

We’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…need them, in fact.

the word “lossy” in scrabble?

Whitney - May 5, 2008

the word “lossy” in scrabble?

No, it’s the antonym of a(nother) jarg… HarryC - May 5, 2008

LOL!

No, it’s the antonym of a(nother) jargon word–lossless, which comes to us from the world of compression.

“Lossless” 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.

…so, they’ve put together an “Innovation” 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’s remote-controlled this, electronic that, and lots of “so, what’s THAT good for?”

One thing I was really salivating over showed-up the other day:

Yep, it’s a Kindle Amazon’s eBook reader.

VERY neat.

It uses an ’electronic paper’ display…instead of being the normal LCD screen on, say, an iPhone, it’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’s just like you’re reading a book. Controls exist for flipping forwards and backwards through the book. Even the form-factor is pleasant and intuitive–like a big paperback or a small hardcover.

Ooooh, have been wanting to get my hands on one of…

Jeff Roberts - May 4, 2008

Ooooh, have been wanting to get my hands on one of those…