Okay, so I decried myspace and Hi5, but 43Things is just, well…neat.

Here’s my page

Okay, here’s the scary reality of writing software: It’s like building a railroad from Chicago to Los Angeles. Everything’s hunkey-dorey until you get to Denver and go: “Who put a MOUNTAIN RANGE here?”.

Sad part: A project manager would look at the above and say, ‘well, we’re halfway there, and it only took us 6 months so far, so you should be able to surmount…um…whatever’s in the way from here on out…in 8 months. Work overtime. Think outside the box.’

I’m not much for prophesy, but I believe we’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’re on a completely different machine.

Case 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–IM to their team or answering email. This ’laptop’ culture has gone through several distinct phases:

Place

Score

Driver & Navigator

Club

1

211

Ginny Eager & Robin Murphey

SCCA

2

240

Lo Arnold & Phil Schneider

SCCA

3

495

Ken Partymiller & Lee Wegner

PCA

4

690

Whitney & Harold Combs

SCCA

5

801

George & Deanne Luxbacher

PCA

Not DFL, but pretty close. However, the more I think about it, this was my first “real” TSD rally as a navigator, and Whitney was driving an unfamiliar, non-performance car (hard to make turns on a dime, plus you can’t maintain speed in an automatic as easily)

Church was amazing today, with the music, atmosphere, message, and Sunday school coming together perfectly. I was very glad to be there.

Gary 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–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…)

Glorious rant by my pal Josh

Shameless Ebay link

:) I’m selling everything that’s not nailed down.

This godawful tripe, shot in location in Ireland, is slow, pointless, and invents ways to make love, battle, and death boring. Don’t see it, even on netflix. You’ve been warned.

This isn’t normally a tech blog because:

2. there are enough of those

3. I generally don’t think about computers outside of work

However, I wanted to write a quick blurb about subversion. Subversion is a “version control system”, 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.

Today’s wonderful Joel Spolsky article.

My 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 “harder languages” and platforms like C, LISP, and pascal to java was already underway.

In essence, Joel’s argument in the article is that some people just won’t ‘get it’ enough to survive interesting computer applications in the hardest areas. That is, you can be pretty dim–and I’ve had such people on my team–and stil get by in the Java/J2EE world. Java hides enough ugliness from you that you can be mediocre and get by.

Not only did I get this, I converted the hex in my head and almost had the ASCII offsets memorized.

Thank you, Bryan Crawley.

Daddy wants one of THESE BABIES

Dual-core intel chips, 4x faster than my powerbook….15.4" high-contrast display…YEAH!

Starbucks info

Yeah, if you ask for a “regular,” you’re nuts, but if you ask for a “short” they have to stand and deliver.

Grand!…er…Grande!

March of the Pengins does many things for you:

2. Makes you thankful for being human

3. Impresses you with the stark beauty of Antarctica

4. Reminds you how fragile life is

This 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.

As I sit at my desk on a sunny day, I’m contemplating Murphy’s law, which states that whatever can go wrong will, at the worst possible time. :-) today, would seem like that day.

I 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.

Yeah, about that…

I talk in my sleep. I didn’t know this until I went to college & I got a roommate. Up to this point, I didn’t think Whitney did, until…

[interior]
[my bedroom, 6am]

Bella: mphrfhfhfhfhfh…chicken

Me: Huh?

B [mumbly]: did you take the chicken out of the oven?

Me: Huh?

B [annoyed, distinct]: Did you take the chicken out of the OVEN?! It’ll burn..

[I go to the kitchen and verify that the only think in the cold oven is the breadstone, then return]

With the MINI washed, detailed and snug in the garage, we’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’m not the best passenger in traffic. (Sorry, honey!)

But the day did start off very well (); let’s hope it’s better than yesterday. I was in a real funk yesterday, thanks to my Mom, who’s convinced a used car is always “somebody else’s problem” in all circumstances. Since every car on the road is a “used” car, I disagree. Granted, some people take care of their cars, and some don’t but keeping things in perspective, no one needs more than a $4k-$8k car. Our Intrigue was in that range, and it’s a marvelous car so far. I’ve had AAA for three years now through work and it works.

Fark Link

In 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…yikes.

The rather depressing link

The 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.

Rationale
I’m trying to cash-out the equity I have in it, pay off CC’s and Whitney’s Intrigue (“Sharkey”) and get something fun, but lots less pricey. Full coverage insurance + $600/year in property taxes suck. I really don’t want to begin the new year living AT my means the way I have been. When you’re a Dave Ramsey follower, and a Christian in general, there comes a time where you have to make hard decisions–decisions about following God and securing the lives of your family.