Posts

Dave Ramsey has recommended it on several occasion… Chris - Jan 2, 2008 Dave Ramsey has recommended it on several occasions, so I added it to my “to read” list a few weeks ago. Looking for something to use a Borders’ 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’ve confirmed my assumptions from those reviews… Thanks for the warning about it. ...

Yeah, yeah, I’m a eurosnob. Sue me. The Camry is getting on my nerves…it sure beats walking, and it gets great mileage on the highway, but I’d really like to get back into a hatchback stick with good steering. I’ve heard good things about the Mazda3, but I don’t like their looks all that much. The E30 has world-class steering, but it’s only a coupe, it gets 20mpg on a good day, and it’s loud and rides like a brick. And it’s about as safe as a car designed in 1980 with 1st gen high-explosive Airbags can be (that is, not very) ...

One part of programming I enjoy is the creative process–taking a thing you’ve sketched out on a whiteboard, and making it come alive. Once you’re at this long enough though, you start to see common problems crop-up, no matter what problem you’re solving or what language you’re solving it in. I’d like to think through one of those today (or at least start to…) The problem is, I can’t really give a snazzy name to the problem itself. When you’re dealing with multithreaded programming, you can say “I have concurrency problems,” 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 “meta” problem–a problem about a problem. ...

As a programmer, should it bother me that I’m beginning to think of Windows as a well-documented, flexible system? One that’s not-too-awful to program in? I beginning to understand why Rana found Java so jarring…documentation varies in quality and it’s all over the place. With Windows, MSDN is your friend :D (Note: I don’t find windows secure, consistent, or all that well-designed, but after reading Raymond Chen’s excellent “The Old New Thing” it’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.)

Skyscapes

Spiffy. Jeff Roberts - Jan 4, 2008 Spiffy.

Really enjoyed this one, in spite of myself. Jessica Alba’s hot, thought her blonde hairdo is jarring at best. Lots of humor and social commentary here, especially surrounding Alba–she wishes for a normal life, she laments being the hottest woman on the planet, she exclaims after a ‘wardrobe malfunction,’ “Why does this always happen to me?!” The 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’s exactly the same feeling I get about the actors here–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. ...

For my pal Jamie: GUI programming is hard. So, the big marquee part of Microsoft Visual C++ has been the “Visual” part, where you draw-out your lovely dialog boxes using a GUI creation tool, then the IDE generates the code & and resource files from that. Okay, so far so good, but I spent most of this morning trying to get this little MFC app I’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’s a win-win, right? Everyone benefits! Bonuses galore! ...

My 6-year-old ID badge is held together by scotch tape and a well-placed paperclip. I’ve worn through 4 plastic snaps to hold it tenously to my waist.

dude - get a new one! :) One to show your new se… HarryC - Jan 3, 2008 dude - get a new one! :) One to show your new sexy married responsible self to the world!….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’t want THAT old picture flashing on the news would you?! ...

I’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: We acknowledge only one authority in church matters–the 66 book Protestant Bible. There is no synod, ecclesial council, catechism, or presbyteroi. The Bible says what it says. ...

I benefit from the polyglot nature of my upbringing. I speak two languages–English and Kentuckian. I can blend into almost anything from a discussion of Platonic philosophy through a rib eating contest at the county fair. At the Truck Pull tonight at Rupp Arena, I realized that not everyone benefits from this, so I thought I’d prepare this handy guide. Thus: Easy ways to tell if you’re having a Redneck good time ...

Thought about this on the way in today…things I’d like to do before I die (yeah, alot of them are car-related, so I’d better do them before they outlaw the internal combustion engine…) * Watch the 24 Hours of Daytona * Attend the Skip Barber Racing school. * (Re)Build an engine from scratch * Do the Classical Grand Tour: Rome, Florence, Venice, Athens. * Visit Paris (France, not Kentucky…) * Have a ride in an aerobatic airplane/fighter jet. * Attend the Grand Prix of Monaco * Go sailing in the Carribean. (No Hurricanes, please!) * Learn to play piano * Go to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. * Visit Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Gettysburg. * Learn Spanish (seems like a must nowadays…) * Learn Greek. * Read: St. Augustine, Plato, Martin Luther, John Locke * Run a 10k * Write a poem for each of my kids * Contribute *something* to greater society that has my name on it… ...

Top headline on the Scott County Public Schools Homepage R U READY 4 COLLEGE SEMINAR Attention Parents of All Students Grades 8-12 Ready to send your kid to private school yet?

Sam Swope Smart We are pleased to announce the opening of smart center Louisville at 11601 Plantside Drive in Louisville. I think this is a reaction to the “we passed on getting a MINI dealership back in 2001 (d’oh!)”. So, Swope has Smart cars…interesting. Why do I see visions of every hipster on Bardstown road grabbing one of these itty bitty things?

Brings back Italy memories. Those things are small… Jeff Roberts - Jan 1, 2008 Brings back Italy memories. Those things are small enough to perpendicular-park, rather than parallel (don’t try that with your church bus). I 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’t catch up to get a closer look - what’s top speed on those things?) ...

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 “Locks” going down–The Cowboys and the Colts. We get to see a January championship game in LAMBEAU FIELD, baby!! I can’t wait (won’t really matter, any of the AFC teams could kill any of the NFC teams, including Green Bay)… ...

So, I’m looking at my budget today, and I notice that I’m spending ~19% of my take-home pay on housing (yay–well within our means), but 27% on transportation, including: Van payment, gas for 3 cars, registration, repairs + upkeep, and insurance. :-) I’m thinking of moving to new york! * * * On 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. ...

Harvid, my mom still reads yr blog. She’s Oba… Biru - Jan 4, 2008 Harvid, my mom still reads yr blog. She’s Obaming! The market will hit a “true” bottom when its sorrow & woe is on the front page of the NYTimes– not the business section, the front page. Then you & 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! ...

Ah the joys of compiling a large native product from scratch. The time to get a cup of coffee, or blog. Some random musings: * The stock market is in the crapper, and will probably stay there. The economy is fundamentally flawed, the the recession has already started–no one’s owning up to that yet. I’m reading Alan Greenspan’s “Age of Turbulence”, and I don’t think we’ve seen this sort of market since the 1980’s, though this is sort of a hybrid–recession, but without fundamental strength in finance. Actually, it might be exactly like the early 1980’s, where the banking industry tried to kill itself lending money to Latin America. ...