A juggling technophile shares personal stories, challenges, humor and perhaps some political commentary.
If you are a web developer (like me) and know AJAX, then you can get a job paying $240,000 per year.
Training on the application software will begin prior to deployment and will take place in Virginia. Deployment will be period of 6-12 months. A Department of Defense secret clearance within last 24 months. [Source]
Tempting?
So IIS v6 wasn’t letting form variables post. <cfdump var="#form#"> would show an empty structure. CF’s built-in webserver on the development box worked fine. Changing the method from post to get made things even stranger with the query string using & instead of &. I finally found the solution. I had used the obscure html tag <base"
<base href="http://domain.com/">
IIS v6 did not like this. Removing that one line fixed the problem. So much for trying to be the perfect coder.
Last year Cathy, Barry, Jay and myself had a blast raising money for Farm Aid with Blogathon 2006. Cathy has participated in Blogathon several years. This year I thought we were taking off. I was mistaken. Thank you Barry for inspiring us this year. I like the cause.
Star has done an incredible service for Tommy. Star has a waiting list. It took us 3 years to get accepted into the program and I have heard of some folks waiting 7 years. Once they complete their indoor arena, they will be able to double capacity and reduce the waiting lists (as I understand). Please support us by making a pledge for this Saturday’s (in 3 days) Blogathon! You can follow our 24 hours of blogging at http://domesticpsychology.com/blogathon/.
Wow! The things that we miss. I just learned that Pennsylvania has had an underground fire burning for 45 years and that it is likely to burn for another 245 years!
An exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to the standard policy of burning the garbage on a weekly basis in the borough landfill, located in an abandoned mine pit in the southeast portion of Centralia. Attempts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, and it continued to burn throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
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There are no current plans to extinguish the fire, which is consuming an eight-mile seam containing enough coal to fuel it for 250 years.
[Source]
Apparently, at $42 million, it is cheaper to move a town than extinguish the fire.
The federal and state governments gave up trying to extinguish the fire in the 1980s. “Pennsylvania didn’t have enough money in the bank to do the job,†says Steve Jones, a geologist with the state’s Office of Surface Mining.
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Across the globe, thousands of coal fires are burning. Nearly impossible to reach and extinguish once they get started, the underground blazes threaten towns and roads, poison the air and soil and, some say, worsen global warming. … The United States, with the world’s largest coal reserves, harbors hundreds of blazes from Alaska to Alabama. Pennsylvania, the worst-afflicted state, has at least 38—an insignificant number compared with China and India, where poverty, old unregulated mining practices and runaway development have created waves of Centralias.
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Scientists estimate that Australia’s BurningMountain, the oldest known coal fire, has burned for 6,000 years.
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…in the United States; near Glenwood Springs, Colorado, for example, an old coal mine has burned for the past 100 years.
[Source]
So, why are we still using coal?
Student: Words.
Master: Sharper than knives.
Because we should all live like we are Ferris Bueller. Thanks Cathy!
Ferris handles everything because he tells himself he can. Cameron can’t handle anything because he tells himself he can’t. [Source]
Student: I will not be overwhelmed!
Master: One cannot accomplish a single task when thinking about all other tasks.
I have returned from a jaunt in the woods (story to follow later). I feel renewed! My taunters are still at large but I will not fall into their trap of living a panicked, stressful way. Prior to this trip I slipped into a very reactionary lifestyle. I have returned to responsiveness and plan to remain so. Let’s see what happens. Time to open and read 9 days of email.
Student: The apprehension is terribly stressful.
Master: Thinking about the worse case is often more horrible than living it.
Home!
On this day I died.
Student: I’m a fool.
Master: I guess that says it all.
I really, really like the MySQL migration tool. I just can’t say it enough.
Amy, wearing Mom’s bra on the outside of her shirt with chest puffed out: "Look at my BIG nipples!"
So last night I’m on the phone with the sheriff’s office when a car pulls up and a stranger approaches our house. The lady quickly approaches in tears and starts asking about our outdoor cat. She describes it in explicit details while wiping her eyes. I excuse myself and tell the officer on the phone that she can cancel the 2 week property watch I was scheduling.
Being slow on the uptake, and after hearing several sobbing, "I’m sorry"s, I prepare myself for the words, "I killed your cat." Of course, had I remembered why I was talking to the sheriff’s office in the first place, the story would have been instantly clear to me. See, 15 minutes prior (roughly 11pm), Tommy calmly came downstairs and told me, "someone just came up to our porch, crouched down like they were sneaking, then saw me through the window and ran back to their car and drove off." I start thinking that maybe talking to Say Uncle about improving our home arsenal would be a good idea. I prepare myself for the worse and walk outside expecting to see toilet paper in the trees or maybe the kids sandbox missing. I couldn’t find anything. Maybe they were scoping us out. That’s when I called the sheriff. They immediately put us on a property watch and promised a cruiser would go past the house several times in the night. But my concern was for my family’s safety while I’m incommunicado in the West Virginia mountains next week. The sheriff transfers me to another department which schedules property watches for up to two weeks. That’s when this lady approached my house. I have to say, it was comforting having an officer listening in while our conversation began.
As it turns out, one of her 10 cats went missing about two weeks ago. Her pet psychic explained that the cat was ok and still near her house. Ah! The pet psychic. That certainly explained how she was able to find a dark gray cat on a county road (ie. no street lights), on a moonless night with the porch lights turned off. She showed me a picture of her cat which was strikingly similar to my cat. Mark points out that she probably knew how to find the cat by remembering where she took the picture during a previous day.
I ponder offering to let her keep the cat but she breaks into explaining that she knew it wasn’t her cat when she got home and it started acting strange. Ok. That translates to "she start tearing things up and peeing everywhere." That would be because she’s feral, a huntress, and abhors the indoors. She literally would rather be out in a tornado than come into the house (that’s a real example!).
I’m sure the cat was in her trunk and she was just going to release it but saw the porch lights on and knew she was busted. So she offered to go get the cat and bring it back (ie. drive out of sight, get the cat out of the trunk, make a U-turn and come back). I have to say I was impressed with how she held the cat to her and didn’t get shredded into a bloody pulp. She handed her to me and I took her with extreme trepidation! This is the cat that has killed a rabbit, squirrels, and two bats. I like my arms!
I suggested that her pet psychic could still be correct and told her about the crawl space access in the abandoned house on the corner where my animals have been trapped before. She went on her way and after a little debate, I called the non-emergency number to cancel the night’s property watch and explain to the sheriff that the stolen goods had been returned.
