Year: 2008

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Disturbing News of the Day

Can you say "psychotherapy?" I knew you could!

A 12-year-old girl has testified in court that she saw her father kill her mother and he then forced her to help dismember the body with a circular saw. [Source, WBIR]

Now that’s some authoritative parenting! I can’t even get my children to sweep the floors! I wonder what that girls career will become. And the grossness continues…

Police said James Hawkins cleaned the saw and returned it to a store where he had obtained it. [Source, WBIR]

…which means someone else bought that circular saw and is cheerfully using it to build their bookshelves in their house. Of course, they’ll never understand why the books seem to rearrange themselves, occasionally jump off the shelf, and exhibit symmetrical book stacking just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947.

I don’t get how someone could do this to another human being much less include their child in the act!

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Oversleeping

Oversleeping takes on whole definition when the person you are working with is 5 hours (or 14) ahead of you!

Stress seems to make it worse wearing the body down. I have written before that the stress reaction used to make sense. You are on the savanna, a lion pops out of the tall grass and begins chasing you, stress kicks in causing an adrenaline rush, and you bolt into the forest to escape becoming a picnic dinner. The stress is short lived. But ongoing stress (days, weeks, years) beats the dickens out of you! Then add to it that I have been staying up past midnight and waking up with or before the roosters and the body feels run over. I suppose those conditions beg for a collapse. Why couldn’t it have come in two days instead of this morning?!

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Collation?

You mean like getting the papers from the copier in order?

You know, I have probably exported and imported data from hundreds of databases at this point in my life. And never, I say never, have I ever had a collation problem. Collation has to deal with how a database handles issues of sort order, case sensitivity, and sensitivity to accents. It becomes important when your database is not US centric or is going to serve an International audience. Last night it got me.

I tried directly updating data on a server that is probably located in Amsterdam and ended up with:

Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "Latin1_General_CI_AS" and "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS" in the equal to operation

Ugh.

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Do-It-Yourself Vasectomy

In December, I set up a chipin campaign to raise money for an operation I promised Cathy 3 years ago. The vasectomy campaign ends in six hours and the Internet hath spoken! Either the digital world out there wants 1) me to have more children or 2) see a DIY vasectomy. As complimented as I am that you desire more of my DNA stay in the gene pool, I am going to have to go with the DIY vasectomy. The only question that remains is to stream via webcam or not to stream? And do I create a chipin campaign for pain killers and re-constructive surgery? Now where’s that Swiss Army knife?

(ala Rocky Horror‘s Time Warp)
It’s just a snip to the left
And a snip to the right
Pull the sack up and put the sutures in tight
No pelvic thrust
For 30 day ay ay ayay ays
Let’s do the vasectomy today!

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So where’s the Reality?

On the positive side, Tommy has graduated high school which is quiet a momentous event. This is the last week of school and the two teens are already out with the tween and young girl having their last half day today. I have been coding like a madman staying up as late as 2am and waking as early as 2am And we have entered birthday season. And with the kids out of school for the summer I don’t have to turn into a taxi quiet as regularly.

On the negative side, I am not turning code quickly enough to keep my clients in a happy place (but does software ever develop quickly enough?). I have a stack of paperwork that needs a couple day’s worth of attention. (TMI alert) I have not bathed in a week (it takes too much time away from programming) and my head is starting to look like Einstein with dreads. I have a squirrel trap in the attic building negative karma in my life with an interest rate that makes Sears look tame. Speaking of interest rates, someone opened the flood gates on that sieve I call a bank account at the same time the food shelves decided to run bare. Did I mention it’s birthday season?

I think that sums up the last week or so and probably accurately predicts the coming month or two.