"Murphy was an optimist!"
Boo at the zoo October 15, 2009 6:05 pm
Posted by utterz in : Daily Life, Podcasting
But what does it mean? October 15, 2009 11:18 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Deep Thoughts, Philosophy"Being out of coffee grounds" sounds like it should be a metaphor for something. Btw, I’m out of coffee grounds.
add a commentThis video is for the wife October 15, 2009 10:38 am
Posted by phreadz in : UncategorizedLINK: http://phz.in/1quq
And the beat goes on… October 15, 2009 2:27 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily LifeSpent the day frantically coding and troubleshooting a custom WordPress theme. Spent the evening cleaning up and configuring machines. Arrived home at 2am to…go to sleep?…no…to do more custom WordPress theme programming. In the morning I’ll get children to school, drive Evan to preschool,(fall break) hopefully find more programming to do during the day (need me?), clean up my juggling gear, then juggle at the zoo from 5:30-8pm then either go to the end of a sweat lodge or go back to working on hardware.
From the mouths of babes October 14, 2009 5:43 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Amy, Cathy, Daily Life, Family, From the mouths of babes, Of Being DadAmy, 7 years old: "I’m not going in my room because Sarah is asleep in there."
Me: "Sarah isn’t in the house."
Amy: "Then what’s that big lump in the bed?"
Me: "Personally, I wouldn’t call my mother a big lump."
Love and care of your web developer – For artists October 13, 2009 9:03 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Programming, TechnologyDear Graphic Designers,
I understand that you are artists and by definition probably a little prone to inconsistencies for the sake of artistic license and creativity. I’m a little artsy fartsy myself so I can appreciate the desire to freehand a stroke rather than pull out a straight edge and right angle; after all this is art, not drafting…or is it. See, a web developer craves and desires regularity. Consistency, predictability, repeatability are programmable. That is, I can write something once and use it over and over with forecastable results. In odd cases, I can program exceptions. Exceptions to rules, much like the real world, are ripe for abuse and unpredictable results.
Consider the job of a doorman at a nightclub. He has been given a procedure. When someone enters the club, he increases the number on a counter in his hand. When someone leaves the club, he decreases the number on a counter in his hand. He is now given a rule which is as long as the number of people in the club is less than a particular number, let’s say 740, then he should let the person in the front of the line in. Once the counter hits 740, he doesn’t let people in. Nice and simple. Now let’s say the manager has a thing for a certain type of woman so he makes an exception to the rule. Any pretty blond woman under the age of 30 wearing a tank top and skirt above the knees immediate gets in without standing in line. We have introduced several opportunities for error but let’s focus on the most obvious one. If 740 people are in the club and a pretty blond 23 year old in a mini-skirt and tank top walks up, does the doorman let her in or send her to the back of the line?
Back to our graphic artists. When you are designing a layout for a website, the layout is typically created as a single image then sliced into smaller images. If you are designing a horizontal navigation bar, when slicing it up do not make two images 41 pixels tall, one image 42 pixels tall, one image 43 pixels tall, and the creme de la creme, the final image 44 pixels tall, and expect me to easily line up the text below the images. Especially don’t do this when the extraneous pixel height is all white space! Thank you. That is all.
/rant
add a commentFrom the mouths of babes October 13, 2009 5:58 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Evan, Family, From the mouths of babesEvan, 4 years old, playing Wii, gleefully announces: "I’m Donkey Dong!"
Okay. I’ll concede there may be some speech therapy in his near future.
add a commentWhat was that great sucking noise? October 13, 2009 11:00 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Family, Of Being DadThat whoosh you heard this morning was air rushing into the vacuum of my checking account as each child left for school today with check in hand. It wasn’t until a few days ago when I watched the opening sequence of The Jetson’s Movie with the children that I really came to appreciate that daily moment George has with 16 year old daughter Judy as he rides the conveyor belt out of the house and she holds her hand out for some cash, the rest of which Jane gets.
add a commentThis Broken House October 13, 2009 9:42 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, HouseMicrowave RIP
add a commentFrom the mouths of babes October 12, 2009 5:21 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Evan, Family, From the mouths of babes, Of Being DadEvan, 4 years old: "Dad, can you make me some chips?"
Me, noting that it is 5:20pm: "No."
Evan, softening voice, tilting head, and putting on droopy eyes: "Please make me some chips."
Me: "No, I’m working. You have to let me finish my work so that I can make dinner. NO no no."
Evan: "Okay. But please."
Me: "I’ll be right up. Just let me make this one blog post."
On Freelancing October 12, 2009 5:17 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Programming, TechnologyRule 417: You will work every bit as hard or harder on small, low budget jobs as you will on large jobs.
Note: This rule is unbreakable.
add a commentDear Beer Fairy… October 9, 2009 4:51 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life…I still believe in you!
1 comment so farMy affair with Jott October 9, 2009 2:10 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Communications, Daily Life, Gadgets, TechnologyI was amazed with Jott when it first came out and it quickly became my favorite memory aid, mind declutterer, and to-do list organizer. Jott allows you to speak a message and have it transcribed to your Jott dashboard, Twitter, Remember The Milk, Google Calendar and many more services. It works through a combination of speech recognition and human transcribers. Then the honeymoon ended and Jott brought its free version to a close. I recently deemed this tool important enough to me to sign up again and it has already paid for itself.
I let Jott send me reminders to both SMS and email. Our neighborhood lacks an association so I sent myself a note. This is what Jott sent me in email. (Click the picture for a larger view) Thank you Jott! Shh. Don’t tell Cathy.
add a comment
Thursday’s Schedule October 8, 2009 7:34 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Family, Of Being DadThursday’s schedule is fairly consistent.
4:30am – wake up and work until 6:15
6:15am – wake up Amy, the 7 year old and turn on everyone else’s lights except Evan, the 4 year old’s
6:15am-6:55am – avoid the computer and focus on getting Amy ready for school. This includes feeding, prompting her to get dressed, making sure that Sarah or Cathy fixes Amy’s hair (I’m forbidden), and making a lunch.
6:55am – Drive Amy to the bus stop (includes some adult social time with 2 other dads..a morning pleasure)
7:15am – Return to the house and prod the teenagers to make sure the 16 year old and 13 year old are ready to go to their respective schools. Distribute checks in response to last minute, "Oh yeah! By the way, I need…"s
7:15am-8:15am – Work which may consist of emails and the bureaucratic side of my job
7:25am – Make sure Noah, the 13 year old has actually left the building
7:30am – Remind Sarah, the 16 year old not to make her ride to school wait on her
8:15am-8:40am – Get Evan, the 4 year old fed, dressed, and ready for school. This includes making a lunch.
8:40am (this could be as late as 9am) – Drive Evan to his pre-school which starts at 9am.
9:30am – Arrive back at home for programming. Sometimes Thursdays might be client meetings or sales meetings. Cathy does the afternoon pickups and child related errands.
So if the 4 year old is supposed to sleep until 8 or 8:15, why is he playing a video game with his 13 year old brother at 7:15?! And yes, I did wake at 4:30 but after walking the dog I returned to bed until 6:15 today.
add a commentThe local area network issue October 7, 2009 8:57 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Hardware, TechnologyMy home network has my development servers on it. One is an antique Windows 2000 server which is currently out of commission for bad memory, and the other is a Ubuntu Linux workstation tweaked to run SAMBA, PHP, MySQL etc. Used to be any machine on the LAN could open up Windows Explorer (or Ubuntu’s Places) and surf to another machine: My Network Places -> Entire Network -> Microsoft Windows Network -> Workgroup and then see all the machines on the network and browse to a shared folder. Now I get an error message:
Workgroup is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.
The list of server for this workgroup is not currently available.
And from Linux (Places->Network->Windows Network):
Unable to mount location
Failed to retrieve share list from server
It’s conceivable that the Windows 2000 server was acting as a domain controller but the LAN is setup on workgroups not domains. Let’s assume the source of this problem is the now semi-retired Windows 2000 server. My home router is a D-LINK DIR-615. So the challenge is to get either the router or the Linux box to fill whatever role the Windows 2000 server used to perform to make my network browseable. Please note that if I refer to the machines specifically, I can still work with files from that machine. So \\mickymouse\familypics would still allow the family pictures to be seen all over the house. The problem is the same for printer sharing. I cannot browse to a shared printer but if I know the \\machinename\sharename I can setup a remote machine to print to the shared printer.
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