I’ve spent the day trying to accomplish something that should have taken 40 minutes and is preventing me from doing the things I really want to be doing today. Something that I’m not even getting paid for. I feel that I’ve been constantly interrupted. At one point I declared, "I’m taking the next 40 minutes and finishing this" during which time I was interrupted 3 times. So finally a crisis hit. Minor. The 7 year old, the 4 year old, and the dog went missing in the creek. Normally this would not be a big deal but we’ve had substantial rain these past couple of days. Also, I believe there is a sinkhole in the creek that the children do not know about. It’s mostly covered with debris right now. It’s not really on my property and I’ve been wanting to clear the debris away to see if it is the entrance to the rumored cave that is supposedly nearby. Right now, I simply know that water flows into the ground through the debris at that point and I don’t want the children near it. So I channeled Coach Boomer (which I only now realized is one of my heroes, Bruce Campbell!) for some echo location and proceeded to be anything except that great TV dad that I so aspire to be. Several tears later, everyone is safe but mad at me. And I feel like crud.
Category: Daily Life
Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.
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Rainy Wednesday
I like the rain…except when it floods my basement but the trench seems in good shape so I don’t anticipate any flooding. I wish I had a nice screened in porch to enjoy the rain. Can’t add anymore words. Work calls.
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We are only human
Either she was wrong or I was wrong but it doesn’t matter because now it’s not right. Dammit damage control is expensive!
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Seeking Recommendations on Netbooks
We find ourselves on the road a bit too much to be as netsavvy and gadget freaky to not be able to have some productivity happening while out and about. I believe a netbook is an economical means to fill that connectivity hole our family stumbles into far too often. Do you have any suggestions, recommendations, or warnings on netbooks, brands and operating systems?
Via Twitter, I’ve learned that Dell solders memory into the netbook making them not easily upgradeable. I now know about http://www.netbookreviews.net/ thanks to xempt who also recommends NewEgg (a favorite shopping spot of mine). Jfloyd pointed out that lspegman has a Hackintosh netbook with a "few glitches but no biggie." steverb says netbooks are 90% the same hardware and gives kudos to Dell’s keyboard design. svandyke likes the ASUS eee (the company we must acknowledge as breaking the barrier for netbooks) and points to C|Net Reviews. ceffyl1 loves her Acer Aspire One D150. jeanroy gave a TweetBrain response (oops. I accidentally closed the question) with good links:
Here are some great links on netbook reviews. http://www.netbookreviews.com/ http://www.netbookreviews.net/ http://www.laptopmag.com/ http://reviews.cnet.com/best-netbooks/ I hope this helps your question. Please follow me on twitter when you get a chance. www.twitter.com/Jeanroy Thanks =D
Asus eee comparison chart.
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You can’t watch them all the time
I caught the seven year old giving the four year old a wedgie. This is one of those moments I feel for single parents because I could not respond rationally and had to tag myself out calling in the second parent. With Cathy’s help we try to convey that this breaks the "no touching between belly button and knees" rule. The question of concern is not why would you do this? but who did this to you? because obviously she learned it from someone. In my head I jump to the worst case scenarios and am horrified. I run down her list of friends and think of the opportunities where inappropriate play could be happening. We probe without making accusations. Amy relents and claims she didn’t learn it from anyone. Then why would she do it? This morning while watching the cartoon network with Amy and Evan, I have an epiphany; She learned it from television.
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From the mouths of babes
Evan was cuddling lovingly with Cathy. His head was resting upon her chest as she held him. As I walked by, I stroked his arm as I admired him and continued to toward my office. As I hit the stairs, I hear an excited, curious voice exclaim in question to his mother, "Did you have 3 hands!?"
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Still Recovering
Yesterday was calm, relaxing and very stress free. I slept deep with vivid dreams and slept late. My body still feels the recent abuse. My muscles in my arms ache. My mind feels recovered but I know that toward the end of this week the stress will grow because for the first time in a long time my project schedule is empty. This is one of the conundrums of working by yourself; you must be doing sales and the work at the same time. I strive to keep myself booked out two months at a time. Perhaps some greater force is telling me to take a few days off.
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From the mouths of babes
While I was playing cards (concentration) with Evan:
Evan, 4 years old: "Pause the game. I’ll be right back." -
Today is Postmorem Day
Yesterday a major project ended for me. This project, as most, consumed my life. I gave up sleeping, found myself wearing the same clothes days in a row because I didn’t know the day had changed, skipped meals, and pretty much neglected anything that wasn’t related to getting the job done. Today I examine the aftermath. Yes, I thought I’d take the day away from the computer but if you stop the momentum, the project never really closes.
When I was a quality assurance engineer so many eons ago, I pushed hard for postmortems. In the software world, a postmortem is an examination after the project to review the development process while fresh in mind with the goal of improving the process on upcoming projects. A postmortem doesn’t just discuss where things went wrong but where things went right. A postmortem can include the ever important cleanup that happens afterward such as backing up the development environment, closing out your notes, jotting down notes about assumptions that were made and things aside for the future, and anything else to bring full closure to a project. In the real world, not many people like postmortems. They represent overheard to management and extra work to the developer. And it may or may not be billable to the client. People want to simply celebrate the product delivery, shove everything on the desk to the floor, and move onto the next project.
My postmortem is not billable to the client. Examining the aftermath, I recognize the importance of wrapping up to be able to move on. I can’t even find the surface of my desk right now for the scattered notes and neglected pile of mail. Instead of taking a break today, I’m going to bring closure to my project. (and find my desk).
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A Day Off
I’m taking today away from the computer..um..I mean…you aren’t really reading this right now because I’m not at my keyboard…
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One of my babies is performing
I’m giddy and nervous as all get out. My most visible, mission critical web application ever is being put to the test in front of hundreds of people in a live audience. It’s cool to see it in action!
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For my wife. Who really has a thing for spiders.
I warn you. Watching this will forever change your life…uh…yeah…Well…maybe not but once you press play you won’t be able to stop watching.
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Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterli.
Replies. mp3
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So what am I doing at 2:30am?
I turn to my Windows98 machine running an ancient version of Photoshop. In a flattened image, I select a small region and copy its contents. I open a new image automatically sized to the selected region. I paste the copy into the new window and immediately copy the layer and hide the background layer. This gives me the ability to have transparency in the image. I outline the parts I want to keep then create a new layer. In that layer I fill the selection with red and reduce the opacity to 50%. Next I invert the selection and go back to the layer with my image. I delete the extraneous graphics and save the photoshop file. Then I save a gif with transparency optimized for the web. I go back to the source image and note the x, y coordinates of the upper left corner of the selection. I spin to my Linux box with MySQL Query Browser open and I update the database with the x, y coordinates and the new image name.
I’m repeating this process for roughly 160 images. I should be using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for this.