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Clot II – Return of the Nosebleed

Producer: Amy
Lead role: Amy
Supporting cast: Dad
Clot summary: At 2:30am, 7 year old girl will erupt from bed with nose gushing blood leaving small drip on favorite pink pillow and a bit of a puddle on the sheets. She will try to deal with the problem herself by sitting on the toilet (lid down) and rocking in a half daze to make sure that blood drips cover as much of the wooden, where linoleum was before the dogs tore it up, bathroom floor as possible. Only when nose bleed subsides will she wander downstairs to rouse the sleeping father who will don his bio-hazard suit and begin to console the weary child…
Planned releases: Rumor has it that Colt III – Revenge of the O Positive is in production and scheduled for an early release.

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On programming – how to read other people’s code and why

Programming is an art. I [You] do a lot of business that starts off with "…and my developer just isn’t around anymore…" Dozens of statements could come before or after that but no of those statements change the meaning. Quite simply, you are [I am] about to look at someone else’s code and that person may be an expert programmer or a newbie borrowing snippets from other people’s examples. The code may be documented correct or incorrectly or not at all. Regardless, you [I] have to work with that code no matter its state or quality.

If you are a professional software developer, or aspire to be one, you will need to know a lot of of things. Various maths, stats, languages, frameworks, methodologies, tools, etc. Fads and buzzwords will come and go, all during your career. You’ll master some, ignore some, laugh at some. … You have got to be able to read other people’s code. [Source, Design by Gravity, How to Read Other People’s Code — and Why]

Worthwhile read by Christopher Schanck

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From the mouths of babes

I dropped the milk. The cap popped off and poured all over the floor.

Me: "DAMMIT!"
Evan, 4 years old: "Dad said dammit."
Mom: * gives Dad eyeballs *
Amy, 7 years old: "Moooom! Evan said dammit!"
Evan: "No, Dad said dammit."
Amy: "Don’t say dammit."
Noah, 13 years old: "Evan, don’t say that. It’s a dirty word."
Evan: "No! Dammit. Dammitdammitdammitdamitdamitdamitdamtdatmdaaaaammmmmmmit!"
Mom: covering her face in towels to hide her laughter.
Dad: hiding in the fridge unable to breath laughing.

Uncle already! I get the message. Mouth meet soap.

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The GSMNP From My Front Door

These pictures were shot with a 1.3 megapixel cellphone camera while driving downparked on the side of the road 9:30ish in the morning. On a clear day, you can see the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This isn’t quiet the view from my front yard as we live slightly below the top of what becomes a valley so our view is obscured by trees and a slight hill but it doesn’t take much to get a view of the Smokies.

Smoky Mountains from Morrell DriveFog...Is Stephen King in town?

That dark orange band is the mountains, not clouds. On a clear day, you can get a very nice view. On days that we cannot seem them, these mountains are obscured from our view by haze, pollution, fog, clouds, and busy minds. This view is a nice reminder of a treasure not a far distance from home that we completely under utilize and take for granted.

From great reading on our wonderful park, check out The Smoky Mountain Hiking Blog.

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From the mouths of babes

Moments after I posted Dad Fail, Evan walked up to me with a question.

Evan, 4 years old: "Dad, why do you always say…" He bent over at the waist at a 45 degree angle with his arms hanging straight down and in a deepened gruff voice, "crap crap crap crap crap crap crap…"

It just went on and on but in the end, it turned out he was repeating a noise from the Nintendo DS Mario game.

Please excuse the screwed up aspect ratio on the video but I did that in haste.