"Murphy was an optimist!"
Of Grasshoppers April 1, 2009 3:42 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Of Grasshoppers, PhilosophyStudent: How do you eat crow?
Master: First you must swallow your pride.
Bureaucracy R.I.P. April 1, 2009 3:36 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily LifeAn easy mistake as a freelancer is to get behind on paperwork. Maybe that paperwork is balancing your checkbook or sending invoices or mundane like writing up postmortems for projects and filing the supporting documentation or something more evil like IRS filings. Whatever it is, I’m caught up on all of mine!
2commentsToday’s Word April 1, 2009 10:07 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily LifePeptobismo
add a commentApril 1st – the most worthless day on the Internet April 1, 2009 7:29 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Of InterestHow’s the saying go? "Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see" or did I get that backwards. The point is some inanely hugh amount of information on the Internet is inaccurate. I’ve always said 90%. This is why you should always confirm your sources! On April 1st I just assume 100% of the information is wrong. Of course, whose April 1st are we talking about? Darren Rouse of Problogger fame lives in Austrailia so for many people last year his April Fool’s Day joke came in on March 31st making people believe it was real. My first 30 seconds of looking at the Internet today:
- BREAKING: Warner Bros. Acquires The Pirate Bay
- U.S. plans role in reshaping GM
- Google introduces world’s first AI tasked-array system
- Introducing Opera Face Gestures
- CADIE: Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity
- Honda Unveils Brain Interface to Control Robot by thought Alone (this one is probably true)
- Google’s April Fools: GMail Autopilot
- Church baptises baby with cola
TechCrunch beat me to the roundup. That said, Internet, I’m turning you off today. Even Redditers hate April 1st.
Update: When did April Fool’s Day begin?
1 comment so farFrom the mouths of babes April 1, 2009 5:55 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Amy, Daily Life, Family, From the mouths of babes, Of Being DadAmy, 6.5 years old: "Dad, what’s a death threat?"
Dad: "What did you just say?!"
Amy: "What’s a death threat? On the show iCarly, they talked about death threats."
Dad: "A death threat means I’m going to have to have a talk with Nickelodeon."
From the mouths of babes March 31, 2009 4:32 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Evan, From the mouths of babesEvan, 3.5 years old, comes down stairs with his picture in one hand and a Rockband drumstick in the other. He points to the picture with the drumstick and says: "We go here now."
He was pointing to the picture of the Midway Drive-in. I’d say we’ll be there for opening night as soon as drive-in season starts.
Of Grasshoppers March 31, 2009 3:17 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Family, Of Being Dad, Of Grasshoppers, PhilosophyStudent: I intervened.
Master: Did you help?
Of Grasshoppers March 30, 2009 9:26 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Of Grasshoppers, PhilosophyStudent: Would you judge me?
Master: But you already know the score.
Today March 30, 2009 10:34 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily LifeI have so many deliverables due today that I feel like the pregnancy ward on a full moon.
Btw, if you unplug your harddrive to be able to replace a stick of memory, your AMD-K6 2/400 will report "Primary Hard Disk Fail" upon trying to boot and give you a mild heart attack.
add a commentI’m done with document.getElementById March 29, 2009 1:47 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : JavaScript, jQuery, Programming, TechnologyI’m working on a project that has compatibility with Internet Explorer 6 as a major requirement. This means all appearances, all Ajaxy functionality, every aspect of the web application should look and perform in IE6 just as it would in Firefox, Chrome, IE7, IE8, and Safari. One of my favorite pieces of code is "document.getElementById()" but special cases have to be considered for IE 6. As an example, you can use getElementById to change the value of a hidden form element:
<input type="hidden" id="foo" name="foo" value="default value">
<input type="submit" id="goBtn" name="goBtn" value="Process..." onclick="document.getElementById('foo')
That code will not always work. jQuery comes to the rescue! Rather than write lines and lines of additional code for browser testing and coding for a special case, we can simply replace "document.getElementById(‘foo’).value=’anothervalue’;" with "$(‘#foo’).val(‘anothervalue’);" and the code will work.
<input type="hidden" id="foo" name="foo" value="default value">
<input type="submit" id="goBtn" name="goBtn" value="Process..." onclick="$('#foo').val('anothervalue');">
I cannot sing jQuery’s praises enough!
3commentsThings to add to bids March 29, 2009 11:46 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily LifeIn today’s economic times, people love to talk about pork in budgets, ridiculous bonus programs, or over the top salaries. Some items are just plain necessary! I think from now on, all my quotes for projects will include a line item for coffee, a line item incense, and a line item for iTunes. That may sound frivolous but if you want me at maximum productivity, I’ve got a keyboard in one hand, a cup o’ Joe in the other, headphones emanating tunage into my ears, and lovely scents wafting all about. That said, I’m burning my last stick of incense right now. I may have to make a foray to World Market, Green Earth Emporium, or Earth to Old City today (well..tomorrow).
add a commentHardware/Software Support March 28, 2009 10:28 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Hardware, Software, TechnologyA service I provide to friends and family is cleaning up their computers when they start reporting, "it’s moving so slow!" or "I keep getting these popups." or error messages or whatever. Usually they are having a virus, spyware or malware issue. I’ve published my trade secret on how to fix this yourself. It takes me roughly 5 hours to clean a machine thoroughly. Granted, I usually do it overnight by sitting the computer beside me and taking breaks between programming tasks to evaluate the problems. You take smoke breaks; I take computer repair or social media breaks. For the service of cleaning a machine, assuring it has adequate virus protections, and making sure all the latest security patches are in place, I charge $135. In addition to software/hardware upgrades, I have replaced keyboards on laptops and even re-soldered a power connector on a laptop to its circuit board.
Yesterday a friend brought her computer and speakers by the house so I’ve added a service…speaker repair (I’d recommend just buying new ones).
add a commentWifely Secrets March 28, 2009 10:15 am
Posted by utterz in : Daily Life, Podcasting
Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterli. Replies.
And then his brain melted… March 27, 2009 8:47 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily LifeThis week was ridiculously hard. No. "Ridiculously" is wrong. This week was f*#%ing hard. This week was not hard in the sense that I lost time to scheduling debacles or being constantly sidetracked. No, I worked my tail off! I’m exhausted but want to keep going.
add a commentJustine Lai Does The Presidents March 27, 2009 8:02 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Of Interest, Sex, Touchy Subjects
I clicked a link in one of my news readers today and was presented with a gallery where San Francisco artist Justine Lai has painted herself having sex with several presidents (NSFW). She’s a good oil painter. A bit of an odd subject. Definitely not safe for work. And I think Ol’ Abe is going to shoot her in the head.
