Reality Me

Blog

  • Today’s Word

    Peptobismo

  • April 1st – the most worthless day on the Internet

    How’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:

    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?

  • From the mouths of babes

    Amy, 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

    Evan, 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

    Student: I intervened.
    Master: Did you help?

  • Of Grasshoppers

    Student: Would you judge me?
    Master: But you already know the score.

  • Today

    I 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.

  • I’m done with document.getElementById

    I’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').value='anothervalue';">

    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!

  • Things to add to bids

    In 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).

  • Hardware/Software Support

    A 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).

  • Wifely Secrets

    utterli-image
    My son just brought me a book I didn’t know we owned. Hmm.

    Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterli. reply-count Replies.

  • And then his brain melted…

    This 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.

  • Justine Lai Does The Presidents

    laijoinordie01thumbI 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.

  • From the mouths of babes

    Evan, 3.5 years old: "Zoooombie! Zooombie!" *bump* "Ow!" *thud* *knock* *thunk* "Oh ow!" *bump* *klop* "Ow!" bump! bump! bump! "oh. I oookAY!"
    Evan: "I come down stairs to scare you!"
    Dad: "Well you sure did that!"

    That’d be Evan wrapped in toilet paper like a mummy accidentally rolling down the wooden staircase steamroller style. It was almost in slow motion. It was one of those parent moments where you are hoping the child is fine because you really want to bust out laughing.

  • Of Grasshoppers

    Student: I am anything but calm.
    Master: A pacing cat catches no mice.