Skunks are strong tonight.
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Blog
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Did Chris Brogan just steal my PULSE?!
Did Chris Brogan just steal my metaphor of Twitter to a pulse in answering his own question? No attribution!
My answer: it gives the web a pulse, a voice, and connects me to your brilliance when I need it. You are the value.
29 minutes ago from txtI jest. You know, the great minds thing. Since I caught the Twitter bug, I have been trying to answer the question "What is it? What does it do for me?" Recently I cemented my thoughts in Can you rely on Twitter for breaking news? Ultimately, I decided to explain Twitter as a pulse. Generally speaking, the more focused the people you follow are on a subject matter coupled with a larger number of those people, the more rapidly you will know about matters concerning that subject.
For example, If you follow a whole bunch of people who are really obsessed with dry ice and that’s all they really talk about, then you will know through Twitter anything that happens in the field of dry ice as quickly as it becomes public.
If you follow random people who all talk about different things, you’ll get noise but you will still get a feeling, a sense, of the commonalities of those people, a pulse. In my case, I follow:
- friends and family
- people in Knoxville
- some breaking news sources
- the movers and shakers in the technology world
- ColdFusion and PHP developers (yeah yeah…some of you .NET guys too)
As Chris Brogan and I came to the same conclusion, I believe more and more people will begin explaining Twitter as a pulse on a topic even if that topic is the world.
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Oops
Lost my temper with the twelve year old because he acted like a 12 year old boy. No! Not that. He was supposed to be watching the little ones while I did some programming and worked on the plumbing but he got drawn into his Playstation2, the one I told him not to play. I demonstrated anger, made 2 children cry, and now everyone (mostly Mom) is justifiably mad at me. Sometimes I wish I could roll the clock back just a few minutes and have a little do-over. Hugs, humility and apologies went all around. Tears were brushed away. But the damage is done. Self-flagellation ahead.
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Lessons of the night
In my plumbing exploits, which really should be documented on video, I’ve learned the following:
- Brass fittings strip easily.
- No matter how sure footed you think you are, when doing the splits between the top of a bar stool and a two by four bracing the hallway drywall suspended over a stack of paint cans and a mop bucket, applying torque to a monkey wrench that is above your head will cause you to fall down.
- Swinging a two foot steel bar with your left hand against a drop forged pipe wrench (often mistaken for a monkey wrench) being held with your right hand is a mistake if you are not left handed.
Last time I did this, this plug came out much easier. Surely I’m doing something wrong.
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Evening is upon us – Football!
Bearden High School has a home game tonight. Sarah will be demonstrating her excellence. Last year we discovered it was neither cost effective or prudent to take the whole family so Cathy and I take turns going to the games to support the
teamflags. Alright, usually Cathy goes. So tonight’s evening chaos is brought to you by Liquid Plumber, The BHS Band Boosters, McDonald’s, and the RedCross babysitting training. Participants in tonight’s chaos are Amy, Evan, Noah, and Dad. Absence from this evenings show is Tommy who stayed at the college to chill with his hommies, Sarah who when not flirting with Zak is spinning flags on the field, and Mom who is taking pictures of Sarah flirting with Zak. Mom shoves down a McDonald’s cheese burger and is out the door leaving Noah instructions to get the trash out of the kitchen then help Dad with Amy and Evan. Amy is told to help Dad with Evan. Mom leaves. Noah goes to the back of the house and plays video games. Dad blinks at the trash. Amy and Evan erupted into loudness contests. Dad tries to figure out how to divide time between refereeing Amy and Evan, working on the tub, and coding web applications. It’s quiet upstairs… too quiet… -
From the mouths of babes
Dad, looking at the ChipIn results: "Jesus!"
Evan, 3 years old: "Da, why you say Jesus?"
Dad: "Oops. I was saying a thank you prayer." -
From the mouths of babes
Dad, to the ice cream truck driver: "You’re like a cat. I feed you and you keep coming back."
Ice cream dude: *blink* *blink*File under things not to say.
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Coder’s High
I’ve got that coder’s high right now. I’m in the zone. Yet the clock still speeds by. I can feel the seconds tick in the pulsing throbbing of my wrists as I type at top speed.
Update: Eek! Technologies merging. I just tried to use JavaScript syntax in PHP and when I went to look it up in the PHP docs I searched for a ColdFusion function. May need to slow down just a bit!
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Milestone Rewards
How do you encourage yourself to reach a milestone? I know smoking programmers who give themselves a smoke break (7-15 minutes) when they accomplish a task. I don’t smoke, so I do a chore that doesn’t involve the computer. Today’s milestone breaks are brought to you by "Crack Plumbers, we’re just cheeky!" After Sarah did an art project involving rocks and the bathtub, our drain slower terribly. Now its stopped completely. This could be a coincidence. We have enough longhairs in this household to clog the public waste system so periodically I have to open the drain and pull out the alien creature that grows in there. It will be about 4 feet long, black, sluggy, and psuedo-intelligent. The most frightful thing I ever saw as a child was a Twilight Zone episode that involved a housewife vacuuming a dust ball out of her air ducts that turned out to be an alien creature that ate her. Since then I have never been fond of dust bunnies, air ducts, or alien looking snake-like gooey lengths of beyond description filth. However, I do want to bathe today…
So I just accomplished a very big deal on my current project involving combining functionality of two different parts of the application into a single page. It also involved altering the roles based security. Implementing roles based security on custom apps can be a time consuming pain in the neck. But fun! Time for my 7-15 minute break. Here creature creature!
Update: Pipes-1; Doug-0. Expect @cathymccaughan to report on my highly anticipated trip the emergency room during my next milestone break.
Update: Pipes-2; Doug-0. Done until Saturday.
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What’s today?
Today is about coding! I’m sick as a dog and the tub won’t drain and it has to work before this afternoon and all my buckets are at the in-laws house. None of that matters. Today is about showing results to my client!
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Our Life
Between coughing up my lungs today, I have been hard at programming on a project. I have some neat things happening but they never seem to happen quickly enough. I took only one break today to return something I borrowed longer than I should have. I am close on my code but it always seems like I need just another half an hour when our evening chaos erupts. This evening’s chaos was complicated by the high school parent night.
What is evening chaos? It starts when a child says he needs the mouse I stole from his computer so he can do his homework. Then Mom dashes out the door explaining the homework Amy has to do after the kids finish cleaning the kitchen table. That’s the table with 3 inches of soapy foam on it and a perplexed middle schooler asking, "uh. How do I clean that up?" Still he manages to leave the table a sticky mess. Evan, who is getting closer to being housebroken, pees on the floor in the girls room. I’m on the phone with the bank trying to get them to fax me a letter that they say they can’t mail to me for 10 days due to federal law. I need it Monday but preferably tomorrow. Dinner has to be made. Go downstairs and sharpen a pencil. Hear Amy and Evan start to fight. Cathy texts to tell me she is going to park illegally. I call to give her a hard time but get voicemail so I text her my approval and then she calls. Evan is screaming just because he has lungs that aren’t filled with gunk. Evan wants to help with Amy’s homework. Oh dinner. Noah has a question on his homework. Code? Sharpen pencil again. And… that’s just the beginning.
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From the mouths of babes
Cathy: "Do I look inappropriate?"
Me: "Very slutty dear."File that under things not to say!
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Of Grasshoppers
Student: I thought I was making the correct choice at the time.
Master: A disappointing or unexpected outcome does not necessarily make the choice wrong.