007

November 16, 2007 · Filed under Entertainment

I just noticed that yesterday’s post was timestamped at 7:07 am. I now have a new goal: to publish a post about James Bond right at 0:07. That means I’ll have to be awake at seven minutes past midnight, but lucky for you I believe the secret to a happy life is to challenge yourself.

Also, I’m the master of my own domain right now; I have no one that I can hear to tell me how idiotic this goal is.

Besides, I don’t have an issue with the idiocy of this goal nearly as much as I do with the considerable challenge it will be for me to be conscious anywhere near midnight, but my stubbornness won’t let me use WordPress’s future posting functionality. This is going to be a clean post; no digital doping allowed, thank you very much.

As always, I accept the challenge.

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Personal Bubble

November 15, 2007 · Filed under Dutch, Entertainment

The Dutch are not known for being “warm” people. My grandmother still prefers to shake my hand over having me give her a hug. I think it has to do with nearly our entire country being 10 meters below sea level; the strategy centers on the assumption that being cold will make you float better when those dikes break.

On top of that, I was raised in Minneapolis, MN. I always thought Minnesotans were a friendly lot; people even use the phrase “Minnesota Nice” to describe us. I didn’t realize until I left Minnesota that “Minnesota Nice” facetiously means “Minnesota Ice”.

Given this background, I’m not exaggerating when I say I have a large personal bubble and I become very uncomfortable when someone invades what I like to call “Franktopia”. It’s like what they say about Grizzly Bears: if you can see one, you’re probably too close. (As I write this I realize the analogy goes a little farther; you would probably feel better if you had a can of mace on you, as well. It is also not advisable to make direct eye contact.  The sign of a good analogy is that the farther you take it, the better it works.)

To the point, the client where I’m working right now is on the third floor of a building whose elevator is powered by two gerbils in an exercise wheel. As I was returning to the office yesterday afternoon, I noticed a woman running towards the elevator as the doors were closing. Since I was raised with good Dutch manners, I held the door for her. She thanked me as she entered and proceeded to stand directly next to me, nearly pushing me into the corner.

Since most people are clever enough not to take the elevator and use the stairs instead, we had the entire elevator to ourselves and I was already standing on the far left. I’ve been in the elevator with eight people and didn’t feel as crowded as I did with just me and this woman. I don’t appreciate being able to make an educated guess about what conditioner a total stranger is using.

As soon as someone invents a Personal Bubble Force Field Generator (PSFFG), I will be the first to order one. And, since I’m guessing that once we invent one of those, light sabers will be right behind it, I’ll pre-order one of those, too. With a green blade.

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Beenebag

November 13, 2007 · Filed under Doggs

It’s funny the way dogs seem to have good days and bad days. Mack is pretty even-keeled, but he does have a temper, and some days it gets the better of him more quickly than others. Beene has on-days and off-days. “Off days” means she has difficulty making it through a doorway without screwing it up, and “on days” means it’s not an off-day. Today seems to have been an average day for Mack, but Beene was on top of her game all day . That doesn’t mean she was actually on top of her game; it just means that she felt extra good about herself and everything she was doing.

I feel bad for Mack that I write about Beene more than I do about him. It’s not that I like her more.  If anything it’s the opposite. But the fact is that he impresses me less often because my expectations are much higher for him than they are for her. With him, it ends up with me being annoyed with him because he forgot to take into account the curvature of space-time for the object (himself) versus the observer (everyone else) due to his current speed, whereas I’m overjoyed when Beene recognizes me when I wake her before 6 am.

I got the dogs up early this morning because Michelle and I had arranged to Skype at 7:00 and I wanted to be ready to leave for work when we finished up. Morning walks when Beene isn’t fully awake are pretty rough because she just plows ahead with her head down and doesn’t notice when we’re stopping to let Mack do his business. She outweighs Mack by roughly 100 pounds, so the poor guy doesn’t stand a chance. We use a Y-leash for them, so couple a 150 pound moron to a 60 pound mutt, and that little guy just gets ripped off the pot every time. When I raise my voice at her to tell her to stop and wait, she looks at me with those big brown empty eyes that say, “What? Am I not on the couch anymore?”

But it’s really hard to stay mad at her when we round the corner for the last uphill stretch to the house and she suddenly wakes up a bit and gets an extra spring in her step and holds her head a little higher. She’s so ignorantly optimistic, I just don’t have the heart to stay annoyed with her when she’s feeling so good about herself.

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Ground Zero: Deccan Plateau

November 12, 2007 · Filed under Entertainment

To be completely honest, I’ve never given India much thought. My company has a branch there and we have lots of consultants from India, but despite being the only habitable country that is also a continent, it has never really made it onto my radar. (Is Antarctica a country? Maybe my previous statement is redundant. I would look it up, but that seems like work.)

It never made it on my radar, that is, until Michelle accepted a job where she would be working with India very closely and traveling there regularly. Since then, I’ve noticed stories about India on a regular basis. It seems like it’s either a coincidence or that the Universe is trying to tell me something, but it’s hard to prove which. Either way, my Jedi powers don’t hurt.

India has a long, amazingly rich history. It has the only existing language directly descended from Sanskrit; it has one of the oldest living religions; it has the Himalaya (the mountains, not the spring water company, which I believe might have slightly less historical significance). It is also where Indiana Jones saved the world from doom. Finally, as I learned today, it is ground zero for a likely cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. (That’s when things went hella-bad for the dinosaurs.)

Apparently, right around the time the meteor that we suspect blotted out the sun hit, India was puking up a 2000 meter thick, 1.5 million square kilometer (big) patch of lava known as the Deccan Plateau. There appears to be some controversy over the timing of the eruptions and whether the meteor or eruptions would have caused more difficulty for organic life. Even though I’m not qualified to make such judgments, I’m inclined to believe research that suggests a 2000 meter deep 1.5 million square kilometer lake of liquid-hot magma would have a negative impact on anything living on the planet at the time. Just ask Dr. Evil.

As it turns out, the Deccan Plateau is just north of where Michelle is staying right now.

Small world. Big Lava field.

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Syntax Highlighting

November 8, 2007 · Filed under Entertainment

It’s official. Michelle’s constant presence is the only reason I don’t glow in the dark and speak in modem tones.

Since she left Monday I have engaged in the following activies:

Seriously, though. This syntax tool is wicked cool. Check out how sweet it makes code look. This totally establishes a need for me to post more code.

Michelle – if you’re reading this – I will do my best to ward off the gaggle of women that will be chasing me after reading this post.

C++

// C++ Sample
#include "catmullrom.h"

Point CatmullRom::GetNext()
{
	if(this->m_dTime >= 1.0)
	{
		this->m_dTime = 0;
		this->m_iPosition++;
	}

	Point crp = this->GetCRPoint();

	this->m_dTime += this->GetPrecision();

	return crp;
}

C#

// C# Sample
public class Node : IComparable
{
	public override int GetHashCode()
	{
		int left = 0, right = 0, word = 0;

		if(m_Left != null)
			left = m_Left.m_Word.GetHashCode();
		if(m_Right != null)
			right = m_Right.m_Word.GetHashCode();

		word = m_Word.GetHashCode();

		return left ^ right ^ word;
	}
}

PHP

// PHP Sample
class encryption_class {

    function getAdjustment ()
    {
        return $this->adj;
    } 

    function setAdjustment ($adj)
    {
        $this->adj = (float)$adj;
    }
}

JavaScript

// JavaScript Sample
function _GetAbsolutePosition(obj)
{
	var curleft = curtop = 0; 

	if (obj.offsetParent)
	{
		curleft = obj.offsetLeft;
		curtop = obj.offsetTop; 

		while (obj = obj.offsetParent)
		{
			curleft += obj.offsetLeft;
			curtop += obj.offsetTop;
		}
	} 

	return [curleft,curtop];
}

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

/* CSS Sample */
.dm_photoalbums_tag
{
	font: 8pt "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans";
	text-align: left;
	padding: 0px 0px 1px 20px;
	background: url(dm_tag_16x16.png) no-repeat center left;
}

Bitchin’.

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