Life: The Soundtrack

Genetics

2007-07-20T13:21:00.001-04:00

My work can be a little draconian at times. Like when you want to use chat software, or you want to check outside email, or you want to surf porn on a blackberry... so I was happily surprised when I went digging through our proxy auto-config and found out that the Chicago proxy is a lot more permissive. Now, I'm the last (or second-to-last) person to ask for advice on networks about, so I have no clue how I managed to switch over to the Chicago proxy, but I did. And I'm happy. Well, happier, still can't check outside email.

But there are people around, so I can't test out any illicit sites. Instead I have to have some code up on my screen so that they think I'm working. I'm about 2 weeks ahead, which is about the limit of what I can anticipate, and I've been banned from helping people (it's not my fault I can do their work in a fraction of the time it takes them). So I'm messing around with one of my micro-projects.

Genetic Programming.

It sounds so deliciously geeky. Slap the label "genetic" on anything and it sounds like you wear a lab coat while you do it. See?

Genetic Resequencing - Definitely requires a lab coat
Genetic Programming - Requires a lab coat
Genetic Disease - Your doctor needs a lab coat
Genetic Reverse Cowgirl - In a lab coat? Awwwwww yeeeeeeeeaahhhhhh

Anyway, this stuff is pretty cool. I've got it writing methods that actually work, now I'm working on having it cull unnecessary parts out of the method.

Track/Stream: Silence

2005-08-11T12:43:00.000-04:00

mom. so you and lynda will be here next week.
me. yeah
mom. you?re not... engaged, are you?
me. no, of course not
mom. well, I don?t know. that?s what I thought, but one of coworkers asked, and you?re a secretive person...
me. well, I?m not married
mom. ok... are you going to ask her while you?re out here?
me. no
mom. alright, alright, I?m just asking. were you thinking of january or february.
me. yeah, somewhere in there
mom. so you?d get married next fall?
me. no, I think it?ll be the following spring.
mom. so an 0-7 wedding
me. yeah
mom. ... you?re not married already, are you?
me. of course not. I think I?d tell my own mother when I?m getting married.
mom. alright, just checking

New York's Finest

2005-08-04T20:32:00.001-04:00

Walking into the train station I saw, for the first time, police officers checking people's bags. Honestly, I know we're supposed to be all scared of "Terrorism n' Stuff"©, but this is ridiculous.

I want to "fight back", but I don't know an appropriate way to do it.

I could complain to the cops. This really doesn't accomplish anything. They're just following orders. I am pretty sure they don't want to check for illicit items in everyone's bags.

I could resist the cops. Best case scenario... I can't take the subway. Worst case scenario... lockdown.

I could subvert the cops. I don't know how effective this would be, but it could be hugely. The idea is to bring a bag with a lot of stuff, so they grab you and have to spend a few seconds. Then, while they're searching (or immediately afterward) ask them why they became a cop. Say whatever you can to draw them in, then drop hints that make them see that this isn't why they joined.

I could take my transportation business elsewhere. I don't think this is economically viable. Plus, I doubt some MTA exec is going to say "oh shit, Paul isn't riding the subway anymore. We're doomed. Dooooooooooomed." and I really can't see many New Yorkers doing this.

Sigh

A Modern Fairy Tale

2005-08-04T20:32:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a handsome young prince. This prince had been invited to a celebration thrown by the wise king and beautiful queen of the land.

The prince could barely contain his excitement. He decided that, as a show of gratitude, he would prepare a course of home-made french fries to go with the king and queen's barbecue.

The party began, and the prince regaled everyone with his french fries, to great success.

Unfortunatey, an evil enchantress named Cuervo was also invited to this party. Secretly, during the party, the enchantress Cuervo cast a spell over the young prince. This enchantment prevented made the prince act in funny ways, and made the young damsels of the land look more attractive than they actually were.

Suddenly, on one of his trips to the castle kitchens to retrieve more food, the prince accidentally spilled some of the oil out of the fryer he was using to make the fries.

In his enchanted state, the prince wanted to make sure nobody would slip, but he didn't want to actually clean up the mess, or tell the king or queen so they could do it. So instead, the enchantment caused him to pour salt all over the kitchen floor, hoping this would prevent people from slipping.

Eventually, the king and queen entered the kitchen and realized something was amiss. When they realized the floor was covered in salt, they assumed it had been an accident and cleaned it up properly themselves.

The prince saw the king and queen working hard to clean and became enraged, because they were cleaning up the mess he had worked so hard to create. Once the king and queen finished cleaning up, the prince took the salt and poured it all over the floor, to re-create this mess.

The king and queen saw this and gave up for the evening. After the party they went to sleep and cleaned up Mike's.... uh.... I mean the prince's mess the next morning.

Damn prince.

Plans A, B & C

2005-07-30T21:56:00.000-04:00

So I've got a couple plans:

Plan A

I will write blog entries on my phone when I feel like it. I will be more vigilant about uploading these entries upon arrival home. At that point, or possibly later, I will review, edit and stylize my posts (such as adding interesting links). This will keep my blog updated.

Plan B

I will go to Macy's to buy a new shirt (coffee was spilled on the one I'm wearing. I haven't made any arrests, but my leading suspect is my left hand. He had the motive and the means) in preparation for a fat-cats night tonight. Afterwards, I will seek a cigar store; again in preparation for fat-cats night. Finally I will browse some blogs I like. This has nothing to do with fat-cats night, but I want to do it and it doesn't warrant a plan of its own.

Plan C

World domination.

It's important to note that these plans are in no way exclusive of each other. For instance, plans A and C could be combined to great effect. Or plans B and C. Or pretty much any plan and C.

My Blog is Back (Hey Na... Hey Naaaaaaaa My Blog is Back)

2005-07-28T19:50:00.000-04:00

It has indeed been a month and a half since anything was posted, and I have decided to try to get back into the swing of things. This absence has been due to the following reasons:

a.) I moved in with Lynda and we completely redecorated

2.) I started a new job which I don't feel comfortable blogging from just yet

D.) I'm lazy

So I come back with 2 things of note to blog about. First of all, we got our tickets for San Francisco. I grew up in Berkeley and want to go visit the 'rents and all. We've got a huge list of things planned:

We will have some spare time, so if I know you, you're in the area, and you're not on my shit list, give me a ring/email/homing pigeon/whatever and we'll hook up.

Second, we got the coolest outfit for Lynda from Purple Passion. It's made by Lip Service, and most of their stuff is kinda kinky. This is no exception. We got the "Achtung Playtime Funnelneck Coat" and oh baby, this one is going to be fun. We even picked up a riding crop to go with it. We need to get it altered slightly to tighten the snaps and find some boots and a matching bra. We also hit the first sale I've ever seen at ~~Toys in~~ Babeland (apparently they changed their name) and got a ton of loot.

I swear we're not taking it to California though.

Well, not all of it...

2005-06-13T22:33:00.000-04:00

Subway Vigilante

franz ferdinand - take me out

something pissed me off in the subway this morning. this guy comes walking along putting up ads for some business (i have no idea what, it was in spanish). he was obviously some schmo who is doing what he is told, so I didn?t say anything to him. however, I did wait until he had moved into the next car and went around and removed every ad he put up, crumpled them and put them in my pocket. for my trouble I actually earned a round of applause from the other people on the train.

on another note, I really like this blog app I got for my shiny new phone (no thanks to the 'rents). it lets me write my blog entry on the train. the next time I get service it automatically posts the entry. then I go clean it up when I get home. spiffy.

Titty-Bar Studies (New York Dolls)

2005-05-27T15:59:00.000-04:00

Today is the final day of my employment at this "establishment" (I use the term loosely). In celebration, John and I went to New York Dolls (I promised Chris I wouldn't use his real name).

This is the first time I've been to a titty-bar in a long time, and certainly the first time during the day. I have mixed reviews.

On the one hand, it was interesting to be there when the place was almost empty (which is a miracle given that it's Fleet Week). The strippers were pretty much all lined up against a wall chatting amongst themselves.

On the other hand, it really sucks to get so much attention from so many strippers, especially knowing all they want is your money for a 30 second lapdance. About every minute we were approached by a new girl with pretty much the same offer (except for the once we were approached by an 8 foot giant who offered backrubs, but we don't think she was really a girl. At least, not originally).

Back on the first hand they do serve liquor, but back on the second hand that means they can't go nude.

My final verdict is the it's a place that delivers exactly what it advertises: slightly busted looking, plastic dolls.

2:30 PM on Fridays at New York Dolls - Not Worth It

Next week I'll review 2:35 PM on Fridays at New York Dolls

No Purpose In Life

2005-05-24T12:20:00.000-04:00

I'm kinda pissed off today. Friday is my last day and the only reason I came in today was that I was supposed to be launching a new version of one of my applications. Otherwise I intended on calling in sick with Leprosy or The Plague.

Instead I came in, fed my addiction, and waited for the launch at noon. Around 12.15 I thought it was a little odd that nobody had said anything to me, so I found the PM who told me that it was postponed until Wednesday.

We have these launch windows that we can only do a launch during. Otherwise we might hit storm systems, or the guidance systems might fail, or something might actually work. You know, things we wouldn't expect.

So there was no reason to come in today.

Another Red-Letter Day

2005-05-23T16:18:00.000-04:00

It's been another day of excitement.

I pretty much played Chuzzle for 4 hours this morning, went to lunch, then played Chuzzle for another hour.

Then I discovered something amazing. My Blackberry's web browser is perfect (though a little slow) for perusing websites one handed that are blocked by our content filter at work.

So I spent the next couple hours browsing porn on my Blackberry. I think this is why they're issued.

After all, they do say that ~~porn~~ necessity is the mother of invention

Exciting Day

2005-05-17T10:37:00.000-04:00

Today has been a whirlwind of inactivity:

I got in...

Got a coffee...

Scratched my ass...

Now I'm on hold with CustomInk, trying to resolve a purchase issue. Once that's done I'll probably go back to playing Rogue or NetHack. All my games and stuff have been moved off my PC so I have to play it off my MP3 player drive, but that's still cool.

Lunch isn't for at least another hour, sooooooo, I think I'll start IMing random people I haven't talked to for years.

Maybe I'll take some time and go up to Grand Central Station and get those cufflinks I've been eyeing...

Free At Last, Free At Last, Praise Tha Lo'd I's Free At Last

2005-05-16T16:24:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since my last update, but this is a big one.

I finally quit my job.

That's right. Enough bellyaching, whining, pussyfooting, and sniveling. It's time to step up to the plate and turn in my badge and my gu..... um..... blackberry.

Which of course means I need a new phone. My current phone is a blackberry deal supplied by the good people at Verizon and subsidized by the chumps I ~~work for~~ used to work for. I've been thinking about a snazzy I-Mate PDA2K (pssssst... if the folks are reading, this would make a great birthday present). It does tons of cool stuff (and would help me keep in touch with my family). Voice, 802.11b, e-mail, and full Windows CE, including the calendar (so I can schedule reminders to call my family). It's cool (and would totally make up for all the forgotten birthday and christmas presents).

Anyway. Until then I've been working on various projects at work. All very critical. Crucial to the business. And once I put the finishing touches on my T-shirt (and matching beanie) I'm going to order a dozen.

Mike/Zack Bingo

2005-04-13T19:55:00.000-04:00

Track/Stream: John Mayer - Your Body Is a Wonderland

Bingo... A man's game... First person to finish wins it all...

Women Bingo
Asian	Ugly Friend	Twins	Cowgirl	Tattooed
Psycho	MILF	3-some	Fat	Cheer- leader
Barely Legal	Friend	FREE	Short	Virgin
Classy	Tall	Nurse	Glasses	Midget
Stripper	Hairy	Redhead	British	Bitch

Awesome Awesome Article

2005-04-12T16:47:00.000-04:00

Track/Stream: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Suck My Kiss

more productive, or more...moronic??

I wish I could tap into this guy's channel of pure rage. He writes this scathing article about VB developers which is so ridiculously on par that he could be the next.... really.... smart guy.... I write about? I am loosely lumped in being a C# developer and using a *gasp* UI, but I don't think I embody the people he is talking about (despite my shameful shameful background). Besides, I use a command line tool for my builds.

Anyway, good read if you're annoyed by shitty programmers like the yokels I'm mostly surrounded with.

Dance

2005-04-10T21:55:00.000-04:00

Track/Stream: No Music - Ears Hurt

SUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNN

It was a beautiful day yesterday, and I spent pretty much all day in my car. As a result I am toasted. I mean honestly, who wants to ride around with the top up. But my sunburn makes it too painful to put headphones on.

So Lynda and I went out to Pearl River (which is in the middle of nowhere) to go to a hobby shop. We got a kit for an electric Willy. We spent the evening putting it together. We got throught the point where the critical parts were all on the chassis and had to put it down to go to Sue's modern dance show.

Now I'm all for the arts. Especially when the arts involve sitting and drinking a beer. This did not involve beer. It also did not involve anything that was even remotely watchable. Gah. Modern dance sucks. Bah.

Anyway, that was saturday. More to come

Fun Night

2005-04-08T10:02:00.000-04:00

Track/Stream: Tatu - All The Things She Said

The blog has been a little neglected lately. I've been really busy at work and haven't had spare time to screw around with blog entries while I'm at work, and at night I dote on Lynda.

Last night was a fun one. We went to the Brandy Library for Amar's birthday. Lynda came, I got tipsy, it was a good night. Most importantly I got Mark (who is actually my boss) to say that I really don't have to do everything Carl says and that if he comes up with any ridiculous requests that he'll back me up. He also agreed with me lying to Carl about the scope of changes I'm making on my project.

Score.

So tonight we're pulling a Fat Cats night at the Carnegie Club. They allow smoking and I've got a pair of Davidoffs I plan on lighting up. I'm pulling out the old suit and going to have a good time.

That's all for now, so I'll leave you with your happy thought of the day:

Russian lesbian teen musicians are hot

Sleepy

2005-04-06T09:19:00.000-04:00

Track/Stream: Frédéric Chopin - Op. 64 - Fantasy for Piano in D Minor

I'm falling back into my old habit of being restless in my sleep, and I'm not sure why. For the last few nights I've been waking up at dark o'clock, rolling over and going back to sleep. At least it's easy for me to get back to sleep. I don't really think it has to do with Lynda because it happens whether I'm sleeping with her or not.

Maybe I'm not tired enough when I do go to sleep. This wasn't happening a few months ago, but I was coming off of a pattern of going to sleep at 2.00 and waking up at 7.00. Now I'm going to sleep at 11.00 or earlier.

We're at my place tonight, so I'm going to wear myself out in the gym. We'll see how well I sleep tonight.

Sin City

2005-04-05T13:48:00.000-04:00

Track/Stream: Rockfish

Saw Sin City with Lynda last night. I'd say it was a pretty good movie because of a few things:

Copious Tits and Ass
Jessica Alba
More Tits and Ass
Cool Cinematography

Oh, I think I forgot to mention, there was some Tits and Ass. There were a few things, though,, that I didn't like:

Guy #1 loses his genitals
Guy #2 loses his genitals
Guy #3 loses his genitals
Guy #1 loses his genitals.... again

Despite the genitalia lossage, it was all in all a good movie to see. Very unique, never really seen a movie like that. It's very stark black and white, stylized, but not overly so. It sticks out very rarely. Then once in a while a couple things stand out in very rich color. It's very good for drawing attention, but I'm not sure why these things were highlighted. Need to find someone better at analyzing movies than I am.

Ex-AWOL

2005-03-31T11:05:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Me First And The Gimme Gimmes - Phantom Of The Opera Song

After our wonderful dinner almost a month ago, I haven't heard hide nor hair of Andy. I kinda think she's pissed off at me. I can't imagine why. It's not like I was staring at Lynda's chest.

Well...... ok...... I was.

But that's ok, I'm her boyfriend.

I expected a thank you for the tickets later (since they were expensive and supposed to be quite good). Since then she hasn't contacted me. I haven't even seen any toast announcing her IM presence (which probably means I'm blocked).

So if anyone has heard from her, let me know she's OK, but I'm not going to call her. I don't want it to look like I'm fishing for a "thank you."

Poor Mike

2005-03-31T09:33:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Fun Lovin' Criminals - Scooby Snacks

I mildly pissed off Mike with my post about him. Personally I think I cut a little close with the nighty/sofa/ice cream thing, but you know, whatever.

So to make Mike feel better, I submit the following ~~blatantly ripped off~~... ~~plagarised~~... original poem...

~~Tigers are~~ Mike is mean.
~~Tigers are~~ Mike is fierce.
~~Tigers have~~ Mike has teeth
and claws that pierce.

~~Tigers are~~ Mike is great,
~~they~~ he can't be beat.
If I was ~~a tiger~~ Mike,
that would be neat.

~~Tigers are~~ Mike is nimble
and light on ~~their~~ his toes,
my respect for ~~tigers~~ Mike
continually grows.

~~Tigers are~~ Mike is perfect,
the e-pit-o-me
of good looks and grace
and quiet dignity.

~~Tigers are~~ Mike is great!
~~They're~~ He's the toast of the town.
Life's always better
when ~~a tiger's~~ Mike's around!

There, you feel better?

Shawn

2005-03-30T14:07:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Story Of The Year - Anthem Of Our Dying Day

I've managed to keep Shawn busy. Ian's fridge is completely tapped out. So are all the other VP fridges. I almost scored a bottle of vodka, but Donna saw and put it back.

Now I've got him searching the CIO's office for "large stacks of green paper with pictures of presidents on them"

I've got my fingers crossed.

Mike Mike Mike

2005-03-30T11:34:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Franz Ferdinand - 40'

So Mike goes and disobeys my orders. I don't even know where to begin describing how fucked up this guy's relationships have been. He's a lawyer upstate, and just to give you a rough idea of his personality, he cheated on his girlfriend the night before his ethics exam (linked for his information).

His other problem is that he's a total woman about his issues. He calls his female friends and complains and tries to get their help on how to fix it. He's probably in a nighty on his sofa eating ice cream and watching Sex In The City too.

So he was cheating on this girl with this other girl. And he's cheating on the other girl with this other other girl. The girl was just some chick he's dating. The other girl is the opposing counsel on the vast majority of his cases, and the other other girl is a client of his.

Fucked Up with a capital "Up".

I told him he needs to lay off the womens and recognize that he can be his own person. Otherwise he's going to drown himself in relationships and end up with some woman who totally dominates him (and who he cheats on). To that end he needs to end his relationship and stop sleeping around for a bit. But I gave him a little leeway. I told him he can keep sleeping with the other chick (not the other other chick), just because she's asian, and asian women are hot. However, he could not do anything boyfriend-like.

So I get this email from him (editor's comments are in red italics)

[T]he asian goes out of town for the weekend, back to her parents' place (which gave Mike a chance to nail the other other chick). She returns on Monday night. Now, while I was at my Mom's over the weekend, I got an easter basket all prepared for her- the whole nine: grass, candy, plastic eggs with more candy in them, real hard
boiled eggs which my niece and nephew made (this isn't the kind of thing a boyfriend would do. Nooooooooo). So, yesterday morning, I take this basket, and go buy some spring flowers (oh dear god) to make the basket look bigger (he's worried about size, hee hee), and bring these over to her house in the morning before she leaves for work. Being that this was in celebration of easter, I left her this note which said:

"Kelly, It took me two days to finally track you down (Easter Bunny Reference). Who would have thought you'd be in [City]! I hope you still believe in me."

Signed: "E.B." (Again, Easter Bunny Reference)

(awwwww, he's so cute and mushy wooshy woo)

Well, at about 9:30 I get this call on the work phone from her:

Me: Hello?
Her: Did you stop by last night, or this morning and leave something here?
(said with a very far away sound in her voice)
Me: Maybe
Her: Come on, just tell me if you did or not
Me: Well, yeah,
Her: And you left something here
Me: Yeah
Her: DONT YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN!

Apparantly, she left her house, preparing to go to work, and saw said easter basket on the porch, and read the note. She immediately feared for her life, and became almost violently ill. She called in sick to work, and was about to call the Police Department, because she thought that there was absolutely no way that I would have done this (Rightfully so), and that there must be some psycho ex-boyfriend stalking her because I said "tracked you down!"

Sigh. Why don't people ever listen to me?

Another day

2005-03-30T09:25:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Black Box Recorder - The Facts of Life

Not much going on. Well, there's a lot going on, but very little of it is actually blog-worthy. I'm working like a dog trying to get a bunch of stuff done...

Wait...

Oh dear god, no. The humanity of it...

Shawn is back.

Gizzi

2005-03-28T16:48:00.000-05:00

Gizzi sucks

That is all

Advice From the 'Rents

2005-03-28T13:22:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice

A conversation with Lynda last night reminded me of a conversation between my mom and I a few months ago. I was still dating Dina and know I needed to break up with her. My mom was trying to give me advice.

Keep in mind, this was over the phone while I was at the office...

Mom:	Let's do some role playing. Pretend I'm Dina
Me:	Uhhhhnnnnn, I really don't think this is a good idea
Mom (as Dina):	Paul? What did you want to tell me?
Me:	I think we should stop seeing each other
Mom (as Dina):	What? Why? What did I do wrong?
Me:	You're horrible in bed
Mom (as Dina):	But...
Mom (as Herself):	Wait, what?!?!
Me:	[Laughs]
Mom (as Dina):	But I can learn. I can get better. You can teach me
Me:	O...K... Role playing over

And this is why I keep my parents away from my girlfriends.

Somehow I Don't Feel More Cultured

2005-03-26T08:17:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Anberlin - Paperthin Hymn

Lynda drug me (kicking and screaming) to The Culture Club last night. The 80's are sooooooo over. The place was packed with a bunch of fat Italian guys in their late 30's with gold chains and hairy chests and girls who were too young to remember the 80's, but were dancing like heffalumps anyway (I envision heffalumps as large ungainly creatures).

I got mildly buzzed. Enough to start dancing at least. Lynda had a good time though, and that's what really matters.

This weekend will be spent in Shickshinny, PA (gesundheit) with 2 of Lynda's aunts and their families. I'm finally meeting part of the family (I've only met one cousin so far).

Encryption

2005-03-23T11:39:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Brandston - King of Pain

I just threw a spiffy chunk of code in. There's a task which needs to be run from a command line (so we can do it manually or via a cron job). It uses the same transport mechanism as the rest of my communications, so to prevent a wayward developer from allowing unauthorized clients from running the job, it requires a username and password. However, the LAN guys don't want to put a password in plain text.

So in about 5 lines of code I implemented the ability to encrypt the password using RSA. The encrypted password may be fed in in place of the plain-text one. It auto-detects between encrypted and plain-text password and decrypts if necessary. The password is then sent to the server who authenticates it. As a bonus, if you tell it to encrypt, but don't give it text to encrypt, it dumps the encryption key.

      using System.Text;

      using System.Security.Cryptography;

      private const string ENCRYPTION_KEYS =

        "<RSAKeyValue><Modulus>...</Modulus>" +

        "<Exponent>...</Exponent><P>...</P>" +

        "<Q>...</Q><DP>...</DP><DQ>...</DQ>" +

        "<InverseQ>...</InverseQ><D>...</D></RSAKeyValue>";

      // Create and initializes our encryption/decryption

      RSACryptoServiceProvider Provider =

        new RSACryptoServiceProvider();

      Provider.FromXmlString(ENCRYPTION_KEYS);

      if (Encrypting && (Password == null))

        // Dump Encryption Key

        System.Console.WriteLine(Provider.ToXmlString(false));

      else if (Encrypting)

        // Dump Encrypted Password

        System.Console.WriteLine(Convert.ToBase64String(

          Provider.Encrypt(

            Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(args[1]), true)));

      else

        // Decrypt Password and Replace.

        // If there's an error, user supplied plain text already

        try { Password = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(

          Provider.Decrypt(

            Convert.FromBase64String(args[2]), true)); }

        catch { }

Tickets4Sex.com - Need Help

2005-03-22T09:32:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Killers - On Top

I need to get some verbage for posting an ad on Craig's List to offer his U2 tickets for some booty.

Help me come up with a funny post which explicitly says (or implies very heavily) that you can get a free ticket to this concert in exchange for a roll in the hay. Send to tix4sex@gmail.com

Random Survey

2005-03-22T08:03:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: [None - Just Woke Up]

Ninjas vs. Pirates

Who would win in a fight?

More Easter Eggs

2005-03-21T15:16:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: The Prom Kings - Alone

I'm spending the day adding easter eggs to my project (Why? Because I can. And I'm bored).

So far, if you send a message saying "LUNAR PHASE" it'll print an image of the moon along with the current lunar phase and percent of the moon visible. I'm working on one that shows the Death Star and a countdown to the closing when you send "REBEL SCUM". I was doing a quick search for Death Star images online and I came to realize exactly how content on the web is broken down.

Porn:	84%
Star Wars:	18%
Other Sci-Fi Crap:	6%
Useful Stuff:	3.9999999999%
My Blog:	0.0000000001%
Total:	112%

Note: The total is over 100% due to overlap between the first two categories

Steve walks warily down the street

2005-03-21T14:10:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Queen - Another One Bites the Dust

More rats deserting the sinking ship that is my company. Yao (who sits in the cube next to me) has announced that her last day is next friday. Well, she didn't announce it so much as told her boss, went to lunch, came back and everyone congratulated her.

We are rapidly approaching a critical point: Project Manager to Developer ratio is at 1:1.12. If 2 more developers leave, we will cross the PM/developer event horizon.... There will be more managers than people to manage.

Of course, we long ago blew the asshole-developer/normal-developer event horizon out of the water.

Something's Awry

2005-03-21T09:58:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Loudermilk - Estrogen Oxygen

A new client is supposed to be entering production today. I (being the only developer on the project) of course was not informed. Developers don't really need to know things like that. I mean, heaven forbid we get to do a little bit of time planning in case there are problems.

So I roll in this morning and here's the message I get:

Foocorp is going live today and the system isn't working. Someone from there called Donna [a secretary].

I can't get any more information than that. You might as well call up the police and tell them that someone is going to be murdered, then not be able to give them any information about who, where, when, why or how.

Now I've used my amazing powers of deduction (i.e. scanned the logs) and the only thing that has happened is that someone (and I don't recognize the name, so I have no idea who he is) has been trying to login unsuccessfully. Now, I can tell you exactly what happened:

This jackass decides he knows everything (he must because he's either a trader or a trader's bitch). He tries to log in (unsuccessfully). He doesn't bother reading the message on the screen (which is probably telling him he needs to change his password) and tries to log in again. Still unfazed by the error message, he tries again. And again. And again. And again. Now he won't be able to log in because he's locked out due to too many failures.

This chump tried to log in 5 times over the course of half an hour and was never successful. Did he call the helpdesk (who would ask him what error message he gets)? No, he went bitching to his trader (if he's a clerk) who went bitching to the company about this waste of time who sent some dumb secretary to call our secretary.

Somehow I will be blamed for not fixing this, even though I do not have access to production.

I hate this company.

WWZD?

2005-03-17T08:20:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Rude Buddha - Miss California

I came clean with Lynda about something a couple days ago.

Kathleen is a friend who did an internship here last summer. We've kept in touch via IM, and around Christmas she was back in New York. We went out to a string of bars and got really shitfaced. Because of said heavy drinking, she missed the late train from Penn Station (she was staying in Jersey).

I try to live my life around a set of core principals that have guided me well. Every time I have a decision, I ask myself "What Would Zack Do?" Then I do the opposite.

Clearly Zack would have let Kathleen sit at Penn Station passing in and out of consciousness until her train got there. So I offered her my place to crash. She finally accepted and we cabbed it to my place and both fell asleep.

Lynda wasn't terribly pleased because she found out that there was another girl in my bed the night before she spent the night for the first time.

I changed the sheets.

God's Total Quality Management Questionnaire

2005-03-15T14:45:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Me First and the Gimme Gimme's - I Believe I Can Fly

In my recent search for The One True Religion®, I've come across a number of people belonging to several religions. It's hard to discern which one is right. So it would help me out a lot if everyone could fill out the following form. It would help me decide which direction to go.

Note: I did not make this up, it was blatantly ripped off

1. How did you find out about God?

Newspaper
Bible
Torah
Book of Mormon
Koran
Other Book
Television
Divine Inspiration
Word of mouth
Dead Sea scrolls
My mama done tol' me
Near Death Experience
National Public Radio
Tabloid
Burning Shrubbery
Who?
Other:

2. Which model God did you acquire?

Yahweh
Jehovah
Allah
Just plain God
Krishna
Father, Son & Holy Ghost (Trinity Pak)
Zeus and entourage (Olympus Pak)
Odin and entourage (Valhalla Pak)
Gaia/Mother Earth/Mother Nature
None of the above; I was taken in by a false god

3. Did your God come to you undamaged, with all parts in good working order and with no obvious breakage or missing attributes?

Yes No

If no, please describe the problems you initially encountered here.

(Please check all that apply.)

Not eternal
Not omniscient
Not omnipotent
Finite in space/Does not occupy or inhabit the entire universe
Permits sex outside of marriage
Prohibits sex outside of marriage
Makes mistakes (Geraldo Rivera, Jesse Helms)
When beseeched, doesn't stay beseeched
Requires burnt offerings
Requires virgin sacrifices
Plays dice with the universe

4. What factors were relevant in your decision to acquire a God?

(Please check all that apply.)

Indoctrinated by parents
Needed a reason to live
Indoctrinated by society
Needed target for rage
Imaginary friend grew up
Hate to think for self
Wanted to meet girls/boys
Fear of death
To piss off parents
Needed a day away from work
Enjoy organ music
Needed focus on whom to despise
Needed to feel morally superior
Graduated from the tooth fairy
My shrubbery caught fire and told me to do it

5. Are you currently using any other source of inspiration in addition to God?

(Please check all that apply.)

Self-help books
Tarot, Astrology
Star Trek re-runs
Fortune cookies
Ann Landers
Psychic Friends Network
Dianetics
Cold fusion
Playboy and/or Playgirl
Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll
Biorhythms
Area 57 (Art Bell)
ESP
Television
Mantras
Jimmy Swaggart
Crystals (not including Crystal Gayle)
Human Sacrifice
Wandering around in desert
Burning shrubbery
Other:

6. Have you ever worshiped a false God before? Is so, which false God were you fooled by?

(Please check all that apply.)

Odin
Cthulhu
Lottery
Baal
Beelzebub
The Almighty Dollar
The Conservative Right
Mick Jagger
Bill Gates
Art Bell
The Great Pumpkin
Ronald Reagan
A burning cabbage
Mushrooms
Other:

7. God employs a limited degree of Divine Intervention to preserve the balanced level of felt presence and blind faith.

Would you prefer...

More Divine Intervention
Less Divine Intervention
Current level of Divine Intervention is just right
Don't know - what's Divine Intervention?

8. God also attempts to maintain a balanced level of disasters and miracles. Please rate on a scale of 1 to 5 God's handling of the following:

Disasters:
	Poor	Excellent
Flood
Famine
Earthquake
War
Pestilence
Plague
AOL
Republican Congress
Dubya
My present relationship
My last relationship
Miracles:
	Poor	Excellent
Rescues
Spontaneous remissions
Crying statues
Water changing to wine
Walking on water
Stars hovering over towns
VCRs that set their own clocks
Clear and competent statements by the President
My present relationship
My last relationship
9. Please rate the following:
	Poor	Excellent
God's Courtesy
Answers to your prayers
Are your spiritual needs being met?
How are your shrubs doing?

Startling Revelation.....

2005-03-15T13:26:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Radio Wazee - Alternative

I've come to a startling realization. I always thought that if someone didn't understand my question I should repeat it. Thanks to a startling new discovery, I now have proof I was wrong...

Carl:	Did you fix the blah blah blah?
Me:	You mean the problem where it whoozits?
Carl:	Did you fix the blah blah blah?
Me:	The problem where it foobars?
Carl:	Did you fix the blah blah blah?

Oh wait, no. I was wrong. I still don't freaking understand.

That's fine. I told him to wait while I figured out, put him on hold for 2 minutes, listened to some music, then picked it up and said "yes".

Problem Solved.

Tickets4Sex.com

2005-03-14T13:28:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Digitally Imported - Goa/Psy Trance

Amar managed to score a pair of tickets to a U2 Concert in October at the Garden. Now he needs to find a chick to take with him. He pointed out that he could offer the tickets on craigslist and specify that only hot chicks need apply.

I then pointed out that, as long as he's only offering to hot chicks and he didn't have to pay much for the tickets himself, he should only offer the tickets to chicks who will sleep with him. And thus a new website proposal was born......

Tickets4Sex.com

We get a small camera crew to film chicks sleeping with Amar. The only compensation they get is a free concert ticket. Maybe we'd list a series of upcoming concerts and get women to email him proposals. The comedy aspect of running a site like this alone would be worth its weight in gold.

The best part is that after they sleep with him, they'll have to stand next to him at the concert itself. Of course, we'd be sure to arm him with a series of inappropriate comments....

Sooooooooooooo. You sore?

You know, Green Day is going to be in town next week...

You were good. Not as good as the chick I saw Blink 182 with, but good

Bad Start To The Day

2005-03-14T09:11:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Digitally Imported - Chillout

Today started off on a sour note and it doesn't show any signs of getting better. The weekend was not remotely restful. Between Lynda being sick Saturday morning and spending the day taking care of her, and church on Sunday, I feel like I need a day off.

But instead I come into work to do something I really don't want to do. I have to branch my code to fix some stuff in the last production build. The new code is weeks away from completion, so I have to do it, but I really hate branching my stuff.

On top of that I forgot everything at Lynda's place. She'll bring it over tonight, but I feel naked without my wallet, mp3 player, keys, id, and blackberry. Cut off from all my technology.

So I'm just going to get the crappy work out of the way and go home. If you come in at all during the day, even if it's only for an hour, they don't dock you a sick day.

Wolf Amongst the Sheep

2005-03-13T12:03:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: William Young Fullerton - I Cannot Tell

So I'm sitting in church with lynda. I've agreed to go with her once in a while. She hopes to bring me back into the fold. We're supposed to be praying right now.

Church is really frustrating for me. I like the messages, in terms of ways to live your life. I like the general life instructions.

Unfortunately, church likes to mix all this religion with these inspirational messages. I don't exactly know what my beliefs of god are, but I know I get frustrated when I listen to it, and I get even more frustrated when I try to believe.

On another note, I find it slightly creepy that the sermon is being taped. There are 4 cameras pointing in various directions, taping the sermon for broadcast.

And as long as I'm going on about creepy stuff, church people wig me out slightly. I think I'm not used to people who are so friendly, especially towards people they don't know. It makes me feel like they want somthing. I guess they want me to believe along with them.

Suckers.

Ex-Roommate

2005-03-13T09:26:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Snoop Doggy Dogg - Gin and Juice

I was talking with Lynda about getting a laptop and it reminded me of a story. So, for your approval, I submit another in a series of...

Disturbing Tales of Computing-ing-ing-ing

A year ago I lived in Brooklyn with a guy named Mike. We had a deal with our next door neighbor where we ran a cable through the wall so we could get free internet (the building didn't support cable, we didn't have phone lines and he had DSL). In order to set up a network without running cables everywhere we had a wireless network setup. That also allowed us to resell service to neighbors (never pass up an opportunity to make some spare cash).

So it was a quiet Saturday. We were both hanging out in the apartment, nothing much going on. I think I was doing some random web surfing. Suddenly I get a short, simple instant message:

Hey, could you bring me some more toilet paper?

My roommate had taken his laptop into the bathroom and, I guess, ran out of TP.

For some reason it makes you feel really really unclean to get an Instant Message from someone actively taking a dump.

12 Steps

2005-03-11T20:30:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Gladiator (Movie)

I have some advice for Lynda's ex (Mike). He has a problem and he needs to deal with it. So I advise he follow the following 12 step program:

Step 1	Admit that you are powerless over being an asshole - that your life has become unmanageable.
Step 2	Believe that a Power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity.
Step 3	Make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of God as you understand Him.
Step 4	Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Step 5	Admit to God, to yourself and to another human being the exact nature of your wrongs.
Step 6	Be entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Step 7	Humbly ask Him to remove your shortcomings.
Step 8	Make a list of all persons you have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.
Step 9	Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step 10	Continue to take personal inventory and when you were wrong promptly admitted it.
Step 11	Seek through prayer and meditation to improve your conscious contact with God, as you understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for you and the power to carry that out.
Step 12	Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, try to carry this message to assholes, and to practice these principles in all of your affairs.

Buddy Christ

2005-03-11T17:14:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Digitally Imported - Deep House

So, I've got this bobble-head Jesus Christ doll (don't ask, it's a long story). I don't want it any more, so ideas on how to dispose of it are running pretty rampant. I feel like I need to do a throwback to my college days and epoxy it to something.

However, I leave it open to the masses to decide what will happen to Jesus. I wash my hands of his fate.

Add a comment below and in a few days I'll post on the results.

Zack's "The One"

2005-03-11T16:57:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: [No Music]

Zack's been seeing this chick named Dara for a couple weeks (which, for him, qualifies as a long term relationship). Last night he kept on telling me how great and how awesome his relationship with her is. He sounded positively giddy. No matter what I asked he said she was perfect in almost every way.

So I asked if she was "the one."

His response:

No, what are you talking about? Are you crazy? She's Jewish and wants to marry a Jewish guy. She knows that we're only messing around. Anytime any of that relationship bullshit comes up, I just have to say 'Not Jewish' and she drops it. It's awesome.

Why am I not surprised?

New Business Idea

2005-03-10T13:26:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Portishead - Strangers

My 15 seconds of thoughtfulness 2 days ago continues to pay off as Lynda's cow-orkers get more and more jealous that she gets flowers and they don't. In the interest of satisfying thousands of women out there, and because I'm philanthropic (and not at all interested in the moo-lah), I have come up with a brand new business. Here's how it works.

Step 1 - You sign up on the website providing your beau's name, work address, days and hours of work, your relationship (in case they aren't actually your beau), and your credit card number

Step 2 - ???

Step 3 - Profit

I'm not 100% sure on Step 2 yet, but one of the other gnomes tells me it's that we ship flowers every couple months (completely randomized so it's not predictable) appropriate to the type of relationship along with a card with some sweet phrase on it. Maybe it emails you a week before it sends them so you have time to alter things if you want. Maybe it slaps a cute little cartoon on the card. Maybe it also slaps on a $10 "convenience fee".

The idea is that you look incredibly sweet and thoughtful, but it takes no memory on your part whatsoever. It just happens. You look good, she gets to make all the cows at her office jealous, and you get some.

Because when it all comes down to it....

you just want some.

I'm So Money

2005-03-09T16:36:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - K. 397 - Fantasy for Piano in D Minor

[Email from Lynda]

The flowers are so beautiful. Everyone is commenting about them and some of the other girls are jealous. When you walk in the room you can smell them and it's just wonderful. Some of the guys have said that you're making them look bad. hehehe Mr. Katz is happy for me and thinks it's great that you care about me so much.

I also talked with my mom today. Remind me later to tell you what she said. She also told me that she talked to my aunt Marcia (Brian's mom) and Brian said that you're nice. He said that you were very attentive and loving towards me. I told my mom that you are like that all the time.

My aunt Bernie was rubbing it in her face over the weekend that she'll get to meet you before my mom, at which point my mom kicked her. So see, you are causing violence in my family, shame on you. hehehe

[Lightly censored to protect the guilty]

The First Rule Is: You Do Not Talk About Fight Club

2005-03-09T10:33:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: The Dust Brothers - This Is Your Life

Crazy freaking morning. In the spirit of the movie being filmed in front of my building, I will attempt to describe it "script style".

In tonight's performance...

The role of Hero will be played by Paul
The role of Damsel will be played by Lynda
The role of Villain will be played by Some Fat Italian Guy

Scene 1 Interior - Apartment Bedroom. Early morning, Hero and Damsel are waking up. [Scene deleted by censors] Scene 2 Exterior - Apartment Building. Car out front has hood up. Hero and Damsel are trying to start it.
Hero:	It's got some power
Damsel:	But it's not starting
Hero:	Let's go get some jumper cables and jump it
Damsel:	You have some in your car, right?
Hero:	Yeah
[Hero and Damsel close and lock car, retrieve jumper cables from Hero's car, and return]
Hero:	Excuse me, would you mind helping us jump our car? It'll just take a second
Random Guy:	Sure, let me pull my truck up
Random Cop:	[Blasts Siren] Move your truck
Random Guy:	I'm just giving him a jump
Random Cop:	...
Random Guy:	...
[Random Guy moves car. Random Guy and Hero attach jumper cables and car comes to life]
Hero:	I'm sorry you're so late. I promise your day will get better
Damsel:	I hope so. I love you
Hero:	I love you too. Bye
[Little does our Damsel suspect that waiting for her at work should be a lovely bouquet of flowers] Scene 3 Interior - Starbucks. Several people are gathered around milk/sugar table
Villain:	[Incredibly racist slur against someone at other end of table]
Hero:	Dude, you need a major attitude adjustment
Villain:	[Incredibly racist slur about what the Villain assumes the Hero does with people of the same race as someone at other end of table]
Hero:	No, but I'm not a [Racist slur about what the Hero also doesn't do with people of the same race as the Villain]
[Villain throws a punch at the Hero's face. Hero narrowly dodges and returns with a right to the Villain's kidney. Starbucks patrons and employees rush in and grab both Hero and Villain.]
Villain:	Fuck you, you [long stream of racist slurs]
Hero:	Whatever
[Hero picks up coffee and muffin, walks to subway station (watching behind himself the whole way). Gets on a train and collapses into seat shaking violently]

So that's the day so far. Scary, crazy, freaky shit.

Incredibly Frustrated

2005-03-08T12:27:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Sum 41 - Grab the Devil By the Horns and **** Him Up the ***

I wrote up this big huge long scathing post, but I've decided I shouldn't post it. Should the wrong person see it, I might end up in some hot water.

So I'm sitting at my desk. It's lunchtime. I'm playing dominos.

I hate my job

Birthday Wishlist

2005-03-07T11:46:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: The Corrs - Only When I Sleep

My family bitches incessantly about how hard it is to shop for presents for me. Since my birthday is in a couple months, I've decided to start maintaining a list of presents I would like:

Tie with Carbon Fiber color scheme
Subscription to Playboy
A better design for this blog
59 Horsepower Hydraulic Chicken Harvester
ThinkGeek Gift Certificates

Feel free to get me any of these, but you can probably guess which one I really want.

You Were Meant For Me

2005-03-07T09:30:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Guns N' Roses - November Rain

Another little funny conversation between Lynda and I last night. She was worried about smothering me because we've been spending a lot of time together. I told her not to worry about it and that I enjoy the time we spend together. I told her I hadn't suggested living together yet for 2 reasons:

I don't want her to feel neglected when I want to play video games or read, not do something with her.
I don't want to live in Astoria.

So we're thinking about getting a 1 bedroom together in the city in August when her lease is up (very rough idea, but possible).

But anyway, a segment of the conversation went like this:

Me:	Who knows, you might not want to live with me.
Lynda:	Why wouldn't I?
Me:	I don't know, I might do something that annoys you.
Lynda:	Like what?
Me:	I leave wet towels on the floor.
Lynda:	I'd pick them up.
Me:	I leave my keys in the door.
Lynda:	I'd get them.
Me:	I break my yolks, make a smiley face
[Lynda falls off the bed laughing]

For those who don't get it...

Homicidal Eyebrows & More

2005-03-07T08:49:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Guns N' Roses - Don't Cry

Internet was down this weekend (no not the entire internet, just my connection) and I wasn't going to go down to the local internet cafe and pay just to blog. There really wasn't anything to blog about.

Friday night we went to a modern dance show (which just confuses the hell out of me). Met up with Sue afterwards, introduced her to a friend of mine and all went out for drinks. I got pretty drunk pretty fast (I haven't been doing much drinking lately, so I've become a lightweight - which is fine because it's cheap).

Saturday we organized my closet. I know, we're party animals. To offset that boredom we went to a store near my place called The Baroness. They have interesting displays, but I've never gone in before ("interesting" = "kinky"). So we walk in and it's all latex clothing.

Latex.

Clothing.

Bet that got your attention. We pretended to be interested and look around for about 45 seconds, then turn to go. The Baroness stops us and forces us to walk around the store looking around. She also made a point to show us the latex nuns' habits. Actually, her corsets were pretty nice. Incredibly kinky looking. But the price was a little kinkier than I liked (I'm not shelling out $650 for an effect we could make ourselves with some liquid latex). So we escaped and went home.

Sunday was another quiet day. I met Lynda after church and went to her place. There was this guy on the 7 train, though, that just set me off cracking jokes. He had these eyebrows that looked like they want to jump off his face, strangle you to death, then go down to the corner bar for a beer. They were very very creepy. Huge thick creepy-crawler eyebrows with evil points at the corners. (shudder)

That's pretty much it.

Dinner w/ Andy - Post Mortem

2005-03-02T21:47:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: No Music

Dinner with Andy and Jeremy was interesting on several counts. I haven't seen her in well over a year, so it was good to see her. Jeremy was really cool, really laid back and generally nice.

Later Lynda and I were discussing the evening and she pointed out that you can usually see similarities between a person's current relationship and their ex. I definitely see some similarities between Jeremy and I:

Similar sense of humor
Similar personality
Similar staring at Lynda's tits.

Lynda pointed out that there were no obvious similarities between her and Andy. The only thing I can come up with is that they both have fuzzy pets. But so what? Maybe there's a reason I went for someone who is the complete antithesis of Andy.

Ultimately none of it really matters to me, because right now there's an empty spot on the bed next to my naked girlfriend.

Dinner Tonight

2005-03-02T12:39:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Dido - My Life

Recipe for Disaster
Ingredients
1 girlfriend
1 ex-girlfriend
1 ex-girlfriend's husband
1 ex-girlfriend's fetus
a pinch of embarassing memories
Instructions
Prepare by forgetting to pick ex-girlfriend et. al. up from airport the night before.
Place all ingredients in the same room. Set departure time half an hour before likely to leave.
Serve food of questionable spicyness to people who have acid-reflux.
Allow conversation to proceed unabated.
Allow girls to use restroom at the same time.
Makes: 1 can whoop-ass

I know what's on the menu for me tonight.

Titty-Bar Studies

2005-02-28T17:46:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Jack Johnson - Bubble Toes

So one of my friends (who would probably rather remain nameless) is in a massive funk today. I'm not talking funky, just in a funk. So we're going to the Flatiron Lounge for drinks and conversation. Personally, I don't think this is the best idea. I think the guy needs to go to a titty-bar, but he isn't interested (which, of course, is the number one sign that you need to go to a titty-bar).

This prompted a discussion with another friend (who would also rather remain nameless, but it was Chris) claiming that it is titty-bar season (when isn't it titty-bar season?) and that we should visit one.

Of course you don't want to go to a titty-bar when all the other perverts are there. For that reason, we propose a government grant for us to investigate which days are ideal for visiting titty-bars in various parts of the city. We figure we can do a complete study with a grant of about $25,000........ in singles.

Anyway, we figure we'll get some preliminary research in, starting early next week (we expect Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to be ideal) to give our grant proposal some extra heft.

Space, Time, and Dimension

2005-02-28T09:01:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Lustra - Scotty Doesn't Know

I was actually excited to come into work this morning. I don't know what madness came over me. I should have known that the feeling would pass.

I was blissful for about half an hour. Then Carl came by to remind me that I have bugs. Then Mike came by to tell me I have new bugs. I hate bugs. I really really hate bugs. These are especially annoying bugs. Like you start streaming data to the system, bring it down, then bring it back up and some of that data is lost.

It didn't take long to find the cause of most of the problems, but I'm really tired of the attitude of people who tell me to fix them. For some reason they assume that it's easy to do.

Conversation #1

Them:	Just don't do this until that is done.
Me:	That's all fine and good but what happens if that never gets done
Them:	Well, under normal conditions it will get done
Me:	We're already talking about boundary conditions that are never likely to occur. If I have to think about your boundaries, you have to think about mine
Them:	Well, then just put a timeout on it
Me:	How long?
Them:	2 minutes?
Me:	It usually takes 3, and if there's network congestion it can take 5
Them:	Then make it 10 minutes
Me:	So if there's a timeout I won't respond until it times out
Them:	Oh no, you can't wait 10 minutes to respond. You have to respond right away. Otherwise it's like their data is going into a black hole
Me:	So you want me to let them know right away if the operation is going to time out?
Them:	Yes
Me:	Ummmmm, I'm going to need a little more time, budget and manpower to bend the rules of space, time, and dimension!!!!

Conversation #2

Them:	I'm not getting any response to my data
Me:	The service isn't running
Them:	So?
Me:	I can't respond when my code isn't running
Them:	Well, can't you just send back rejections
Me:	Not when my code isn't running
Them:	This is a serious issue, we can't just not respond to data
Me:	Beats his keyboard against his head

I really am beginning to hate my job.

Lynda's Back

2005-02-26T11:38:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Custom - Hey Mister

Lynda's cousin Brian bailed on picking her up from the airport, so I stepped in. I conveniently had taken the day off due to being sick (the trick, kids, is to dip your nose in a pan of water, then inhale sharply just before calling - this produces a nice runny nose sound along with a good phlegmy cough). So I ran a couple errands, like dropping laundry off, and got her car and picked her up.

I'm going to take a break here and extol the virtues of New York City laundromats. New York laundromats suck. Big time. The only good thing about them is that you don't have to be in them often. It usually costs me about $30 to do my laundry (when you factor in detergent, softener, dryer sheets, and a soda while I wait). It costs about $25 to have the laundromat do all your laundry for you and fold/hang it, and it's done in 6 hours. Plus you get the sadistic pleasure of knowing someone else has to clean your dirty underwear. Does life get any better?

So I got Lynda from JFK (she flew out of LaGuardia. Thank you, Delta, for that itinerary). We pretty much made out the entire car ride home. Almost rear-ended a few people, got honked at, all in all: fun. We get to her place and the following series events occur:

4:40 pm - Arrive at Lynda's. Clean up cat's mess
4:45 pm - Mess around
5:45 pm - Make dinner
6:05 pm - Eat dinner
6:07 pm - Remove cat from dinner plate
6:20 pm - Finish dinner
6:21 pm - Mess around
7:30 pm - Watch The Grudge (with Andrew too)
7:35 pm - Bitch about how crappy The Grudge is
8:30 pm - Pause The Grudge while Andrew answers the door
8:35 pm - Stop making out, resume movie
9:15 pm - Finish The Grudge, start watching Eurotrip
10:00 pm - Finish Eurotrip, go to bed
1:00 am - Go to sleep
3:30 am - Get up to use restroom
3:31 am - Step on cat's tail, wake Lynda up screaming because cat sounds exactly like creepy cat-boy-thing in The Grudge
3:35 am - Go back to bed, lie awake, can't stop thinking about creepy cat-boy-thing
5:00 am - Still awake
6:00 am - Still awake
6:45 am - Lynda wakes up
7:45 am - Get out of bed, take shower
8:30 am - Get out of shower
8:50 am - Take Lynda to class

I need to pick her up in half an hour or so, maybe I'll try to take a nap.

Easter Eggs

2005-02-24T22:29:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Dido - Here With Me

On my last project I managed to sneak an easter egg in. It's nothing big, but if we receive a message with a specific field set to Kerrek it displays an image on a printout of a small dragon.

Phil just found out about the "feature" this morning. His first question was why I put it in. Carl and I just stared at him. He tried to clarify by asking if it had been because a customer requested the ability to put an image on the printout. Our eyes bug out and we keep staring at him. While he was trying to rephrase his question again I turned to Carl. Carl said maybe he doesn't know what an easter egg is. Phil insisted he knew, but again asked who had asked for the functionality.

I told him to pull up a browser and gave him the Elmer Fudd Google link to type in. I then asked him why Google had that page up. He said "because the programmers were bored?" After that he acted like he understood, but I still don't think so.

I mean, come on. Why did I put an easter egg in? Asking why a bored programmer puts easter eggs in is like asking The Pope why he's catholic, or why the sun sets in the west, or why half of the girls I've made out with have gone lesbian.

There is no "why." It's just a fact of life.

Donna's Rugrat

2005-02-24T13:55:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Paul Van Dyk - Vega

Donna's little kid was running around the office yesterday. I think he's like 10. I don't know if we started hiring 10 year old programmers (they'd probably be better than most of the ones we already have) or it was Take Your Brat to Work day. Probably the latter.

So because I happen to have some of the more esoteric (and therefore attractive to small children) cube toys, he decided that I was his new best friend. This friendship went through several. First I ignored him. Then I neglected him. This was followed with a rapid succession of dismissing, disregarding, and evasion.

At that point I realized that I needed a new approach. I recognized that most of the office was still mimicking my earlier attempts and were still in various phases where the took no heed of his actions. So I had him start stealing me soda and water from various VP offices. I'm set for the next few weeks in all of my beverage needs.

After this his usefulness dwindled, but the problem remained. I decided the best defense was going to be a good offense. I tried to scare him off with knowledge, but that was fruitless. He just stared at me and nodded until I stopped talking and put my headphones back on. I think he kept staring and nodding. I'm not terribly sure.

Clearly the kid was not to be deterred. I soon realized I was misdirecting my offense. I could have just gone to his mother and ask that she keep her child in check, but that seemed rude. At this point the boy himself provided inspiration in the form of a plastic watergun he threatened to shoot me with. I simply explained to him that waterguns were for wimps. Real men fill their waterguns with ketchup.

So today when Donna was passing out paychecks, she refused to give me my envelope.

Pfffffttttt. I get direct deposit anyway.

Tired Evening

2005-02-23T21:51:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Moby - Sky is Broken

I've been tired often lately. Monday night I crashed at 7.30 after a relatively quiet day. Last night I was ready to go down at 10.00, but stayed up watching TV until the jam session. Tonight it's not quite 10.00 and I'm ready to sleep again. Maybe it's because I have a cold. Maybe I just needed to catch up after the last few weeks of work.

There's also surprisingly little to do in my room aside from the computer. Part of that is due to the fact that I have 12 square feet of floor space. I've been trying to start reading Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, but the first page is very dense and hard to get past. So instead I've been passing the time by resisting the urge to mess with Audrey and listening to music. I talked to Lynda briefly.

The only other thing that went on today is that I finally went up to Times Square and got Andy tickets to The Phantom of the Opera. She is a big fan and she and Jeremy are going to be out here next week. I promised them a wedding present, so now that's covered. The seats are decent, especially considering I bought them a week before the show.

Riffing

2005-02-22T23:28:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Muddy Waters - Mannish Boy

So after my call to Lynda (still in Florida) this evening, my roommates decide to get stoned. We were going through some jazz and blues music and came across Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters (think of the blues riff in Bad To The Bone). They started talking about how awesome it would be to have that riff on infinite loop.

So I jumped on the net, pulled down some shitty mp3 of a cover band playing it in a club, and slapped a 40 minute audio file together of nothing but the opening beat. There really wasn't much that 3 white guys freestyling could do, but we gave it our best shot.

I recorded the whole thing on my mp3 player. I've got blackmail material which is going into a black hole until Zack (Josh too, but mostly Zack) decides to get married (cue evil laughter).

The best part was when they decided that we couldn't do the vocals, so Zack went looking for his harmonica, which none of us have ever played. Yeah.... right....

Best Riffs

So there's a bunch of pubes in the bathtub.
Whenever Josh takes a shower
He also uses your soap
And you see those pubes ev-er-y-where
I got the.... pubes-in-the-shower bluuuuuuuuuuues
- Zack

Sittin on my ass
Doin' shit
I looked at the TV
And then I saw some tits
I said... "love those titties, baby"
I got none
I got the no-titties blues
- Josh

Three dudes sittin around
One of the dudes starts fantasizng about the other two dudes
That one dude gets his ass like totally fuckin' beat
duh duh duh duh duh
- Zack
(about Josh)

Chick comes out Zack's room cryin'
I was all muddled
Asked Zack why she left
Said "Damn bitch wanted to cuddle"
- Paul

New York City Under Snow

2005-02-21T10:35:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Smashing Pumpkins - Galapagos

(Southwest view from my roof)

I really like living in the city when it snows. There are a lot of reasons, but the primary ones are that it muffles the white noise of the city and it covers up the filth. I'm also looking forward to going up to see The Gates in Central Park. I was planning on going, but didn't think it would be that great with nothing but the dead foliage. I think the snow will make it a bit nicer (and keep away tourists).

So this morning, because of the snow last night, I headed up to the roof to take a couple pictures, then went to the grocery store for milk, eggs, and some fruit.

This mornin', we's havin' waffles.

Lynda - Gone For a Week

2005-02-21T02:29:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Warren G - This D.J.

I was beginning to think that Lynda being in Florida this week was going to a good thing (Note: I am not going to link to something explaining where Florida is. Everyone knows Florida is America's wang). I didn't want my bad mood (which has been slowly escalating) unleashed on her for something that isn't her fault. I didn't really have to worry about it though; being around her relaxes me. Now the sucky part is that I'll miss her being gone.

So after dropping her at the airport I came home and went to see Constantine with Zack and Josh (worst... movie... ever). Afterward we ate at a new sushi place on 8th & A which is running a half price promo (they make their money back by having atrocious service). We watched some crap TV then I blew a couple hundred people away on video games.

Now I'm going to sleep...

Maybe after I read a bit more in my new compiler book...

Not a Good Sign

2005-02-19T17:09:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Dieselboy - Beckoning

I didn't leave work until 4.30. After testing (which went well) they rolled the database back and couldn't bring one of the systems back online. I depended on that system, so I was forced to stay 3 hours later than I expected. Finally my boss asked why I was still hanging around. I told him that he had told me to stay. He made me wait another quarter hour, then let me go. On top of all this, he declined my request to take some of the comp time I have earned.

So I left the building listening to Linkin Park at a fairly loud volume. This isn't necesarily a bad sign, but it is a warning sign. On the way home I ran into several situations which exacerbated my mood. The first was with dumb tourists, then dumb NYU students, then with a flamboyant staff member at Barnes & Noble, then with a Barnes and Noble "Recommended Book" about Brad Pitt and Jenifer Aniston, then with stupid people walking on the sidewalk.

By the time I got home, my music had changed from loud Linkin Park to loud Dieselboy. This is like red sirens going off. It usually means I'm very close to completely blowing my top. And this evening I have a dinner with Lynda's cousin and his girl (who sounds like a total bitch), followed by a party in Brooklyn.

I'm already tired and pissy. I'm hoping I can keep it in check.

Work - Good Thing We Don't Work for NASA

2005-02-19T11:02:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Linkin Park - Breaking the Habit

The launch last night was less than stellar. Ray's estimate that we would be leaving around 6.45 pm proved to be hauntingly true. In fact I left the building at almost exactly 6.45..... Hawaiian Time. The night seemed to be a case study in me telling people to do things a certain way, they forget, argue, or just straight out don't, I force the issue, and things work.

So we're all back today to do final production testing. Aside from several initial run foibles (incorrect roles assigned, passwords not reset, the building fire alarms going off) things are running pretty smoothly. I haven't had any problems to fix in over an hour and with any luck I'll be out of here around 1.00, home to sleep for a bit, then out for the evening with Lynda.

On a more important note, Andy says I'm a "computer geek" because I posted code in my blog.

You'd think that she would have noticed that before, like during the 8½ years we dated, instead of a year and a half after we broke up.

Work - Launch

2005-02-18T09:30:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Live - Lightning Crashes

We launch in T-minus 8 hours, 30 minutes. This is officially the quiet before the storm. Hopefully there won't be a storm as such, but you know what I mean. My morning will be quiet, probably testing bug fixes on my previous project.

In the afternoon I'll do the final build of my new system and deploy it to the target machines. At 4.30 pm the systems I am dependent on come down for their maintainance. At that point I'll bring my system up in order to make sure it starts up and attempts to connect. If that's successful I'll bring it back down and wait for those systems to come back online (around 6.00 pm). Once they're back up, I'll bring my system up, make sure it connects and does everything it needs, then go home. With any luck I'll be gone by 6.30 pm.

Now, because I work in a corporate hell, replace every instance of "I" in the above paragraph with "the appropriate team (with me hovering above their shoulder)." The build team does the build, the deployment team does the deployment, etc.

Developers aren't allowed anywhere near their own code running in production. Kind of a pain in the ass when something needs to be reconfigured, but oh well. I guess they think we'll be too tempted to fix a problem in-flight.

Yeah, we probably would.

Porn Names

2005-02-17T13:24:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Presidents of the United States of America - Kitty

I got into a discussion about the unique name thing with a couple coworkers. Of course the conversation strayed to porn. So, what porn name you would choose for yourself?

Me: Craig Shaftway (0 on Google) or Thickly Settled (13,900 on Google)
Chris: Dick Striker (18 on Google)
Ralph: Scuba Buzz (2 on Google)
Amar: Buck Naked (71,000 on Google)
Lynda: Sugar (31,500,000 on Google)
Liz: Fifi Greenwood (0 on Google)

I'll add more as results come in

Work - Waiting for a Contractor

2005-02-17T12:00:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Guns N' Roses - November Rain

In a rather amusing move today, we realized that our company only has 3 employed .NET developers. One is a VP (who rarely deigns to program), one sucks (only knows VB.NET and doesn't understand complicated things like "application domains" and "for loops"), and the other is your's truly. Most of our development is in Java, but we've also got 5 .NET consultants.

So I'm hoping to take a week off soon, and it was decided that I should start teaching another developer how my program works. To be honest, there's a lot of truck-sensitive knowledge in there. So we start casting about for the appropriate person to tutor. Immediately both employees are removed from the pool (for obvious reasons).

So now I'm just waiting for upper management to assign my soux developer. In the meantime. I'm Googling old friends' names, just to see what pops up. Apparently Judd gave up on drama and programming and is, instead, a published doctor and journalist. David works for NASA, is a surgeoun in Australia, and works for Oracle. Gabe has started writing comic books, organizes charity races in Michigan, and plays guitar in a band in San Diego (it doesn't help that he shares the same last name as half of Mexico). James has more jobs than I could think up in a year (shares the same last name as half of China).

My friends need uniquer names.

Work - Non-critical bugs

2005-02-16T09:04:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Digitally Imported - Deep House

Right now my project is 2 days away from launch. My boss is incredibly paranoid and will believe just about anything you tell him. So he has mandated that, barring any critical bugs, the project is going to launch as-is. Everyone who has any sort of dealing with the project knows this.
So to remove any shadow of doubt, here are examples of critical and non critical bugs:

Critical: Someone can flood the server effectively grinding all activity to a halt

Non-Critical: A tag erroneously identifies a rejection as pertaining to a cancel instead of a modification

Critical: Under typical work-flow conditions, orders are lost

Non-Critical: It is difficult to determine where the logs for the current session begin

Critical: Users can begin World War III with a malformed message

Non-Critical: The service name should be prefixed by two characters (Not the display name, the internal name used when you run net start svc, which is never seen by anyone anywhere and only executed by automated scripts)

For the record, every single one of the non-critical examples above has come up since the code-freeze announcement a week ago. I was asked for every single one if the fix would be launched in production.

Random Browsing - Found Magazine

2005-02-15T16:37:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Linkin Park - Somewhere I Belong

Just browsing some random crap. Found an unusual site: Found Magazine. Basically people just post stuff they find. I guess people are fascinated by other people's crap.

My Favorite

C# - Volatile Fields

2005-02-15T14:12:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: Moloko - Fun For Me

Fields in C# classes can be marked as volatile. I'm slightly unclear on this, but it looks like a niche task, really only needed for concurrent thread signalling issues. For example, if you have the following:

  class Foo

    public int i = 0;

    public bool b = false;

    public void Go()

      i = 42;

      b = true;

    public int Wait()

      while (!b)

        System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1);

      return i;

If you call Go() from thread A, then call Wait() from thread B, it's possible to get 0 as your result. This is because .NET optimizes stuff behind the scenes, and assignment statements might not get executed in order behind the scenes. This is all covered when you're using a single thread (so if thread A checked these values, it'd be fine), but for multithreaded scenarios it isn't handled.

Now, if you were to put a volatile keyword on b (i.e. public volatile bool b; ), it would ensure that all assignments were flushed before b is assigned.

I'm sure there's an excellent reason behind this, but I'm equally sure I've pebcak'ed a bug or two due to this. Hmmmm, one more thing to watch out for.

Work - Command Line Configuration

2005-02-15T09:14:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: 3 Doors Down - Kryptonite

Still don't have much to do at work, so I finished a little project I started yesterday. Through a few of my projects now I've had to deal with command line stuff. In general it's a pain in the ass to support a bunch of dumb options. These things also tend to be formulaic, so I decided to refactor all of my command line handling into a few quick classes and put a bunch of junk into config files.

So the end result is a pretty lithe class (around 150 lines) that does the basic stuff, but can be easily extended to do whatever you want. None of it is commented, but most of it should be pretty obvious.

using System;

namespace System.Configuration

  public sealed class CommandLineSectionHandler : System.Configuration.IConfigurationSectionHandler, System.Collections.IEnumerable

    private CommandLineParameter[] _Parameters = new CommandLineParameter[0];

    public void LoadCommandLine(string[] args)

      for (int i = 0; i < args.Length; i++)

        for (int j = 0; j < _Parameters.Length; j++)

          bool handled;

          bool expectMore;

          object state = null;

          _Parameters[j].LoadCommandLineSegment(args[i], ref state, out expectMore, out handled);

          if (handled)

            while (expectMore)

              _Parameters[j].LoadCommandLineSegment(args[++i], ref state, out expectMore, out handled);

              if (!handled)

                throw new CommandLineException("Invalid Command Line Parameter", _Parameters[j].Name);

            break;

      foreach (CommandLineParameter param in _Parameters)

        if ((param.Required) && (!param.Satisfied))

          throw new CommandLineException("Missing Required Command Line Parameter", param.Name);

    public string Help

get

        System.Text.StringBuilder Result = new System.Text.StringBuilder();

        foreach (CommandLineParameter param in _Parameters)

          string nextChunk = param.Help;

          if (nextChunk != null)

            Result.AppendFormat("{0}\n", nextChunk);

        return Result.ToString();

    public CommandLineParameter this[string Name]

get

        foreach (CommandLineParameter parameter in _Parameters)

          if (parameter.Name == Name)

            return parameter;

        return null;

    public System.Collections.IEnumerator GetEnumerator()

      return _Parameters.GetEnumerator();

    public object Create(object Parent, object ConfigContext, System.Xml.XmlNode Section)

      int i = 0;

      _Parameters = new CommandLineParameter[Section.SelectNodes("param").Count];

      foreach (System.Xml.XmlElement parameter in Section.SelectNodes("param"))

        if (parameter.GetAttributeNode("type") == null)

          throw new ConfigurationException("'type' attribute not specified", parameter);

        if (parameter.GetAttributeNode("name") == null)

          throw new ConfigurationException("'name' attribute not specified", parameter);

        string typeName = parameter.GetAttribute("type");

        Type paramType = Type.GetType(typeName);

        if (paramType == null)

          paramType = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().GetType(typeName, false, true);

        if (paramType == null)

          paramType = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetCallingAssembly().GetType(typeName, false, true);

        if (paramType == null)

          paramType = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetType(typeName, false, true);

        if (paramType == null)

          paramType = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetType(this.GetType().FullName + "+" + typeName, false, true);

        if (paramType == null)

          paramType = Type.GetType(typeName, false, true);

        if (paramType == null)

          throw new ConfigurationException("Parameter type not recognized", parameter);

        _Parameters[i++] = (CommandLineParameter)((CommandLineParameter)paramType.GetConstructor(System.Type.EmptyTypes).Invoke(null)).Create(this, null, parameter);

      return this;

    public class CommandLineException : Exception

      private string _Parameter;

      public  string  Parameter { get { return _Parameter; } }

      public CommandLineException(string Message, string Parameter, Exception exx) : base(Message, exx) { _Parameter = Parameter; }

      public CommandLineException(string Message, string Parameter) : this(Message, Parameter, null) { }

    public abstract class CommandLineParameter : System.Configuration.IConfigurationSectionHandler

      protected string _Name;

      public    string  Name { get { return _Name; } }

      protected bool   _Required;

      public    bool    Required { get { return _Required; } }

      protected string _Description = null;

      public object Create(object Parent, object ConfigContext, System.Xml.XmlNode Section)

        _Name     = ((System.Xml.XmlElement)Section).GetAttribute("name");

        if (((System.Xml.XmlElement)Section).GetAttributeNode("required") != null)

          _Required = bool.Parse(((System.Xml.XmlElement)Section).GetAttribute("required"));

        System.Xml.XmlNode description = Section.SelectSingleNode("description");

        if (description != null)

          _Description = description.InnerText;

        this.Configure(Section);

        return this;

      public virtual string Help { get { return _Description; } }

      protected abstract void Configure(System.Xml.XmlNode Section);

      public abstract void LoadCommandLineSegment(string Segment, ref object State, out bool ExpectMore, out bool Handled);

      public abstract bool Satisfied { get; }

Since this is just a framework, we need a couple examples of how to extend this. Plus it'd be nice to have a configuration example. To extend this, you'd need to start by implementing a CommandLineParameter class. That's actually pretty easy. You need to implement two functions and a property.

The property, Satisfied, is actually pretty easy. You return whether or not you consider yourself properly initialized. This is used after the command line has been parsed. Any required parameter that does not report itself as satisfied will throw an error.

The Configure() method is called when configuring and is passed the param element from the config file (more on that later). These nodes are plain XML and can be processed as you see fit.

The LoadCommandLineSegment() method does the bulk of your work. You will be passed each segment of the command line (in the Segment variable) which was not handled by a prior parameter. If this parameter is handled by your handler, you should set Handled to true so that no subsequent handlers will be called. If you expect more data to come immediately after this, set ExpectMore to true as well. You will have exclusive access to subsequent data until you set ExpectMore to false. Finally, should you need to keep track of any state, it is suggested that you do so using the State parameter. This will be passed back to you in an unaltered form and can be any object of your choice.

That's all there is to it. So here are a couple examples. I start with another abstract class to make my life easier. It just handles configuration of a key in the form /key. If a value follows, it is up to subsequent implementations to include it.

    public abstract class KeyedCommandLineParameter : CommandLineParameter

      protected string _KeyName = null;

      protected override void Configure(System.Xml.XmlNode Section)

        System.Xml.XmlElement parameter = (System.Xml.XmlElement)Section;

        if (parameter.GetAttributeNode("key") == null)

          throw new ConfigurationException("'key' attribute not specified", parameter);

        _KeyName = parameter.GetAttribute("key");

        if (!_KeyName.StartsWith("/"))

          _KeyName = "/" + _KeyName;

      public override string Help

get

          if (_Description != null)

            return string.Format("{0,-20} {1}", _KeyName, _Description);

          else

            return null;

Pretty simple. Here are a pair of implementations of parameters. One covers boolean flags. The flag defaults to false unless the value is present. The other covers integer flags. They can have a default value (0 if none is specified) and the value is specified as a second parameter (i.e. /foo 15).

    public sealed class IntegerCommandLineParameter : KeyedCommandLineParameter

      private int  _Value = 0;

      public  int   Value { get { return _Value; } }

      private bool _FoundValue = false;

      protected override void Configure(System.Xml.XmlNode Section)

        base.Configure(Section);

        System.Xml.XmlElement parameter = (System.Xml.XmlElement)Section;

try

          if (parameter.GetAttributeNode("default") != null)

            _Value = int.Parse(parameter.GetAttribute("default"));

        catch (Exception exx)

          throw new ConfigurationException("'default' attribute not properly formatted", exx, Section);

      public override void LoadCommandLineSegment(string Segment, ref object State, out bool ExpectMore, out bool Handled)

        ExpectMore = false;

        if (State == null)

          if (string.Compare(_KeyName, Segment, true) == 0)

            Handled = true;

            ExpectMore = true;

            State = new object();

          else

            Handled = false;

        else

try

            _Value = int.Parse(Segment);

            _FoundValue = true;

            Handled = true;

          catch (Exception exx)

            throw new CommandLineException("Invalid Parameter Value", _Name, exx);

      public override bool Satisfied

get

          return _FoundValue;

      public override string ToString()

        return String.Format("{0} - {1} ({2})", _Name, _Value, _KeyName);

    public sealed class BooleanCommandLineParameter : KeyedCommandLineParameter

      private bool _Value = false;

      public  bool  Value { get { return _Value; } }

      public override void LoadCommandLineSegment(string Segment, ref object State, out bool ExpectMore, out bool Handled)

        if (string.Compare(_KeyName, Segment, true) == 0)

          Handled = true;

          _Value = true;

        else

          Handled = false;

        ExpectMore = false;

      public override string ToString()

        return String.Format("{0} - {1} ({2})", _Name, _Value, _KeyName);

      public override bool Satisfied { get { return true; } }

Here is a sample config. This is pretty standard config framework. On each param node, you are expected to have a type and name attribute. You may also have a description child element (used when displaying Help). Anything else depends on your parameter implementations.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<configuration>

  <configSections>

    <section name="system.configuration.commandline" type="System.Configuration.CommandLineSectionHandler, CommandLineParams"/>

  </configSections>

  <system.configuration.commandline>

    <param type="BooleanCommandLineParameter" name="booltest"  key="foo">

    <param type="BooleanCommandLineParameter" name="booltest2" key="foob">

    <param type="IntegerCommandLineParameter" name="inttest"   key="bah">

    <param type="IntegerCommandLineParameter" name="inttest2"  key="bahb">

    <param type="IntegerCommandLineParameter" name="inttest3"  key="bahc" default="5">

      <description>This is a parameter</description>

    </param>

  </system.configuration.commandline>

</configuration>

Finally, it's nice to know how to do stuff with it. Try something like this:

      System.Configuration.CommandLineSectionHandler StartupConfig = (System.Configuration.CommandLineSectionHandler)System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.GetConfig("system.configuration.commandline");

      StartupConfig.LoadCommandLine(args);

      System.Console.WriteLine(StartupConfig.Help);

      foreach(System.Configuration.CommandLineSectionHandler.CommandLineParameter param in StartupConfig)

        System.Console.WriteLine(param.ToString());

      System.Console.WriteLine("inttest3: {0}\n", ((System.Configuration.CommandLineSectionHandler.IntegerCommandLineParameter)StartupConfig["inttest3"]).Value);

This loads up the config, passes in the command line arguments and processes the whole deal. Then it shows the help text followed by a list of each parameter and the associate value, then shows you the value of a parameter called "inttest3" (I used the config file listed above).

Work - Nothing to Do

2005-02-14T14:02:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: SOMA-FM - Groove Salad

Work is going pretty slow today. My project is slushed right now. Technically it's not frozen as I'm still tweaking the odd value here and there, but for all intents and purposes the existing code is untouchable. Later today I'll do a release candidate build.

That's not going to stop me from working ahead though. We're slapping a FIX front-end on an existing electonic trading platform. For launch, we're looking pretty good. The only bugs I get are from jerks nit-picking on my grammar (I said "TLTC on 7 Lot(s), Out on 3 Lot(s)" on purpose, instead of "TLTC on 7 Lot(s) Out of 10 Lot(s)". They mean the same thing, but mine is the industry-standard way).

So now I'm doing three things:

1.) Implementing version 1.1 functionality (Already done, but blocked by pre-processing directives)

2.) Reviewing how long it will take to add some new functionality to my last project (probably an hour of work, but I'll list 4 hours to cover my ass)

3.) Playing Dominos, surfing blogs and reading up on the lesser-known areas of C#

I expect to write some posts through the day about what I've learned.

Snowboarding @ Butternut

2005-02-12T21:36:00.000-05:00

Track/Stream: The Crystal Method - Trip Like I Do

It's been a long time since I've gotten to strap my board on and throw myself down a mountain. Lynda, Andrew (her roommate) and I jumped in her car last night and drove up to his folks' place in Connecticut (note the convenient link to the state, in case you don't know what Connecticut is). After a short night's sleep we headed out to the slopes.

We hit Butternut, a small resort in Massachusetts (again linked for your educational goodness). They touted 22 of 22 runs open (2 runs are the bunny trail, and 1 is for innertubes). Lynda and Andrew both took a class, which left me free to go to the top of the mountain. I took a few long relaxing runs. Unfortunately there wasn't enough cover to go for a tree run, but there were some interesting natural terrain features, so I had some fun. I had a couple accidents including being nailed in the back by a ski and landing hard on my hip, but nothing too bad.

Afterwards we went back to Andrew's parents' place, hung out for a couple hours (just long enough for me to be victorious in a game of scrabble with some beauties like clime, ova, and vectors (on a triple word score)), then drove back to the city. I pulled second driving shift, so after dinner at Burger King (yum) I brought us home.

Gas and Food: $40
Lift Tickets/Rentals: $100
Breaking my MP3 Player While Boarding: Pricele...... wait a minute! That thing cost me $300!

Damnit!

Me:	Hello?
Her:	Did you stop by last night, or this morning and leave something here? (said with a very far away sound in her voice)
Me:	Maybe
Her:	Come on, just tell me if you did or not
Me:	Well, yeah,
Her:	And you left something here
Me:	Yeah
Her:	DONT YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN!

Life: The Soundtrack

Genetics

New York's Finest

A Modern Fairy Tale

Plans A, B & C

Plan A

Plan B

Plan C

My Blog is Back (Hey Na... Hey Naaaaaaaa My Blog is Back)

Titty-Bar Studies (New York Dolls)

No Purpose In Life

Another Red-Letter Day

Exciting Day

Free At Last, Free At Last, Praise Tha Lo'd I's Free At Last

Mike/Zack Bingo

Women Bingo

Awesome Awesome Article

Dance

Fun Night

Sleepy

Sin City

Ex-AWOL

Poor Mike

Shawn

Mike Mike Mike

Another day

Gizzi

Gizzi sucks

Advice From the 'Rents

Somehow I Don't Feel More Cultured

Encryption

Tickets4Sex.com - Need Help

Random Survey

Ninjas vs. Pirates

More Easter Eggs

Steve walks warily down the street

Something's Awry

WWZD?

God's Total Quality Management Questionnaire

Startling Revelation.....

Tickets4Sex.com

Tickets4Sex.com

Bad Start To The Day

Wolf Amongst the Sheep

Ex-Roommate

Disturbing Tales of Computing-ing-ing-ing

12 Steps

Buddy Christ

Zack's "The One"

New Business Idea

I'm So Money

The First Rule Is: You Do Not Talk About Fight Club

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Incredibly Frustrated

Birthday Wishlist

You Were Meant For Me

Homicidal Eyebrows & More

More Postmortem

Dinner w/ Andy - Post Mortem

Dinner Tonight

Recipe for Disaster

Ingredients

Instructions

Titty-Bar Studies

Space, Time, and Dimension

Conversation #1

Conversation #2

Lynda's Back

Easter Eggs

Donna's Rugrat

Tired Evening

Riffing

Best Riffs

New York City Under Snow

Lynda - Gone For a Week

Not a Good Sign

Work - Good Thing We Don't Work for NASA

Work - Launch