Naginata

H8 Quiz

You all get exposed to this quiz just because I like the answer I got. Compliments of Powder.

You are Woodstock!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Senator John Kerry

Since it seems to be the trend today, I'm going to paste in the full text of an article that needs to be read. You can find the original text at Don Bendell's site, and some comments on said article over at WorldNetDaily.

Nagi's short version: Democrats are lying cheats and cowards? Who knew!? Give me George W Bush, with all his inability to veto anything, over Senator Kerry any day. The current joke is that John Kerry could debate himself... and I'm starting to see that, like all good political humor, there's some truth under the comedy.

... I've made a few false starts on writing a paragraph talking about how awesome Green Berets, and soldiers in general, are, and how insignificant the things that I do for a living seem when measured against a real American hero... but words are failing when I try to express my gratitude. So let my inability to textualize "thank you" in any form approaching sufficiency stand in its place. It is my hope that those like Senator Kerry who choose to malign your deeds, your honor, and your sacrifices will someday be called to account for their actions.

*snip*

My wife had rotator cuff surgery earlier this year, and the recovery is terribly painful. Then, she developed a staph-epi infection, and they had to cut the same scar open and operate on her again. Just thinking about the pain and anxiety of facing that painful surgery a second time in the same wound, makes me cringe. That experience, however pales in comparison to what I am going through right now, in my heart.

The old hurts are surfacing and the feelings of betrayal by fellow citizens, and their leader stirring them up, are breaking my heart again. I am being cut in the same scar. How did we who served in Vietnam suddenly become cold-blooded killers, torturers, and rapists, of the ilk of the Nazi SS or the Taliban? Most of us were American soldiers who grew up idolizing John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and all the other heroes. That was why I volunteered. But for political expediency, John Kerry has rewritten history, again. After spending only four months in the country of Vietnam, John Kerry testified before Congress in 1971 with these exact words about incidents he supposedly witnessed or heard about from other vets: “They personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."

I was a green beret officer who volunteered for duty in Vietnam and fought in the thick of it in 1968 and 1969 on a Special Forces A-team on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, just for starters. We were the elite. We saw the most action. Everybody in the world knows that. But we did not just kill people, we built a church, a school, treated illnesses, passed out soap, food, and clothing, and had fun and loving interaction with the indigenous people of Vietnam, just like our boys did in Normandy, Baghdad, Saigon, and everywhere American soldiers ever served. We all gave away our candy bars and rations to kids. Our hearts to oppressed people all over the globe.

My children and grandchildren could read your words, and think those horrendous things about me, Mr. Kerry. You are a bold-faced, unprincipled liar, and a disgrace, and you have dishonored me and all my fellow Vietnam veterans. Sure, there were a couple bad-apples, but I saw none, and I saw it all, and if I did, as an army officer, it was my obligation to stop it, or at the very least report it. Why is there not a single record anywhere of you ever reporting any incidents like this or having the perpetrators arrested? The answer is simple. You are a liar. Your medals and mine are not a free pass for lifetime, Senator Kerry, to bypass character, integrity, and morality. I earn my green beret over and over daily in all aspects of my life.

Eight National Guard green berets, and other National Guard soldiers, have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you totally dishonored their widows and families by lumping National Guard service in with being a draft-dodger, conscientious objector, and deserter, just so you can try to sabotage the patriotism of our President who proudly served as an Air National Guard jet pilot. I have a son earning his green beret at Fort Bragg right now, and his wife serves honorably in the Air National Guard, just like President Bush did, and I am as proud of her as I am my son. I volunteered for Vietnam and have no problem whatsoever with President Bush being our Commander-In-Chief. In fact, I am proud of him as our leader.

John Kerry, you personally derailed the Vietnam Human Rights Bill, HR2883, in 2001, after it had passed the House by a 411 to 1 vote, and thousands of pro-American Montagnard tribespeople in Vietnam died since then who could have been saved, by you. Earlier, as Chair of the Senate Select Committee on MIA/POW Affairs, you personally quashed the efforts of any and all veterans to report sightings of living POW’s, when you held those reins in Congress. You have fought tooth and nail to push for the US to normalize relations with Vietnam for years. Why, Mr. Kerry? Simple, your first cousin C. Stewart Forbes, CEO, of Colliers International, recently signed a contract with Hanoi, worth BILLIONS of dollars for Collier’s International to become the exclusive real estate representative for the country of Vietnam.

“Hanoi John,” now that it works for you, you beat your chest about your Vietnam service, but to me, you are a phony, opportunistic, hypocrite. You are one of those politicians that is like a fertilizer machine: all that comes out of you is horse manure, and you are spreading it everywhere.

Medals do not make a man. Morals do.

Don Bendell

Canon City, Colorado

Do you... blogger?

Great post by Luke of #R fame about RSS and ATOM and why Blogger/blogspot is stupid.

Full text snipped in the "Read more" section.

Mark posted an entry a few weeks ago called The myth of RSS compatibility in which he outlined the 9 different versions of RSS and how they are incompatible with each other. While I'm sure his article is technically correct, in practice it's not that hard to write a single parser that handles all formats of RSS. Such a parser may not be 100% correct according to all the 9 different specs, but it will handle the vast majority of available RSS feeds without a problem. SharpReader implements such a parser and I assume most (if not all) other aggregators take a similar approach as it saves the writer a lot of duplicate coding for shared tags and extension namespaces like dublin core.

In the design of the new ATOM format, it was decided to start from scratch with a new format instead of basing it on the existing RSS tags. This way ATOM breaks free of the incompatibilities, under-specification and in-fighting that often occurs around RSS. The unfortunate downside of this is that ATOM feeds cannot be handled by existing RSS parsers, whereas an RSS 2.0.2 (should there ever be one) would be backward compatible enough to be read by existing parsers that already handle the 9 current dialects.

Building an entirely new parser for ATOM did not seem very appealing to me, especially since the ATOM spec is currently only at version 0.3 and is bound to undergo quite a few (backwards incompatible) changes before reaching 1.0. Because of this immaturity of the spec, I had initially planned not to support ATOM until it reached 1.0.

Mark's decision long ago to cripple his RSS spec (while keeping an ATOM feed containing everything that used to be in his RSS feed) made me temporarily consider implementing ATOM, but since diveintomark.org was (back then) the only site I knew off where the ATOM feed contained more information than the RSS feed, I decided against it. Then recently Blogger decided to add ATOM feeds to all their blogs while keeping RSS a pro-only feature.

While I personally do not understand the reasoning behind Blogger's decision (why use an immature spec that is not yet widely implemented and is still in flex, when there is a widely implemented and mature alternative that will do everything you need it to do?), it did force me to reconsider my initial decision as there are now many thousands of blogs with an ATOM feed that do not have an equivalent RSS feed.

I have therefore added support for ATOM to the next version of SharpReader (due out soon) and I'll just have to bite the bullet and keep updating my code-base as new versions of the ATOM specification come out. In order to allow ATOM feeds to use the same extension namespaces that I already implemented for RSS, I have decided against creating a separate parser, but instead integrated the ATOM bits into my existing RSS parser. This effectively means I'm treating ATOM as if it were just another RSS namespace extension (with quite a few funky elements): <atom:feed> is treated as a <rss> tag, <atom:entry> is like <rss:item>, etc. A nice side effect of this implementation is that it will allow people to add ATOM elements to their existing RSS feed and vice versa, which I believe should be allowed anyway according to the standard namespace extension rules.

More on Children

Hey, here's another link that all you people who have decided not to spawn younglings just yet will appreciate. Link compliments of something linked by lessthanepsilon. Ok, so the grammar, she's getting interesting. I blame work.

It takes a Village

Look, this isn't going to be a pleasant post, especially not if you have, or are thinking about having children. Just fair warning. Also, the grammar and consistency-of-thought checks are pretty much off for this one, due to the rage.

To single people, and couples that are without children:
You guys are cool. Don't ever change.

To people with children, single or no:
I'm watching you.

So here's the situation... rough day at work, trying to kill a bug that I only recently got to predictably manifest... and the thing only works on very long fax runs, so running tests on it slams the database AND takes 10-20 (or more during peak load) minutes to do. High stress day, to say the least. I finally got it fixed, and was looking to go to the Y to work off some stress on ye old treadmill and/or freeweights.

I wasn't feeling so great, so I decided to just jog a little, walk a little, maybe aim for 3 miles or so total, then probably call it a day. As usual, there's a few kids up front, but "meh" there's always kids up there.

As I was jogging, though, it seems a whole group of kids decided it was their time to work out. Here's a quick summary of their "plan":

• Use aerobic equipment. Maximize workout by jumping from machine to machine every 2 minutes. Ignore confused and angry looks from adults.
• Change TV channel from News to MTV. I'm not sure what the program was on MTV, it was either a car commercial or a report on the grand opening of some strip club.
• Use nautilus equipment. Specifically, have 2 people pulling on opposite sides of a cable machine at the same time. "What are we working on today kids? PERMANENT BACK DAMAGE! YAY!"
• Consider running on the treadmills behind someone else, to maximize the number of people that can be working out at once.
• Adults using the basketball court for aerobics? NO PROBLEM! There's a narrow hallway you can use to dribble in. Sweaty Y members walking from the weight room to the restrooms/water fountain make good obstacles to practice your footwork.
• Speaking of the water fountain - people using the water fountain do NOT make soccer goals when they bend over. Your ball may fit through that hole. Or it may hit my knee. Then you may fit through a closed window.

Ok, so there's less "workout" things there than "pissing me off" things.

Here's my point - if you decide to spawn some younglings, fine, that's your business, not mine. It is not my business to discipline your children - but I will if I have to. It is not my business to help your children with their math homework - but if you teach them proper manners and they ask politely, I may offer them assistance if I'm in the mood. It is not my job to keep your kid from wandering into the wrong bathroom, behind a door that's too heavy for her to open - and no amount of shaking your head at me from across the room is going to make me do other than make sure the door doesn't swing shut on her little hand. Oh, darn, she walked right in there, now you have to GET UP and go GET HER, not look at me like I'm supposed to give a damn.

You don't like it? Don't bring your kids to the Y. I'm not paying $220/year to help you raise your children, nor to make sure they get exercise. As far as I'm concerned, any adult should have veto power over anyone without a driver's license using ANY of the exercise equipment.

While we're on the topic of the Y... there's a "Curves" in town now. So the Y, hoping to keep business, buys some new equipment, puts it in a room that was for aerobics or kids, I'm not sure which, but both seem to be in my way these days, and declares that it's off limits to men.

Fine - no broads on the freeweights then. You want to get sexist, then let's dance, cupcake. Otherwise, you've got some nice new equipment in there, and I pay the same money as everyone else in that place.

Summary - the Y failed to enhance my calm today. It's running short of chances.

Quote

This quote is cool enough to get its own post.

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." -- Brian W. Kernighan

Quizzes Again... and more

First of all, let's get THIS travesty out of the way:

Now, about "the drunk post". I know you ALL saw it, and now it's gone.

I wish I could bring it back, but I can't. You were all ready to laugh at the drunk post and write off anything strange in it as "oh, he's drunk, and not really responsible for his actions". I would ask that you give the same consideration to the deletion of said post, since I was very, very hungover at the time, and not really responsible for my actions the other way. Had I waited until I was sober sober, I no doubt would have found the drunk post funny and let it go, but let's face it, there's nothing funny about remembering liquor, when you're HOBAR'd.

That being said, this weekend was a lot of fun, even if there was a lot of chundering, and the girlfriend takes VERY good care of me.

Edit: Oh yeah, I left out that part where Ralph and Carolyn got married... the church and the ceremony were beautiful, and best wishes to them on a long and happy life together. Hopefully I get some pictures of the church up here at some point, because it was very, very cool :)

Attention Users!

Dear User,
You often complain that some of our systems are "too restrictive", that we treat you like children sometimes. You brought this on yourself. It would be a lot easier for me if I could write my systems without too many restrictions on input, and let you put things in however you want. It's not that I put restrictions on things because I like being some sort of all-controlling big brother character, it's just that you're too stupid to use systems that don't restrict you as much as possible.

Oh, I'm not saying that you're mentally deficient, I'm sure that some of you are very bright, when you're not at your desk. You have to realize though, as soon as you sit down, you stop thinking. How hard is it, for instance, to see that I've already populated a "State" box with all the proper 2-letter abbreviations for US and Canadian states/provinces? No, not good enough, you have to override what the box tries to pick for you and enter "CAL" or "WVA" or "OERGON". So what do you want? Do you want me to spellcheck every state entry? How about if we just use the 2-letter abbreviations? It's easy, all you have to do is type "CA". Heck, Just type "C" then hit the down arrow! Even easier, just bring up the drop down list and click!

I'm willing to work with you, but you need to decide if you want to be stupid, and have my program hold your hand, or if you want to be smart, and make decisions on your own. If you decide to be stupid, you're not allowed to complain when my software makes decisions for you.

<3,
Naginata

Paper Kites

So, my office is part of a room that basically projects itself into the factory floor. That is to say, the building is a rectangle, split down the long way with the offices on the left and the shop on the right. my office is part of a large rectangular "bulge" into the shop part.

Right outside the walls of the office, is a machine whose apparent job is to assist all manner of chemicals in becoming airborne. Next to that machine is a fan, that blows the chemicals up. Throw in a hole in the ceiling of the corner of my office and a strategically placed cobweb, and right now I live in the vent area for the machine.

Result: I'm freaking high right now.

Seriously, I've got a buzz going, and it's not the good kind, it's the "I see the world through a fog, and also I feel dizzy and nauseated" kind. I'd enjoy it, I guess, if it were a slightly lower concentration of checmicals, and I weren't at work, but the concentration is high enough that I'm going to throw up in about a half hour or so if I don't get some air (which I'm doing periodically), plus I'm at work right now, so I have to... you know, keep working. Which I can't do, because I'm high.

They call them fingers, but I've never seen them fing. -- coworker B

I suppose I could write some sort of prose here, or some sort of stream of conciou...cons...con... stream of... you know, some drivel, but I'm not going to, because... 1) I'm not in to that sort of thing, and 2) That's pretty much what all my posts are.

And now I'm going to go outside for some air. Maybe I'll post more if I get bored... maybe I won't.

Wordsmithing

What is it about language that's just so damned fun to play with? I think it's best summarized thusly: Language is like Legos. Think about it - it's a sea of tiny discrete blocks, with different shapes and colors. Some are very general - the good ol dark grey 2x4. Words like "blue" and "desk" - the meat and potatoes of language, on top of which all else is built. Then there's the little clear 1x1s, the little round pieces that inevitably represent headlights, and so on. These are more specialized words like "grok" and "comrade" - words that can be added in many situations to help more express your design more clearly and exactly. Finally, there's the wheels, whip antennae, ship hulls - the over-specialized pieces. They're either so specific that they could only ever be used for the design they were included with, or so superfluous that they add little of substance to the model. Words like "parastalsis" and "Toxotes jaculatrix" that very rarely make their way into casual conversation.

So what's the point? Simply this - there's 2 ways to play with your legos. Either you take the designs that they give you, and continue to say things like "I would like some pie", or your spice it up. What if you took that lego airplane, and gave it forward-swept wings? Maybe you end up with something like "It's pie that I crave!". Maybe you figure out how to make the same basic model, but with half the piecees left out... "I like pie". Maybe you throw away the lego plane altogether, and harvest its pieces to craft some sort of lego boat, or spaceship, or who knows what. "Precious pie, how could I be without you?!" "Ah pie, that without which there is no gustatorial pleasure!" "Lack of pie will surely throw my people into rebellion!"

Some people even get nuts with their legos. They throw out the instructions and start mixing sets together. They make their own custom bits - flags to fly atop a mighty brick castle, custom sails on a pirate ship, perhaps even motors to make the whole thing move. These are the people who produce words like stuponfucious or obfuscatorium or even fhqwgads (which I may have misspelled).

The point is this - I like doing fun things with language, just as I like doing fun things with legos. Words or plastic bricks, it makes no difference to me, the joy comes from stacking them up in unexpected ways. Most of the time, you end up with something that will make your parents wonder if they should move out from under the power lines. Sometimes, though, you end up with a construct of surpassing beauty, balance, and meaning. Sentences like "Ending sentences with prepositions is something up with which I will not put" (Churchill) or "I think it (western civilization) would be a good idea" (Ghandi) are the sorts of things I'm talking about. But you can't build the 3-foot long Star Destroyer without instructions if you don't produce a few hundred brickensteins first. And quite frankly, producing wordbominations is just plain fun, even if, like their plastic counterparts, they often end up destroyed within minutes of their creation.

Story Time

And now, a story...

+_+

+_=

=_=

=_+

=_=

-_-

*ring ring phone*

0_0

o_o

=_=

-_-

The End.

Update: Delphi still sucks

This is how you get data in to and out of delphi:

1. Create a database object. Feed it some parameters (username, password, database name, etc). This assumes that you have oracle set up and configured correctly.
2. Create a "Query" object. Feed it some SQL so that it knows what's going on. This may auto-generate, but not if you want to run on multiple databases. Expect to write the sql yourself. Also expect it to fail the first couple dozen times.
3. Create an "Update" object. Now go back and tell your query object that you created an update object.
4. Go tell your update object to generate some "insert", "update", and "delete" SQL. You will probably have to edit this by hand as well.
5. Forget that you ever created the update object. Delete any reference to it in comments. It does not exist. Do not even mention it.
6. Now if you want to add a new object to the table, open the query object, set the values to whatever you want (note that parameter names MUST match those from the object-that-we-no-longer-mention!!). Then say "append", and it will magically use the update object (shit, I mentioned it!) to insert the new record.

Design like this will make your code VERY easy to maintain.

Best Quiz Ever!

I am a Defender-ship. I am fiercely protective of my friends and loved ones, and unforgiving of any who would hurt them. Speed and foresight are my strengths, at the cost of a little clumsiness. I'm most comfortable with a few friends, but sometimes particularly enjoy spending time in larger groups. What Video Game Character Are You?

The Oracle at Delphi

If anyone out there has a working knowledge of SQLDirect 2.9.5 and/or Delphi 5, I need to pick your brain.

Right now I'm working on a system to put requisitions into a database, and I absolutely have to use Delphi 5 until much later. The problem right now is that there's 2 objects: a Query object and an Update object. The Updates happen via the Query object.

That seems broken to me.

The Query object is "opened", and then the new record "appended". This doesn't seem good to me, considering that the table in question is massive. And people complain about slow updates. It's messed up. And I lack the power of "documentation".

I could deal with crappy libraries OR a crappy language OR a crappy IDE. Heck, I could probably deal with any 2. All three at once, is too much even for me.

Invent Me #9

Dance Dance Revolution - my obsession, my addiction.

The new version (DDR Extreme (the "8th mix")) is due out this fall for PS2. What I want is for the playlist and oni mode playlist to work like this:

You set some options in the menu for which songs you're going to show (DDR8 only, DDR6, DDR7, maybe even Konamix, but that would probably be hard (or impossible... and not nearly as worth it to me personally)). In the playlists, you'd see a little icon next to the song for which mix it was from, so you'd know which was from which. If you pick a song from something that's not DDR8, it would ask you to swap in the disc from the appropriate version, and load the songfile there. It would NOT start DDR6 or somesuch, just get the critical song data. When you were done, back to the DDR8 playlist... it would go to the playlist and maybe you'd have to slap the DDR8 disc back in to get the list/preview music... if that's how it has to be, so be it.

Just think how cool it would be, to have a 300 song playlist. You could play Days go By, and Japan and Tsuguru, and V and A all in one session!

Viva Las Vegas

So, I got back from Vegas last night. Wonderful trip, I expect details about the trip to come out over the next <time period>, so I'll save you a long "this is what I did" post and just give you a few facts.

First of all, when you go through a security check point, and they ask you to strip down AGAIN, the correct answer is not "da, Comrade".

Ok, so that never happened. But how cool would that have been?!

I think that the extent to which this trip was awesome is best summarized by what happened when I got back in indy. I limped to my shuttle, waited for it, limped over to my car, which I very nearly did not recognize, stopped at a wendys, and drove home. Upon getting back to the house, I grunted something at Tim, and went to bed. Then I got up thismorning at 6:30 and went to work. The point is, I slept for like... 10 hours, and I still feel like I haven't recovered. Going to the gym for jogging/lifting is definately on pause until at least wednesday, maybe later. The blisters from walking around, are mighty.

So yeah, we've learned some important lessons about the evils of sobriety. It was a good trip. I dunno how many details I'm going to post up here, really, because what happens in Vegas, yadda yadda yadda. Let's just say that I'm looking forward to going back for more quality cigars and carousing. And this time, NO POPOV!

And if this post is a bit... out of order, and disconnected, and doesn't make sense... let that be a commentary on what the trip did to my brian, and not on my writing skills.