Thoughts of Canada Day

Does anyone else know what they are going to do for Canada Day? I don't know right now. I heard that the stuff (concerts) downtown were going to blow, but that is from the guys over at X FM, do you never know how good that info is. I figure that I'll just be wandering around downtown if it's not too hot. This week has been pretty much a write off. Friday was the only day that I got a decent amount of work done, and I think that is because just about everyone else was out of the office. Thursday was blown because of a department picnic at Lac Lemi after listening to a consultant go on about iterations in the morning. *yawn* It was okay though except for the managers in the department keeping on asking "how are we going to cost that?" Sheesh. Give it up people.

One of the interesting / funny stories the the consultant told us was how it is hard sometimes to sell iteritive developement to customers. One of the first things he said: don't make your mock ups too good. This is because when the customer sees something that looks like the end product, and they can click it, the just go "well, connect it so that it works". Riiiight. It's akin to seeing a plastine car at a car concept show that you can reach out and touch, and then just expect them to drop an engine into it and make it work. Doesn't quite work that way.

The second story was about tackeling the hard issues first. Address high risk things early. Well, he told us about a project that he worked on and the biggest concern that all the tech people had was if they could get these three computers to comunicate going through all the networks that they had to (he didn't get into too much detail). Anyways, they worked for an iteration (many weeks at least) and were able to get things working using ping. Well, they were really happy with this, and brough the customer in to show them. So the guy comes in and they show him the three computers that show the pings on the screen. The customer looks at this and says "I paid how much money for this?". Oie. I guess that it is hard to explain some things to people when the issue is not in their field at all.

Irish Tenors - Waltzing Matilda

Yay! Harry is here!

Humm.... maybe I should figure out a different title. Ah well. The title sort of spoiled my story, but long the jist of it is that my copy of Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix has arrived. Yay me! I am sure that I can use all my spare time reading it. ;-) I think that right now I'll only read it at night. I'll save my Effective Java book for the bus ride in. I see now what Ryan and Peter were talking about. I'm mostly reading it straight though with some minor skipping around. Some things in it we have been following in our project group, some not, but nothing big. I just read the defensive copying section, which I thought that pretty smart.

Speaking of Harry Potter, I thought that today's Penny Archade was pretty funny. From the look of the cover, I think that I like the one that we got here better than the one that they got in the states. Why do they do everything differently? What is fine for the rest of the world isn't okay for them, so they have to change it? *sigh* Some times I really just don't understand.

Now all I have to do is resist reading my book and actually clean my room. Give me strength...

Moby - At Least We Tried

Update: I didn't notice at first what the girl behind the counter was wearing / had on her forehead. hee hee... nice touch. ;-)

Dusty Clean

Oie. I think that I should be cleaning my room more often. I just went though it getting it "clean". So far, I am at stage 1: organize and put away. Tomorrow will be stage 2: actual vacuming and dusting. I think that stage 3 is profit, but I am not sure yet. Dusting is something that I hate, but it is something that I do the most. Somehow my room still gets dusty. Damn. I just have to clean more. I think that when I get a house, I'll buy and old wind tunnel and have everything smooth surfaces and hardwood floors. When I want to clean things up, I just turn on the 'ol wind, and boom, the place in blown pretty clean. No dusting for Jim. I could probably set it to go on while I am out of the house. That way I would be forced to put everything in it's place. I went for a short bike ride in between some cleaning, and that helped my head a bit.

I have picked up some funny quotes lately. One was from the JUnit FAQ, which said:

Some developers have argued in favor of putting the tests in a sub-package of the classes under test (e.g. com.xyz.test). The author of this FAQ sees no clear advantage to adopting this approach and believes that said developers also put their curly braces on the wrong line. :-)

I thought that was pretty funny.

The other one I found in some code at work. It was a comment that said:

// No idea what happened here. This is an impossible error!!!!!

That was my favourite because I had seen the output of that default switch several times before I had read that code. I am just glad that they had put it in.

Black legend - you see the trouble with me

Ah, Friday...

Yes, as you may have guessed, it is Friday. ;-) Yay! That means that really not much is happening here today. I was supposed to go out with Kibbee some time this week to the rib fest, but that didn't end up happening. I went out with my group though for a "team building lunch" which means that we just went out and got some ribs (rib sandwich for me) and sat outside watching car accidents and people. Really productive lunch. *cough*

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw what happend to Peter's door. That is pretty damn funny. It can't be fun living there, but at least Pete always has great stories. Every time someone complains about the place that they are living at, he can trump them, everytime. hee hee... Anyways, I should get back to work... most people are away at a meeting right now, so that means that it is mostly quiet and I can actually get stuff done. ;-)

Village People - Kung-fu Fighting

Babyback, babyback, babyback ribs!

Went out to Sparks St. today for lunch with the guys (no running for me) and got some ribs. The lines were pretty long, but they moved "quickly". I think that I am supposed to go out later this week with Kibbee, so I'll be doing that too. They were not as good as some people were raving though... Ah well. And I think that they should provide a tarp instead of a napkin. That and a toothpick.

Big plans tonight. Going to find a good pasta place (Mamma Gratza's?) downtown and wander with Laura. I would figure out something more ambitious, but that would involve staying out late most likely, and I will still have work in the morning.

They have a new policy here at work. Nothing will go live to the production server durring business hours (8-5). This will only be fore static pages and images. So, since the earliest anyone gets in is like 7:30, we have 1/2 hour window in the morning to move anything up. This is really going to hamper any work that I will be doing. *sigh* I really think that I have to find a project that I can work on at work... doing small fixes on things is really ticking me off. I'd like to build something bigger sometime. Oh well. I should be working on AudioMan anyways. If you want to download it and play with it, that's cool. Just email anything you find out about it.

Cake - pretty pink ribbon

sleepy...

It is late once again, but I am still up. *sigh* You would think that I would learn. I have to be early tomorrow so that I can get off early. I am going to go out with Laura because today she found out that she got into med school at U of O. I am really happy for her. This means that she doesn't have to write the MCAT exams again. From everyone that I have ever spoken to, those are to be feared above all else.

Does anyone else think that when I go to www.asciitable.com they have an ASCII table, but as an image? I think that is really funny. Maybe I am just to much a nerd, or that really is ironic.

If anyone wants to make comments, right now you have to enter in a email address... don't bother. Just put in some crap that looks like an email address. I will fix that shortly. I'm too out of it to figure out where to turn it off right now.

Ace Of Base - Happy Nation

2003.06.17 @ 2018

Well, I think that this is the end.

I will from now on be blogging at this location. Ryan is hosting me. I am doing more and more blogging just to blog, and not to play around with the technology. And I am getting frustrated with what I had built already. This will allow people to post thier own thoughts on my thoughts too (if you so desire).

Just as a warning, it isn't the prettest right now. I have to play around with the style sheet some, and add links etc. I will still keep this site going, but not too much more. I have moved this months posts to the new blog, but there might be some formatting issues. Anyways, that's it for now. Jimbo Jones, signing off.

Listening to: Barenaked Ladies - It's All Been Done

Moving (again)

Yay me. I am finally moving web pages. I think that it is about time too. I was starting to get sick of the look of my old page. I'm not totally happy with the default one from this page, but I will be changing that soon. I just have to figure out what I want to bring from my old page, and what I want to leave here. I think that I will try and transfer my blog posts over. We'll see.

One thing that has frustrated me here is today the really smart people have found a "virus" on their computer. So they have sent out this warning to everyone in their address book. Do you know how many thousands of people are here? Shit... but the funny thing is that it is just a virus hoax. *sigh* Ah well.

great weekend

*sigh* Yes, I am going to complain about my knee. It was great before. Now it is not. I think that I will not be running for a bit. I did about 18 minutes before it gave out on me. I am going to make an appointment to see someone about it. First I have to figure out if I am covered by school health insurance. What a pain.

I said that I would talk about the amazing time I had this weekend, and I will. I had an amazing time. ;-) hee hee... I went and saw Bend it Like Beckham which was a great movie. I like the small non-blockbuster movies sometimes. They work on things that other movies leave out... like story. *cough* Matrix Reloaded *cough*. That was a good night, but I ended up staying out too late, so biking downtown for noon was out of the question. We ended up starting around 3 pm though, and it was good. On the way there it misted, rained, etc. But when we actually got downtown, the sun came out and it was beautiful. I didn't want to do the trip back, and not just 'cause my butt hurt. Man, I think that I have been on a bike only 3 times since grade 12. But I do have to say that it is much easier than running... Anyways, got back, grabbed some food, watched tv and feel asleep. That's about it.

One thing that I never want to do is deal with the customer so the engineers don't have to. I am not a people person. I don't have good people skills. Grrr... Talking to a guy on the phone about a web page and he said "Uhh, it looks like that doesn't line up by 1 px. Do you think that you could fix it?" Yes, I will spend time rewritting stuff because the text is in a table. Why the hell do you care if it is off by one px? You can only see it if you stare losely. Do you think that it effects the users? Do you think that it impacts the performace? Do you really think that the text that is off by one px (if you stare and measure) is really worth your time and my time to fix? grrr... okay, I think that I am done ranting and bitching. I think that I want to go limp home now.

Listening to: John Williams - Departing Coruscant

Why am I here?

I have no freaking idea why I am typing this late. Oie. Ah well. One cool thing that I was able to find today (which I was looking for) was how to get java to figure out what runtime env. it is using. I was so happy that I found it. I knew that this would make sense for it. I just don't know if this would solve the problem that I want it to. I just have to figure out what happens if you try to have byte code in your progam that you don't actually use. What I want to do is when you try on the program, it checks that it will be able to run properly, and only then will
it start up. If it's not the right env., it provides a message to the user and dies. Fail fast, fail early. And I figure that might be a more portable way to do things, since we are using Java anyways.

Okay, I was going to talk all about what I did this weekend, but I think that will have to wait for another time since I am having a hard time focusing on the screen. Tomorrow is going to be a hard day at work. :-( Why the hell and I still up? grrr... and it'll probably take me like an hour to get to sleep. Maybe not. Anyways, I'll document The Amazing Adventures of Jim and Laura (and the bike trip) later... but right now I have to address a very important issue: lack of sleep.

Listening to: Aqua - Freaky Friday

Grey or Gray?

It's a pretty gray (grey?) day today. But it's all good 'cause it's Friday!! YAY! I have a busy weekend... lots of things to do. Tonight I am going out to see the movie Bend it Like Beckham with Laura, Amy, and a bunch of other people. It is supposed to be really good, but we shall see how it goes. Tomorrow I am supposed to go for a bike ride from Stittsville downtown, and have a picnic, but now the weather is looking shitty. :-( I was really looking forward to it. I hope that we don't have to cancel it. Ah well. And of course Sunday is Father's Day, but then that night I am going out to Karen's to watch Lilo and Stitch. Ah, it's tough being me. ;-)

I just have to figure out where I am going to work on AudioMan. I don't think that much is going to get worked on this weekend, but thankfully next week is free. I should be able to get more done on that. I just want to make sure that we are not adding in more functionality than we commited to (since I am really lazy). I don't think the focus of the class was to make a
killer app that does all sorts of cool things, but to learn the whole process cycle which includes customer interaction, iterative developement, and ensuring quality through best-practices. I really believe that the actual product is secondary and not as important. To quote just about everyone that has ever come before me, I believe that it is the journey, and not the destination
that matters.

Okay, there was like an hour pause there... I should leave now. :-P

Listening to: Trebble Charger - Amercain Phyco

Running here again...

No running for me today again. I am trying to make sure that my knee is alright 'cause I am going to do a bike ride / picnic from Stittsville downtown on Saturday. It should take about 1.5 hours each way, but I have not been on a bike for a long trip since grade 12. This will definally be an interesting trip. ;-) All I have to do now is finish putting together my brother's bike (rear gear shift cable) and get it all suited up with the "extras" that I will need for the small trip like a water bottle holder and a kickstand. Not necessary, but they would be nice to have. And I will have to get it done tonight, cause tomorrow I am going to go out for a movie, and I don't want to be putting together my bike the day for the picnic. *sigh* Yes, the struggle is truely difficult. :-P

I, as usual, have not been doing as much as I want to do on AudioMan. One thing that I did find was a cool tool that plugs into Eclipse and using Ant to do branch coverage. I figured that would be a good quick way to at least check that we are doing the minimum. Here at work I was working on a email feedback form. Well, the funny thing is the form never worked. I guess that they thought that no one wants to provide feedback. How bad is that? The form went up live, and the people never tested it. I mean, you typed in some things, so it must work. Shheesh.

Listening to: Salty Dog - Dionne Reel - Mouth of the Tobique

Nerd Books

I finally got my nerd books in. Yay! I have just been quickly going through the Unix in a nutshell and it seems great. I am already glad that I got it. I got screwed when I bought that small edition of Unix for Dummies. It was way worse than the man pages. I guess I should have known better... ah well. I used it as a reference, but it wasn't even good for that. I am going to start reading the Effective Java book as soon as I finish Frankstien. I am almost done that... only about 20 pages to go. But I keep on doing it slowly because it is well written, and I don't want to miss any of the rich text because I am tired and not really absorbing it.

Here at work we are a little bit in crisis mode. We have problems with the Apache and php. Apairently it was loading in a new instance of the php module everytime it got a request to the user. So, if 10 ppl hit the page, at 8 Mb per module, that is 80 Mb of memory taken up. Increase the number of people, and the server sort of browns out. That and at the same time robots are crawling and bringing down apps and again browning out the server. So they have been scrambling to block some robots and they changed the server so it only loads the php module on demaind. Shit, sorry for all the spelling mistakes. Ah well.

Pretty soon I will be sending out another email to everyone that wants to go to the Ottawa bluesfest and see Great Big Sea. I think that it should be good... so far I think that the list is around 8 at least. Yay! ;-)

Listening to: The Tragically Hip - Three Pistols

Oww! My knee!

Stupid friggin little school girls. I went running today (it was a beautiful day) and I was doing great. When I got over to the museam there were a couple of like 12 year old girls, and they suddenly changed direction and I twisted so I would not plow them down. Within a minute I was limping because I had screwed up my knee. Next time I'll flatten them to the ground. Grrr... and I had just got my feet fixed up, and I was going to do so much better. Ahhhggg! So, SO frustrating!

I think that the number of days for this blog are numbered. Ryan has made me a blog on one of his sites that uses movable type, and I think that I will start using that. I just had to make sure that there was some way to back up / export my posts, and then it's all good. I just have to play around with the style sheets to get it how I like it before moving it. I am a little tired of the silver, blue and red, but I'll see what I will do. I don't think that I will move my countdown clock over, or things like that. I'll still be using this, but not really for blogging. *sigh* Peter has always offered to host me, but I just wanted to do my own stuff. I'll still mess around with Perl here though. Ah well.

Listening to: Moby - Harbour

Up and down like a...

It's very frustration to put a file on a server that keeps on going down. Even if you are putting up a message that is saying that you are having troubles. :-( We are having a lot of trouble at work today with our main product that hosts tons and tons of gov't sites. *sigh* Some times things can be so frustrating. Ah well.

My running is getting better and better. We did only about 4 km today, but I am really starting to enjoy it. I am not pushing myself too much, and we are only out for like max 45 minutes. Pretty soon I am sure that we are going to cut out all the walking too. That will be really cool. I have to make sure that I am doing well for when Liz comes home from Switzerland. I think that she wants to do a 1/2 marathon, and if I am all trained up, I think that I would do that with her. I think that my goal right is to be able to run all lunch, and then do a 10 km, and then go from there.

I went over to Laura's house yesterday for her birthday. It was really nice. ;-) I left from my neices b-day party to go there, so all afternoon I was at birthday parties. ;-) One with lots and lots of small children running around, and the other one quiet and with just adults. Nice. Afterwards we watched Chicken Run. Pretty funny for clay. But it sure seems like a lot of work to go through to make a movie. I always liked Pengu though. The funniest parts were where he went "Wan-wana!". hee hee...

Listening to: Space - We Gotta Get Out Of This Place

Friday ;-)

Such a great day out today. Unfortunally, I didn't go running... my feet really don't like me at all. But that's okay because it is Friday! ;-) There are definally some things that I like about living in the city: how close you are to things; how when you wonder, usually there are other people around enjoying wandering too; how some times it doesn't have a rush rush rush feel to it... it can be really nice.

I ran into kibbee today at lunch. I found out that he has started up a blog himself. Good for him. I guess that it seems that it is what all the other software people are doing, so why not. I wonder if it is going to get to a point where we just communicate though electronic means. Humm... maybe.

I came across a site the other day that I just thought was one of the worst ever. It is for John Meunier which seems to have stuff to do with water supplies. I just struck me as a bad abuse of web techologies. Everytime you resize the page, it downloads a new filler gif to use, they slide up and down (not together) in the frame of the bottom. This is a case where I think that Ryan would say that they were trying to make a web page into an app. This is a great case where if someone had just applied W = U*H, they could have realized what they were doing was just wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh-oh! I had better get back to work... ;-)

Listening to: They Might Be Giants - Istanbul

You call that a bike?

Okay, I just had to link to a couple of comics that I read today. The first one is a Dork Tower one, while the other is a Doctor Fun (4
June, 2003). I think that to really get the first one, you would have had to read 1984 by George Orwell to really get it. He really was a great writter. I just read Animal Farm about 2 weeks ago. It was really good too.

I pulled my bike out of the rafters yesterday. I oiled the ol' girl up. It's been like 8 years since I last rode it, and now I remember why. It's really rusty, but things mostly work. I just don't think that I want to spend a bunch of cash to get a new one. I'll deal with the one that I have for now. I just shelled out like 30 $ for a bike helmet (tells you how long I last rode) and also got a water bottle holder. I have to grease it up to get the holder on, but that's later. I rode out to the highway (ie. pavement) and back, round trip probably about 5 km. I only saw 3 cars, and only 2 actually passed me. The one that did pass me (the first one) AND was going my way was a porsche, so I guess that I was going fast. ;-) I am getting my bike into working order because a friend does a lot of biking (doesn't drive) and I thought that I could join in and bike together. We'll see how that turns out.

Listening to: Barenaked Ladies - One Week

me == tool

I must be a compleate tool. I went running again today. Ah, gotta love stupidity. One thing is though, I am running great. I get to the end of the 5 km, I feel great. I am not puffing or about to die at all. We are still doing the 5 run / 2 walk, but I am not having a hard time with it at all. I can't wait to step it up to a full run the whole time... I might actually have a chance of being fit this summer. I just think that I'll be treating a lot of blisters for the next little bit.

I was on the phone last night, and my parents came home from shopping. So, because the dogs are barking like mad, I toss them out the back door. I walked around to the front, and opened the door for my mom. In that amount of time, two of my dogs had succeeded to get wacked by a pork-u-pine (I don't care how it's written!). Anyways, they got it in the face, but not too bad. However, Jaz also got it in her front left paw, both front and back. And she got it bad... My dad figured that we couldn't get them out of her paw, so he called the vet. But they couldn't do anything till this morning when my parents took her in. She was in a lot of pain, limping around on three legs. My favoutite dog (named Jaz), I think that she is the smartest too. Dumb, dumb, dumb. :-( It's almost like it had fallen onto her paw. Maybe after this time she won't ever go after one again. Right...

Listening to: Space - 1 O'Clock

Come back 1 year!

My brain is totally burnt. I don't know why. Maybe it is not enough sleep. Or not enough scary things at work (but that's okay with me!). I just feel like I should crawl up into a ball and go asleep, but I don't want to. At least tonight I don't have to look around to find a place open that will sell me a bus ticket.

I went out today with the guys and got some food at lunch (my second lunch). We went to this shwarma place on Sparks St. They guys there had really watched too much Signfield. One of my co-workers made it to the front of the line and said "chicken and garlic please" to which the guy yelled "No please! Leave! Come back one year!" They were pretty scary there. I made sure that I just said two words: <meat type>, <sauce>. And the food wasn't that super good... I guess it's just cause I finished a huge la-zon-ya (sound it out) and bean salad. But I always enjoy the second lunch in an hour. ;-)

Listening to: Live on Release - I'm Afraid of Britany Spears

RIP Kool FM

I didn't believe it at first, but Kool fm (93.9) has now become Bob FM. I guess this has just happened in like the last week. Weird. And how did they come up with such a crappy name? I googled for Bob FM and it came up with a whole bunch of stations. Sooo, lots of stations have that crappy name. Great. Even if you link to www.planetkool.com, you get bob. Apparently one of the things that they mention about their name is that it is spelt the same way forwards or backwards. Wow. It sure sounds like they have the best and brightest working over at bob. Sheesh. Well Kool, I have not really listened to you in many years, may you rest well.

On a totally different note, the is a hockey game going on right now... and I can't even keep awake. I think that I need to have some time off. Maybe two days in a row. Ya, that would be good. I could get some sleep and finally get some rest. Oie.

I finally did it. I went and ordered a couple of computer books from amazon.ca. I really ordered them through computerbooks.ca which is run by a guy at work out of his house. I thought that I would be nice and give him the referal. I ordered Unix in a Nutshell (O'Reilly book) and Effective Java Programming Language Guide. I felt a little left out... both Ryan and Peter had picked up the books... and I want to actually read a "profession" related book(s) this term anyways. I just hope that I can get through them... I am having a hard enough time working through Frankenstien (which is really nicely written by the way...). Oie. I think that I should go to bed... so, so tired.

Listening to: Sugar Ray - Fly (featuring Supercat)

Mmm... deep fried Dory

Well, I really did it last Friday. I totally f*cked my feet with my new shoes. I ran, I felt great, my sides and legs didn't hurt, but I got blisters on the insides of my feet. Well, that, and walking around most of yesterday, I screwed them up in a major way. So, no running for me today. *sigh* I was just getting good at it too.

Yesterday I went out an saw Finding Nemo which in the newest Pixar movie. It was pretty good... not as scary for little kids as Monsters Inc., but good none the less. I didn't really like Albert Brooks in it as the father (orange clown fish), but (for once) I thought that Ellen DeGeneres was wonderful. I think that she is what saved the movie. She was the perfect voice for Dory, and she pulled it off perfectly. It's funny, they somehow got Ellen's body language into a blue forgettful fish. Truely great.

Overall yesterady was wonderful. The weather was perfect, even though they were calling for thunder and lightening. I walked along the water from Andrew Haydon Park to up past bratania beach. There were a lot of people out biking, walking, roller blading, and just generally enjoying the weather. There were some people out on the water, I don't know what you would call them, but it looked like they had surf boards strapped to their feet and there attached to big kites. So they were being pulled along the water by the wind. Really cool. Even when the guy fell. But I still think that I would like be out there in a kayak. ;-)

Listening to: Prozzak - Tsunami