Tons of work, zero focus

I've got tons of stuff to do. I just can't focus enough to create lists of the stuff I have to do. Very frustrating... maybe it's because I have my share of "clear moments" at work today where ideas came to me. Too bad some of them aren't technically feasible, but otherwise it would have been perfect.

(aside: apparently you can only use oracle's instead-of triggers on select statements if fine grained auditing is turned on - not something they'll do to a prod box)

Focus is lacking... can't even figure out what to do to fix it... agughaggg...

I've always wanted one...

Ever want something without actually having a need for it? Or build something just for the "wow - neat!" factor? I've been thinking of building a trebuchet. Most people don't have a need for a twelfth century engine of war, but it's good to just have it around sometimes. I mean, I can't honestly tell you the last time I've needed to storm castle walls or repel invading hoards, but you have to make sure that you plan for a rainy day, right?

I'd like to build a scaled down version. Maybe something with a 6 foot arm that could fit into a garage. Then came the "what am I going to do with it" thoughts. I could use it to throw a ball for our dog at the dog park next door. But there isn't a dog park next door and we don't have a dog. If I was to put one in a dog park for other people, I can see it being used to launch purse dogs - which may or may not be a good thing.

All I need now is 1) what to use it for 2) where to keep it 3) how to build it.

See, almost done! ;-)

Fat equals flavour

I've been making richer food lately. A lot of the recipes can be fairly simple to prepare - as long as you avoid the super anal, perfectionist recipes. I find that I'll read a handful of recipes for the same dish and pick and choose from those because there is many ways to skin a cat (I won't try that recipe again!).

The one bad thing about simple, tasty food is that it can tend to be high in fat, sugar, or both. I can see myself becoming like 300 lb if I'm not careful. For me I think that it'll be a 2 fold trick to not becoming like that 1) kept active 2) as fat / sugar content goes up, size of portion goes down.

This morning I had to make some crËme br˚lÈe which meant that I had some leftover egg whites. So I decided to make a souffle with the leftovers. Too much souffle for 2 people. Ugg. Too much, too heavy (butter, cream, cheese, ...). I didn't follow the second rule and I felt that it took away from the experience. I knew better, but my sense of proportion gets skewed when I am hungry.

Ah well. I'll have to keep those rules in mind. Now off to make some lasagna. ;-)

Planned obsolescence sometimes really pisses me off

I know that how our society is currently structured everything is new, falls apart, gets replaced. It's wasteful, but that's another rant entirely. What's really ticked me off recently is the planned obsolescence of our garbage can. (aside: I usually say "designed obsolescence" rather than "planned")

We purchased a stainless steel garbage can less about a year ago. You press down on the pedal and the lid lifts. Not too difficult a concept. What I didn't know was how this was constructed. The metal pedal is connected to a metal rod. The metal lid is connected to a different metal rod. The place where those 2 metal rods connect, the place that gets the most torque of the whole pedal-rod-lid system is a little plastic L bracket. Which broke.

My only explanation for such a horrible implementation is that it was designed to break in short order. Practically the whole thing is metal except for that part that would be under the most stress.

It just ticks me off. Especially since I have not fixed / replaced it yet and I have to keep on lifting the lid - which is hard when your hands are full. >:-(

Having fun with python

While working on scripted deploys for websphere I've had to do some python programming (well, actually jython). It's just to do little functions, but it's been pretty fun. No autocomplete or syntax highlighting because I'm doing most of my work on the server in vi, but I'm finding it easy to spot any syntax mistakes errors and I can almost guess at the functions available to me.

Like the ruby code I've played with, it seems nice and clean. The only thing that I've got to figure out is how to write unit tests because I hate developing with print statements...

If feels like the difference between python and java is the same as java to C. Why do we program in things like java when there are things like jython and jruby? I can understand not wanting to swap out the infrastructure, but if you can just switch the language to something faster and cleaner, why not? The java eco system seems to be moving towards what they have in .Net: write in whatever language, we'll convert it to the same byte code and run it on the server.

Random helpful computer things

A couple of random helpful things that I've noticed lately that I thought were pretty cool.

1) When using google calendar, if you use the scroll wheel (or 2 finger scroll with a mac), it will scroll "pages" in the calender. For example, when you're in the month view and you scroll, it will change months. Pretty handy.

2) In firefox, I've known for a long time that you can get to the url / location bar by ctrl-l (or command-l) and to the search bar using ctrl-k (command-k). With the search box you can set it up to search different search engines / sites (google, yahoo!, wikipedia). What I didn't know is that you can change the search engine using the keyboard by using the up / down arrows and the alt key (command key on the mac). Now I can easily switch what I'm searching without using the mouse and finding that part in the ui.

I enjoy little things like that. ;-)

Retro lego

I love lego. Some of my fondest memories of childhood toys were playing with it for hours upon hours... so much fun. Of course there are sites like lugnet dedicated to all things lego... I should have looked before now. The cool part? You can find retro sets that you used to play with including build instructions. Some ones that I remember playing with were sets like lunar rocket launcher, cosmic cruiser and modular space transport.

Now all I have to do is get it all from my sister... I wonder what I'll have to do / trade in order to get all that lego back. :-/