In a previous journal entry, I used the term "in-vitro" where I meant "in utero". I went back and fixed it.

Apparently, the bus ride to Austin and subsequent March For Life made me more tired then I realized. Still -- if it changes just one mind and saves just one life, it's all worth it.

Had he survived his birth, he'd have been 3 months old today. As a result, I'm completely numb and probably won't be posting much over the next week or two. Just in case anyone thought it was going to be another 3 year sabbatical for me.

Had a failed date yesterday....

and.....
it's so sad...

I just want to find a girl who would love me. It's not fair that's it's so hard. :(

When does life begin? Scientifically, we can answer this question with a set of straightforward scientific facts:

Every living organism on earth has a DNA sequence, which varies by species. Tiger DNA is not the same as Giraffe DNA. There are some species that can make sterile hybrid offspring (Ligers, Tigons, Mules) due to similarity in the DNA, but the DNA of each parent species is not an exact match.

Therefore, there exists a DNA sequence that is uniquely human.

When determining whether a particular cell, or cells, are alive, we can observe one or more of the following phenomenon -- mitosis (cellular division where the DNA is duplicated), cellular respiration, as a result of osmosis or photosynthesis, etc. We can clearly observe and define life in these parameters.

At the time of conception, shortly after the sperm cell penetrates the egg cell, we can observe mitosis and cellular respiration. It is clear that at a biological level, this new organism is unquestionably alive.

This new organism also has a complete human DNA sequence, which means it is unquestionably, biologically, a human life.

Because of these Scientific Facts (in fact, you could even say "The Science is Settled") Human Life begins at conception, with each new person having the potential to develop into an adult organism.

The abortophile will often question this with, "Well, what about miscarriages? See, even God performs abortions so it should be legal!"

This argument does not hold up to a logical analysis. Sometimes, the process of human reproduction fails and the result is a miscarriage, or premature still birth. Some times, there is no explanation for a in-utero death. The reality is, people of all ages die every day of natural causes. Applied to it's logical conclusion, this argument can also be used to say murder should be legal, because all people are going to die anyway. Clearly, this is incorrect, and as a result, using miscarriages to defend abortion falls flat.

Referring to the unborn child as "pregnancy tissue" or "fetus" or "not really a baby" is also deliberately misleading by abortophiles. My second son was born too early, and died as a result. There was no question at all, just by looking at him, anyone could tell that this was unquestionably a tiny little boy.

The next argument made by pro-abortionists is often the fact that the unborn child is dependent on the mother for survival; that it is just a parasite. This is another weak argument, as no one disputes that a tapeworm is alive. While an unborn child does meet the biological definition of a parasite, this does not mean the unborn child is not alive, nor does it mean the child is not human. Furthermore, the average 6 month old is also dependent on the mother for care, and this is not unique amongst humans. Young being dependent on parents is a common trait amongst mammals and some other groups as well - birds, for example, care for their young. Furthermore, some Democrats consider people to be dependent children up to age 26.

Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that abortion is the ending of a human life through non-natural means. It is killing a person (and in the case of the mother, wounding her as well). This ending of an innocent life can not be justified in cases of rape or incest, as the child had no control over it's creation, and does not deserve a death sentence for being conceived under horrible circumstances.

From a medical ethics perspective, the only time an abortion can be justified is when the life of the mother is at risk. The reality of this situation is that BOTH lives are at risk, and the goal is to save the lives you can â" in this case, the mother's life -- because if the mother's life ends, the child's life does as well. Any other case -- there is no moral, medical, ethical, or any other reason to justify abortion. It is not a "medical procedure", it is a crime that when carried out successfully leaves 1 human life dead and the mother wounded.

So a question that often comes up in numerous gun forums is: What caliber bullet is the best?

Short Answer: The one you can handle the best -- where you have an accurate grouping -- plus, any gun is better than no gun if you find yourself in a situation where you need it.

Long Answer: The one rule of Hand Guns is that "stopping power" is largely a myth. Bad guys are stopped one of two ways - hitting a critical organ (heart, brain, spinal cord), which in the case of the heart could still give the attacker as much as 30 seconds of fight left in them -- or, puncturing enough holes so the attacker bleeds out and passes out from loss of blood pressure.

Compared to rifles and shotguns, all hand guns suck.

But since you can't conceal an AR-15, here's my opinion on some of the various handgun calibers and why I would or wouldn't recommend them for self defense / concealed carry.

First -- just forget about .50 Cal or .44 Magnum. You're not going to find a small frame gun to conceal chambered for these rounds. (No matter how awesome they may be.)

Second -- no matter what caliber, do not carry FMJ (Full Metal Jacket) rounds. In a number of states, Texas included, you are responsible for the round. If it goes all the way through a bad guy and hits an innocent person, you're on the hook. For self-defense, you want a round that's going to hit the bad guy, expand, and stay in them causing as much damage as possible. So buy and carry some form of expanding round. Remington Golden Sabre Hollowpoints are good, so are Federal Hydra-Shoks and Hornady Critical Defense rounds.

Now one to some of the more popular rounds.

.45 ACP -- This is what I carry in my everyday carry gun (a Springfield XDS). I am physically strong enough to more than handle the gun, and the .45 ACP is a heavy, slow round (compared to the 9mm and .40 S & W) but leads the pack in FBI statistics in "one shot stops". For a handgun round, the .45 ACP is a pretty devastating round. However... the recoil can be a bit much, and if you aren't strong enough to reliably control the gun, it's not for you. If you can, .45 is the way to go.

.40 S & W: Sometimes called the .40 slow and weak when compared to it's 10mm sibling, the .40 caliber round is also an effective round. The recoil tends to be a little sharper in pulling up as opposed to the .45 (where the recoil is more of a back push) but some people can handle the .40 better than the .45. It's a good choice.

9mm: The 9mm round is often denigrated, but the fact is I used to carry a 9mm as my everyday carry until I bought my concealable .45. The 9mm is smaller, but faster, than the .45 and the .40, and carrying a hollowpoint round here is even more critical. However, 9mm often takes 2 shots to stop, so if you're going to carry a 9mm (or any other gun, really) practice is very, very important. Double-Tap!

That's it. That's the, uh, unholy trinity of hand gun rounds that I'd recommend.

The rest are too small in my opinion. And no, I especially recommend against a .357 magnum -- it's a small bullet (even smaller than the roughly .38 9mm round) and much, much faster. Even with an expanding round I think the risk of the bullet passing through the target and wreaking havoc on innocents is too great. .380 ACP, .38 Special, .22 -- better than nothing, but unless you hit a vital organ you might just piss the person off.

Home defense? IF you can handle the recoil, get a shotgun. Otherwise, or if you're married, the AR-15 is an excellent choice. Or even better -- get both! I have one of each, as my wife is not physically strong enough to reliably handle the 12 gauge boomstick. The AR-15 on the other hand, has very little recoil (part of why they're so popular) and most women can easily handle it. Plus, most magazines are 30 round capacity (and MagPuls are awesome). The AR-15, despite the claims of our mentally retarded Vice President, is EASIER, not harder, to handle than a shotgun.

For the AR-15, you can buy expanding rounds, typically both Hollowpoint and Softpoint (especially in .223 Remington - but be careful here. If your rifle is not rated for the 5.56x45 NATO rounds, DON'T USE THEM IN YOUR RIFLE. However, if your rifle is rated for 5.56 NATO (like mine is) you can use either 5.56x45 or .223 Remington. The 5.56 round is same bullet, but the 5.56 NATO variety has a lot more powder behind it, meaning a much faster muzzle velocity. For the shotgun -- double-aught buckshot, and maybe for the last one load it with a 1 oz slug. Though be sure of what you're shooting at, that slug may pass through your brick and your neighbor's brick.

Finally -- always aim for center mass. Unless the bad guy has body armor, headshots are stupid. And if you think you can "shoot the gun out of the bad guy's hands"... well, the gene pool is better off without you in it.

Found a special, for $59 you can get 120 rounds of 5.56x45 NATO, 55 grain FMJ-BT, with a plastic ammo can.

Finally. 1000 rounds cost me $600 earlier, but then again, I also picked up 68 grain green tipped NATO FMJ rounds, so I bought something slightly different. (My AR-15 will obviously handle both with no problem. I prefer a heavier bullet, more momentum usually means more penetration depth.)

For you non-ballistics guys and gals: Grain represents the bullet weight - a lighter bullet will have more range, but will pack less punch when it reaches the target. BT = Boat Tail, which also adds some additional range and in-flight stability. The 5.56 bullet is so lethal because it tends to yaw and fragment once it hits tissue (or ballistics gel) and the path of the bullet because very unpredictable (more predictable in a consistent gel, but far less predictable in a Boar).

Cheaper bullet prices = more range time for me. A day at the range is always a good day.

When we moved to Hungary we had to buy appliances as Europeans believe in big power. And I wouldn't want to have shipped stuff like that anyway. We bought a refrigerator from Bosch because we figured it would be high quality.
 
The compressor on it died the 28th of December. We called out a guy and he informed us that he could replace it for about $250 or we could have it done under warranty. We thanked him and called the warranty people. They came out and told us it would take a week to get the new part. That week turned into two. Finally a guy came out to install it. We were done.
 
That night it died. I think he put it in wrong but I'm not sure. Either way I had to call them back out. They new guy that came said the new compressor was "kaput" and that it would take a week to get one. That was last Tuesday. They are supposed to come put it in tomorrow. So we are coming up on real close to a month.
 
I don't think I'll be buying one of their products again after this.

I started a project to do my homework for the week in the Android class I'm taking. I've been doing the bulk of my work on a desktop machine in my office. This week-end I also set up a dev environment on my Fedora laptop at home. I don't want to have to monkey with copying files and carrying them back and forth so today I set up a GitHub repo so that I could use it to keep things in sync.

I'm no git expert. In the past what I've done is create a project in github with a couple pieces in place. Then I pull that down to a directory on my machine, add the files I need and then push all that back up.

Today I took a little bit of a different approach. I created the project. Then in bash I went to the root directory of the project and set things up. It took me a minute to get it all figured out. The git reference on remotes was a huge help. There is also the JetBrains documentation on git with IntelliJ which is what Android studio is built on.

For my own reference - once I got the project built I needed to add everything. First I went to github and made a repo - but I made it empty, not like I usually do. Then I went to the root of my project in bash.

git add .

and then make an initial commit

git commit -m 'initial commit'

I set up the remote

git remote add origin https://github.com/bittercode/learnandplay.git (bittercode is my github user name and learnandplay is the name of the repo I set up.)

Then I pushed the code to the remote

git push -u origin master

And that put it all up at github. Now I should be able to go home and pull it all down there. I also set up AndroidStudio so that it now handles all the git stuff. When I created a new activity it asked me about adding them to git - so I just said that it should default to yes and now I'm on the fast track to happy days.

Logic, reason, clarity of rational thought -- all these are things that utterly escape damn_registrars.

Pudge, you'd have a better chance if you went to Niagara Falls and started yelling at the water to stop falling then you will ever have in getting through to this putz. It's utterly hopeless, and damn_registrars is too close-minded and quite frankly incapable of understanding any thought outside of his limited, spoon-fed liberal world view. He's like an even more dishonest, annoying version of Rachel Maddow with even fewer "facts". Probably less manly, than Ms. Maddow, too.

I won't claim to know how old he/she/whatever is, but there is ample evidence in the account's posting history to suggest that damn_registrars is essentially an emotionally and mentally stunted individual trapped in a never ending adolescence.

As such, any attempts at an intelligent, rational discussion with this fool are in vain.

As to the ludicrous charges of "fake conservatism"... he called me that because he can't believe that anyone would think the way I do. Apparently he has yet to discover Senator Ted Cruz. Should be entertaining when he does...

Wendy,
Here's a dollar. Take a bus downtown and have a rat chew that thing off your face.
-- RG

What did I miss?

Almost all the coding I've done in the last couple years or so was in Python.

I finished my first homework assignment for my Android class and started the second. The first required zero programming and the only files I edited were xml. For the second assignment I'm doing something a little more ambitious and actually writing a little Java. Stinking semicolons. I keep forgetting those little buggers.

I mentioned the IDE thing - holy cow have they gotten more useful. When I want to use some library I just start typing in what I want in the code and a quick keystroke automagically adds the import. Good gravy. The UI editor - if I add a hard coded string - a couple mouse clicks and it generates the necessary entry in the strings.xml file for me. I don't even have to go look at it. It's weird. It takes me back to my old VB 6.0 days.

On the up side with the semicolon - at least I use a US keyboard. On the Hungarian keyboard it requires using ctrl+alt along with another key.

I wrote yesterday about my issues with Android Studio and that I was using Eclipse instead. I wrote too quickly.

Apparently there are some bugs with Eclplise, ADT and Fedora 20 maybe KDE is a part of it too. Anyway I can't keep it going and Eclipse crashes regularly and quickly. This made me go back and look at my issue with Android Studio. An error in the text I used for a text box on one of my layouts was the issue behind it locking up. I had to run the app from the console to figure this out and then fixed the text with Kate and I'm back in gear.

I started the class late so I've been playing catchup. So I don't have time to dig any deeper right now on the Eclipse issues. I've got the first little app mostly done and now I'm working on the second. They are due in five days. After that if I have time I'll keep poking at Eclipse to see if I can find the issue.

Android Studio is still in beta and obviously not a finished product. This should not be news to anyone. I am currently participating in the Creative, Serious and Playful Science of Android Apps course at Coursera. I'm really enjoying it. Professor Angrave does a great job with the lectures and it is completely practical. I've taken a few jabs at getting started with creating something for Android but I believe this will get me further than any of those false starts.
 
He uses Eclipse in the lectures but I figured I would use Android Studio. They are close enough that I was able to keep up just fine. But today, trying to complete the first homework assignment, I ran into so much trouble that I switched over to Eclipse myself. The IDE kept hanging up and wouldn't come unstuck. I killed it and restarted it. No joy. I killed it, logged out, logged back in and restarted it - still stuck. I've got to get a couple little things done by the twelfth and that was it.
 
Plus, as I watched the lectures it was apparent that the Eclipse environment is just a lot further along in a lot of respects. This makes sense. I'll keep checking in on Android Studio over time and if Google puts any effort into it at all I think it will become the best tool for Android development but right now it's too bumpy.
 
I've got some ideas for stuff that I plan to make. If I get anywhere with any of it - I'll post about it here of course.

Turned 0x30 on Christmas Eve. That sounds better than 48. I expect to start acting 20 when I hit 50.
insert goatse link here.

I've mentioned it in conversation. I've been going back and forth in my mind on what I would do. I need a new laptop. My old travelling laptop, an Acer, still runs fine but it is incredibly slow and takes forever to start. At the time I purchased it, this was not a big deal. There were a few primary concerns back then. One was battery life and the other was size. I was on long flights a lot and I wanted something that would let me make better use of that time. The Acer was perfect and the fact that it was very inexpensive was a huge bonus. I knew it would be slow but that really didn't matter. Most of those trips were to conferences that I was putting on. I'd boot up every morning and be plugged in and running all day. I ran presentations from it and handled email, google docs, etc.
 
Now my work style has changed a bit. When I'm home I don't really use my laptop much at all. It takes too long to start when I'm doing something quickly and now my phone and tablet handle most things I want to do briefly anyway. I stream a lot more video now but the little Acer can't do that well at all. When I am traveling I'm not at conferences. I'm working in national or team offices in our various countries. I'm checking networks, assisting in admin stuff for software, all kinds of things and I'm usually moving about - working with different people. The Acer just doesn't handle all that too well and my last trips to Albania and Russia I got really tired of telling people, "Just give me a few more minutes. I'm still getting my machine started."
 
I have had the Acer for over 4 years now so I think I got a great return on what I spent for it. And it still works, it just doesn't fit my current needs. I will probably set it up for one of my kids. It will be fine for them to use in doing homework and stuff. But what will I get to replace it? Well here is where I'm a little torn. At the same time I need a Mac. I want to be able to do some mobile development and our staff use a mix of Android and iOS phones. I can develop for Android on Linux or Windows but the iOS stuff requires an Apple machine. In my perfect world we'd just use Android but that's not reality. The reality is we have a lot of people that use a lot of Apple products.
 
I don't know why. I do - but I mean personally I don't get it. I don't like Apple products for the most part. My admittedly limited experiences with OSX have been unpleasant. I think it is not easy to use and the interface is rather poor and limiting. I'd much rather be using Linux. So it has not made me happy to see more and more of our staff move to Mac. As a nonprofit I hate to see us paying a premium to use what I don't think is a superior platform. And once many of our high level leaders made the jump I saw more and more people follow. So this long explanation is so that I can say - in a lot of ways it makes sense for me to get a Mac laptop. I can do the iOS work on it, I'll learn more about the Apple ecosystem so I can support others, and I'll have a machine that fits my current work better once I learn how to use it. The one thing holding me back is that I'll become another leader that leans people toward Apple.
 
I guess I just need to get over it. But I got wound up about it again today when I read this HN post. What this guy went through to fix his power button behavior - all the software and fixes people recommend in the HN comments to fix functionality- and yet people give me crap about Linux being too difficult. Unreal.
 
On an unrelated note, we had friends over for a little get together last week. One couple is Hungarian and the other Albanian. We decided to play a game. Someone (not us) suggested Pictionary. We got it out and started playing. It was horrible. We quit pretty quickly. As the only native English speakers my wife and I had a huge advantage. I've played that game many times and until this time never realized how much culture fits into it. Both other couple speak English very well but there were so many phrases and other things that made it hard for them. We switched to ticket to ride - the European version. It was a lot of fun. And now we were the ones with a very slight disadvantage. We played with each couple as a team. The other couples could each speak openly in their native languages about what they wanted to do but my wife and I could not. It was a lot of fun.
 
So it seems so stinking obvious but it is wild to really see it right in front of you - how much language and culture are all tied together. It would have been really interesting if we'd had someone from the UK.