Woot!

It may or may not snow tomorrow morning, so the school district, including Mercer's daycare, is on a two hour delay. I emailed the boss and told him I'd try to get out of bed around 9:30 tomorrow :D

4 year old thread, Still good

Our current BOFH is going out in a few weeks for shoulder surgery after tearing a tendon fencing a few months ago. He's expecting to be out one or two weeks at least, and is trying the PFY, aka, me, to hold the fort while he's not here to rule his domain.

I'm looking forward to it, it should be fun. And there's so much that I can improve while he's gone, he's been here for like 18 years, so of course there are things that a fresh set of eyes can find to improve. Like simplify the backup procedures by eliminating a few sets of tapes, change the IP ranges to be 192.168/16 rather than 192.168.1/24 (More elbow room). Not to mention, all those cables hooking into the switch could be routed in a more tidy fashion, I'm sure I can improve the cable routing by just cleaning it up a bit. While I'm at it. the servers on the rack could probably be organized alphabetically ascending rather than just have them sit in the order they were installed. Not to mention, we have a bunch of different service accounts doing various things, how much simpler wouldn't it be to just run it all as Administrator instead. Likewise we have a whole bunch of groups and policies in our Domain, I think we can merge all these together into just a Users group and save some administrative effort. Then of course update the documentation to use a cross linked Wiki instead of just text files on a network share.

Yes, I can see lots of room for improvement. I'll make him proud.

I won't tell him beforehand though, it'll be a surprise.

Right now I'm developing a reporting web application to be used primarily by our external users. In the process I'm also refactoring some old code to try to establish a more solid platform for future applications, the whole re-usability thing that's so popular these days.

One of the things I've found in working with .Net in general, and ASP.Net in particular, is that it seems that even seemingly simple things can have you spend hours searching forums and articles and testing any variety of the 1000 "innovative" ways that people get things done.

This morning I wanted to create a fairly simple thing, have a base page that other pages inherit from that can provide common functionality, error handling etc. For instance, I want the ability to show a message at the top of each page indicating he outcome of an operation. So I add a ShowMessage method to my base class.

OK, all is fine and dandy.

But, I also want to use ASP.Net master pages for the visual layout, how to accomplish this along with the base page turned out to be not as simple as it would appear. Looking through forums and articles people have come up with a multitude of "clever" ways to do similar things, and the more clever, the more lines of code. So testing the various methods, finding out that there was "just this one little thing" that the developer hadn't solved "just yet".... Various approaches of overriding render methods, assigning master pages at runtime, creating custom content templates, and all kinds of other crazy things.

Finally I thought, "There's got to be a better way to do this".

Which means, there usually is.

The simple solution was the create an Interface with a Showmessage method.
Have the Masterpage implement this interface.
Have the base page test the type of the master page it belongs to, and if the interface is implemented, call ShowMessage in the master page.

Simple, elegant, and very not-clever.

I don't like clever. Too damn many .Net developer sites are clever, so utterly fascinated by the capabilities of the platform that they forget that the goal of developers is usually to get shit done.

If you haven't already.

O'Reilly on The Colbert Report

Colbert on The Factor

Yes, it's worth 15 minutes of your life.

Did anyone notice that it went missing?

Edit:
As noted below, my subscription lapsed and I never noticed thanks to adblock, doh!

It began with a radio station contest:
"Hold your wee for a Wii" at the studios of radio station KDND 107.9.

A twenty-eight year old Sacramento mother of three has died of water intoxication after taking part in a local radio competition to win a Wii console.

Jennifer Strange was found dead on Friday at her home after taking part in a contest named "Hold your wee for a Wii" at the studios of radio station KDND 107.9. The competition involved drinking large quantities of water, with the last person to go to the toilet winning a Wii console - currently out of stock in most of North America.

An Associated Press interview with another contestant, named James Ybarra, claimed that contestants were initially given eight ounce bottles of water to drink every fifteen minutes, with larger bottles being used once contestants began to drop out. According to Ybarra, "They told us if you don't feel like you can do this, don't put your health at risk." He described the victim as "a nice lady" and that "she was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for her kids."

According to Wikipedia's definition of the condition, water intoxication (also known as hyperhydration or water poisoning) is a potentially fatal disturbance in brain function that results when the normal balance of electrolytes in the body is upset by a rapid intake of water. It is unclear how serious a danger to the contestant's health KDND knew the competition to be at the time.

John Geary, vice president and marketing manager for Entercom Sacramento, the station's owner, claimed to the AP that station personnel were "stunned" when they heard of Strange's death. "We are awaiting information that will help explain how this tragic event occurred," he said. The incident has already been widely reported by mass media outlets around the world.

OK, stupid bitch deserved what she got seems to be a common thought. After all, she willingly participated, it's not like the radio station made her do it, right?

But a recording indicates that the DJs were very well aware of the risks, even joked about them:
"Can you not get like water poisoning and die"
"Maybe we should have researched this before, hahaha"
"If it gets dangerous for somebody, their body will automatically throw it up"

A nurse calls in to say:
Caller: "Those people that are drinking all that water, can get sick and possibly die from water intoxication"
DJ#1: "Yeah we're aware of that"
DJ#2: "They signed releases so we're not responsible, it's OK"
DJ#1"And if they get to the point where they have to throw up, they're gonna throw up and they're out of the contest before they die, so that's good right?"

Jennifer, the deceased, comes on:
DJ#1: "Jennifer I hear you're not doing too well"
Jennifer: "My head hurts, they keep telling me it's the water, it'll tell my head to hurt, and it'll make me puke, but I don't..."
DJ#1: "Who told you that, the intern?"
Jennifer: "Like, it kinda, it ...hurts, but it makes you lightheaded so I'm not sure if I'm just like..."
DJ#1: "This is what it feels like when you're drowning, there's a lot of water inside of you"
Jennifer: "Oh, it hurts"

So they knew about the risks, created a dangerous competition, failed to do research beforehand, downplayed the dangers, provided inaccurate medical advice to the contestants, and failed to provide any form of assistance when it became apparent that contestants weren't feeling well as a result of the competition.

She might've lost the Wii, but I think the family will win a radio station.

PS3: 9 of them in a pile on the floor.
Wii: 0, and most accessories were gone as well.

It's OK to not be precise, I promise, I grew up with Metric, I'll vouch for you. You really can say that a building is "oooh, I dunno, 30 or 40 meters tall".

It's OK, calm down, no-one is going to make you give accurate and precise numbers down to the smallest decimal should you ever have to use Metric.

You don't have to explicitly ask for 473.18ml of beer rather than a pint. Just ask for a beer, the bartender will handle it, it's not a big deal.

When baking, you don't have to actually measure 387 grams of flours for 3 cups, just change the proportions and wing it. 7 deciliters should about do it, add some more if needed.

But what of my woodworking tools, what about the 2x4? Good god what the hell is a 2x4 in Metric?!

Calm down, calm down, for trade-specific areas we use inches or whatever other unit as well! Studs are still often called 2x4, boats and planes travel in knots, day trips can still be expressed as "about 2 hours away", and a 38 inch rack on a 24 inch frame can be expressed as "Holy shit look at those boobs!".

My most valued Christmas presents were from the Wife and her sister.

From the sister in-law I got the Monty Python 16 Ton Megaset, and LOTR.

From the wife I got a whole body shower thing to go in the renovated bathroom, I've been wanting one of these for years. Being 6'3" most of the time I only get wet on parts at a time when taking a shower as the shower head needs to be directed damn near horizontally. I also got a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream with glasses, a beer stein, and Margarita glasses. Notice a trend? Clearly she wants to get me drunk and wet so she can take advantage of me.

Today I got a $25 Amazon gift certificate in the mail as a thanks for spending so much on my credit card over the past few months. So I went to my Wishlist and threw The Silmarillion in the cart. I looked for something cheap to reach $25 and qualify for free shipping, but couldn't think of anything.

Then I found it, Baja Bob's Margarita Mix, 3 bottles of 32oz each, with free shipping. Woot! When mixed that's a gallon of sweet sweet alcohol.

So much drinking while reading or watching DVDs is planned, and I think that with some saran wrap and a straw I might event be able to enjoy it in the new shower.

Stuff makes for happy fun times.

Downloaded and started installing Visual Studio 2005 SP1, it took about 10 minutes to start up, then spent about 20 minutes "Gathering information" before it told me that I have to close SQL Server Management Studio. I did and clicked retry.

Then it started over again from scratch, it's now been another 20 minutes of gathering information.

Well this is time well spent.

I guess I can play some Risk while I wait.

Sat Jan 6 - 73F
Sun Jan 7 - 67F
Mon Jan 8 - 60F
Tue Jan 9 - 58F
Wed Jan 10 - 54F
Thu Jan 11 - 59F
Fri Jan 12 - 69F
Sat Jan 13 - 77F
Sun Jan 14 - 79F

Took the family to the zoo this weekend. Probably could've worn shorts and sandals, but doing that in early January is just, well, wrong. Next weekend is projected to be in the high 70's, so we might try to go on a picnic or something.

I do miss snow, but since that's not gonna happen in SC, I'd rather just skip the whole winter thing and jump right into summer again.

Hooray for global warming and warm lazy weekends!

Only America-hating Communists support universal health care.

There, I'm glad we sorted it all out.

At the mall, in Hot Topic looking for a Christmas present for my 14 year old nephew in Sweden. Aside from the staff, there are no cool young kids in the store. Everyone is a parent or grandparent and is confused about what they're looking for/at.

Me: Hah, That's awesome!
Tammy: What?
Me: This T-shirt. I want one.
Tammy: No, you can't have it.
Me: Why not? I'm pretty gangster! *spends 30 seconds knitting fingers into gang sign*
Tammy: Dude, you're so Caucasian.
Me: That's racist.
Tammy: ???
Me: You wouldn't call me Caucasian if I were black.

-------

Tammy: Do we know what music he likes?
Me: No, I haven't seen him in 6 years.
Tammy: Maria said he likes black clothing, and plays video games a lot.
Me: Why don't we just get him some razor blades and a MySpace page?

(We got him some black gloves with skulls and shit, and an wallet looking like a NES controller, he might be too young to appreciate the old-skool video game geek value though)

-------

Shortly before going to Vegas, I've spent the day looking for everything related to a vacation in Vegas.

Me: Wait!
Tammy: Gnuh?
Me: I just thought of something!
Tammy: What?
Me: The hookers have you wear a condom right?
Tammy: What?
Me: The hookers have you wear a condom! So what's the point of a Creme de Menthe blow job? The Creme de Menthe in her mouth is just gonna be on the outside of the condom!
Tammy: What the hell? It's 1am, and you wake me up to ask about hookers in Vegas?
Me: I take an interest in the cultures that I visit.
Tammy: I hate you.

W00t!

So, hey, check it out: there's this awesome new gaming system that we just can't stop playing. Too bad it's so hard to find in stores - we guess they just didn't make enough of them. It's called the Nintendo Wii, and holy mother of Zelda, is it ever a blast. If the Wii is cool with polygamy, we might ask it to marry us.

The controller - so easy! No more intricate push-this-twice, pull-that-three-times trickery, just easy waves of the hand. The console - so cute! It actually makes our gaming room look better, unlike the bulky, ugly consoles we could mention. How does Nintendo keep the price so low on that thing, anyway? And the games, good Lord, the games! Not to mention those adorable avatars. We've already created virtual versions of the entire staff, so we can beat each other virtually-bloody instead of actually-bloody, like we usually do. The only problem is that none of the nose options are as big as Jason's actual nose. But that's a minor quibble.

In fact, we love the Wii so much, we want to give a Wii to everybody on our payroll. To fund this Wii-for-the-People program, we're selling this Sony PlayStation 3. The SIXAXIS wireless controller is basically the same complicated gazillion-button-style controller you know from past PS models, but at least you won't be fighting Grandma for gaming time. Along with the usual roster of ho-hum games, the PS3 can play CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs, and the 20GB hard drive can store music, videos, and music videos. It's certainly, er, rather full-figured, for those of you who want a lot of heft for your money. And its HDMI capabilities give you polygons and frames-per-second out the wazoo, if you prefer that stuff to having fun.

Best of all, for every PS3 you buy, we can buy Wiis for two of our employees. So when you get frustrated by those intricate combo-button moves, or bored by the underwhelming game offerings for the PS3, keep the spirit of the season in mind. Remember all those happy Woot staffers whose lives have been changed by their super-fun Nintendo Wiis, paid for by you. Heartwarming, isn't it?