As i turn 49, i felt the urge to post, because i always post on my birthday. Except i don't. Going through the list (link takes you through your own posts, as adding a username does not work), i found:

News: I'm thirty and related ramblings
Verbiage: So, 32 is here
Verbiage: Ding! I just hit 33.
Verbiage: 42 is here

Really? That's it? I'm such a lazy bum. But, i don't have to do it anyway. It's just something i value.

I always seem to remember the 30 post because my b-in-law commented that he liked the line, "I went from being a twenty-something to a thirty-nothing". In a sense, any time someone says a "line" is a good one, i'll think myself special for coming up with it. Heh. Half the time i don't even need anyone else to tell me, i guess i just forget about those "inspirations" more quickly.

As for "I, myself, seem to be about fourteen or fifteen, but wiser for the wear. If not for my experiences, I doubt I'd be much different." I cannnot say that anymore. Midlife changes you, and i am definitely different. But that feeling does persist to some extent anyway. It must be partially true.

In the 32 post, i didn't care so much. Same. Birthdays are just dates on the calendar, and perhaps a time to reflect. Not much more.

33: asks "Ah, to be forty, to be over the hill. Will it be then that i can finally enjoy life?" Heh.

42 just laments, and i feel the same now.

---

Regarding age, my thoughts are now about 50. I didn't really feel 40 until i was 43 or so. But i've felt 50 for a few years already. I'm not a young chicken, even if at time i wish i were like one. Age is just a number, but it's also an indicator of the journey.

I've been on slashdot for about 25 years now. Wow. I even got that 25 years on ebay email with a $25 coupon.

So, i'm writing a program/dll to make API calls to a data provider. For the API itself, disregarding authentication, i have only implemented GETs. Well, i just did a POST and after verifying it worked, i thought to myself, "that was my first post". At which point, i felt a strong need to post that here.

There is a Michigan Left directly opposite the exit of a busy parking lot. It's difficult to explain a mindset, but there are three major reasons you exit: to go straight to the turnaround, to turn right onto the street, to turn right and get on the freeway. All three options are common.

The turnaround has a sign that says, "turn right only". I argued with a friend if that meant, "do not go straight" or if it meant "if you turn, it must be to the right" because it is one way traffic. Turn signs here are confusingly placed; even when you get on the freeway there's a no left turn sign. What's up with that?

Anyway. i went straight out of the parking lot today (just like the guy before me did a minute or two earlier) and a cop stopped me, telling me i couldn't do that. I told him, everyone does it and there are two lanes in the turn (no line marker, but you could easily fit two cars in there with room to spare) and there is only one lane leading up to it. (It is obviously made to do this, because of the placement of the turnaround (which came second) and the two lanes.) He told me the width was there for long cars and i almost did not give him enough room to make the turn. (He was in an unmarked car, though from the looks of it, i figured he was probably a cop anyway. I did the turn right in front of him, because i thought it was legal.) He also explain the solid white line barred the maneuver. He was nice the entire time, and i was not argumentative. Anyway, i got a ticket for "improper lane usage". The remarks read (in all caps):

Drove across NB Greenfield RD from private drive to get to turn around lane 4 lanes over over solid white line

That sounds pretty bad. Heh.

Anyway. the street is shared by two cities, and northbound isn't in his, so, i wonder how he could give me the ticket anyway. That is, the violation itself was in a different city that he is supposed to patrol.

The court date is in 14 days. I have to speak to a lawyer and see what's going on. At the very least, i can finally get clarity on two things: can a cop of one city give tickets in another, and is that straight across drive allowed.

It seems right to post this here, where it all started. Farewell, ~talinom.

The Cambridge volume has been released. A bit expensive, so i will either have to wait for the price to come down or to borrow it from a library that may have it.

I started this search on 9/10/13, and now it ends about 5.5 years later. Time passes and things happen, i guess.

Project Gutenberg finally has De Temperamentis available for reading. It took nearly 5 years but its done. Wow.

The Cambrige volume has a release date of February 2019, but is still not out. I assume it will be done very soon.

and there you are

I've been hanging out on reddit, all while hating it. I've known for years it was a cesspool and avoided it, until eventually TIL pulled me in. I have noone to blame but myself.

Sometime back, Storium popped up on Kickstarter. I loved it so much i pledged $40 and played it quite a bit. I got a lot of time to let my imagination run free, and it was fun; it really was a good forum for creative outlet. But there was no forum. I asked the owner if there was to be one or for permission to create one, and he asked me not to, and pointed me to reddit. I accepted his request and eventually gave up on Storium. I figured, no forum, no real product. Storium was the type of product that needed a decent forum to support it, and reddit was a cesspool.

Traditionally, forums were hierarchical. The reason was simple. There were so many divisions or subdivisions for what you want, that you ought to find the right one for your question. Hierarchies help with finding the right place because it is like a flowchart. All that works well on paper.

Windows 95 created the Start Menu and replaced the Program Manager interface with a hierarchical one. It was a great idea, but noone used it. Everyone stuffed what they needed in the Start Menu, there were no established subgroups, and start menus everywhere were not navigable. Microsoft could have had a place for everything, but they did not. They never fixed the problem, instead they rolled with it. What did they do? They added a search bar for the Start Menu. It was as if they said, dump your program hewre, then search for it when you need it. They copied Apple yet once again.

When i used Windows, i had my own rules about the start menu. In general, no more then 5 folders per level, and everything used often had a hotkey. I was able to find or start nearly any program with seconds, simply because it had a hotkey, and the ones that did not, i was able to find quickly. To me, that was what the start menu was for. People would see my organization and compliment me, but noone would copy it. Even more, when they tried using my system it would take them a while to find things. They were not used to my way of thinking.

My takeaway was, that most people don't care about how they get their program started, they just want to memorize it and move on, and for the ones that care about a decent method, it is not usually worth the effort to design and maintain. Fwiw, Debian implemented a half decent one in their menu, so a company doing it for many people seems to be acceptable. This left people with unkempt menus and a simple search to find it. I hated it when that was introduced, because it was "wrong," even refusing to use that lazy feature. I use it now on other people's systems, it just is.

Reddit and other top down forums follow the same idea. There's no reason to split into a hierarchy, because searches will find most things. And, for people who want to see everything, the top down approach lets them see what is new. But that only helps if you know what to search for, or you want top watch everything. What if you don't? Ideas came up for tags or pseudo-hierarchies. None really caught on, and a simple top down style is the new approach.

Over time, i realized that like many things, forums could be split into three groups. Groups where only recent things truly matter and a history is kept just in case (like a help forum), top down is the best approach. Conversely, forums where multiple items are discussed or historical discussions are still of value, hierarchical is best. But for forums that do not cleanly fit into either, it comes down to personal preference. If that is true, reddit's TIL or many of their help forums are best as top down, because historiocal posts don't mean much. But r/jung, where the same questions are asked over an over again, would fare better hierarchically.

Storium had both. It was for people to discuss what they were doing (top down) and for discussion of how the system works and is best used (hierarchical). They preferred top down, i preferred hierarchical, hence the conflict. Meh. I'm making much too big a deal over it.

I guess that's it. That's what i wanted to say. I admit that the top-down style has its merits. But that they replaced the hierarchical style instead of adding to it, just replaced one broken system with another one.

So, i'm trying to learn graphql-php, which is really hard to do when you cannot find any good documentation. Everyone seems more interested in explaining how it is better that REST than to explain what it actually is. And (some of) the tutorials don't really work, probably because they expect you do know some things already, and they just want to explain "how to do it here". But i digress.

I was reading About graphql-php when i came across the "Current Status" section with the following text:

The first version of this library (v0.1) was released on August 10th 2015.

The current version (v0.10) supports all features described by GraphQL specification (including April 2016 add-ons) as well as some experimental features like Schema Language parser and Schema printer.

On second thought, that might explain why i don't understand what they are talking about.

I guess this is an ad of sort, but i wanted to share. I have been using Linode for some years and am quite happy with them. Basically, its virtual root with a decent UI and support team. They charge by the server, either by month or by hour, and the basic system is $5 a month. Need a quick server or command line, within minutes your up and running. My only complaint is sometime "recently" they changed from the hierarchical support forum to the top down style. Ugh.

Anyway, i ran across this page offering a $20 credit signup bonus. At the very least, that's 4 months free. If used just when needed, that can last quite some time.

Just wanted to share. I think they are worth checking out if you need virtual root.

Andy used to own a roofing business but has since mostly retired. He no longer has any employees or major equipment, but he does work a few hours most mornings to keep himself busy and make some money. Bob is a friend of mine, who is also friendly with Andy, and somewhat recently started to work with him in the mornings, giving Andy the help that he needs.

Bob had to go out of town one day and Andy needed help. So, it was arranged that i would go in his stead. I know nothing of roofing, but i can hand him stuff or whatever and be mildly helpful, at least better than having noone there at all. I agreed to go simply because Bob asked me to, and off i went.

It was arranged that i would meet Andy at his house at 7:30. I rode my bike over and i think i was 2 or 3 minutes late. He had called me when i was just around the block from him, maybe a minute away, asking me where i was. I am usually prompt, but i miscalculated. Regardless, i know that he is a stickler for time, which is funny, because Bob isn't.

When we got to the worksite, he put up the ladder handed me a bucket and asked me to take it up. I climbed two steps and froze. The first two steps of the ladder seem super easy, but the third step is where you are now actually climbing a ladder. It seems simple, simple as walking, right? But it isn't. There's a couple other things involved.

I have a fear of heights. So do a lot of people. Though, when most people say they have a fear of heights they actually mean they have a fear of falling. I have that too. But i also have a fear of heights which manifests itself in my ankles. If i am standing next to a tall structure and look straight up, my ankles tense up and begin to hurt. Once, at the Gateway Arch, i looked up to the top and nearly fell over. I think someone caught me, though i don't remember exactly. This is an irrational fear that i have litle control over. While the good advice of "don't look down" helps with the fear of falling, it does not help with the latter.

So there i was, frozen. He said i did not need to climb it up, and then i watched him go up and down the ladder a couple times before i climbed up. I was afraid because i kept putting my left knee past the side of the ladder, but that is normal. When i got to the top, i walked off (it was a flat roof), but he showed me that i had made a mistake by not holding onto the top of the ladder when i got off it. That can cause the ladder to fall! You must hold the ladder when getting off at the top. He said to hold the top of the sides, something reinforced by Bob when he showed me as well.

Getting down the ladder also took some watching. It's really easy when you know what you are doing, but it does not come so naturally, at least not to me. They seem to know how to do it but can't explain it without watching themselves do it. It's just one of those things they see as being so easy that they wonder why others have issue with it.

I helped on the roof, but not as much as he would have liked, mostly because this isn't my forte, and what needs to be done does not come naturally to me. I can make guesses, but unlike him i will be wrong. And he didn't explain things well, i must learn to watch silently and only talk when he is not in middle of something.

On the way home, Andy gave me $50, which i thought was overwhelmingly generous for how little i had done. I never expected him to call on me again. Indeed, he told Bob that i had issues with the ladder and mentioned other things. Oh well. I hope i helped at least a little.

But recently, Bob just came back to me because he is planning to go out of town again soon, and "my name came up" as a helper. He must be desperate. Heh. Anyway, Bob just started giving me ladder lessons. I feel so silly needing them, but it takes knowledge and practice to do it safely and comfortably. I even went to look it up only and watched a few videos. All of them show how to setup the ladder and other safety issues, but only one showed how to get off and on at the top. Fwiw, if you will get off onto the roof from rung A, you stop one rung below rung A. Then, with your hands on the rung above rung A, you place your non-dominant foot in the middle of rung A, and lift the dominant foot onto the roof, then your non-dominant foot, and only then take your hands off the rung. To get back on, simply reverse these steps. It takes a little getting used to to make it natural, but it makes sense.

Bob is showing me how to do it on his roof, but that's a slanted roof, making it all that much scarier. I asked him to leave getting off and on to another day, as it was too much for me to handle in one day. I keep asking him to spot me by being near the bottom of the ladder, because just being there makes me feel safer and therefore more confident when climbing above the bottom two steps. I vacillate between considering this a skill and seeing it as something that ought to be as simple as walking. Maybe with practice one leads to the other.

It's been some time, but i finally have some good news on Galen's De Temperamentis in English. A couple good pieces even.

The last message, which was mentioned in the last JE on the subject, was on January 5, 2016. I thanked her and that was that. After seeing nothing come along, i picked up the thread on March 27th this year:

I was thinking about this again, and thought i would ask for an update. June 2016 has come and gone, and i still do not see anything about Volume 2.

Has the book been cancelled?

I received her reply the next day:

I have forwarded your enquiry to my colleagues in the Classics team. Volume 2 is not cancelled but, according to our database, it is still not yet submitted and it looks like it could be another 2 years before it is published unfortunately.

For an email thread i started in July 2014, another two years seemed like it fit. But for whatever reason, i decided to look again at the Cambridge Galen Translations series and saw Volume 2 was listed for release in January 2019!

When i first saw it a number of things confused me. The listed work is "Volume 1. Mixtures (De Temperamentis)". The "Volume 1" part confused me because this is volume 2, i did not recognize "Mixtures" as being what i wanted, and i completely glossed over the italicized part that listed the title i recognized.

Galen wrote the book in Greek. It was translated to Latin under the name De Temperamentis, which in English translates to "The Temperaments," which is a bit different than "Mixtures". (I went into a little more detail in the first installment in this series. I assume it is called Mixtures Volume 1 because Mixtures includes other volumes. In any case this is what i have been waiting for. I just didn't realize it yet.

So, i went back to Distributed Proofreaders to see if the project had moved. Of course it didn't, and i didn't think much would come from something that has stagnated for the past four years. I asked again about progress in the thread (waking up a thread after 2 years) and got a reply from someone trying to help, and i must thank her for doing exactly that. There were some private messages, and finally, after just under 2 months, the project leader is attempting to wake things up again, with mentions there and in the Type In thread.

At first i repeated my mistake saying the work did not look like it was being translated in Volume 2, but i have since edited the post and i pmed the leader letting him know, in case that would affect his (or anyone's) decision to help. I mean, if it is going to be translated from the original, this project may not be worth the effort.

I also emailed the other guy who was interested in this. So, i may receive a reply from him or more information on the type-in project. The Cambridge book itself should be available in January, but i am kind of waiting for the delays that i have seen over and over again push it further away. The first volume has dropped over $100 in price from its original listing. This second book seems to be listed at $125, so i may wait a little bit even after it is released for the price to come down a bit. Who knows?

The saga seems far from over, but it just got a little more interesting.

Well, i'm looking for a job again. I have been pretty much since i got back in the country almost 5 months ago. Well, i waited a week or two before started, and it's not 5 months until next week, so i guess just 4 months.

Everyone told me the economy is good and i would get a job right away. Well, i called an old boss at Ford who has hired me three different times in the past, but he no longer hires people outside of India. A great deal of jobs here are for the Big 3, or tier 1, 2, or 3 suppliers. But when it comes to IT, GM's staff seems to be mostly in another state, and although i've worked for DaimlerChrysler years ago, i rarely see listings for Chrysler anymore.

Quicken loans hires a lot, but they do not seem interested in me. I've applied for a bunch of jobs, but other than a few staffing firms, i've only gotten one call from a company, only to be told that the SSIS and SSRS requirement was very important to them, and therefore i did not qualify. I mean, i feel like if you know SQL Server, having a requirement for SSIS and SSRS is comparable to requiring how to drive a car, and 3 years experience in turning on the radio. It's so ridiculous. I've seen only one listing so far with the words that they'll train you in those tools. As if they needed training.

But i'm getting ahead of myself. I'm a database developer. Or, shall i say, a developer who specializes in databases, with all recent experience being almost exclusively in Oracle and SQL Server. I write queries and fix other people's queries. Reading other people's queries is a painful experience, as they usually know nothing about databases and just "do it wrong". Another skill i have, though not really something i can list, is that i understand many programming concepts. I do not just know them, i understand them. I have helped other's with their code in languages i don't really have experience in. Good programmers can do that, right? Why do good programmers seem to only exist online?

So, i search every day (mostly) for "database," "oracle," and "sql". That ought to cover the terms used in database development: sql, t-sql, pl/sql, oracle, sql server, etc. I have my searches saved and open up some 30 tabs every day around noontime. Michigan Talent Bank (local government site) is pretty good, my only complaint that you have to save a search to refer to it directly, and can't just use the url. Indeed is not so bad, though rarely relevant. Career Builder usually doesn't find anything for me. Dice is terrible. It "updates" listing nonsensically, making finding things with the last 24 hours being mostly wheat you have seen the day before, and the day before that, and etc. Their search is also somewhat slow. And, you can't change your email address, so, overall, i think dice is a terrible site. Glassdoor is fancy, but is slow, only only shows 30 hits at a time, limits filter usage by the month (unless you use the url instead), and mostly shows garbage results for "database" (though oracle and sql are much more relevant). Google careers shows me nothing, and LinkUp hardly has anything for me. Monster, where i search for "database developer," "database engineer," (both of those with quotes) and sql, doesn't have many results, and the sort is weird. USA Jobs is about as confusing as the government, so i only search for "database," but their job descriptions are tons of noise to signal, and then applying is a pain. Kelly services is rarely relevant, and google jobs (where i add "-administrator -dba") shows few results, though they seem the most relevant, except when they shows me results for other states. All the searches are limited to 1 day (or 3 on Monday) where possible. I take about half an hour to an hour to search each day, first finding what looks interesting (and new), then reviewing the results to see what applies, and finally applying. I maybe find 1 or 2 each day, but often 0 as well.

I am wondering if i should just offer my services on something like craig's list. That is, write or tune queries, design data models, and that sort of thing. But how would even go about that? Maybe i need to switch careers instead. I don't know. I think i just spent more time writing this JE than i did looking for a job. Maybe that's my problem. Along with the rambling in this JE, my punctuation is terrible.

I hate firefox. I hate firefox. I HATE firefox. I hate it, i hate it, i hate it.

I have hated firefox since the beginning. I installed it, and immediately went back to mozilla because it was so bad. I eventually got used to it, loved the addons, and was happy that firefox had a path in life.

Then chromefox ruined it all. No normal versioning. Automatic updates which could not be turned off, then it could be, unless you checked help/about where it happened anyway, silently, horrifying you on the next boot. Then came breaking add-ons. Automatically upgrading add-ons to version that don't work for your browser, and visual changes galore. Chromefox is just plain terrible at being chrome. If not for the addons, i probably would have switched already. I should look again, because chrome's addons are pretty good.

Firefox used to have a vision. They used to be tops. Then some moron got elected and changed everything that made firefox into firefox. And then the constant change. Stop it already you idiots. Just stop it. I hate to say it or even think it, but if they all died slow and painful deaths, i would probably rejoice in them getting what they deserved. They took something wonderful and redesigned it for no good reason, making everyone's experience, who actually cared, terrible. The FF design team is just plain evil. It's bad enough that they changed what worked without making it an option. But they forced it. Yeah, yeah, addons can change it back. But i am scarred for life.

Recently i rebooted my mac and turned on sync to work with my laptop. Mac gained nothing, but my laptop had it's addons upgraded to non-working versions or otherwise messed up, and noscript's whitelist (well, the new stuff) wiped out. That represents hours of research (a few minutes at a time, but nonetheless) defenestrated. Now a lot of websites aren't working again. And my passwords too, all got reset to old passwords. Sync messed it all up. What morons designed that? I have turned off Sync. I gained nothing and nearly lost everything.

I've about had it with firefox. I think i will finally bite the bullet and seriously check out chrome. Everything i hold dear about firefox is pretty much untrue. And where i can hold it in place (i'm using version 45) one little mistake can mess it all up royally.

I hate you firefox team. I really hate you. I say hate, because as i finally learnt to love you, you stabbed me in the back by turning against everything FF stood for. You guys did what even Microsoft, with millions of dollars, couldn't do. Turncoats, backstabbers, double-agents, whatever. When you guys 404, i want to laugh at you heartily.

Some more notes on the last entry.

There is a bug that when the only ball left is on the left corner, the screen is considered cleared. This effectively allows a theoretical low score of 10/20 points less. That is, instead of 1540/3080, the score could be 1530/3060, or the (slightly) more realistic 1580/3160. Obviously this is a matter of circumstance, but it does come up where the best move is to ignore that corner to save the 10/20 points.

I was thinking of my rule, "No more then 4 balls can be dropped by the second way," which i still find to be a good method. But, i am missing the point. Since all method 2 balls are scored at 100 points, it is not the individual shot that must be considered for method 2, but the over the entire game.

So, since i am trying to beat 7330, had that been on one ball set and assuming no method 3 drops, the score would be due to 1580 because of method 1, and 5750 because of method 2. IOW, 575 method 2 drops. As long as i could focus on keeping the drop under 575, i would beat that score.

But that isn't the case, because there were ball set changes, and each brought with it (at least) 17 balls on screen. That 17 is subtracted from the 575 for each ball set change to arrive at the actual method 2 drops. However, i do not remember how many ball set changes there were.

To get a better number, i ought to start remembering amount of ball set changes per game when the score is about 7 or 8 thousand points. Then average it to get the average amount of method 2 drops per ball set change. Finally, use that number as a guide for how many drops should be "allowed" per ball set (and roll over of unused drops to the next ball set). I should still aim to minimize them, but this would be helpful. As for method 3, they simply cannot be depended upon, as their rarity makes them mostly inconsequential.

I'm thinking about this too much, but if it makes it more fun, why not?