Jott
So I’m using Jott to send myself reminders now, but its speech recognition is less than perfect. Here’s a sampling of the e-mails that result…
Thursday and every Tuesday night take past trash out. Mark[?] Reminder, replace the battery. [unclear speech, please listen] Remind her very clean kitchen.
Doesn’t matter; anything’s better than waiting for Verizon’s voice mail menus.
Read more...Mindshare...
What’s been occupying me lately:
Ruby. Like, consuming my every waking moment. It’s as exciting as Perl was back in 1999, but unlike Perl, I already have an app deployed that an ordinary Windows user could install, with more to come.
Google Code. Sourceforge was pioneering, but this makes development something I want to do every day.
A Web service client I’m writing for work. It’s in Java, and the vendor’s forcing me to use janky protocols with janky libraries. I’ve been able to isolate the damage to two classes so far, but who can say what’s next?
God of War II. It’s not as polished as the first, but it’s still pretty damn good.
Disgaea 2. If you’ve never played a tactical RPG before, you’ll probably raise an eyebrow at this one, but I don’t care. It’s got depth and technique and it’s cute. You can even skip the storyline if you can’t stand it.
Dreamhost. Thanks to a discount code I scored 300GB of storage for $10 a month. (Twice the size of my hard drive at home.) I mainly want the shell, Web server, Subversion, and Rails. Shutting down my personal Apache at home without having to give up access to any of my files is a nice bonus, though.
Oh yeah, and the baby. Though mostly he just prevents me from concentrating on any of the above.
Read more...Yeeee-haawww!
> prop NOYB > sent_dtime 2007-05-04 > record caught exception while handling > request: unrecognized operation: > {[namespace]}process > > prop NOYB > sent_dtime 2007-05-04 > record Internal Server Error > (caught exception while handling request: > javax.xml.rpc.JAXRPCException: header not found.) … > prop NOYB > sent_dtime 2007-05-04 > record successful update > > prop NOYB > sent_dtime 2007-05-04 > record successful update …
Read more...According to this article, foreign travel to the U.S. has fallen 17 percent since Sept 11, 2001, and not because of fears of terrorist attacks, but fears of overzealous security officials.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10436518
As usual, hope comes from where the money is - the travel industry, which is currently lobbying for reform.
Read more...Yeah, I'm going to hell.
I’m responsible for watching the e-mail inbox for the reports production account, because we have all these old-school scripts with hard-coded e-mail addresses. They frequently need updating when someone changes job roles or leaves the company. I’ve even been changing several reports whose main recipient, John Smith (not his real name), died a few weeks ago.
So I really shouldn’t be laughing at this message I received today…
> —– The following addresses had permanent fatal errors —– > John_Smith@mycompany.com
Read more...ahhhhh
Speaking of e-mail bounces, if anyone has trouble getting hold of me the next couple days, it’s because my mother in law is moving out so she can live with her fiancee, and we’re transferring my ISP account from her name to mine.
All should return to normal shortly. I really need to get my own domain name, to avoid interruptions like this.
Read more...Man, I am on a roll this week! I think it’s taken me this long to overcome the incredible inertia imposed on me by our build, defect tracking, and release systems, because there are umpteen steps with each that you have to stop and think about. Well, after a year and a half, I finally have enough experience with each that I don’t have to think about them any more. And now, I can think about coding! Imagine that!
Read more...Once, long ago, I attempted writing a brief treatise while drunk. I’m sure the file is long lost, and I have a substantial buzz going (one tequila shot and one beer. Sad, huh?) and so here’s another attempt.
Shit, I started this with no idea what I was going to write about. Well, I’ve got a glowering baby on my lap (no risk of dropping him, we’re on a couch buried in cushions and blankets), so I guess I’ll write about him.
This guy is a little shit. He’s spent substantial portions of the afternoon and evening shrieking his head off for no apparent reason. I suppose it’s gas or some such, but it’s very frustrating.
Well, he’s being angelic right now, at least. The worst thing he’s doing is flopping his head onto my typing hand, and as light as his head is, that barely disrupts me. In fact he even just cast me one of those grimaces that can be mistaken for a smile. (There are a couple points I’m certain he’s actually smiled, and no, that’s not just a proud parent talking. Regardless, it’s the most magical moment in existence; this creature that has done nothing but distress and annoy you smiles at you, and suddenly it’s all OK.
Meh, that’s all I have for now. Somehow I doubt this post will seem at all out of the ordinary, except for a total lack of narrative flow. Oh, well.
Read more...From baby to kid...
Lenny had a karate “recital” today, where they basically get up on stage and show off for a room full of parents why they’ve been paying $40 a month. It was basically the same routine I’ve caught glimpses of week after week when dropping him off, but getting 15 four-year-olds all doing the same moves at the same time was a pretty impressive feat.
He’d stayed over with his friend Madison the night before, and afterward both families went to lunch at Denny’s. It was kind of a preview of what we were in for the next few years… “No, you two are going to sit on opposite sides of the table.” “There, you have the exact same crayons, now you have nothing to complain about.” Considering their lack of sleep, though, they were cute and well-behaved.
Very mundane, middle-class-family stuff, but of course it’s all novel to me. It was kinda fun, a reminder of my own childhood.
Read more...Yeah. something like that.
> From: [my boss] > Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 > To: [me] > Subject: FW: question > > Jay, the award program question has arisen again. I know > you are busy with [project x] and [project y] work. Do you > have time to look this over and come by to discuss it? > > > From: Liz > > Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 > > To: [A lot of people, including my boss] > > Subject: RE: question > > > > Hi everyone, > > > > We’ll need to get some input from our technical team on > > this one, since it was my understanding that the system > is > > set up so that 2005 awards automatically expire on > December > > 31, 2006 unless the property is a repeat winner in 2006. > > Could someone please look into why the 2005 award winners > > are still displaying award logos on [our].com? > > > > Thanks, > > Liz
I fished through my e-mail archive, and dug this out…
> From: Liz > Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 > To: [my boss] > Cc: [me]; [somebody else] > Subject: RE: [xxx] Awards Mystery > > Hi Mike, > > [snip] > > If we were to update the business rule for these > properties, what would the timeline look like for making > the change (see below)? [snip] I realize this isn’t > ideal, but it is urgent that we address the issue because > properties are noticing every time their award logo > disappears from the site. > > The business rules for the 2006 program are: > [xxx] winners with 2005 dates expire on 12/31/07 > [xxx] winners with 2006 dates expire on 12/31/07 > [yyy] winners with 2005 dates expire on 12/31/07 > [yyy] winners with 2006 dates expire on 12/31/07 > Please let me know how you think it would be best to > proceed. > > Thanks, > Liz
Read more...