I'm sure it's too late for most of you, but...
If you hear Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” coming up on the radio, change the station. It’s not that it’s a bad song, it’s that you don’t want something that depressing stuck in your head.
Read more...Best Buy is offering a World of Warcraft map for $2 - shipping is free. Pre-expansion, but it could be useful anyway. Just ordered ours.
> More than just a map, this giant lay of the land is a work > of art. At 24” x 36”, this two-sided map makes a great wall > hanging in any room. On one face, the map shows all flight > paths, including the Horde, Alliance, Neutral and > Druid-only travel points. On the flip side is an unfettered > map of Azeroth displaying a beautifully rendered view of > the topography of the islands.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8206069&type=product&id=1165610667161
Popped next door to Target and bought a Burning Crusade box ($40) as well. Lessee, and we’re dropping, what, $30 a month to maintain two accounts? Man, Halo 2 was a lot cheaper…
Read more...This article suggests that a minimum wage hike is essential not just to everyone’s livelihood, but their safety as well…
> If the gap between rich and poor gets too large, and if > those at the bottom feel they have no meaningful route to > the riches at the top, then the fabric of society will > fray, or even come unraveled entirely. … > Shortly before I arrived in Brazil, a British tour bus was > hijacked and robbed in broad daylight on the way from Rio’s > international airport to a ritzy beach area. While I was > there, two Supreme Court justices were carjacked on the > same road. > Overall, the murder rate in Brazil is five times that of > New York City. … > The New York Times reported recently on a World Bank study > concluding that if Brazil had the much lower homicide rate > of Costa Rica, Brazil’s GDP would have been three to eight > percent higher in the 1990s. > As one economist explained in the article, “You have money > spent on guarding stuff rather than making stuff.” And when > international investors look around the globe, they choose > safer places.
http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/economist/19750
Boosting the minimum wage is just giving a man a fish, though. Let’s teach him how to fish by raising education funding as well.
Read more...It seems I never just sit down and pick a programming language up… I flirt with it for a couple years, trying to convince myself that I really need it.
Well, I’m really liking Ruby now. The reason is the whole “Ruby classes are never closed” thing. Feel like going back and adding methods to a class? Go for it. Want to add methods to an individual object? It’ll create a virtual class for that object behind the scenes. Mixins aren’t so mysterious if you view them as a batch-adding of methods to an existing class.
Read more...Diana’s been watching Alton Brown on Food Network. This is a bad thing because it convinces her we need all kinds of kitchen gear. It’s a good thing because this week alone, I have enjoyed from-scratch cinnamon rolls, and this lovely little chili recipe:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_28231,00.html
Read more...It still blows my mind that my wife not only understands what it means to “fire up a Perl interpreter”, but appreciates the overhead involved.
I have chosen… wisely.
Read more...Annnnd… the car’s back from the shop. $60 to find that a bolt was missing from the brake assembly and replace it. It wasn’t the CV joint at all.
Did I mention the last people to work on the brakes were my father in law and myself? And I doubt the mistake was my father in law’s. I really need to stick to coding.
Read more...The car’s in the shop (probably a bad CV joint from running around with an off-kilter rotor for so long), so I’m telecommuting today…
Anyway, I’m working from the Lappy on the couch while D sleeps in the bedroom. The dog’s sleeping next to me on the couch, and he’s “running” in his sleep again.
I’ve never watched a sleeping dog before, probably because I’ve never owned a dog that was allowed in the house before, so this is amusing to me. His four legs twitch independently in an odd rhythm that might or might not actually get him somewhere if he were awake. He’s probably chasing a cat in his dream or something.
Read more...The call: > CodeConvDAO(transaction).get(code, system.toString(), context.toString())
The declaration: > public CodeConvRecord get(String sysCode, String context, String code) throws DAOException {…}
…Even without knowing Java, you can probably figure out what’s wrong with the call. (Hint: the order of the parameters.)
So of course I don’t see it until the moment my co-worker arrives at my desk to help me troubleshoot…
Read more...Finally found a real reason to keep those neodymium magnets at work (other than keeping them far away from disks and video tapes at home)… My pen, binder clips, Penguin Mints, nail trimmer, and even a stapler are happily out of the way and yet easily accessible, stuck to the underside of the metal bookshelf in my cube.
These magnets may have just gone from useless curiosity to Life Tool in my book.
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