Posted on July 11, 2006
Of Cell Phone Cameras and Bowling Pins
Under normal circumstances, including incidents when I’m walking into movie theaters and secure computing facilities where such things are clearly prohibited, I have my digital camera on me. It’s pretty small; most people think it’s an oversized cell phone, but it is, in fact, a Canon SD400 Digital Elph, and has taken most of the pictures on my website.
I mention this because one of the more impressive insta-photo-worthy events I’ve witnessed lately happened when I forgot my camera, so the pics you’ll have to endure are from my cell phone, which takes horrid pictures.
The event of which I speak is when, on an otherwise unremarkable Thursday night, during my regular bowling league, our team captain (Michelle, who stands 5-foot-teensy and sports a bowling average that hovers just below 140), pulled a 251 game out of nowhere. Yowza. Evil pics to follow.
Congratulations Michelle!
Posted on June 25, 2006
I Miss Vacation (Take Two)
Two vacations in nary a month — one would think I’d be fantastically relaxed, yes? Shame how reality works. I DID have a delightful time with clan Koch, in Gatlinburg, however. For those of you who’ve been yelling at me for a while for pictures, they’re finally up; sorry for the delay. Enjoy!
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Posted on June 14, 2006
ChipWiki, the crouton of life
I ate lunch at the “Happy Palace” today, which is a very “in-and-out” sort of Chinese Buffet restaurant in town. Beyond the normal joyful ocassion that dining there always is, I was afforded the following fortune in my fortune cookie which, contrary to most fortunes I get, really, I think, hits the mark:
You are the crispy noodle in the vegetarian salad of life.”
I am the crispy noodle.
Isn’t that SO me? Right. That’s what I thought you’d say.
In honor of this blessed event, I’ve decided to start toying with wikis. ChipWiki is now up and running, and has, to date, no new material outside of what MediaWiki ships with. I have turned off anonymous posting and automatic account creation, however, so you can’t post to my Wiki unless I say you can. Mostly this is because I already get weird comments about alien-porn on my wordpress blog, but it’s also largely because I don’t trust you (the general public) to edit ChipWiki, because only I am the crispy noodle of life.
Posted on May 31, 2006
What day was it, a month ago, anyway?
Sometimes I really ENJOY bugs in other people’s software. This one might be a feature; I don’t know.
If someone comes up to you today and asks you what the date was a month ago, do you think you could figure it out? I think I could make something up that sounded reasonably accurate. Today, at least in my world, is May 31st. If you us the Teradata database, and ask IT what it thought the date was one month ago (date – INTERVAL ‘1’ MONTH), it explodes. Error message. Very bad.
Apparently, it’s unethical to ask the computer these difficult questions. What Teradata WANTS to do is tell you that a month ago, today, was April 31st. Of course, April 31st doesn’t exist (30 days hath [hath?] Setpember, APRIL… You remember the drill.), so it poops its pants. Or something. Personally, I’d have no problem if someone told me that a month ago today was April 30th (I’d have no problem if they told me it was April 31st; I really don’t pay that much attention). But still, tell me SOMETHING.
This is the sort of thing I deal with on a near-daily basis these days.
UPDATE: Teradata’s even more freaky: the example above works like I mentioned, but if you use “add_months(date, -1)”, it works the way I’d like! Totally twilight-zone over here.
Posted on May 23, 2006
I miss vacation
It’s amazing how different a week on the beach is from, say, five minutes in front of my office PC at work. Beach: warm, sunny. Office: Cold, slightly blue tint from monitors and flourescent lights. Beach: Sounds like the ocean. Office: Sounds like electronics equipment buzzing and whirring and with that little noise in the back of your head that you’re not really sure is actually THERE, but you know you can’t go looking for it, just in case it isn’t.
You get the idea.
Pics are up here:
Thanks to all the folks with cameras, and FOO! to those of you that didn’t take any pictures! Dr. Helfrich’s video will be up soon.