It seems that it has been quite some time since my last post, a week to be exact, for which I apologize to my noble and illustrious readers. I must be on quite the Jimmy Stewart kick, as I have watched “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, “Rear Window”, and “The Philadelphia Story” (which I am currently in the middle of). Both “Rear Window” and “Accepted” were really good, and “The Philadelphia Story” is looking pretty good at this point, too. You should watch the director’s commentary of “Accepted”, as it has virtually nothing to do with the movie that these guys are watching, and more to do with the making fun of each other and generally goofing off. It was a really good time. I watched some Airwolf, MacGuyver, MXC, Get Smart, and MythBusters this weekend. I’m really digging the variety. I continue on to try and catch up on my old movie backlog, which I’m sure will take me quite some time. This little endeavor has, though, gained me quite a whole new appreciation for actresses before my time, such as Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Shirley MacLaine, and Audrey Hepburn.

My apartment complex recently had need to shut off the water to the entire complex several times over several days, during business hours. I’d say that this happened roughly 3 to 4 times over a week or so. It definitely took me at least two tries to get through a shower without them cutting off the water half way through. Once or twice I misjudged the time, and once the notice fell off my door, so I was caught completely unaware.

The new cable has been pretty worthless. I watched it for a day or two, and remembered why I didn’t miss it (especially since I don’t get channels like 3-6 on my tv, as it is somewhat decrepit, and counts me out of some of the probably better broadcast programming). Comcast was quite efficient in their billing, as it has already come, which reminds me that I need to expense it.

I somehow managed to get my external into an odd state, where it now has XFS on it, instead of the normal FAT32. I didn’t have enough to rectify this, so I had to break out the good ol’ fibre channel for a bit to get the external back to a state where just about any o/s can read it. I can fill in the mundane details later, for those of you who care. I’ve played with LVM before, but always more in a playful way than in a production way. And I knew that it wasn’t the most intuitive thing in the world, so I had to mess with it some to get it to bow to my will.

Oh, I got a haircut this weekend, as I was going to a wedding on Saturday. The haircut went ok. The sides are a lot shorter than I prefer, and there is some long hair in the front (like everyone seems to leave long with the part not in the middle), but other than that, I can’t complain. The wedding was small, but good. It was the first that it wasn’t a Wesleyite and hence wasn’t a wedding where I felt like I’d known them forever and knew lots of other Wesleyites in attendance as well.

It’s been pretty cold at night here, so I haven’t been riding at all in the mornings. I caught up on some laundry over the weekend. I had a fun adventure both dropping off and picking up my suit from the cleaners. During the drop-off, the Indian lady was trying to ask me a question, which I couldn’t understand at all, and asked her to repeat mabye half a dozen times. I still didn’t understand and finally another employee (that was on the phone at the time) stepped in and said the word “Thursay”, which is what she had been trying to convey to me, that the suit would be ready to pick up on Thursday. Which was fine, of course, but it was definitely a tough time getting through the thick accent communication barrier. Then, when I went to pick it up Friday after paintball (yes, I know get over it), I had an almost even harder time getting it back, as they apparently couldn’t read my hand writing, tought that the G was an E and finally a C to figure out where they had my suit stashed among the racks and racks of clothes. I finally got it back, but question if I would go back there again. They also left some odd oily (or what seem to be oil) marks on my white shirt. I dunno what to think about that, but I’ll have some time before I need more stuff dry cleaned.

This past week I’ve meant to blog about the stuff like the dry cleaners and the water being cut off, but let it slip and they both might have gone by the wayside, but I happened to remember them tonight while I was writing, so you all can partake in my life a little more. I should try to do a little better about shooting off little bloglets when I think of funny things that happen.

Anyway, I am looking forward to getting out of Dodge. I’m getting pretty stir crazy around here…

My hair is too long.
I have new shoes (for a little while now).
I’m getting cable tomorrow.
I want to go snow skiing.
I am one click away from buying a new $300 coffee table that I’ve been lusting after since I don’t know when, but $300 is a lot. That’s like half of a new computer (a really decent one) or 3 400 GB drives (on sale). All things that I really could do with. Why oh why doesn’t money grow on trees?

Why would you condone text-speak abbreviations in official high school exams? It’s lame. And why don’t they just put an extremely heavy weight on spelling? Wouldn’t that be an semi-unbiased way to make sure that the kids know that they should use the appropriate spelling, while simultaneously not punishing the content for the poor spelling?

I was today forwarded to me an email of some propoganda of the American Family Association, stating that Best Buy has banned the use of Merry Christmas in their advertising. Apparently this is an abomination, although it is beyond me as to why. Can anyone tell me why they have a problem with this? Best Buy is an international corportation (albeit a small one, with only US and Canadian stores). Corporations don’t care about you, they only care about their bottom lines and their stock holders (well, supposedly their stock holders). They only pseudo-care about you if they loose you as a customer, so I would imagine that they thought long and hard and chose the decision that would piss off the fewest of their likely customers. Also, I’m not quite sure what exactly their expectations are from this campaign. They want everyone to email Best Buy, but there is no mention of boycott or anything else. Are they just bitching and whining about this? Seriously, what did you expect from a corporation? It’s the American way, the realization of American dream, and capitalism all at work. It would appear that the major reason why this is even brought up is due to several other corporations changing their stance from previous years. Also, it appears that they have a problem with Borat. Are they aware that it was fictional? That jokes make fun of things? That we don’t have to be offended by every little thing? That the “Running of the Jews” really is a funny premise? That it is really funny in the context of the movie while simultaneously really sad that there really are real people in the world that honestly and completely hate certain people-groups. It is honestly sad. But in a make-pretend movie, it’s ok to laugh, honest. :)

Ok, off my soapbox now.

I watched “Stranger than Fiction”, which was really good. I’ve also watched “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” today, which I accidentally napped through parts of. I went to see Borat a little while ago, which I loved. And I watched “Roman Holiday”, which I seemed to recall loving as well. My Netflix queue is filled with old movies at the moment, including “Mr. Smith…”. I seem to be on a kick to try to whittle down my list of movies I need to watch from the IMDB Top 250. Well, that and I’m still really low on modern movies that I want to watch.

Does anyone else ever feel like no matter how hard they try, that there are a great many things that they cannot will into happening?

REL was in town. I thought about going, and maybe should have, but didn’t.

I whole-heartedly and completely agree that this is gibberish to me as well.

Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘I can’t configure Debian’.

I watched “The Break-Up” (which was still good), “Thank You for Smoking” (which was ok), and I’ll be watching “Roman Holiday” sometime today most likely.

I knew it. I didn’t think that I had much of an accent. Now irrefutable internet proof!

Is today the 1st? Is rent due today? I have no idea what day it is. At least this week I know what day of the week it is. It’s been a stressful week and I can feel it in my upper back. Hopefully only one more stressful day (Thursday) this week. :)

That researcher guy got questioned and then his house searched and stuff confiscated, which is unfortunate, because he really did break the law. He should have known better, but the problem has existed for quite a while. I despise it when a company or organization or department feigns something like that. You give the illusion of security or fore-thought or whatever, but in reality you can’t or won’t accept the truth.

This should make a bunch of people very happy.

To catch up on movies as of late, I’ve seen “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, which I thought was pretty much “The Apartment”, “The Lake House” which was better than I was expecting from Keanu and Sandra, “Blade Runner”, which I still don’t really get, “Match Point”, which was excellent, especially from Woody Allen, “Nacho Libre”, which I should have watched in the theater, because it was really good and would have been better with an audience, “Lost in Translation” which was ok, but seemed more or less like “Code 46”, and “Memoirs of a Geisha”, which was wonderful.

Me, a couple of guys from work, and a couple of their friends went out to a bar after work tonight. So, me and this guy from work were sitting talking, and a very tall young lady comes over near us to pick up her purse and various other items from the table where her and her friends had started the night, to take them to the table where they were currently. My friend and I were in the middle of a conversation, and the young lady was picking up stuff from the table, but said something like when you aren’t sure if someone is talking to you or not (like, “excuse me?” or the like). I more or less continued with what I was saying, she picked up the stuff from the table and walked over to their new table. After she left, my friend chastised me, saying that she had wanted me to talk to her. To which I said that I was admittedly oblivious (as I really was). I more or less played it off, especially as I find it hard to see myself picking up some random smoking, drinking chick at a bar. But, it was a really nice sentiment, either way, if she really was trying to strike up a conversation, or if it was just his interpretation of the situation, it made me feel good. :)

I finally got around to watching the latest episode of Studio 60 last night (episode 6). It was AWESOME! I really feel like the cast and the writers were really gelling, because the dialogue and the acting was spectacular. Multiple mini story lines, character and plot development. Good stuff. Maybe it was each becoming comforable with the other, maybe it was the cast getting used to the tempo and gait of the writing, maybe just the cast getting to know each other better, maybe it was the story progressing to the point where you were no longer having to remind the audience who was whom and could actually move the narrative forward. Whatever it was, it was good, and I’m glad that it looks and feels much more like what I grew accustomed to in Sports Night and the West Wing. I’m much relieved, as I was up until this point not yet convinced as to the quality. If this keeps up, then I’m not worried. :)

I guess that I saw this on Digg, which then linked to this and this. All I considered to be lackluster.

By Handsome Rob’s personal request, I posted a picture of the new bike.

Even though you may not be in CS anymore, you didn’t have to miss this year’s Bonding Sunday!

I have been quite remis in posting both here and in the photoblog. I just went back through what I’ve taken over what seems like the past 6 months and posted them into the photoblog (starting with this one of kb). They’ll show up one a day for quite some time (until the 12th of November). Enjoy!

I still don’t understand Python and its zealots. I find myself all too often in little altercations over the choice of languages and platforms with guys at work, specifically with my great disdain for Python.

I think that if you are an advocate of a dynamically typed language, then you are lazy. You don’t need to be programming if you can’t plan ahead for what variable types you are going to need. If you have a problems thinking that far ahead, then you really do have problems. I think it’s the lazy man’s way out. You can’t be encoumbered by declaring the type of your variables. It hinders your process and bogs you down. You can’t be saddled with such things. If you can’t figure it out, then you shouldn’t be programming. I add a type to a variable without thinking, just like I add a semi-colon to the end of every line. Just like I add a period at the end of every sentence.

I cut my adult programming teeth on C and Java, which are both strongly typed, and probably have permanently influenced the way that I approach solving problems in code and the length of code I consider acceptable for even the simplest of programs. I don’t even see the “boilerplate” any more and I don’t see people’s problems. Importing classes in java is a necessity to me, and I know and understand that, yet when I see imports in python, I always perceive them as the author’s attempt to be cooler than he really is. I don’t know why that is… But what I try to myself realize (and may or may not really reach a decent level of zen in) is that neither I nor you, Mr. Zealot, have the right answer. If there really was one best language then we would all be using it, and no one would be writing new ones, as I am sure someone came up with one just today. Don’t be a zealot and say that your language is better, and force it down my throat. Because it is not the one true language for all of the world and for every application.

I try not to be a zealot for Java, but it’s especially hard for me when other zealots rear their heads and plead their case. I try my best not to force my opinions down other people’s throats, and I appreciate it when others due the same. Don’t waste your breath trying to convince me that your way is better, show me your way is better and I will immediately fall in line. But, if you show me, and you don’t convince me, then you’d better go back to the drawing board and try again.

In my quest for answers, I ran across this.

Let’s face it: your average commercial application isn’t burning CPU cycles solving NP-complete problems. We typically write code that moves chunks of data about and adds up a couple of numbers. In these scenarios, is it worth worrying about the relative performance of the language used to do the moving and adding? Not in my book.

Most of the time the computer waits on you, just like in Mother Russia, and not being stupid and choosing a decent algorithm is key. And I, too, do not care what language it was written in as long as it does its job currectly and in a timely manner. I, in fact, like many other things, do not care for a very, very long time, but then care immensely about how well it will do its job. But then he quotes this:

Justin Ghetland experienced this recently on a Rails project. Having coded the same application twice, once in Java and once using Ruby on Rails, he was surprised to discover that the Rails application outperformed the Java one. Why? Justin believes it’s because Rails does smarter caching.

He compares Java to Ruby on Rails. How can you do that? How can you compare a language to a platform. Of course Java will loose if you’re running it against some other platform that caches the result. Are you stupid? A 2 year old could tell you that. I digress as he does into why Ruby is cool because you don’t have to write sql or some such blather.

Python was derived from ABC and I have as of yet to hear the true reason why he chose as he did. Are the perceived benefits of implicit declaration, statement nesting by indentation, and smaller size === more readable in fact true? Is the benefit perceivable or even quantifiable? Isn’t readability in the eye of the beholder, or more precisely in the eye of the maintainer?

I have not been one for trying to fix some else’s code in quite some time. Ever since that first time or two, I realized that the probability of me finding your error in your non-trivial code was very slim. And in the several minutes that I would be trying to orient myself with the code, the author would figure it out.

Plus all of my other gripes:

the language should not enforce style guidelines
the correctness of a program should not be dependant on indentation
how easy to comment out a code block and not affect the surrounding code
how easy to temporarily copy and paste new code into a block
how easy to determine the end of the code block
“it forces correct coding style” — indentation is only one of many factors of proper coding style, which of itself is debatable; would you want to enforce CamelCase or Hungarian notation at the language level?
“I dislike using braces because I have to indicate my intentions twice: once for the compiler and once for humans.” — couldn’t repetition be considered good for readability?

“When you get to the bottom of it, however, I write programs in Lisp for the same reason I write prose in English—not because it’s the best language, but because it’s the language I know best.”

Well, that last statement really is true and the crux of the whole thing. I know C and Java, and Python isn’t like them in more than a few ways. I ignore certain things about my prefered languages, and the other zealots do the same. I really don’t care what language something is written in. Do I care what language Firefox, Gaim, or xterm is written in? Surely not. I only care that they do their job and they do their job well. If they don’t then I find something else. This is how it should be. Survival of the fittest; a capitalist chosing of software.

I guess what irks me the most is when the zealots proclaim that Python is the best, one, and only, and then their apps suck. Don’t come to me proclaiming the wonders of a language, the ease with which this allows one to code, the brevity, the veritable snake oil-wonder language, and then your apps still suck. I shudder to think how much they would suck if they chose a “harder” and more verbose language.

And why does WordPress have a stupid little draggable ui, yet no autosave or type-as-you-go spell check. Get your priorities straight! Features first, eye-candy later. Function before form.