Wow, I heard the Microsoft Kin's been axed already. I just started seeing commercials for it on Hulu the other day. It's only been available for two months I think.
I guess if you have a gajillion dollars you can make stuff and never sell it as often as you want. Still, it seems like a waste to me…
Today my boss came in to my office and asked if I could find out the output voltage and impedance for his laptop's sound card.
Hardware specs tend to not go that in-depth. Finding the manufacturer of the sound hardware may work, but I ran in to several dead ends trying this.
In the end, I found a website dedicated to using your sound hardware as a cheap oscilloscope. Turns out, they've done the research and listed averages, which ended up being good enough for my boss.
The answer? Typical output voltage for a computer line-out jack is 1.5-2.0v. Impedance tends to be between 30 and 400 ohms. Just in case you needed to know.
- Up for 3 hours, wife's still asleep. So it's a typical morning. #
- Scripted query time. Must finish this silly side project today. Sick of it hanging over me. #
- RT @Diablo: "The 10 year anniversary for @Diablo II is next week, how will you celebrate?" Playing Diablo 3 would have been nice... #
- Fixing my #MUD #039;s "get" command. Changed local storage and made it a Singleton. Cleaning up a few issues. 1400 lines of C++ code later... #
- It took me nearly 4 hours to upgrade my iPhone last night. At least half of that was attempting to download the update. #
- I'm really getting things done today. That's a good sign... #
- Sonic! (@StarShipSofa)http://yfrog.com/9dqtkj #
- Anybody know whose brainchild having #spokanehoopfest and #ironman Cd'A on the same weekend is for the last several years? #noHotelsAtAll #
- I think the boxed noodles I had for lunch today were bad. They tasted horrible. I ate them anyway. #
- Woah it's Bruce Campbell's birthday today! #
- USELESS TWITTER. STUPID GAY SOCCER GAME. #
- Sweet! #Futurama starts back up on TV tomorrow night. It better make it to Hulu... #
- Listening to today's @FootStompin Scottish music podcast. Wish it was longer! #
- I get cranky when things usurp my access to technology. Like today. #
- I get cranky when things usurp my access to technology. Like right now. #
- Curse you, world cup, curse you!!!! #
- I guess tweeting "goal" with 30 million other people at the same time does nothing for me. Apparently I am alone in this feeling. #
- Twitter web access is failing. Posting when it says error. Switching to twitter phone app. #
- Hoist up the John B sail.. I wanna go home. #
- I just heard that the Spokane Chinese ASsociation has a picnic this Saturday, 10a-2p #
- Chicken fajitas for dinner tonight. Oh yeah. #
- Is is...Is it possible? Am I actually CAUGHT UP at work? #
- I really am catching up on things fast. At this rate, I'll be working on the boss's pet projects in no time! #
- I can start working on unit tests for my project soon! Yay, new stuff! #
- More @wootoff love! But I'm soooooo tired... #
- Having trouble sleeping (again). Hopefully I don't write horrible code when I'm tired... #
- SlickEdit's editor preferences are so ANNOYINGLY COMPLEX that it's impossible to get your desired settings, no matter how hard you try. #
- My #MUD #039;s get() command is building again. It's also half the length it used to be (only ~800 lines now) #
- Such an exciting Saturday. Doing dishes. #
- Didn't make it to the Spokane Chinese Association picnic today. Too much going on, too short notice this time.
# - 親愛的斯波åŽä¸åœ‹æœ‹å‹ï¼šä¸‹æ¬¡è¦‹ï¼ #
- Hmm. Undefined reference to singleton object in my #MUD at link time. Not sure why... #
- I'm pretty sure my undefined reference issue is due to static objects in static library files, but haven't found the solution yet. #
- Gave up, called for help from a coworker that knows way more than me about Singletons, link errors, and libraries. #
- Two small sandwiches on homemade Italian semolina bread for lunch. Toasted sesame seeds FTW! #
Last night my brother Wes and I watched the latest Cinematic Titanic release, Danger on Tiki Island.
Having been a long-time fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, this is an instant classic. While I don't think I enjoy the live versions quite as much as the normal DVD releases, it doesn't detract from the enjoyment of the jokes. And I can tell you, there were a lot of them!
The story is (roughly) about a scientist and his wife investigating an island after nearby nuclear testing. Accompanying them is a peace corps guy that wants to improve the quality of life of the native population. But a monster is loose on the island, and the natives have reverted to virgin sacrifices on a near-nightly basis. Exactly how they could sustain this level of commitment I can't say.
Did I mention the trees have grabbing tentacles? And the monster suit was ridiculous? Of course I don't need to. Plus, there is a bonus documentary feature.
Don't be afraid to rush out and get the latest installment from Joel, Trace, J. Elvis, Mary Jo, and TV's Frank!
I'm feeling a little oversubscribed. Between Twitter, RSS feeds of my favorite sites, and (sigh) Facebook, I typically get at least two copies of every bit of information, and frequently all three.
What I need now is a good duplicate-detecting social site aggregator.
I've been making a little progress on the MUD again. I don't work on it much, but it hasn't been building for a while, and I've got a drive to get it fixed so at least I can continue testing it.
I've made a few modifications lately, the biggest being changing the command objects to Singleton objects since that's the way I've been using them anyway. I've also been working on the get command, and as happens when a design gets better, it's shrinking in size. Hopefully I'll be able to wrap it up tomorrow, since Lorien will be working until almost 9:30pm tomorrow night anyway.
I've also been lax about source control. My current system is rolling up a tarball, bz2-compressing it, and dropping it into my gmail account. I really should get something a little more sophisticated. At some point I'm going to have to do something about it. But the goal right now is to get it building again, and to test out the get revision.
I am making a new bread this week: Italian Semolina. I made two loaves of white last night, and one big loaf of sourdough. And I'm enjoying a little bit of everything for lunch today! There are few better things than fresh homemade bread…
- Dinner shortly. Strawberry Cream Cake to follow immediately thereafter. #
- Inlaws are playing bocce ball outside. I'm inside, saying away from the pollen. #
- Monday. This is the one of the quietest Monday's I've seen in a long time... #
- Homemade sourdough baguette and swiss cheese. Mmmmm... #
- Wow. My sourdough baguettes are fantastic! #
- RT @TheSmitchell Follow my employer! You know you want
to... @ChiefSoftware (it's my employer, too!) # - Things are running pretty smooth for a Monday. Somewhere out there, somebody else is having a VERY bad day... #
- Apparently the Federal Courthouse next door is under lockdown due to suspicious powder mailed to them. Which way is the wind blowing? #
- Just saw a dog run past my open door. Apparently it's bring your pets to the office and annoy your coworker day. #
- Amazingly productive work day is now over. Time to head home and eat more sourdough! #
- Dear all you jerks clogging Twitter with your stupid soccer game: shut up and leave the rest of us alone. #
- I LOVE my @Blendtec blender. Nothing else comes close to its ability to make smoothies and icy beverages. #
- Got an email from a company that historically has problems releasing on time about how to shorten release cycles. Ironic. #
- I bought a box of snack-bag chips so I could take a bag to work with my lunch. So far I've forgotten them _every_single_day_ #
- Microsoft's not selling upgrades for Office 2010. This is the first I've heard of it. I usually buy upgrades for the office. #
- stupid apostrophes #
- How have I not ordered the latest #cinematictitanic DVD yet?? #
- Seeing entire pods of fail whales lately... #
- Grumble grumble grumble SQL grumble grumble grumble grumble #
- Thinking about Schlotzsky's for lunch today. It's my uncle's birthday. #
- Quit crying about your #tweetcount they'll fix it. #
- Upgraded to the new #wordpress 3.0. The process was very smooth, as usual! #
- Got pulled out of weekly development meeting to address a problem. Not sure I should go back now that it's taken care of. #
- AWESOME! @CarbonLeaf is playing nearby (Moscow, Idaho) next month! #
- Another SSHD attack against my desktop box. When will they learn they can't get in?? #
- Back to SQL queries and writing reports people will use for a week and then forget about.. #
- Cleaning up after bad database users. Does anybody look at what they're doing before they just hit 'ok'? YOU KIDS PICK THIS PLACE UP! #
- Word 2010: Open Word 2007 file, click Print. FAIL. Can't print a range of pages. IT'S GRAYED OUT. At least Print Selection works... #
- Kin: The only phone that integrates with Windows Live... #
- Off to a product refresh meeting, name modification, etc. #
- Wow. 10:30am and my office is already 75F. This is not a good sign. Plus, I'm eating lunch. #
- Sales: Can you change the color of this? IT: What color do you want? Sales: It doesn't matter. #
- Converting some MUD classes that should be Singletons into Singletons. #
- Grumbly tummy, yellow elf needs food badly. #
- Altered the UUID class to be a Singleton. Now instead of being a global, it only masquerades as one. #
- Baked, cooked, did dishes, cleaned kitchen. Thinking about making more sourdough. Made 2 baguettes last night, a sammich loaf this time. #
- Converted several classes to Singletons. Smooth going, just tedious. Must get the #MUD building again... #
- There is some wicked thunder outside right now, been seeing lightning for the last hour or two. #
I've been using the yaml-cpp library for a while now, and I have to say that overall I'm greatly pleased by how well it works.
As I was making some adjustments to my I/O last night I ran across a bit of documentation that I never noticed before. Of course, it could be newly added. Anyway, I've found the most convenient way to parse my documents (I have many thousands of them to read and write), is to access them by node-name. For example:
node["location"]["name"] >> mObjectLocation.location;
The information I read last night, however, may convince me to change this behavior.
Apparently, named-node access in yaml-cpp is order-n2 complex over the entire document. Put simply, every time you access a node like this the library loops through all nodes looking for a match. Personally, I think a hashed table lookup would have been much faster, and perhaps they'll add that later.
Overall, I wouldn't normally worry about it because my documents tend to only have a few dozen nodes. But I do have 20,000 documents to parse. And to top that off, as they are used they become more complex. And as more items are added, the node size will grow geometrically. I can easily envision a future where a single document contains hundreds of nodes, and it's starting to scare me.
The solution? Well, I can honestly say I don't have a good one yet. I think perhaps if I enforce the order things are written, which already only happens in one way, I can then read in linearly instead of by node-name. The problem with that is if a file is edited by hand and the order is accidentally changed. So by renaming my current solution to readCompatible() and writing a new linear read() function, I should cut down on a lot of extra unnecessary processing.
But I'm still not sure that's the best solution. Any smart people out there have a better idea?
I received a text message spam today from 7793482905 that contained the following message:
RE: Congratulations: You have been preselected to receive a $100 Target Gift Voucher! Please call 888-511-9334 to claim. To end msgs reply Stop.
My reply was in two parts:
- Stop
- PS Say Hi to the FCC when they process the complaint I'm filing against you for this
AT&T won't do anything about text spammers. You can't block them, but (supposedly) they have to respect you when you reply Stop.
I prefer to take it a bit further and file a compliant with the FCC.
I doubt that any person will actually see my message, but just in case, I like to give them fair warning.
I upgraded to WordPress's new 3.0 release. In the first hour, they have over 15,000 downloads!
The upgrade was a piece of cake, as usual. They make it simple and easy. I always back up my database and files before the upgrade, and I've never had to go back. And let me tell you, I've been using WordPress for a very long time, since the early days. I upgraded from bb to WordPress on November 18, 2003.
From Spokane News KXLY:
The Coeur d'Alene Police Department reports that a woman showed up at the Fast Lane Quik Lube, located at 484 West Bosanko Avenue, for an oil change. Mechanics at the business later identified that woman as Cyndi Steele, Edgar Steele's wife. As mechanics were working to remove the oil plug they noticed a suspicious device underneath her vehicle, a Mitsubishi Endeavor.
I'd think it was suspicious if I found a Mitsubishi Endeavor underneath my vehicle, too!
I've used this exact method to get a dormant starter going so well that it nearly triples when I refresh it. If this doesn't get your starter up and running like crazy, then there's no saving it!
Warm up 1 cup of water about 20 seconds in the microwave. It should be warm, but not hot. Too much heat will kill your starter. If it's too hot for you it's too hot for your starter.
Add 1 cup of your starter to the water and whisk until uniform. Discard the rest of the starter if it's dormant. If it's really active, use it!
Put 1 1/2 cups of flour in a bowl with the starter and whisk until combined. It's okay if there are some small chunks of flour, but you want it as well-combined as possible.
Cover with plastic wrap and keep it out on your counter. If you have a warm sunny spot, that's even better, but it'll work at room temperature.
Repeat this process in the morning and in the late afternoon/evening for 3 days.
Once it's really active, you should refresh it every 2 days or so if you keep it out. If you refrigerate it, it should keep indefinitely.
- I really wish my body would allow me to sleep in... #
- "Vincent and the Doctor" was a very good episode of Doctor Who! Liked it almost as much as "The Girl in the Fireplace" #
- The problem with being a good IT guy is that you're good at *everything*. Attention to detail, disaster plans, etc. This means you're busy. #
- Today it's PHP and databases. Mostly just PHP though. #
- New website rollout is today...if things work out right. #
- Reese's Peanut Butter Cuts #oneletteroffcandyclub #
- Well looks like the rollout didn't happen. At least it wasn't MY fault for not being ready
# - Came in to work early to a phone system outage. PRI was down. Now Twitter is showing the fail whale. What's going to break next? #
- Ooh Amazon has Firefly on Blu-ray for only $27.99 right now.. #
- Website rolled over finally. Took me 12 seconds to publish the new rewrite rules. For this I came in early. #
- Listening to latest @FootStompin podcast. They are always always always too short. Good music! #
- Is it safe to come back yet? [tap][tap] Is this thing even on? #
- Wherefore art thou motivation? #
- Development team meeting in 10. Then probably off to donate blood. #
- At the blood bank donating some of my awesome A- blood #
- Done and on my second glass of pineapple juice. Donating blood today was extra easy and fast! #
- Just read "Serenity: Float Out" by Dark Horse comics. Great but as usual, too short. Mote Firefly please! #
- My #followFriday Pt. 1: @KevinGilmartin @mrsspykes A Scottish couple I've never met but seem pretty cool. #
- My #followFriday Pt. 2 @cpkimball (America's Test Kitchen) and @CinematicTitans (to watch while you're cooking) #
- My #followFriday Pt 3. Coworkers: @DanDanTheArtMan (writer/podcaster also) and @TheSMitchell #
- My #followFriday Pt. 4 @Enfors The only other #MUD developer/enthusiast I've found on Twitter #
- Gee it sure would be nice if we had @somegrenades! #sneakyFF #jaynequotes #
- Left halfway through the meeting. Skipped the after-meeting meeting and the after-after-meeting meeting. Feel no shame. #
- The only sport I would watch on TV would be Hurling. Nothing else is interesting or exciting after watching Hurling. No Irish TV here though #
- Shopping at Costco done. Fridge stocked to overflowing. Freezer is out of space. Freezer in garage is 3/4 full. Making pizza #
- You should see me toss this pizza dough. I nearly dropped it twice. #
- Made an 8-pound batch of bread dough to use over the next two weeks. From this most excellent recipe book: http://amzn.to/b7sjkJ #
- It doubled in about 40 minutes... http://yfrog.com/50blpmj #
- The dough! It's climbing out of the bucket!! Help!! #
- Despite being refrigerated, the dough continues to rise like an out-of-control science project. I need a bigger container. Or less dough. #
- Hacked off a chunk of dough to try to curb the Napoleonesque expansion. Shaped and proofing now. Fresh bread coming soon! #
- Hot out of the oven! http://yfrog.com/jbicvj #
- Preparing another Strawberry Cream Cake for dessert tomorrow. Did I mention I bake a lot? #
- Copying some recipes into my recipe book software. Updating some notes, too. #