Free Mental Healthcare for All Canadians

Riding the Dog, is an American rite of passage. Cross-country is a slow, foul experience that tests the measure of one's humanity. I took some of the hardest drugs I've ever taken on the Dog. In an unrelated experience, I met my wife of thirteen years on the Dog. Your mileage may vary.

Enduring the confines of a vehicle where you can hear the piss and poo tank sloshing around within leaking distance of your luggage is maddening. Today, this fellow hadn't met the woman of his dreams and decided he'd had enough.

I Love Commercials

Here is proof that TV commercials don't have to suck. Here's a Bravia ad and the "making of" video. Thanks to The Daily Dish for finding this gem.

Come Up With an Original Idea

Tried to Play Scrabulous Today? ...all my hard-earned statistics are no more.

Source: SLOG

This sort of gimme gimme attitude is pathetic. Does the concept of you get what you pay for ever cross the minds of Internet drones that can't see outward into the world further than their webcam?

If the clever and talented guys from India that built such a technically proficient application had an original idea in their heads they could have made something that wasn't just an intellectually lazy redux ripe for intellectual property legal intervention.

I Promise I Washed My Hands

Believe it or not my 3-month-old puppy, Kevin, is almost house-trained after a week and a half of tutelage. However, the final piece of the puzzle is getting him to master his two-stroke engine in the morning. For whatever reason, he pops out of his crate in the morning, faithfully pays homage to the greatnetss of both number one and number two, comes inside, plays a bit and then sneaks off for a quick second dump on the carpet.

I am reminded of the great Homer Simpson when speaking of the wholesale habits of people in Springfield picking up after their pets, "Did we lose a war, or something?"

Happy Endings Rule

The world officially doesn't suck, contrary to all the reports of the impending Global Warming Apocalypse caused by all the evil Americans and their SUVs, lattés and free-wheeling firearms.

I lost my wallet Sunday. Lost things have varying degrees of lost. This was not just a where did I put it, am I getting Alzheimer's kind of lost. It was a holy crap I don't have a fucking clue where it is kind of lost. I'd checked my three favorite piles of clothes and the various manicured piles of litter that I organize my life within and came up with bupkis.

I'm very good at not dragging around much with me. I only had four meaningful components in my wallet: my driver's license, my debit card, my proof of auto insurance and a $100 bill. The debit and insurance cards would be easy to replace. I didn't even care about them. However losing the other two items were problematic.

At any given moment, it is unlikely that my drivers license is actually valid. I simply count upon the club-footed incompetence of civil bureaucracy to save me when I'm pulled over by the po-po. I've been going back and forth with the State of Texas over the past decade or so on the various shakedown strategies they employ against citizens. I was currently on a slowest slow-pay plan on some bullshit fee I'm certain I've paid several times over and never get credit for it. So the most optimistic scenario of replacing it was going to be a long wait with the Great Unwashed in some stinky strip mall DPS office, finally culminating in a teetering gun play situation with whatever clerk rolled their eyes at me one too many fucking times.

Losing $100 isn't the end of the world as much as it stings when I consider how much beer just got poured down the drain. Typically, I don't carry more than $10 in cash. So, I'm certain the presence of of the $100 played some critical metaphysical role in losing my wallet. I have a nasty habit of losing cash, which is why I stay fairly consistent with the $10 policy.

Until this morning, I was still under the fading hope that I'd still find my wallet in a new and previously uncharted pile of litter in my house. On a lark, it occurred to me - probably from an old after school special from my childhood - that I should just retrace my steps. This concept proved to be a powerful antidote to my low-functioning brain at this point in the week.

I recalled the last place my wallet made an appearance was at the grocery store this Sunday. I had just pulled off a sweet bicycle ride earlier in the day, and I was so tired that after changing my shirt, I realized I didn't have the energy to even change my blasted shorts. I was sapped to the bone. I had designs to barbecue chicken for company, and fixin's were needed. Watching the video of me in my head, I realized it was a big mistake to run for groceries in my cycling shorts. They aren't the sort that show off my package, but they do have small chickenshit-sized pockets.

I know my wallet made it into the store because I did pay for and take home the requisite grub. Unbeknownst to me (I've been looking for days how I could work that word into a post) my wallet had fallen out of my pocket in the parking lot, I suppose. This morning, I realized I had time to stop at the grocery store and see if there was a miracle to be found in the lost & found.

There was. Everything, intact. Holy shit.

Who Will Make My Monte Cristo Now?

Benigans beagnach críochnaithe? As an Irishman in need of deep-fried sandwiches to sustain my fighting weight, I'm outraged at this development.

Managers were informed about midnight that all of the Bennigan's restaurants nationwide will be closing as of July 29. Calls to several Dallas-Fort Worth area restaurants confirmed the closure

Source: Dallas' CBS 11 News

King of Dallas

D Magazine is having an epic summer-long battle of determining The Best Thing in Dallas. The stakes have risen and there are only four combatants remaining for the final round. Of the four, one - Sports Radio 1310AM The Ticket - is actually my favorite thing in Dallas. The other three (high school football, college football and the Texas State Fair) are actually completely uninteresting to the non-mullet-head populace. What three things would I replace them with, if I were King of Dallas?

#1 Sports Radio 1310AM The Ticket
With the exception of the extremely awful Norm Hitzges, I can't think of anything more spot-on than the station Baby Jesus (or was that Baby Arm?) gave unto us.

#2 Aw Shucks Oyster Bar (on Lower Greenville)
Fresh oysters, clean hot catfish and fries with a spicy shrimp cocktail appetizer constitutes the best meal that can be had in the city.

#3 Dr. Boothe (Lasik Surgeon)
A day of irritation, a week of eye drops hell and two months of fearing light breezes - but well worth going from 20/600 to 20/10. Dr. Booth is a miracle man.

#4 The Real Estate Market
This should be one of the cornerstones of why anyone would choose to live in Dallas. Why pass up cheap reasonable-quality homes that actually go up in value?

The Only Time Half-Assing Works for Me

Fellas,

If you are going to have a hollow life filled with make-believe bullshit and delusions of grandeur, at least make it half as fucking magical as Brad Pitt does.

Brad and Ange want Bono as Godfather to their twins...After giving birth two weeks ago, Angelina, 33, and Brad, 44, spent a week bonding with their new bundles of joy at Bono's bolthole in a leafy village in the South of France.

Source: Mirror.co.uk

Hello FriendFeed

The comments on my prior Goodbye FriendFeed (FF) post are a convincing demonstration that perhaps I'd made too precipitous a decision.

Although I've certainly given up being a FF consumer, it is clear that FF is consumer tool of choice for many. So, I'd be foolish to eliminate FF as a publishing outlet. I've put my Crisatunity blog and Twitter back into my FF hopper.

This does present some issues that I want to resolve (i.e., set and forget), and here are my resolutions:

Problem #1
FF audience meta data is more than somewhat inaccurate. According to FF's my audience is nonexistent. My friend settings page actually has an mp3 of crickets chirping. I'm not a highly trafficked author, but I know that I reach into the dozens, but FF says, "uh-uh; you're all alone out there buddy".

Solution: ignore FF meta data

Problem #2
FF potentially fragments my already limited momentum to conduct discussions. Already, I have fragmentation between the blog (via Disqus) and Facebook - but I can tolerate it because there's an acceptable public/private audience segregation.

Solution: add a note in my feed template to encourage discussion at the blog and then just ignore FF discussions.

Finally - I looked into the "Hide" feature, which sounds like something I'd want to enable but doesn't address my fundamental issues in the least contrary to what some of my comments suggested.

Whiners of the World Unite

Does this mean we can officially put newspaper ownership into the same unbelievably overblown and whining oh-me-so-poor boat as the teacher unions?

When you look at the actual business of running newspapers, however, it is notable that the average operating profit among the six publishers is 18.5%, as measured by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). For all that ails the industry, this surpasses the EBITDA of such companies as Chevron (18.7%), Boeing (11.2%), Wal-Mart (7.7%) and Amazon.Com (6.0%).

source: Reflections of a Newsosaur

Goodbye FriendFeed

At first I thought FriendFeed (FF) was a good idea. It seemed like a way for me to aggregate all the XML output I was generating for easy consumption by my friends. Over the past few months there were several problems that deflated this optimism.

Problem #1- I hate maintaining shit.
I never developed a sense that posting content directly to FF was something I'd want to do. I prefer to focus on generating content in my media (i.e., this Blog, FaceBook, Twitter, Google Apps, etc. ) that happen to have XML feeds bolted-on. Every time I started or stopped using a new content medium, I felt the tug of obligation to go and update my FF settings. I hate things telling me what to do, even if they aren't telling me what to do.

Problem #2 - I hate noise.
Because FF is an aggregator, though highly customizable, it is a noise machine. I find that I can't be bothered wading through others' FF content because although I may like someone's blog, for instance, I don't give a hoot about their family photos, what they are reading or their banal tweets. I can only assume my FF is the same sort of noise to others.

Problem #3 - I am easily confused.
With FF and it's various way's of consuming and publishing, binding it to most social web environments it can cause circular publishing of sorts as well as duplicate information. Both very bad things and exactly counterproductive to publishing in the first place.

Problem #4 - I don't have friends. Or at least, I certainly don't have friends that are incapable of following me - or more specifically, the parts of me - the way that works out best for them.

So if you are reading this through my FF. Keep reading my blog, but come in through the front door and subscribe the old-fashioned way.

UDPATE I had a reversal of sorts...

My Crush

I'm obsessed with my puppy, a heavy duty crush. I can't remember the last time I fell in love with a friend.

Kevin, Mr. Touch and Go, the broke-dick puppy I've been jury-rigging with liver snacks and pharmaceuticals for a week appears to have made it to the other side and will live a lifetime of eliminating in my yard. (when did eliminating come into vogue?) In Kevin's new, I'm-going-to-make-it phase of life, I've decided to stop giving him all the food he is willing to eat. Over-feeding the dry dog food he seemed to enjoy like crack, seem like the least I could do for him on his death's bed.

I have no clue whatsoever on the rate I'm supposed to fuel the shit furnace intake system. On the website for the food I'm using, Science Diet Puppy Large Breed, there's a handy dandy guide for feeding. Hooray. Three cups a day is the verdict. Kevin has been slaking his insatiable gullet for at least twice that from me for a week. I feel a little used. Maybe that's why playing with Kevin makes me want to take a shower afterwards.

Less food means less shit, so I'm very happy about this new phase in our relationship.

But wait a minute. On the feeding guide there's something disturbing. The guide, axised by age and weight, has an apportionment for an under four months old puppy weighing 140#. What the hell sort of monster is that?

Kevin is a Member of the Axis of Evil

Kevin is a puppy I took home from the city animal shelter on Saturday. I just wanted a dog so bad, having waited on this decision for over a decade, secretly plotting to trick my wife at a moment of weakness on her part.

Having concentrated too hard on defeating my wife's good sense, I was vulnerable to Kevin's shenanigans. Right off, Kevin kicks my wallet in the privates by going lame and passing out from fever inside of twelve hours in my house. Two vet pit stops ensued, one of them a pricey after hours affair, essentially just to just to hear repetitions of, "Doesn't look good; I dunno what's wrong with him". The only meaningful outcome of the vet visits was that Kevin got some of Heath Ledger's leftovers and responded by an almost instant healing. Quite the little coke-head, apparently.

So, five days later the furry shitball looks to be completely on the mend, though the vet tells me he could keel over at any minute nonetheless, so I'm still doing this dance where I'm trying to wedge some reality in between Kevin and the kids' love beams. Personally, I could take Kevin sailing away far better than watching my family turn into blubbering mounds of trembling wishy wash.

So Kevin you suck, and I can't wait to get home and get sloppy kisses from you then shower up and repeat with my wife.

Meme du Jour

How old were you when you started programming?

8 years old, I think. My dad did Wang mainframe programming for Allis-Chalmers and dragged me into the office on weekends occasionally and sat me at a terminal with some manuals. Mostly I liked to make the noisy giant green bar printer go, as it were. However, I didn't get serious until around 9 or 10 when Santa brought my family a Commodore-64.

How did you get started in programming?

As a hobbyist pre-teen, I wrote all sorts of games and puzzles with the C-64. I even liked hacking existing commercial games. As a professional, it started for me when I was already doing Oracle DBA work, and it became obvious that somehow I was going to have to get my feet wet building things instead of just maintaining them.

What was the first real program you wrote?

It was called MamaJama. It was a Microsoft Access application that used a ODBC connections to glue an Oracle database on a Solaris machine and a RMS database on a VAX. The RMS database was very old, very cryptic and very hierarchic, tables with over ten thousand columns. The Oracle database structure was normalized, relational and useful. The VB developers of the company used the sanity of the Oracle database as the target of their coding, oblivious to existence of the VAX. Which was a good thing, because the VB developers couldn't spell VAX. The MamaJama's ran periodically to synchronize these two extremely different databases. To this day, I'm pretty sure there's no such similar software in existence, replicating a VAX's RMS database and a Solaris' Oracle database - but that could just be my own hubris assuming that.

Pretty much everything I've ever done since has been a variation in degree or another off this basic theme, connecting shit up.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

In chronological order: ROSCOE, C-64 BASIC, QBASIC, Visual Basic, Pascal, C, C++, PL/SQL, Korn Shell, VBA, Java, Python, PHP, Oracle Forms, C#, JavaScript

This excludes the multitude of product-specific 4GLs (i.e., Bendata HEAT, SalesLogix, etc.) I've been forced to muddle through because of the short term job at hand.

What was your first professional programming gig?

On the help desk at a mortgage bank, I was required on a sporadic and infrequent basis to unstick the software system we used for trouble tickets. Unsticking required the execution of a single SQL update statement. I didn't know what it did, why it was required, or even a whisper of SQL.

The reason I did the unsticking in the first place was that the staff DBA didn't want to even be bothered to do this once a month six-second task, so he installed the Oracle client on my PC, gave me the SYSTEM password, a script file containing this one SQL statement, and the three bullet-point instructions on how to execute it with SQL*Plus.

After about a year of this arrangement, the DBA was quitting for greener pastures, or whatever. His version of pass-down was to write on a piece of paper two things and hand it to me on his way out the door. He had written down our Oracle support identifier I'd need if I used the other bit, the 800 phone number to Oracle Global Support Services. I already had the SYSTEM password. What else could I possibly need?

I think it took all of a week after his absence for something to go wrong in a part of the business that had nothing whatsoever to do with the help desk duties I performed. Possession of this piece of paper implicated me as the de facto DBA and that was that. After about a decade of belly fat accumulation and a million dollars earned and burnt to a crisp, here I am.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Almost certainly not. If I wasn't such a complete pain in the ass who had to have it his way all the time as a punk kid, I would have pursued being a professor of who the hell cares and gathered as much co-ed ass as I could have until it was time to be put out on the next ice flow.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

Quit sucking so much. Quit crying so much. So many developers have zero clue what the alternative is, never having worked a truly miserable job their whole life.

When I Watch a Movie

I don't go to the theater often, but when I do the thing I'm keenest to watch (other than the film) is the editing. Editing is incredibly under-appreciated, even though it can make a bad film good (Easy Rider), an awesome film even awesomer (The Shining) or a great film terrible (Dr Zhivago).

I ran across an excellent example of exactly how powerful film editing is in the equation of happiness (if the video below doesn't work, try it here) :

I Love It When Stupid Teens Get Burned

Dear Max P. Sanders of Minneapolis, MN

I hope the several thousand dollars fine a few days in the klink, legal fees and public humilation for the rest of your life (thanks to the InterWeb) was a perfect way for you to learn just how stupid you are.

This veteran is spitting on you.