Gale Force

OK. my dad poured cement with three other people.helicopters are blowing in it.

There’s quite a little uproar going on about the release of a certain hex key that can be used to decrypt HD DVD movies. Apparently the AACS doesn’t like it when you publish that particular key on your blog. Desperate for anything to drive some attention and traffic to my blog, I have decided to post that key here; however, I’m going to disguise it as a poem so no one will recognize it for what it really is!

Oh Nine, Eff Nine
One one zero two!
Nine Dee Seven Four,
Ee Three Five Bee.
Dee Eight
Four one
Five Six, See Five?
Sicks Three Five Six,
Eight eight See ZERO.

fin

So welcome AACS, MPAA and other industry watchdogs! Hope you enjoyed my poem.

My wife started blogging.  I’m not sure how I feel about it just yet…on the one hand, the internet needs more blogs.  On the other hand, what if more people read her blog than mine?  Does that make me less of a man?

The truth of the matter is, more people should read her blog because she’s a much better writer than I am.  So here’s the deal…if you have enough time to read two more blogs, read us both.  If you only have enough internet tube-width for one more blog, choose wisely.

And by “go to college” I mean you can go to a college campus and ALMOST purchase a candy bar from the cafeteria vending machine.

Check out this little gem that arrived in my INBOX today:

Never one to look a gift horse 63 cents in the mouth…let me be the first to say: Bob, ICANN…thank you! That $0.63 (or 1/14th of a domain name registration) of GoDaddy store credit is truly a generous gesture.

Did you know that Adam was 130 years old when his son Seth was born? It’s true.

“And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.” - Genesis 5:4-5

So what does this have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing — that’s why I created a “Ramblings” category.

Or in other words: ! #! ->

Code monkeys have all these cute little names for various character combinations used in their code. Because programmers’ time is so much more valuable than anyone else’s they can’t call “!” an exclamation point…it’s a BANG! (what happens when you use the word “bang” followed by a “!”…is that a Bang-Bang?). Likewise, the !# is called a shebang because it would take far too long to say “Exclamation point hash”.

Wanting to be super cool, some co-workers and I added our own little code-ism to the mix. The “->” (PHP Object Dereference symbol) has been officially dubbed the “bop”. How much cooler are you going to sound in your next code review when you say:

“So I totally had this object I needed to dereference so I fired up Notepad and typed dollar sign variable name bop methodName open paren close paren (BTW - parentheses are called “parens” in code-speak). It was so sweet!”

OK, so you’ll never sound cool during a code review meeting…but you get the point.

So there you go…another contribution to mankind from yours truly. The “bop”. Have fun with it…name your next object instance $mmm and I guarantee you’ll chuckle every time you call a method of that object (admit it…you just laughed at that).

Spread the word…spread the love. -> = BOP ! (err…bang!)

Google is nifty. One thing I particularly like is their use of advanced search operators (I call them search expressions…but who am I to change Google’s nomenclature). If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s the ability to do cool stuff like this:

• Restrict your search to a particular site: site:jtoo.net soccer (What is jtoo.net saying about soccer?)
• Find a certain file type: filetype:pdf 1040ez (Where does the IRS keep that form again?)
• And all sorts of other cool things

I liked this idea so well that I stole incorporated it into a project I’m working on. I wanted to be able to search for invoices using Google-esque search operators so I came up with this little nugget (more after the jump)
Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t forget this week is Unplug ‘n’ Play week.  So what are you doing reading this (OK I’m kidding myself that anyone reads my blog)…go outside already!

But just so you know, our family is fully mostly on board with the program.  My wife and I have amended the rules with the “after-hours” clause that will allow us to watch some ST:TNG episodes at night once the kids are in bed.  Other than that, we’re unplugged for the week.  Please allow me to say some parting words:

To my Wii - Sorry buddy…I won’t be seeing you this week.  We’ll have to bowl an extra game come Monday.  I will miss your soothing, pulsating blue light.

To my Xbox - Why haven’t I upgraded you to a 360 yet?  I doubt I’ll miss you much this week…but the kids will.

To WoW - We have such a love/hate relationship…I think the time away will be good for both of us.

To Guitar Hero II - I hate that I can’t beat Misirlou on expert yet.  I won’t miss trying this week.

Here’s a little blogger’s trick I’d like to let you in on…when you don’t have anything original to write about, do a “roundup” post! This is the blogger’s equivalent of a TV “clip show”. Now that I’ve completely lost your attention…on with the roundup!

“A Vatican committee that spent years examining the medieval concept on Friday published a much-anticipated report, concluding that unbaptized babies who die may go to heaven. That could reverse centuries of Roman Catholic traditional belief that the souls of unbaptized babies are condemned to eternity in limbo, a place that is neither heaven nor hell. Limbo is not unpleasant, but it is not a seat alongside God.”

But we already knew that.

Novell Bombards SCO with Summary Judgment Motions

“Novell has filed 4 motions for Summary Judgment against SCO, which essentially ask the court to toss the remainder of SCO’s case that isn’t already being arbitrated between SUSE and SCO. One seeks a ruling from the court that Novell transfered none of the copyrights in Unix to SCO, which is backed up by many exhibits and declarations from people who negotiated the deal. Another, along the same lines, asks the court to toss the portions of SCO’s Unfair Competition and Breach of Contract claims pertaining to the Unix copyrights. The third asks the court to rule that Novell did not violate the Technology License Agreement between SCO and Novell, and last and also least, the fourth seeks to toss the Slander of Title for the additional reason that SCO has failed to prove any special damages. These motions follow 2 motions for summary judgment filed by Novell late last year on 2 of their counterclaims.”

Poor embattled SCO. It seems like just last month I was still working within your comfortable cubicle walls…oh wait…that was last month.

Bored and vengeful? Try condemnation!

“Roommate leave the milk out again? Some jerk in an SUV cut you off on the way home? Don’t waste your time with insults, rude hand gestures, or weak physical attacks. Instead, try eternal damnation! YouAreDamned.com makes damning souls for an eternity of flame-induced suffering easy! Just enter a name, e-mail address, and an optional path to salvation and your most hated enemies will be engraved upon the Burning Wall of Eternal Damnation. Afterwards, kick back and read the wall to learn why so many people deserve a spot in the stone.”

Any of my old co-workers remember the infamous Saint Jon website (please, oh please let me have a backup of that somewhere)?  Same idea…other side of the good vs. evil battle.

And there you have it.  A few choice articles that Google Reader (I <3 GR) was kind enough to send across the tubes for me today.

10101101101110.  Pretty awesome eh?

Once upon a time the 1’s and 0’s used to do it for me…not anymore.  As a programmer I’m spent, burnt, depleted, drained…done.  I still program for a living but the honeymoon is over.  I find very little satisfaction and enjoyment in programming like I once did.  I tried to pinpoint the moment it happened…was it at HomeStar Communications where I went the last 3 months without getting paid?  Maybe it was at Caldera before they became SCO.  Or perhaps it was SCO.  Regardless of when it happened, the fact is, it happened, and now I’m stuck here in a profession I no longer enjoy.

When I first chose programming as a career (or did it choose me?) I thought I wanted to work with computers instead of people.  People intimidated me.  Now all these years later the words of Albert Einstein speak to my soul:

“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” (emphasis added)

I’m deluding myself into thinking I can spend a lifetime surrounded by computers, code, bits and bytes.  This is my prison from which I need to be freed and it can only be done by “widening [my] circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures”.

It’s all about the people.