Month: March 2003

  • Paint

    This is the month for painting. We just got our house painted, and deck washed and sealed, and today we started painting Brandon’s room. He’s getting a light-ish blue, with a space-themed wallpaper border and bed set.

    Looks pretty good, so far. We’re doing the second (and last) coat tomorrow, and then next weekend we’ll be hanging wallpaper border.

  • Errata

    I was reading through PHP Advanced this evening and on page 63, came across something incorrect (regarding objects in PHP):

    PHP does not support multiple levels of inheritance, so you could not make a Grandchild class that extends a Child class that in itself is an extension of the Parent class.

    Actually, PHP does support multiple levels of inheritance, and you can see the proof yourself by browsing the source code of the PEAR DB class found here. The inheritance path for the DB_mysql object looks like this:

    PEAR -> DB_common -> DB_mysql

    And even the PHP website’s documentation confirms this (found here):

    You create a class, parent, and use extends to create a new class based on the parent class: the child class. You can even use this new child class and create another class based on this child class.

    Now, what is true is that PHP doesn’t support multiple inheritance in general— i.e. inheriting from multiple sources simultaneously. But chaining a string of class definitions singly is okay.

  • Items for your consideration

    So, we got a new cat this week.

    More specifically, my wife got a new cat.

    She’s been bugging me to get another dog, which I will not do; one is enough. So, more or less in exchange for that, I capitulated on a cat.

    So far, our other two cats pretty much hate it.

    …..

    Over on Tim Bray’s website, there’s an article on enterprise software— and a delicious quote I couldn’t resist reprinting here: “Software pricing continues to be a black art, and one which most people practice poorly.” How true. How so very true.

  • Oscar

    Didn’t catch most of the Oscars last night, nor did I really want to; I have no desire to sit through 3+ hours of drivel just to find out the only awards that really matter.

    (For those keeping track, those are best picture, director, actor/actress, and supporting actor/actress. Best script and musical score are okay, too.)

    Wouldn’t it be nice if the Academy Awards only consisted of these six awards? Then I’d watch them every year.

    And of course, I missed Michael Moore entirely. That seems to be what everybody’s talking about. That and Eminem winning best song.

  • No clever title

    I love the irony in this Slashdot posting: “XML Co-Creator says XML Is Too Hard For Programmers“. Reads to me like a title The Onion would publish.

    Anyway. The Slashdot post led me to Tim Bray’s weblog, which is pretty cool to me. (But then, I’m a geek and this probably won’t be as cool to you.) This is the guy who helped invent XML. His blog posts look pretty insightful and/or entertaining, and I rather like the design of the site. Simple. Uses CSS for all the layout, no HTML tables. Nice. I need to brush up on my CSS.

    On another note, I’m finally re-launching The Brew Site. I’m working behind the scenes to get all the PHP working and the site active, but I figure if I don’t do this now, I probably never will…

  • What are all the colors of the rainbow?

    Our trip to Portland today was definitely one of the odder ones.

    In short: The good news is, Kaitlyn’s eyes are as good as they’re going to get, according to the doctor, which is pretty damn good. No more surgeries. The bad news is, the doctor recommended a second eye surgery for Brandon, before he turns 2 if possible. Definitely not what we want to hear.

    As for the (gory) details of the trip, this is a doozy: Brandon threw up on himself and he and the car smelled like puke the rest of the day. We had to buy him a new shirt at Goodwill because the one he was wearing stank so bad.

    Then Sherri managed to spill a bunch of orange juice all over her lap and seat while trying to fill the kids’ cups with juice. That wasn’t as bad as the vomit, though.

    After the eye doctor we went to the Lloyd Center Mall and had a highly mediocre cheesesteak lunch from a food court restaurant called Steak Escape (yes, they actually have a website).

    On the drive home, we saw the brightest rainbow I have ever seen when driving through Madras. I wish I could have taken a picture of it; it was truly spectacular and almost made it all worth it.

    Incidentally, the answer to the question in the title is: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (purple). Seven colors. Sherri didn’t believe me that there are 7 colors and that indigo was counted, until we got home and she looked it up online.

  • Kon-Tiki

    We’re heading up for a day trip to Portland tomorrow for Kaitlyn’s post-op visit to the eye doctor to check how her eyes have progressed since surgery. Have to get up at 6 am though, that’s a bummer.

    Here’s a link too geeky/cool to pass up: The Contiki Operating System and Desktop Environment. It’s an operating system with built in web server and web browser originally written for the good ol’ Commodore 64. This may not seem like such an accomplishment given today’s advanced systems and seemingly limitless power, but for those familiar with the C64— or especially anyone who owned/used one— all I can say is: Damn.

  • Philosophy

    I thought I’d share something I had forwarded to me in an email awhile back. I don’t know who wrote it, so I can’t give proper credit.

    A philosophy professor stood before his class with several items laid out on a table in front of him.

    As the class began, he picked up a large, empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, each about 2″ in diameter. When he had piled the rocks to the brim, he asked the students if they thought the jar was full.

    They all agreed that it was.

    The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar, shaking it slightly so that the pebbles rolled into the gaps between the rocks. Once more, he asked the students if the jar was full.

    Again, they agreed it was.

    With that, the professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar, where it filled the spaces between the rocks and the pebbles.

    “Now,” said the professor, “I want you to recognize that this is your life. The rocks are the important things – your family, your partner, your health, your children – things that would still make your life full even if everything else was lost. The pebbles are the other things that matter, like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else; the small details of life.

    “If you put the sand into the jar first, there will be no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are most important to you. Take care of the rocks first – the things that really matter. The rest is just sand.”

    At this point a student stood up, popped the cap on a bottle of pale ale and walked to the front of the room. Taking the supposedly full mayonnaise jar from the professor, he raised the bottle and poured it into the jar, filling the remaining spaces with the ale and proving that…

    …no matter how full your life, there is always room for beer!

  • I’m here all week, folks…

    What with the recent talk over Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez getting married, I’ve heard speculation that she might take to calling herself “J. Aff”. I think they’ve got the wrong idea. She should take both surnames, hyphenated, so she’d be Jennifer Affleck-Lopez… or, you know:

    J. Aff-Lo.

    Hey, it could be worse, I could be making AFLAC jokes (cue the duck squawking, “Affleck!”)…

    And look, the government is all set to release their new Monopoly money at the end of March! <Insert Park Place joke here…>

  • 03/03/03

    By now I’m sure everyone in the Gregorian calendar-using world has commented on how cool it is that today’s the third day of the third month of the third year of the century/millenium. I got a kick out of it when I saw it as the due date on a Blockbuster receipt a couple of days ago. Isn’t it amazing how our brains can construct patterns and meaning out of what are basically arbitrary numbers?

    Just wait til 06/06/06…

    I just got around to watching last week’s episode of Enterprise tonight, “Canamar,” and boy, what a riff on Con Air, even right down to the name. Con Air takes place on a plane full of convicts being transferred to another prison; “Canamar” takes place on a ship transporting prisoners to a prison planet. Con Air has a criminal mastermind escape, take over the plane, and hijack it to parts unknown; “Canamar” has a criminal mastermind that escapes, takes over the ship, and hijacks it to parts unknown; Con Air has a hero on his way to freedom when disaster strikes, forcing him to save the day; “Canamar” has a hero (two, actually) about to gain freedom when disaster strikes, forcing them to save the day… I’ll stop there. You get the picture.

    I was actually one of the few people who liked Con Air, by the way.

    Random web link: Harlan Ellison’s official webpage; “Ellison Webderland” as it’s called (which is a not-so-clever play on “Ellison Wonderland” which was clever. At the time).