January 2012
2 posts
Marriage Advice
My friend, Jinksto wrote a whole month’s worth of emails to a couple who were getting married. While all his advice was good advice, Mrs. At Home and I have our own marriage advice.
Mrs. At Home
Mrs. At Home’s advice is sound, and simple:
You’re on the same team.
This means what it sounds like. Many couples seem to be in some sort of a Women are From Venus, Men are From...
Why Dissing Atlassian?
For April Fools’ this year, Atlassian released a “game” called Angry Nerds. And then when they released Confluence 4.0, they truly made a serious mob of Angry Nerds. There are long-ish threads on their site by folks who are stark-raving mad about Confluence 4.0
For the uninitiated, Confluence is a wiki - much like Mediawiki. The idea is that the community of readers is...
December 2011
2 posts
Dallas
Last night, Mrs. At Home and I saw a preview for Dallas the new series. Since it will be on in 2012 and we’ve lived in the Dallas area before, I figured I’d give some bullet points about Dallas and Texas in general so I could set the record straight on some things I know will be asked.
No. Everybody in Dallas does not wear cowboy hats. Many people in Fort Worth do, however.
No....
Trinkets
I’ve mentioned before (I think) that I’m not really big on keeping trinkets around. I had a closet full of trophies in the home in which I grew up - debate, math, soccer, etc., and I had my sister take them all to the trophy shop to be taken apart and donated. I don’t have my high-school yearbooks. In fact, I didn’t even get a yearbook my senior year. I don’t have my...
November 2011
1 post
vim tips
I’ve mentioned in the past that I’ve been using vim as my primary
editor for some time, so I figure now is probably as good of a time as
any to give some tips I’ve picked up during my extensive use of vim.
First, people wonder why I use vim when I work primarily in GUI
environments:
It’s available everywhere. On Windows, Mac, and all the non-GUI
platforms I work on. ...
October 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Adoption Stories: Citizenship Has Its Privileges
This post won’t be so much advice (not all of them are advice, just my personal experience of the adoption process) but a bit of a rant.
Since we adopted internationally, a lot of the work we had to do involved the INS - now USCIS. There are parts where we have to prepare paperwork to bring an orphan into the country and have her become a citizen, and parts have to do with our family...
Wore Out
I’m wore out. Yeah
The kind of wore out you get when you take a couple of extra days vacation and start learning a new skill relevant to your work.
The kind of wore out you get when you sit in traffic on your way to the middle of nowhere.
The kind of wore out you get having a conversation about nothing and everything with a good friend.
The kind of wore out you get driving through...
1 tag
Adoption Stories: Don't Change Anything
I had promised long ago that I would start posting some stories from the adoption, more from a man’s perspective.
Guys. If you’re going to adopt (I really do recommend it), the first tip I can give you is don’t change anything. For at least two years prior to the adoption, don’t change a thing, including:
Don’t buy a house
Don’t buy a car
Don’t buy...
September 2011
1 post
Colorizing Photos with the Gimp
There are a million tutorials on the ‘net on how to do this, but some folks at work mentioned they like the effect on occasion, and the way I do it is ever so slightly different than how others do it, and it’s a good opportunity for me to prove to myself that I’m getting the different layer modes.
We’ll start with this photo from our awesome cruise:
Open the file you...
August 2011
1 post
Pin It! Button in iPad
Mrs. At Home has been playing with Pinterest lately. I haven’t bought in, haven’t joined or anything. It seems like a less functional version of Springpad, but it seems to be popular with the fairer gender.
But she couldn’t pin things from her iPad. There’s a link on their site for a “Pin It!” button, but those don’t drag on the iPad’s browser. ...
July 2011
5 posts
Time Machine in Lion
I upgraded my own MacBook (the unibody aluminum 13” MacBook that lasted about 4 hours before they made the battery a permanent fixture and called it a MacBook Pro) to Lion. So far, there are some small improvements, but still not positive I’ll install it on other machines (like where I have a 32-bit Cisco VPN client that won’t run on it).
The one thing that concerned me the...
Adoption Stories
While adoption is no laughing matter, I’ve often considered writing a book about adopting from China from a man’s perspective. While Mrs. At Home did the hard work of the adoption, there are many stories to be told about the girls, American bureaucracy, and Chinese culture that (in retrospect) make me laugh.
I don’t think I have what it takes as an author. Furthermore, I...
Google +1's →
w00t! I’ve added Google +1’s to my blog now. That’s pretty slick!
Social Graph Now Working?
I did a bit of work on the XFN tags on my blog recently, and now the Social Graph API is seeing this as being my site. So hopefully my blog will start to appear on my Google+ profile.
"Custom" QR Codes with The Gimp
QR Codes are everywhere now. While these QR codes don’t get you even close to the coolness of something like QRlicious, it’s a start and the beginnings of something to play with.
Create Your Background Image
Obviously, if you want your QR code to look cool, you need to start with a background image. For this example, I’ll start with a screenshot of the script I used to make...
June 2011
2 posts
Schadenfreude?
Okay, so maybe there’s a bit of it in Dallas’ win over Miami. Just a bit. I’m more of a Spurs fan than a Mavericks fan. But they’re getting a bit long in the tooth (like the Mavericks aren’t), and I really like that they’ve always won as a team, not because they have one or two super-duper stars.
The Schadenfreude doesn’t come for me from whence it comes...
Idiosyncrasies
Most people have idiosyncrasies. But all programmers have more of them than most normal people. Here are some of mine. Some are for practical reasons. Some - I can’t tell you why I do them.
Hygiene
Shaving - right side of face to left. (I shave right handed, so shaving the left side of the face first guarantees I’ll get shaving cream on my collar).
Brushing teeth - left to...
May 2011
5 posts
Checked vs. Unchecked Exceptions: ONE Story
First, here’s the thread on Twitter:
@willathome: Writing a Java API from scratch - checked or unchecked exceptions? @robhines: @willathome I vote Checked! @willathome: @robhines there are good reasons for checked - most notably that they’re documented. But it’s inconsistent with PHP, .NET, etc. @robhines: @willathome I think it is best to leverage the language, checked forces...
Being Offensive
I missed a call from my good friend XiaSi today. By the time I got to the phone, I had not received the message indicator yet, so I just called him back. At the beginning of the call, he explained that he had left a rather long-winded message. We had our conversation, and that was that. Until a few minutes ago, I listened to his message. Google Voice says the message is 2:12 long - which is...
Not a Spectator Sport
A wonderful dear woman at our church was a bit upset this morning that nobody ever hugs anymore at our church. So I asked her, “how many people did you hug this morning?”
We’re often so quick to point out the faults in our church, but few of us seem to be willing to do anything about it.
Think your church doesn’t have much of a community feel to it? How many people...
Dance
K’s softball team (who is doing exceptionally well, mind you) has a strong connection in a couple of ways to some dance studios. The coach has a daughter who dances at the same studio as L. One of the players dances, and her dad is an assistant coach. L dances (betcha’ didn’t know).
The assistant coach’s daughter has missed a few practices and a game today for recitals...
Learning to Learn
I was a music major in college. I often blame many of my current idiosyncrasies on having been a music major, but I think I finally figured out a new one.
There have been several times in the past few years where I’ve attempted to learn something new and gave up very quickly. I tried banjo, harmonica, and now am trying to learn to play guitar. When trying to learn these things, I give...
April 2011
1 post
Smells Like - Home?
This afternoon when we were painting at Cajun Canvas, a very familiar sense washed over me. It wasn’t just a smell or a feeling or a look, but all of them.
The power had gone out, so the front and back doors of the little shop were wide open. And there was little electric light inside - just the natural outdoor light peeking in from the front and back of the store. And there was the...
March 2011
5 posts
K Ramirez
I’m not a fan of Manny Ramirez’s type of “poison” that he brings to a baseball team. I’ve heard he’s bad for team chemistry and other things.
But I admire him as a hitter.
Not because he hits a lot of home runs or gets a lot of RBI, but because he’s simply one of the best batters in the game.
Watch a Manny Ramirez at-bat. He can be down 1-2 in the...
Stupid Cat
My sister had a cat with this problem, and I had never seen it before, so this may be of help to more people than just a funny story.
I’ve had one cat in the house for most of my life. When I was younger, the cats were either exclusively outdoor or indoor/outdoor. As I’ve lived in suburbia, the cats have been almost exclusively indoor, so this may be why the thing is new.
...
My Evil Scheme!
Please use your best Heinz Doofenschmirtz voice to read this. Redbox allows you to rent a movie in one location and return it to a different one. So we thought it’d be fun to take all the Secretariat’s in the entire tri-state area and return them all to the same machine. So here’s the evil scheme. I’ll wait for evil scientists everywhere to reserve a movie from this link...
Charlotte Engineering - Yet Again
This post should look like a page straight out of Bruce Schneier’s blog. If you need, there are also instructions on writing a proper Bruce Schneier blog post.
Interesting article:
The interchanges have design names - Diverging Diamond, Turbine and Split Diamond.
The Diverging Diamond interchange, or DDI, as engineers refer to it, will take some getting used to. It calls for...
Joke Time
A friend of mine posted that it was joke time, so I thought I’d share my favorite joke.
A young boy who is the son of a very, very wealthy father turns five years old. For his fifth birthday, his father asks him:
“Son, for your birthday, I will get you any gift your heart desires. Any gift at all.”
The son replied, “Dad, I would like 10 ping ping pong...
February 2011
1 post
The Switch - Part I
This post is long overdue, and because it’s long overdue, something tells me it will also be long.
K is ten years old. In all her life, we’ve never had a terrestrial phone line. I think we gave up the terrestrial line two years before she was even born. We’ve never really had a need for a terrestrial phone as Mrs. At Home and I are both on the move enough that cell phones...
January 2011
7 posts
AAADD
I had mentioned Mrs. At Home’s success in not getting side-tracked during changing bed linens. A friend sent me the link: Joke of the Day – A.A.A.D.D. – Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.
But while you’re here, also go check out Entropy by Design
Two Of Our Best Ideas Ever
Mrs. At Home and I independently had some of our best idea’s ever today.
Mrs. At Home decided that, rather than strip the bed, wash those sheets, and put on sheets from the linen closet, forcing her to fold the original sheets once dry, she’d just put the original sheets back on after drying. It saved her a lot of effort because folding sheets and putting them in the closet almost...
A Sales Pitch
I’m a huge fan of customer service. And I don’t think that any business is without some form of fault. So another thing that really sells me on a company is not only that there are few problems, but when they do have problems, how they deal with them.
My friend Jinksto posted this on Facebook a few days ago:
Dear Sonic at <some address >… your inside tables are...
Countercultural
Mrs. At Home told me this - and it seems the perfect tie in to this post:
I used to go to weddings, and the old ladies would poke me in the arm and say, “you’re next!” They stopped when I started doing that to them at funerals.
I’m not countercultural. I never asked to be countercultural. I never asked people to look at me as different. I don’t dress (too)...
Fun With Flowers, Turtles, and Pythons
Stay tuned to a giveaway at the bottom here.
K and I have been working on her learning Python. And actually, I couldn’t ever decide between Python (more useful) and Turtle Logo (more entertaining plus it was my second language), so we kinda’ opted for both.
So we’ve been talking about writing functions, calling those functions, etc. And we’ve been talking about the...
Unicode Entities for Common Keys
After searching for all the codepoints for some common keys in the last post, I thought it’d only be fair to share the codepoints for those and how you render them in HTML with you. This also includes some other things you might use every so often.
⌘ ⌘
⌃ ⌃
⌥ ⌥
⇧ ⇧
↹ ↹
→ →
← ←
⏎ ⏎
¼...
Screenshot Shortcuts
I know with the plague we all had, and our excellent trip to Georgia, and with an exploding transmission (really - the service guy said he’d never seen anything like it) that I should have lots of other things to post about. So out of those things, what am I going to talk about?
None of the above.
I’m going to talk about taking screenshots in Snow Leopard.
In my line of work,...
December 2010
4 posts
Poblano Soup
When we lived in Dallas, there was a place downtown called American Grill (I believe) that was more of a bakery. On occasion they’d have very good lemon meringue pie, and sometimes a really good Boston Creme Pie. But the one thing that made it worth the trip was Poblano Soup. It was absolutely incredible. I looked and looked and looked for a recipe, and finally found one that was...
Charlotte Engineering
I often joke that there’s probably a book with the handful of different ways to engineer an interchange. Then I extend the joke to say that there’s a much larger book of alternative ways to engineer a highway interchange, and the engineers who designed 485 decided to try one of every kind. They didn’t look at function, they just decided to do what they liked. So without...
I'll Brag if I May
Okay, I’ll brag on the girls.
When I was young, my parents were constantly after me to keep my room clean. I was the worst about having a messy room. More than once, a parent would step on and irrecoverably break a toy, and then throw all my toys away. And it was with good reason, too - I probably contributed to injuries unseen. And once every three months or so, I’d shovel...
Geek Cred
My pals The Nerdy Redneck and Jinksto had a couple of cross-comment discussions about the other being either not-nerdy, not-manly, or not-redneck enough, then it turned into a friendly discussion about how they really just want people to comment on their blogs. From it, I think The Nerdy Redneck got somewhat introduced to me, and I’m guessing my geek cred will be in question.
Also, this...
November 2010
15 posts
2 tags
git for Backups?
I started using git to keep versioned backups of my personal MediaWiki. It’s very easy to do, and very space efficient. Here’s a bit of an example of how I managed it. I use environment variables for just about everything, but this has them expanded.
Preparing the Repositories
I used multiple repositories for everything. There three things that could go wrong that you would want...
The Junk We Like To See
This post isn’t so much about Tiger Woods. I could really care less about his personal life.
Several months ago, somebody had asked Steve Jobs why networks show the garbage they do - and can’t somebody do something about it. Jobs’ reply was that the networks really only peddle the garbage that we buy. That is, if we didn’t watch it, they wouldn’t show it. If we...
Poor Parenting?
There are things which are true which I teach my children. Then there are some things which I just allow my children. To believe.
In kung fu movies, everybody can fly. This has become less the case over the years. Previously, the guy selling deep fried squid on a stick with very little training could fly. Nowadays, only people trained at xiaolin temple can fly. When the girls have seen people...
A mens room clearly not designed by men. An even number of urinals.
Spill schmill. Rivergate BP doesn’t remove the pump retainer clip things. I’m a customer for life.
What happened in Sports today? K batted in a run to go 1 down, then scored the tying run as the Serpents became the Charmeck champs!
It’s 51 degrees and coach P just got the Gatorade.
We win!
Two Steele Creek teams tied in the 5th of the championship game. Does it get better?