Older blog entries for whytheluckystiff (starting at number 37)

i'm finding myself in the same position as criswell these
days.  as i reach the age in which a young man is supposed
to be forming his own opinions about video stores, i often
find myself frozen in line as the other "members" in front of
me engage in the video store equivalent of road rage.  it's
happened three times in the last month.  what's interesting
to me is that some of my most competent and talented friends
have worked for video stores.  times are changing though.  and
no one will be able to stop the destruction that will follow.

last time i was in line at hollywood video and this guy with
a black eye was in front of me.  he had just come back from
a carribean cruise with his wife and he was pissed.  the lad
at the counter was a british kid with blue stuff around his
eyes.  powdery blue stuff.  black eyes and blue eyes. i just
realized that!  what is it with people at video stores and
their discolorations?

so Blacks Eye was fuming in line.  he had a Playstation game and
when he got to the desk, he started going off about how his
kids were crying the whole time he was on his trip because
the game was still locked.  i guess Blue Eyes had forgotten
to remove the plastic anti-theft strip for the game.

so Blue Eyes scans the game or something and then hands it
back to the guy, "there I gave you a free week."

"oh, a free week is all?" says Black Eyes, winding his hand.
i remember him winding his hand on his shorts, like winding
up for a punch, instinctively.  "what about two free weeks?"

"well, no," says Blue Eyes, "it's actually just one free
week you get, because that's what you paid for."

"oh but it's your mistake," said Black Eyes, "see you
should give the game for free for two weeks.  it's your
mistake."

"but we've fixed the mistake," (Blue Eyes), "and given
you the free week."

"but it's too late for that now," and Black Eyes gets
this big grin on his face like he's going insane.  and
i can see him by now because they started walking over
by the doors.  i guess the worker was trying to help move
him out.  "yeah, my kids already cried over that game.
my trip's already over.  the kids already cried."

i was stuck there for fifteen minutes listening to this
little debate.  i mean they both had such good points 
and the children had cried all week.  hard to say.  i
don't know who i would have voted for.  (i mean if they
had a phone number where i could call in and vote for
Black or Blue.)  they fought all the way out the door
and into the street.  i had to find a worker in back to
check me out.

agg.  didn't mean to take up so much space.  i know i
shouldn't go on and on like this.  it's a terrible
habit.  then again, perhaps i'll buzz back through it
and post it up as a front page article.

A blurry, excellent existence.  I've mentioned that I started working
on a YAML parser and emitter for Ruby.  Yaml4r.  Well, it
finally works.  It handles the basics.  Well, except for headerless files and
multiple documents.  Many thanks to the Yaml-core list.  Just reading helped alot.

I sure appreciate Yacc.  And the Ruby incarnation, Racc.  I can't bear parsing characters
or using all regexps for larger works and such.  Whereas writing the YAML parser was such
a pain before, writing grammars was a lot less grunt work with Racc.

We just got a new coder here at work.  Very cool guy.  I mean what can I say: he brought in
nacho cheese.  Bottoms uP!  No, seriously.  It's such a relief to have nacho cheese around.

my neighbors just got a maniacal pair of sugar gliders. 
these little guys had great tails: an awesome tube shape, black at the end, 
curling about.  and of course, they jump.  man, i'd love some of that 
ankle-to-wrist stretching membrane.  one of the kids had a glider balled 
up in his hand that he'd walk around with.  yeah, it was like actual 
pokemon for these kids.  

just as fun as finding out about new animals: finding out about pet websites.  
my mom's just finished writing a book about dealing with grief and spent a 
section on death of pet.  she found some fantastic poetry, among
which was this find parallel between a dog's death and common excretion terms:

	...Also, you have to take me out, or let me outside to "relieve" myself. I 
	would really prefer to not do it inside, where you and I have to live. But 
	when I have to "go", I simply have to "go." I need you to help me take care 
	of this, so we can both have an "odor-free" living environment.
  
and then it ends with something about I just have to "do" what's right.  
not that i'm big on rappin on dead pets, but not knowing the pet and reading the 
poems out of context can trip out some laughs.  i mean i cried like crazy when my 
dog died last year, but i don't think i'll ever do that again.  i'm young and it
was my first dog.  but she had to "go" and her face had that "poo"r expression of 
weeping wax.

browsing around.  he knows himself too well.  and requests for
demotion ignored. or we are full of mercy.  and badv is full of complete 
understanding, the kind that can only come from the fbi.

cristian guissani just released DbTcp 0.1.14, a lo-fi ODBC connector that i've had good
success with in a certain nebraska foxpro situation (with birds.)  it's been an angelic presence.  (big birds.)

there is so much newness to life.  thousands of days pass, but waking up in the morning is still a new experience.
even sometimes opening and closing eyelids is a new pleasure.  and i appreciate the angle at which i am looking
in the moment.

rasmus, amars, vab, others:

my extension to the thought is: a person who releases free software for the ethics
alone cannot appreciate the movement as much a person who, having satisfied their own
obstacles with software, resolves to freely pass their creation on to the world.  and
there is resolution in doing this.  everything i have learned, i have learned from
someone else.  a book, a class, a discussion-- perhaps i have made a few original
discoveries.  once my software is given to the world, i expect no reward, as i have
received so much already.

the creature who codes for the ethics alone is dependant on the ethics as a reward.
if the movement appears to falter, then they loose their inspiration.  so i find it
encouraging to think about those software authors who released free software before
the Movement.  why did they do it?  maybe they were just nice people.

and i'm sure some people question my certification of bytesplit as Journeyer.
i suppose i don't have much of a defense, except that i tend to certify high.  if someone
is keeping up their involvement on this site, then i feel like encouraging them.  and if
i certify them as Journeyer, then there's a chance they might respect that. and actually
start acting like a Journeyer.  

Journeyers, Ho!

the brainwashing of our world is not enough.  i want to fork
the brain and keep the child.  if only to reread huck finn for
the first time again.  perhaps a new brain would help me find a
reason for my navel.  maybe even: to store salt in, so i can dip
celery into when i'm in bed and i get hungry.

thanks to someone around here for linking yaml one
day.  i listened on the list for a bit and started the yaml4r
project (a YAML emitter/parser for Ruby).  It's nice to be pitching in on someone
else's project.  Clark, Oren and Brian all have been welcoming and VERY appreciative
of my effort.  in many ways, it's often more rewarding to help out on a project than to
push my own. 

i've been enjoying reading recentlog lately.  I've thought it would be kind of cool
for an advogator out there to make a weekly summary page.  One-liners for some of the
highlight entries.  Perhaps even rank the topics and encourage more succulent content.

sickness cancelled my trip.  bah, i really wanted to see bjork.
oh, thomasvs, i certified you because i couldn't
resist certifying a breeders fan.  and i was overjoyed to hear they were
touring again, so i threw on I Just Wanna Get Along and started certifying
all breeders fans in sight (you) and i almost certified you a master because i was
practically rabid.  i figured i'd better try out GStreamer first.  ;)

yeah, so i was trapped in los angeles while i was sick and had no computer, so i
wrote out the article on mixins for the front page on a tiny legal pad.  which was
difficult, as i couldn't try out my examples until i was feeling good enough to stand
erect.  had to revise it a bit, but i guess even when i'm sick i can't bear not
getting something done.  thanks to positive feeback on the article.

i guess i've been in "marketing" mode too a bit much.  looking back on my previous
diary entries, i think i've talked too much of my own projects.  which i suppose is
okay, since it's my own diary and it's good to feel fascination (rather than disdain)
for stuff i spend time on.  but i think i'm going to scan freshmeat and lend a hand on
any interesting projects i find.  or i can watch more sealab.

Krelin: i can completely relate to being torn during a concert.
i used to bring recording equipment to concerts, but it prevented me from doing a
whole lot of dancing because minidiscs skip too easily.  but harry connick was probably
a sitting concert, so.. ideal bootleg situation.  anyway, the comment struck me.

abiword devs:  (and i noticed there are a bunch of you commenting on guadec, but i've
no idea who's who)  you have created an excellent app.  lightweight, saves in XML,
cross-platform, and so on.  i write at least ten pages a week to keep my fiction
alive and abiword is my tool.  i've even come away from using strictly longhand.
so thanks.

oh crap.  the other day i was starting to get nostalgic about adovgato.  i started to
really miss ReadMe.

aw gee.. about that php is toy coding comment.. no harm intended.
sloccount shows that the libraries the javuh team just completed
totals 14,628 lines of code.  needless to say, it was very fun
to code (hence "toy coding") and quite guiltless.  and truth be
told, i'd rather be categorized with the kids than the adults.
at ApacheCon and anywhere else.

i think our project goes along with the whole "rapid prototyping"
idea as well.. a possibility which would be much more cumbersome
in other prominent web languages.  we are able to build a basic
object schema and generate the HTML forms, databases, and PHP
classes from that.  saves a lot of time.  i think this goes with
other comments just voiced.

i just went back and watched the pilot to alias, which
i missed because i got into the series late.  i am addicted to
that show.  and the pilot has so much more meaning now.  it's
amazing that it's only been a single season. 

released javuh 1.0 yesterday,
which was a rush.  for the first time, i'm not really concerned about users getting
into it.  i've spent the last seven months working rather regularly on this code and
seeing it bring great strides to my PHP development.  now, i'm able to
release a rather stable chunk of code to the world and anyone can pick it up and use
it.  oddly, a lot of my previous projects were just done to get involved in
open source.  this ono has geniunely useful code to me and i'm satisfied if even a
single person benefits, because i'm not looking for a return.  it's kind
of cool.

lest i present myself as too good natured, i think a lot of
the reason i feel so casual about this code is because it's all PHP.  for some
reason, PHP just seems like toy coding (even though it's responsible for my
salary).  and i guess another would be that much of the code was built for
projects i got paid for.

i've been getting back into the rubik's cube lately.  i've
hit a plateau of about four minutes.  it's an awesome game for programmers.  my
method of solving the cube often involves shuffling the cubes in order around the
edges.  for some reason it feels like a relative of the turing machine.  there's a
fabulous video of the 1982 world championships up at speedcubing's
multimedia section.