Coffee and Code

My girlfriend and I have been seeing these mantis-creatures clinging to the warm stucco on our back wall in the evening. The guy pictured above just hung out and let me take a bunch of really close pictures! Apparently, these guys can change color to blend in with the environment: Another mantis-creature we saw had changed its color to match the stucco perfectly.

Santa Fe has been wintery lately; the nights are much colder, the days are crisp, and hot tea has become my new favorite beverage. (Whiskey in the wintertime is another favorite, of course!) Now that it’s cold, I forsee a lot of hot stew and oven-roasted dishes in my future... mmmmmm...

I’m in the midst of rearranging my office to make room for a weight bench and my other exercise equipment. My plans for the cold months are to spend a little time each morning and evening at home, so I only have to go to the gym for the cardio equipment. Winter is also a great time to work on programming projects, so I plan a lot of that: New blog with .Net 3.5, new version of the I-Ching application, and a website redesign. Too ambitious? Maybe. We’ll see.

Until next time, reader, stay warm and have fun!

As promised, here are a few pics of my new ride! (Not the best pictures I have ever taken.) It’s a 2009 MINI Cooper John Cooper Works Hardtop.

It’s been a while! I have been really, REALLY busy, so I thought I should seize this three-day weekend to do some catch-up, i.e. post a blog entry before the month of May slips away...

First, I should let you know that I am moving this blog to a new website at the end of the summer: www.punkulo.us. I didn’t link it here because the domain currently points nowhere. I am almost done with the design for the new site, and am pleased to say that it’s different than anything I have designed in the past. Maybe I’ll post a screenshot soon.

I also finished up on a months-long project I was working on for an associate... a good feeling! So, I’m devoting the summer to working on personal projects, such as the above-mentioned website and a new version of my online I-Ching: The Oracle of Changes application.

Last Saturday, a litter of six baby squirrels popped up from a hole in our front yard. I must say, they are very cute and photogenic. (I normally don’t care for squirrels, but I have a weak spot for the baby ones.) I think they might be orphans because I haven’t seen the mother yet. So, my girlfriend and I have been looking after them when we can, fending off the marauding neighborhood cats and such.

Well, that’s all for now. I will return for another post in June. See ya!

Left: AudioSource Db5 mobile speakers. Right: Flying Alarm Clock.

I received some excellent birthday loot this year. I hear that I have more on the way, too. Thanks everybody!

Pictured here:

• AudioSource Db5 Personal Stereo Speakers
  The speakers feature a "3D sound" feature and fold in half for portability. They run on batteries or USB, are small enough to fit in your coat pocket, laptop bag or purse, and sound awesome! I have my network walkman plugged into them in the picture.
• The Amazing Flying Alarm Clock
  When the (LOUD) alarm sounds, the helicopter apparatus flies off the top, taking the alarm's shut-off key with it. To disable the deafeningly loud klaxon, you have to get up, find the key, and return it to its base. By the time you've done that, you're awake enough to make a pot of coffee. Check out the Flying Alarm Clock in action at thinkgeek.com.

Claudia: check out this Creepy Spider photo!

It's been an atypically lazy summer for me... I've spent most of my free time hibernating in my house, attempting (unsuccessfully) to avoid the heat.

It looks like Autumn is going to be action-packed though, with a trip up to Wyoming next month followed by a flight to South Carolina in November, to visit my aunt and meet several relatives I haven't yet had the pleasure of getting to know.

The MINI's in the shop right now, so I'm forced to putt around in my slow, banged-up Mazda pickup for the time being. WAAAA!! (I am such a baby sometimes.) But seriously, once you drive a MINI Cooper, driving anything else is just not as much fun!

I'm planning on taking a break from school for the second fall term. During my hiatus I plan on finishing a new web design for this site, putting my new weblog into production and revamping the I-Ching: Oracle of Change application. My plans for the latter include a web services layer, a re-vamped Flash interface, and membership support so that people can save previous readings and stuff like that.

This afternoon, it's off to Galisteo, NM for an afternoon of barbeque, beer, and vulture-watching.

The first fall term for school started a couple of weeks ago. The coursework is easy but the reading is KILLING ME. We're talking instant drowsiness upon merely opening the book here. Aside from the boring reading, the class is okay, even if our 'computer lab' is also a run-down chemistry lab that smells funny.

The 2003 MINI Cooper S I bought last month is turning out to be a lot of fun. It's a speedy little car, at least while I'm not running the A/C. The 6-speed transmission is taking a little getting-used-to, but it's awesome to be in a car that can actually dodge the potholes!

Work has been super-busy, and my next leave is in early October (hopefully). Until then, I'll be working my tail off but hopefully also having some serious fun to compensate.

Happy first birthday to A.J., and peace to the tribe...

I've just returned from a trip to Wyoming, so for now I'm temporarily incapable of pronouncing the 'g' in words that end with 'ing'. Git it?

Anyway, while I was there, my brother gave me this really funny shirt having to do with Chuck Norris. The top of the shirt reads, 'Things You Should Know About Chuck Norris'. Here's a few things (you should know about Chuck Norris):

1. Chuck Norris does not sleep. He Waits.

2. Chuck Norris's cowboy boots are made from real cowboys.

3. Chuck Norris sleeps with a night list because the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris.

4. When the boogeyman [sic] goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

5. (My personal favorite) If Chuck Norris is late, time better slow the fuck down.

These are only a few; there were a bunch more that I didn't post here. He he.

So this teenage kid and his mammy were standin' in front of me in line at Walgr**ns. He says to his mom, 'I gotta start shaving. Clean-shaven men get all the best jobs.'

And here I am, lookin' all haggard with 3 days worth of stubble and camo pants on.... wild-ass hair... so I say to the mammy: 'Well, I guess I'm outta luck!' And the mom says - I love this part - 'Oh, you see, my son means a STRAIGHT job.'

Ho ho.

Anyway, I found this link at leftslipper's website while searching for how to bind an ObjectDataSource to an object factory. The article not only told me what I needed to keep my new weblogger project rolling, but offers an alternative way to handle objects: namely acquiring them rather than constantly creating and destroying them.

It's the day before my 30th birthday, and I'm feeling introspective.

I'm not feeling an overwhelming despair at the loss of my youth, or some pressing need to begin emulating adult behavior. Simply put, after another decade on earth, I want to give you a brief chronology of my life thus far. Lucky you! Here goes:

1977: Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, to piano players. Began freezing my ass off and being a dumb little kid.

1983: Started kindergarten at age 6. I wrote my first love note to a girl. The recipient of the note had to ask the teacher to read it to her - It didn't dawn on me that other kindergartners couldn't read yet. Ditched class for the first time. Loved: the Space Shuttle. Hated: Beets.

1985: First chance to use a computer, an Apple IIe. My 2nd grade teacher had a beehive with a Cruella DeVille-esque gray streak and drove a red Camaro. I don't feel incorrect to say that she was an uber-bitch who probably had to swim in alcohol to forget how miserable her life was. Am I digressing? Loved: attack helicopters. Hated: tonsils.

1990: The seventh grade begins a year-long attempt to fit in with my preppier classmates. This was a failed experiment that left me looking a little like Screech from Saved by the Bell, and probably embarassed my family. Loved: DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. Hated: acne.

1991-1996: General downward spiral into juvenile delinquency and self-destructive behavior, interspersed with inexplicable bouts of ROTC and Mormonism. Toward the end, discovered the joys of dial-up BBS, telnet, Novell Netware, phreaking, sneaking, and especially programming. Loved: urban exploration. Hated: getting busted.

1998: After a couple of years working as a pizza delivery man and a milkman (I never got laid doing either!), I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I ended up at the local community college, studying an odd admixture of exercise science and Microsoft Office. The community college was great because I could basically live there - I was in the gym at 6:00 AM, ate breakfast, lunch and dinner in the cafeteria, and they paid me $6.00 an hour to surf the net and hand out print jobs at night! Loved: metal. Hated: granola whores.

2000: This year absolutely sucked on so many different levels. I'd like to forget this entire year.

2001: First programming job! Yay! {... ignore these horrible things happening around you... repeat: the sky is NOT falling...}

2003: Met a really nice girl named Lisa, who I began dating under very curious circumstances! Without saying too much, my belief in the beautiful weirdness of life was reaffirmed. Loved: Scotch. Hated: politicians.

2006: This was a good year, if a little stressful. I hated the holidays, loved the rest of it. Paid off debts,chilled out with Lisa, and ate way too many lime popsicles.

2007: Still alive, still not loving beets. Goal: an actual vacation to somewhere I've never been, to do actual vacation things like relax and sight-seeing.

That's it, folks! I've still got birthday weekend to burn, and I'm getting hungry...

All is quiet in my temporary autonomous zone tonight; I thought I'd give a shout for Robert Anton Wilson, who died recently. I've read some of his work, and I gotta say that I dig what I read. I'll miss his amusing website updates as well.

I'm not sure if the page exists anymore, but there used to be this biography page on his website that would randomly switch words and phrases out with bizarre grammatic equivalents... That and there was a cool SWF on the site that switches RAW's head out with first a monkey and then (a buddha? can't remember) and a yin-yang symbol.

In other news: still working on the weblogger! I'm looking forward to being able to allow people to leave comments again.

Happy New Year! May 2007 be easy on you.

Here's a quick status for those who need to know:

1. Phone line is still on the fritz. It started working this morning, and then promptly stopped again.

2. Milestone: I completed all my Christmas shopping this evening. And it's not even February yet! I set a new record for myself.

3. The new job is great. I love everything about it except for the small issue of my first project being converting a Filemaker app to SQL Server.... said FileMaker app has 1 table with - brace yourself - 759 columns. That's right: Seven Hundred and Fifty-Nine columns. My head hurts.

4. Still working on my new blogger. It's progressing well, so it shouldn't be too much longer until you see it in action on this website.

Shout out to my peeps. Out.

New code sample: Sortable AJAX Grid

I saw on the news today that the Enron Top Dawgs were convicted. Hell yeah! Whether or not they get appropriate sentences... well, that's another matter entirely. The cynic in me believes that if they get any prison time at all, it will be at one of those exclusive country-club prisons you hear about... Personally I think they should go up to Chino and have Big Bubbas as cell mates... But it doesn't really matter, because Karma's a bitch and these two will get what they deserve, one way or another!

In other news... I found a really cool XML tutorial. I like it when tech tutorials are a bit cheeky...

First: I am having a weird IE/CSS problem on my sitemap page. Basically a tricked-out unordered list, with images on the listitem tags. In IE, when I roll over a link, the image on the listitem underneath it disappears, and sometimes doesn't show up at all. Anybody know why this is happening??

In other news.... as I walked into work this morning, it felt more as if I was walking down the long hallway to the electric chair or something... Dead Man Walking!

It's not that I hate work so much... just that I felt cheated out of my weekend... Lisa was gone for most of it, and last night when she got back, we were both tired and just passed out.

I'm really tempted to cash in my chips early today, go home and drink hot tea and lounge around. Bleh.

I posted a bunch of photos [see] to Flickr on March 31st - most of them are from our shooting excursion a couple weeks ago.

My folks came to visit this last week, and brought my dog down. They are a lot of fun to have around because they drink A TON of coffee! It's really unbelievable, but I know one thing: they, at 65, have at least twice the energy of genetically enhanced chipmunks on methamphetamines!

Right about the time my parents left, our house's mainline to the sewer started backing up... The plumber came out and roto-rooted the mainline, which cleared it, but I guess they have to replace the entire line next week ($6100!!!) because it is so badly crushed and mutilated by creeping, sinister roots... The plumber showed me how bad it was on this magical snake-cam. Well, I'm glad I don't have to pay for it. That is all.

It was my birthday on Sunday. 29 years on this earth seems like a long time, but lately time just flies faster and faster. Or is it that the room just spins faster? (I spent my birthday being inebriated.)

Thanks you, family-types, for your phone calls and e-mails. It is always good to catch up, and I am looking forward to seeing my dog next month!!!

Drinking was not the only thing I did this weekend: I posted most of my photographs to Flickr as well. If you'd like to see them, go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanctumvoid.