Christmas Train

Stardate 58122.0 (12-20-2004)

 In front of the engine.

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Catching up on things, slowly but surely. We been working on some refinancing, and a person came over to our house yesterday to sign the final papers. We got a better interest rate on the loan than what we had, so the monthly payments are less. We will need to refinance again in three years, but experts say you should do that anyway.

Last Wednesday, Rachel, Thomas, and I went on the Heber Valley Railroad’s Christmas Train. April and Patrick came down with a cold, and couldn’t go. We got to the station just as the train pulled up. We’ve ridden it in the past, and my kids were always scared of the noise and steam. Thomas was fascinated this time. They served cookies and hot chocolate, sung Christmas carols, and they read “The Polar Express”. The train only goes a few miles now. Back when it was the Heber Creeper, I remember it used to go all the way to Bridal Veil Falls. My understanding is that much of that track has become unsafe, and it is too expensive to maintain it.


I personally have always loved steam engines. My grandfather worked for the Great Northern Railroad, and he was an engineer for a while. I had a model railroad as a kid. I worked for hours at a time on the track layout, electrical systems, and town. It wasn’t as good as the ones you see in the magazines, but it was mine. The hobby has dropped in popularity due to video games. On the other hand, the Internet had made far more resources available. I don’t have room in my house, and I don’t have the time, but maybe someday I’ll build one again.

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Java Log

Stardate 58121.8 (12-18-2004)

Reading an entry from The Bitter Villager about Java-Log, the first thought that came to mind is this is another online programming site. That was followed up by the fact that this person is not a programmer, so it could not be. Indeed, it's a fireplace log. I just found it interesting that I tend to look at the word Java, and immediately think of the language, and not coffee.

I made a few more fixes in the log entry. The return characters needed to be translated into HTML. I will need to do some other translations as well, but for now I just won't use the characters. Carl Stark wrote in his blog that he thought some people put too much effort into blogging. Since I had detailed the process I went through, I figured that one was about me. A quick email confirmed it. Not that I mind, as I have encountered that opinion before. I love to construct new things, be they programs, castles with my boys, or changes to the house. I could just blog to one of the free bloggers, but they don't do exactly what I want to do, and I have fun doing things this way.

I also discovered through Carl that some friends are now blogging, so my list of frequently read is growing.

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Updates

Stardate 58121.7 (12-17-2004)

Apologies for the long time between entries. Pressure from work and holiday events have conspired to eat away all my time. I have, however, made some progress. The web based log entry system is up and running (except for updating the RSS feed, but I am close on that). The Welcome page has been redone, although there is no visible difference. The change is that the recent list of updates and the Updates page come from the same source, which frees me from having to move stuff from page to page. The log entry page will add itself to the list on the Welcome page. It adds the font and style sheet markers automatically. There remains quite a bit I could do, and I will, but at least I have the basic stuff in.

During all this, I read a few blog entries about how much time some people are spending in front of the computer. It always seems ironic to me. The computer was supposed to free you, not chain you to it. I try to combat this by setting up script files to automatically take care of routine tasks. For example, as soon as I am done with a change for a program at work, the server is updated, programs are recompiled, and the tester environment is updated. I spend almost no time transfering files and compiling.

Speaking of the job, I talked to a number of people, and I will be moving to web development. I need a replacement, though, so if you have C programming experience, UNIX experience, Oracle SQL experience, and Visual Studio experience, there is a job opening. I am involved in the hiring process, so I don't think I am eligible for the referral fee.

April went to Anahiem last week to train on an instrument. The end of the week was our tenth wedding anniversary. So she arranged for someone to take the kids, and I flew down on Friday. There was no agenda, we did whatever came to mind, and we slept in. It was great.

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Busy Time

Stardate 58112.8 (11-28-2004)

Yeah, yeah. It's been exactly twenty days since the last entry. There have been a number of reasons. The first is that I decided the process has become complex and time consuming, so I am changing it. From the user point of view nothing will change. The way it used to work is that I would type an entry, update the welcome page, update the menu to refer to the new entry, update the RSS feed, and possibly update the Updates page. Each new entry requires cutting and pasting of formatting code. I did fix the need to update the menu. The problem was that it didn't like not having a file name passed to it, because I was initializing a variable to an empty string instead of undefined. Then I changed the script to sort the list of entries from lowest to highest, and if a specific file is not passed to the script, it loads the last one from the list. (Using a stardate as the name helps with sorting, as standard date formats require more complex sort algorithms.) Now there is no need to update the menu unless I add an item to it. The welcome page is a little more complicated, since there are a few elements mixed in that get changed. The plan is to put a PHP script in it, which will read from the updates file, and grab the first ten items.  The favorites list is also a trick, but I also have an idea about how to get it working.

Another issue with this is that I could only update from my desktop. When I get home from work, more and more often I don't want to head to the basement and get back on the computer. I do have some free time at work, so doing log entries from the web makes more sense. I am still working on this one.
Next, I installed Firefox. I like the tabs, especially the fact I can set the Home page to multiple tabs. It also has RSS integrated. The problem here is that it does not recognize mine. I am still working on why. This has slowed the web based log entry, since I want that page to update the feed for each new entry. Perl has a module to build RSS files. I have all the old entries converted. I have not yet abandoned IE, because there are a couple of areas where Firefox does not work yet. The Real video segments on the Amazing Race pages are one. It won't let me select anything but the pre-race interviews. 

Another reason is that I have been sick on and off for the last few weeks. Nothing much, just a stuffy head or sore throat. It does exhaust me, though. 
Yet another reason is that work has been busy. We have a few new clients, so that means some custom work to do. Because of this, the number of issues is at an all time high. Last Monday was reorganization again. The guy who was assisting me is now my boss. I don't mind that. I didn't go for the job, because it would be in conflict with my goal of putting my family first. The last guy who had it described it as going to one meeting and getting beat up about one issue, then going to the next to get beat up about something else. When I am put under that type of stress I tend to get short with my wife and kids, and regret it. I do wonder, however, if this is the right thing to do. You're supposed to climb the corporate ladder, right? I read a long time ago that software developers who did not were eventually left behind by new technology and younger employees. That does worry me.

The reorg did upset me. I had a number of conversations with the last guy about doing web work, and he kept telling me everyone on the team would get to do it. The reorg split the web developers into their own group, so my chances of doing anything with the web are zero. I did go to the head of the group to ask to be considered for any open positions. It's worth a shot.

Today I am 40 years old. I had thought about doing a bit about things I have learned, or some sort of retrospective. The past, however, is done. I see no point in rehashing it. The flaws I see in myself in years past are still there. I don't see making any changes that would cure them. I don't have a desire for a two seat sports car, or quitting my job and taking off to the tropics, or any other dramatic change. I am the same as I was.

Which, to be honest with myself, is where I have always wanted to be.

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Visual Studio Express, The Incredibles

Stardate 58110.8 (11-08-2004)

Being able to program a computer has advantages. I have been entering data into a database for some research I am doing. In the last three weeks, I managed to get a quarter of the way through gathering it off the web. I decided this was taking much too long, so I put a webbot together to grab the pages I needed. This took all of fifteen minutes. Another two hours was needed to find the common elements of the data I wanted, and have the bot sift for them. In less than 10 minutes it had gathered the other three quarters of the info, and updated the database. The effort was quick and dirty, and could have been done better (using regular expressions to do the parsing, and automatic updating of the pages to retrieve are a couple of things that come to mind). However, it saved a lot of time and effort in entering the data by hand.

This was my first serious foray with Visual Studio C# Express. The environment is not bad, but I am annoyed that the key mappings for things like compiling and going to errors are different from the C++ edition. I also tried to have it generate the database update statements, which it claimed it did, but I could not find where it put them. It’s a beta product, so I am not sure if this is a bug, or just ignorance on my part. I am thinking the latter.

The family went to see The Incredibles Friday. It was an ok movie; something of a mix of James Bond, the movies where the guy is looking everywhere but his family for fulfillment (sorry, can’t think of any titles), and various superhero movies. Pixar was of course impressive with the animation. Some of the social commentary was unusual for animated films (“When everybody is special, no one will be”). I found myself wondering when it would be over, so it was not that compelling. The kids loved it.

The string of daily entries came to an end Friday as well. There are just too many other things going on to keep it up.

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Mulan DVD

Stardate 58110.4 (11-04-2004)

We purchased the Mulan Special Edition DVD. Mulan is my favorite Disney movie. It came out when Rachel was 2 ½. She had been to a few movies before, but this one stuck with her for a long time. She saw it four times in the theatre. The second time I took her by myself. I can still picture the night. We went on a Friday night. Rachel had been looking forward to it for the whole week. At the movie, she told me not to be scared, but the bad guy was coming. I must have acted out scenes with her for the next six months. I have to admit, I still love the scene of the Hun army coming over the pass. I still laugh at parts.

The special edition had a few deleted scenes, and some music videos. It does have a trailer for Mulan II, which is due out in 2005. The other extras seem to point out that they creators had a hard time with the beginning. They had five, but I liked the one they ended up with. The videos included a version of “Make a Man Out of You” sung by Jackie Chan in Chinese as he swings a quarterstaff around. Not really interesting.

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Rome: Total War

Stardate 58110.3 (11-03-2004)

Rome: Total War, the demo version, was loaded tonight. The interface took a little getting used to, but it seems to be a good game. All you can do in the demo is a tutorial, and the Battle of Trebia. This is supposed to be an easy battle, but I found it a little intimidating due to the number of units you need to control. You get to be Hannibal in his second meet up with the Romans. All in all this looks to be a fun game. 

This is the game engine used in for the battle scenes in Decisive Battles. I am a little miffed that this was moved off of Sunday at 9 PM to Friday at 7 PM. One of the great mysteries of life is why every show I want to watch comes on at the same time. In this case we have the aforementioned Decisive Battles, Joan of Arcadia, and Star Trek: Enterprise. And it's not like I watch that many. Dish Network came out with a built in recorder for their satellite receivers this year. It seems like a good idea except that they only record one show at a time. That doesn't help me.

They are coming out with a new version of Pirates! this month. I used to play the old version on the Amiga computer when it came out in the mid 80’s. The basic idea is still there, but they have updated the graphics and game play. The site does not have a demo, which makes me a little upset. I'd like to try the game out. 

Voting

Stardate 58110.2 (11-02-2004)

Following the election returns on MSN, I found this paragraph:

"All 435 seats in the House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a 227-205 edge over the Republicans, with one Democratic-leaning independent and two vacancies in Republican-held seats, also were up for election."

I had to read this three times before I started to laugh. Are the Democrats now in such a minority that the Republicans need to divide themselves? In the rush to get news out, I guess they missed correcting this.

Patrick caught strep, so I stayed home today. This is getting to be a trend. I didn't get over to vote until 6 PM. I had planned on waiting a while, but when I got there, the district I was in had no one there. The other district had a line out the door. I took the boys with me as Rachel had a soccer game. We were in and out in 8 minutes. Thomas ask me when I was going to vote as we left. I chuckled and told him that was it, I was done. I've since found out that locally, almost nothing I voted on went the way I voted. Amendment 1 was the only one that passed I voted for. I did vote for the incumbent for House of Representatives. Strange, though, I didn't used to have such a liberal outlook.

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Predictions

Stardate 58110.1 (11-01-2004)

Predicting the future is favorite pastime for a lot of people. Nostradamus, Edgar Casey, and many other people are famous for it. Science fiction is partly based on this, and especially predicting changing in technology. I am always reminded of a commercial that aired in 2000. It starred Avery Brooks, and it started with him saying, “It’s the year 2000. Where are the flying cars? I was PROMISED flying cars!” This little collection from John Elfreth Watkins in 1900 was fun to read. My grandfather, who worked on the railroad his whole life, supposedly echoed prediction #7. Sadly, he did live to see air travel supplant rail travel. Some of the predictions that looked good thankfully did not come to pass. 

Prediction #11 sort of hit me as naïve. Fish, birds, and other animals consume mosquitoes and flies. Without them, the ecology as we know it would collapse. The main concern with them is that they spread disease. That is the problem I think he was trying to address.  

I am not any better. I would have thought that telecommuting would have been much bigger than it is, and I thought the World Wide Web was a pretty neat idea, but I had no clue it would be as successful as it was.

There are a couple of urban legends going around about the Presidential election. One is that if the Washington Redskins lose at home, the incumbent will also lose. The Redskins lost this weekend. The other is that because the Boston Red Sox won the World Series and the Democratic National Convention was held in Boston, it means John Kerry will win. Urban Legends has another tongue in cheek page about this.  

This week will probably tell.

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Stardate 58103.1 (10-31-2004)

Halloween went much better this year. The weather was a little cold, and it sprinkled a bit, but no snow. The kid’s buckets were filled with candy. Thomas had a hard time. He had fallen asleep before we left to go to a friend of a friends’ house. He was still tired, and just did not have as much fun as the rest. The kids went to at least 25 houses. Rachel, her friend, and her friends little sister lasted the longest.

When we got home around 8, there were not a lot of houses in the neighborhood with people home. I think we made the right choice. The kids had fun, and they got lots of candy. I put the pictures together in a photo story, as Microsoft calls it. The released a beta version of a new tool to build a slideshow of pictures with music, notes, and commentary. I am going to try using it, since I have not be satisfied with my efforts at scrap booking.

I carved the pumpkins with the kids on Friday. Patrick’s pumpkin, the one we grew in the back year, weighed 52.5 pounds. He got on the scale, and he weighed the same. Just to make sure the scale was not stuck, I got on it and so did Rachel. It was not stuck. Ah, the strange coincidences you find in life. Rachel had a haunted house on hers, Patrick a spider and a pirate skull, and Thomas a cat. 

It's nice to be off of Daylight Savings. The kids do not have to go to school in the dark.

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Science Day

Stardate 58102.9 (10-29-2004)

Rachel and Patrick went to Science Day at school on Tuesday. It sounded pretty interesting. Rachel’s comment when I picked her up was that we needed to move because we were in an earthquake zone and all the houses were built on sand. She eventually got onto some of the other things they showed the kids. Electricity was one, including what sounded like a Van De Graff generator, and other static electricity devices. Patrick primarily talked about the cars they had set up do demonstrate pedestrian rules. He was apparently ticketed while both driving a car and walking.

I spent most of the week working from home because the van developed problems. While driving it on surface streets, the engine would just quit. If you shifted back into neutral, the car would start right back up. The repair shop traced the problem down to some frayed connectors to the main computer. But with a gallon of regular gas now costing over $2, I’m not complaining.

The Amazing Race 6 starts November 16. The number of TV shows worth watching is adding up.

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More Models

Stardate 58102.7 (10-27-2004)

Carl Stark was kind enough to send me an ADVOT (ADVanced Officer Training) sheet for the Klingon cruiser Patrick, Thomas, and I are building. I found out there is also a Cub Scout badge for model building, although I don't know what the details are for it. We haven't had a chance to work on it again, but there is more bad weather in the forecast, and it is UEA weekend. All that's left is the detail painting, and the decals. I did repair my model of the U.S.S. Enterprise from the movies. Thomas really likes this one, and I have to admit being proud of it myself.

(click for a larger image)

We went to the Classic Fun Center on Monday. Davis Hospital picked up the tab. The boys and I played a game of laser tag, and they went on the inflatable playground.  Rachel climbed the wall, and then went skating for a while. I was impressed that Patrick wanted to try. He didn't get far, but it was only his first time. He does want to try again.

I finally fixed the Visitors page. Apache is evidently sensitive to the permissions on a file. The one that generates the calendar here was correct, and that gave me the clue I needed. 

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Model Building

Stardate 58102.4 (10-24-2004)

Patrick and I started the Klingon cruiser Saturday. The weather was ok, if cold, for his last game. The rain started about an hour later, and continued through the day. I found to my chagrin that there was no instructions. Somewhere in the three or four moves over the last twenty years they got lost. It's a simple model, so no big deal. We started painting it today. Both Patrick and Thomas are excited about it, more than I thought they would be. Model building is a slow process. I snapped a few pictures of them painting this morning. Click for the larger image.

        

Wow, I found a blog for someone with similar tastes in TV watching. He watches The Amazing Race, Decisive Battles, & Enterprise, to name a few. Speaking of the last two, I missed the first half of Enterprise on Friday, so I am going to record it tonight. Decisive Battles is showing the Battle of the Teutoberger Forest, titled "Herman the German".  Tonight is a good night for TV.

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E-books

Stardate 58102.1 (10-21-2004)

Before moving back to the original team, the guy who gave me tasks asked what I liked to do in my spare time. I told him I liked Sci-Fi, and he told me he read Sci-Fi as well. He has not read a paper book in about two years. Every new novel he reads he buys as an e-book on his PDA. If it is not available in that form, he doesn’t read it. It sounds good, in that I would not have to track down the book, or remember what page I was on last. Except I don’t own a PDA, and I don’t think I will for a while. I’ve thought about it. The main issue is that as soon as I get a PDA, it will be outdated. I don’t have to worry about paper books being incompatible. I have yet to find a use for the device. I have a digital camera, and my cell phone stores numbers and if I want, reminders for events. I still use a paper calendar on the fridge to keep track of which kid has hot lunch at school. In short, I haven’t yet justified owning a PDA. Maybe if I could choose from a list of books to read during the moments I am waiting. I guess I could use it to record the blogs, but I don’t speak those out loud, and I tend to stumble over words as I speak. I also edit the entries, mainly reordering the paragraphs to flow better.

Google does have a nice service if you can do text messaging on your cell phone. Google SMS can be used to find definitions, restaurants, residential listing, and other things. Kinda handy if you don't have a phone book or dictionary handy. I tried it for fun, and it came back in a couple of seconds. 

Here’s an interesting idea: a library of e-books. You check it out for a period, and then when that period expires, it automatically dumps from memory. Maybe someone could even come up with a device that looks like a book. It could contact the library via cellular modem, and you could select the book you want to check out, and it downloads it to the ebook. I am sure there is something like this already, I just haven't looked.

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Network issues, Thriller, Soccer

Stardate 58101.8 (10-18-2004)

Very good weekend for getting some outstanding projects done. I went back to work on the home network. After nearly a day and a half, the obvious hit me. The DSL modem had a router in it. I attached a wireless router to that. The IP address of the DSL was 192.168.0.1, as was the wireless. TCP/IP does not like more than one device to have the same address. The breakthrough came after I installed a second network card on the desktop machine, hooked to the wireless. XP recognized it and configured it fine, but complained there were two devices with the same address. That was the event that kicked my brain toward the problem. So the DSL router gets the default 192.168.0.1 address all the other devices look for as a gateway. The wireless is set up with a static IP address. Both routers have DHCP enabled, but they serve only the devices attached to them. Both have DNS lookup set to the ISP’s servers. One little annoyance is that if the power flips off, I need to power down the wireless for a few seconds. It doesn’t happen too often, though. Of course, the day after I get it all set up, the power does blink. Twenty-twenty hindsight keeps yelling at me that the problem was obvious, I just couldn’t see it.

Rachel, Patrick, and April went to a play at Weber University called Thriller Friday night. I had a prior commitment and couldn’t go. We felt Thomas might be too scared, so he went with me. The play was apparently very good, because both Rachel and Patrick talked about it on the way to soccer the next day. There were lots of monsters, but most of it was humorous.

Soccer is winding down. Rachel played her last game for the fall, and Patrick’s is next week. Rachel’s team pretty much dominated, due to a ringer. I did see some improvement in teamwork the last game. One thing I did note was Rachel’s friend Audra. She started out the season only kicking the ball when it came her way. The last few games she has been taking the ball from opponents, and dribbling it down the field.

Patrick’s team has been struggling. Most of the players are new to U-8, where there is a goalie and positions. The players did not understand what special tasks the goalie could do (such as grab the ball with their hands). Patrick had a tendency to show off, such as flailing his arms as he kicked the ball, or kicking the ball and falling down. This last game I had him sit down and watch went he was out. He noticed a few things, and I told him he needed to pursue the ball after kicking it. He tried this the next time he was in, and he scored a goal, as well as helping two other teammates score. The team still lost, but the game was good.

Rachel starts indoor soccer. This is competitive, and several parents have been recruiting her. Basketball will be starting in January.

Monday morning was raining, dark, and a little cold. After I woke the kids up for school, Thomas came down in his pajamas. I told him he needed to get dressed and ready for school. He told me that it was not time for school because it was the middle of the night. It was a little sad to have to correct him on it.

Xmission updated the web server to Apache yesterday. So far, the only thing that does not work is the Visitors page. There is help for this on the web, though, so I should get it back up soon.

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Superman is dead

Stardate 58101.4 (10-14-2004)

Superman is dead. Christopher Reeves, who took the Man of Steel to a number of big screen movies, passed away last weekend. He suffered an accident on a horse in 1995, and was paralyzed from the neck down. He became a bigger man by using his fame to champion a number of issues. I was rooting for him in his goal to walk again. I loved the cartoon in the Standard-Examiner that showed an empty wheelchair by a window, and the comic book character soaring away from the balcony.

I am getting a little paranoid in my old age. I was working on the monthly testing Saturday, and I received a meeting notice from the department manager. I was the only one on the list. I can't remember the last time I had a one-on-one with her. I worried about it all weekend. It turned out that as our group's supervisor is taking a new job in technical support, she wanted to know if there were any concerns or questions I might have.  

Enterprise started out a little bad, but not too bad given where they left it. The idea of the temporal cold war is coming to an end. I can't say I am sad to see it go. It never really made sense to me. Much of the the rest of the season looks good, though.

Saturday's Ticonderoga auction was great fun, and it seemed to go well. The only bad thing is that I forget my camera. The Ticonderoga website has no photos from 2004, and I was hoping to add a few. I was glad to see Ray Graham's art go for good money. He does excellent work. I wish I had that kind of talent.

There's going to be a lunar eclipse on October 27th. I hope to get a few pictures of it, and it should interest the kids, at least for a few minutes.
We are not sure what we are doing for Halloween this year. Last year was such a disappointment. I am still holding out hope that we will find somewhere to do some serious trick-or-treating.

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Decisive Battles

Stardate 58100.7 (10-07-2004)

Decisive Battles on the History Channel is TV program I found I like to watch. I've always been interested in history, especially military history. And something about computer animated soldiers act strangely just appeals to me. It was kind of funny to watch a Roman scout in the battle of Cynoscephalae (say it with me very slowly, SIGN-a-SEF-a-LA) back up towards the Greek spears in a jerky manner. Computer AI has advanced, but still has a way to go. Cynoscephalae, which is Greek to everyone meaning "Dog's Head", is the battle between two military styles, the older phalanx of Alexander the Great and the new Roman legion. I knew such a conflict had taken place, and the Romans had won, but not where or when. Alexander's descendant, Phillip V, lost the battle, and his bid to rule all of Greece. It was interesting to learn that the victory came about because the Roman squad leaders could change the tactics of the men they led. Next up is The Bitter Villager's favorite queen, Boudicca. 

Spaceship One won the X-prize. I didn't know they were that close. I also thought it had to be a three man shot. Anyway, congratulations. It's a good thing to see someone get into space. 

Patrick went to cub scouts. He definitely likes it. They made some neckerchief clips and a flag for the den. I listened to some of the older kids as they went over basic geology, and it does sound like it will be worthwhile.

I've been reading some of the spoilers on season 4 of Enterprise. It looks to be a good season. I hope it makes it to season 5.

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Back to the old team, Thomas Corn Maze

Stardate 58100.3 (10-03-2004)

Presidential debates just never interested me, probably because no matter what is said, the candidates can always reverse it. So instead of watching them, we watched Scooby Doo: Monsters Unleashed with the kids. The kids thought it was very funny, but it was more of a nostalgia trip for me. I watched Scooby Doo, Where Are You? endlessly as a kid. I picked the habit up again when Cartoon Network came on. So I knew all the creatures in the movie; the Black Knight (What a Night for a Knight), Miner Forty-Niner (Mine Your Own Business), Tar Monster (The Tar Monster), Captain Cutler (A Clue for Scooby Doo), and the Ten-Thousand Volt Ghost (What a Shocking Ghost). The kids' favorite was the zombie (kind of nondescript, but I am guessing Which Witch is Which?).

Tuesday Patrick and I went to the cub scout pack meeting at St. Paul's. It was long and boring, but Patrick does know the kids in the new tiger cub den, so he is happy. I overheard his best friend Robert telling him that they get to make things, and go places. Robert was very excited about it, and he passed it on to Patrick. As we left. Patrick wanted to get the uniform as soon as possible. 

Thursday I found out I was being put back on the old team. There is a ton of work to do, and they need help. The other team was fun, and it was a good experience. I did feel as though I did not do enough for them. Java is a good language, but I think Sun needs to add to the capabilities of the language. Hibernate is a great tool for mapping database tables to queries, but it relies on @ tags in the comments. If you mess up on a tag, the only way to catch it is through testing. For example, I spent about a couple of hours tracing down a problem, only to find it I typed a single quote instead of a double quote on a column name. At that point I saw C#'s attributes in a new light. This is a compiler supported feature, so the problem would have been discovered earlier and corrected faster. I still miss parameterized types in both languages.

Friday, after several failed attempts, I finally got Windows XP SP2 installed. The install kept hanging in places, especially in the "Checking your configuration..." stage. Now, however, I have a new software firewall installed, and everything looks ok. I have not tried any games yet, but most of the problems I have read about stem from multiplayer modes. I don't really have time to play them, and the one time I did, AOE II refused to connect to MSN Gaming Zone after I started the game. While waiting on the install, I tuned into CNN after April called to tell me Mount St. Helens was erupting again. I remember watching news reports of the 1980 explosion, and we visited the mountain in 1998. I bought a videotape of the eruption and the aftermath.

Friday as well I went with Thomas on a field trip to a corn maze at the Cold Creek fish farm in North Ogden. They had two mazes. The first wasn't an actual maze, since it gave you only one choice of a way to go. The second one is an actual maze, with a tunnel in front, and a Halloween theme. The kids did not do that one. At the end the kids could pick out a pumpkin, which pleased Thomas. He has adjusted to school, and found some friends. He doesn't mind extended day much anymore. The EDP teacher told us Monday he went up and asked her for a particular blanket. She was surprised, as this was the first time he actually spoke to her. I have noticed he is more relaxed and comfortable in a group of kids, as at Robert's birthday party below, so school seems to be having a positive effect on his social skills.

Saturday was a busy day. Patrick had a nine o'clock soccer game, and Rachel had one at ten. Patrick's team does ok, but most of them are still in the habit of kicking the ball and stopping to watch where it goes. Patrick has improved in that he is not purposely falling down each time he kicks. He did try for a fastbreak down the field, but was intercepted. I think the kids need to work on stamina, because they were tired and lackluster during the second half. One mother told me that last week her son didn't understand he could pick up the ball as goalie. I wondered at the time why he was having problems with the position. Still, the boys all seem to be having a good time. 

Rachel's game was a little more active. The older kids have better skills, obviously, and more teamwork goes on. Some of the girls are more talented. Rachel is not one of them, but she enjoys the game and does ok. Even though no official score was kept, parents are getting competitive and keeping track. The game ended in a tie. Given the talents of the teams, and some of the girls in particular, this was pretty good. 

As I mentioned, Patrick's best friend Robert had his birthday party Saturday. It started later in the afternoon. April was working, and I had a Mountain-Con meeting, so Patrick went off with another friend, Josh, from school. After the meeting, Rachel, Thomas, and I went to the Halloween superstore on Riverdale road. Rachel got a vampiress costume, and Thomas got a pirate costume. We saw Rachel's Pre-K teacher there. She knows Thomas, and she tried to get his to wear a pirate hat with dreadlocks attached. I told him he looked like Captain Jack from Pirates of the Caribbean, but at that point he wanted to leave and go get Patrick. He was a little confused, and kept asking me where Josh lived. We were still a little too early to pick up Patrick, so I just drove around. I was a little surprised as I drove by Robert's house that Thomas was able to identify it as such. So we went in a little early, and Rachel and Thomas got to have cake. Robert's father Charles recruited me with one other father to ambush the kids in a silly string fight. I took Thomas and Rachel along. Charles told me after he hadn't thought it was a good idea for Thomas to do that. I knew Thomas would love the chance to surprise Patrick and his friends. He stayed for a while longer and played with them. I don't think before he started school he would have done this.

I rearranged the Enterprise reviews. I found a way to fix the size a table, and add a scrollbar. Frontpage doesn't like it, though, and keeps changing it. I might investigate other web editors. I am a little worried about the size of the reviews now. Everything for a particular season is pasted in one file, so season three is 77K. It's large, but I think it works better.

Well, enough rambling for now. It's been a busy week, as usual. I have probably missed quite a few things to blog about. I think about stuff to enter, but when I get a chance, I don't really have the desire. I loved Carl's results from the weblog quiz, "But if you'd post a little more often, you'd make your readers very happy." It depends on whether you blog to keep readers happy, or yourself. I try for both, but lean toward making myself happy.

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Cleaning, Hill Air Force Museum, Mowing

Stardate 58092.6 (09-26-2004)

We've been doing a clean up and throw out, room by room, campaign. We started with the second biggest mess in the house, the 'play' room. (The first is a storage area.) The idea behind this room was a place for the kids to go and play with toys. They did this, but it ended up with toys everywhere until you couldn't walk in the room, at which point they didn't play in it. Several times we went in and picked everything up and organized it. A coworker of April's suggested that this was overload, in that there were too many toys and they could not decide which to play with, and therefore ended up playing with everything. So the broken toys, puzzles with missing pieces, and other stuff was thrown out. We are giving a number of the video tapes to the school, and some to a dentist who used to be our next door neighbor. Most of the stuff is gone, and we are making good progress.

Friday, in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid having a neighbor boy show up the minute Thomas got home from school, I took him to the Hill Air Museum. He has been wanting to go for months. Once we got there, and he saw the planes up close and realized how big they are, I think he got a little scared. He wanted to go home. So we zipped  through (I could have stayed to examine the B-17 for an hour alone), and went to the gift shop. I bought him a cheap die-cast plane, and one for Patrick because he insisted. Passing the model display case, he exclaimed "Wow, cool!". I remembered that I had found an unassembled Klingon K'Tinga model a month or so ago. I might stop by again and get a couple of simple jet fighter models so that we could assemble them one stormy day this winter. Most toy sections no longer carry plastic models. As a boy, I put together dozens of planes, tanks, cars, and ships. I remember having a model of the Bismark for years.

Mowing the lawn is becoming a bigger chore. Rachel found out that Patrick was doing it, and wanted to do it as well. So I let her do the front, and Patrick the back. The contrast in styles was fun to see. Rachel circles the lawn, but misses spots. Patrick has no pattern that I can see. He just turns as he sees fit. But he meticulously cuts every blade of grass. The back yard is about twice as much grass as the front, but Patrick wanted to do it all himself. He came up about three feet short before quitting. It was good enough for me, and I finished it.

We are attempted a game night on Sundays. Last week was the first try. When the kids could not find any of the board games they wanted to play, April taught them Rummy. Patrick broke down after coming in second place for the third time. Tonight we played a couple of rounds with his Star Wars cards (Rachel won both rounds), and then Rummy again. I asked Rachel not to take a set of cards, and helped Patrick to get a few down. He did just barely win. I know teaching someone to lose gracefully is important, but constantly losing is discouraging. He said after we where done that Rummy was a fun game.  I also remember playing the game on Sunday night with my sister an mom, so I would like to continue it.

I took a blogging quiz. I got 56 out of 100 points, and this description:

56 points is in the 51 through 80 precent (why yes, so it is. Percent is also spelled wrong)
You are a dedicated weblogger. You post frequently because you enjoy weblogging a lot, yet you still manage to have a social life. You're the best kind of weblogger. Way to go!

Finally, my snide comment about Gibby's Smash Mouth lyrics was uncalled for. I remember being dumped, and I would not have liked what I wrote. Sorry about that. The problem is I don't have anything other to say than the same thing everyone else told me, in time, all of it will go away, and there is someone out there for everyone. At the time I didn't believe it, but it did come to pass. Everything changes, and eventually for the better.

The other comment was about no other shows that I liked winning Emmys. Star Trek: Enterprise did win 2. They were not shown, which doesn't make me pleased.  I guess I should not have posted that night, but oh well.

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Amazing Race Winners

Stardate 58092.1 (09-21-2004)

Chip and Kim win the The Amazing Race. Finally, someone I was hoping would win did. Even better, the show trumped The Donald's "The Apprentice", the favored to win show, in the Emmy's. April pointed out that up until that point, there were numerous shots of Trump. After, he seemed to disappear. Sorry, "Survivor", but the tribe had spoken.  Race 6 is starting on Saturday, October 2. I have no idea who else won anything, few shows that I like ever get nominated.

Changes, changes, changes. Miss Cranky is gone, to be replaced with The Bitter Villager. I wonder if she considered those of us who would have to update our links (g). She also stole my idea of a large first letter at the beginning of a post. Mine sinks into the second line, though, so it looks better. Rory Byth lost his girlfriend. I hope he doesn't resort to posting Smash Mouth lyrics on his site. 

I was listening to NPR the other morning, and they had a piece on how companies are training their international travelers to avoid politically charged subjects, such as Iraq. The report went on to say people in other countries are trying to find out the opinion of the American public on these issues, and how the presidential election might go. I put some thought in on this, and have decided to vote not so much for Kerry as against Bush. It's a useless gesture in Utah, whose electoral votes will go to Bush, but it will be my little no-confidence shout.

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New Team

Stardate 58091.6 (09-16-2004)

Switching between teams is brain wrenching. The regression test last weekend turned up a some anomalies. The first few were easily explained by the differences in implementation of C libraries on Windows and UNIX. Been there, seen it, conquered it, have a drawer full of T-shirts. The other couple of issues took most of yesterday and today. An hour was spent looking at the 20 lines of code that are responsible, trying to find obvious flaws such as variables not initialized, incorrect values, and a few other things that might account for it. Nothing, the code was solid. Turning to the test itself, it finally hit me. The tester set up the scenario with a bunch of inter-related data. If the data does not start out in the correct state, or the order in which it run is not correct, the test would act the way it did. I rechecked that everything ran in the correct order. Yup, nothing wrong there. Checking the initial state of the data, reconstructing what went on when, and sure enough, the problem was uncovered. Next, the hour and a half explanation of what went on to the interested parties. The day is mostly shot and my brain is still churning. The bright side is that the release is now shipping a day ahead of schedule. I pick up the kids and I need to go over the spelling words with Rachel. I find two lists in her folder. I know one is from last week, and one is the current one. My brain is balking at another "what happened when" exercise. It should be something as simple as finding a date on the paper, but I can't do it. After Rachel is in bed, April calls and tells me which one I should be looking at.

Thomas has found a friend at school. He's been talking about him for most of the week, and the boy is coming over for a play date tomorrow. Thomas is excited about that. He still hates to go to EDP, but he is in a good mood about going to school. Another friend is good. Thomas's friend in the neighborhood is a boy a year older across the street. This kid tries my patience. He has been banned from coming in the house, because within 30 minutes he has every toy Patrick and Thomas own (and sometimes Rachel's as well) out. When asked to help clean up, he announces he has to go home. I've kept him a couple of times anyway, but he can only manage to pick up one or two items in the time Patrick and Thomas pick up the rest. This week he was banned from our backyard. The boys turn on the hose, and make mud. I don't mind so long as they don't leave the water running for more than a few minutes. Unfortunately, several times they have spread the mud all over the patio furniture, and the patio itself (I described a cleanup I made Patrick and Thomas do a bit ago). Monday, while April was attending to a still sick Rachel, they did it again. April told me she found Patrick in tears, desperately trying to wash the mud away before I got home from work. Thomas was grounded, but we gave Patrick a reprieve for trying to fix it. It is bad enough that I can now instantly hear the outside faucet go on. I did have them stymied for a while by kinking the hose as I wound it up, but Patrick discovered all he had to do was unwind it past the kink. Sometimes having smart kids is not a good thing.

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Rachel Back in School, Hurricane Ivan

Stardate 58091.5 (09-15-2004)

Rachel went back to school today. One trip to the ER, one to WeeCare, and two to the doctor, and she is finally feeling better. She spent most of yesterday catching up on missed schoolwork. I had to remember what predicates were, and work with her on the pronunciation of  Osaka, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. I'll leave as an exercise for the reader to guess what country they were studying in social studies. I also wondered why the last two cities were on the map. They might now be some of the larger cities in Japan (oops, gave it away), but of course they are well known as the only cities to date to undergo nuclear bombardment. One primitive bomb apiece hardly counts as such, especially considering Dresden and Hamburg, but it was enough. I also use the cities as clues when I feel the need to point out only one country has ever used nuclear weapons in war, and nobody can figure out which one it is.

April and I have been following Hurricane Ivan for the last day and a half. Friends and family have all left New Orleans, as far as we can tell. My mother-in-law called yesterday afternoon to say she was leaving with a cousin. She called back about 9:30 that night to tell us they had reached Baton Rouge. Normally it's about a two hour drive. April found a website for one of the local TV stations, and she was watching all their weather report videos. I hit on the idea of looking at the traffic cameras. It was weird to see one side of the freeway clogged with cars, and the other clear, and knowing this was within the last 30 seconds. At this point the city has escaped serious harm. 

I took the Jung Typology Test to kill a little time waiting on a compile. Big surprise, I'm an introvert. I had to laugh at the personality type it gave me, Mastermind. It sounds like a comic super villain. Yes, that arch foe of justice, MASTERMIND. The description was all flattery. Only 1 percent of the population fits this type. Hey, but I'm in the group with Ayn Rand, Stephen Hawking, and Ike.

Shoot, the annoying pair of Colin and Christy were not eliminated on the Amazing Race. I was all set to see them go. Well, here's hoping they don't win on next weeks' two hour finale. I was surprised to find that Race 6 is scheduled to broadcast Saturday, October 2. They were taking applications for another race last month, so I am guessing there will also be a 7. Now, if one or two other good shows pull through the season, I'd be happy.
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Titanic Exhibit

Stardate 58091.0 (09-10-2004)

Went to see the Titanic exhibit at the ZCMI mall last Monday with Rachel and my sister, Susan. I am glad the entrance fee was discounted that day, as I don’t think it was worth the full price. Upon entering, they handed you a boarding pass with the name of someone who was actually on the ship. At the end of the tour you could find the name of the person on a list that also indicated if they survived or not. A little on the morbid side, but it did generate some interest. Rachel’s second-class passenger did not make it, but both Susan’s and my steerage passengers did. This disappointed Rachel a little. One other thing I noticed is the optional audio tour guide is digital. It struck me because I remember at a Etruscan exhibit a few years again there was a guy at the end of the tour busily rewinding the cassette tapes. Another job eliminated by technology.

I did learn a few things from it. A first class accommodation on the ship is between $45,000 and $73,000 in today’s dollars. Steerage is about $650. It wasn’t exactly cheap to sail on the ship. Microorganisms are eating away at the steel in the hull, and in a few more years the ship will collapse.

Monday as well I let Patrick mow the lawn. I kept an eye on him the whole time, and I told him quite a few times that if he lost control of the mower, just let go and it will stop. He had to stop about four times. But he stuck with it. He even wants to do it again.

The van is legal again. April took it in the last time, and it passed. This experience is why we dread car registrations.

Patrick had his first soccer practice Wednesday. He’s on a team with his friends from school. The new commissioner is allowing this now. He seems to enjoy it more. I decided not to coach this year. Patrick had too many problems with me coaching, and Rachel is getting beyond my ability to teach. The games start on Saturday.

I also took Patrick to a cub scouts meeting Wednesday for a troop at St. Rose. Unfortunately, he found out that his best friends are joining a troop at St. Paul’s. He wants to join that one. It took some talking to April, but I think that would be the best.

Rachel has strep again. One more time this year and we will probably be removing tonsils.

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Dinosaurs, Car trouble, Programming

Stardate 58090.5 (09-05-2004)

I went with Thomas on a field trip to Eccles Dinosaur Park on Friday. One of the good things about 4 ten hour days is that I can become a little more involved with my kids school activities. Rachel is unfortunately beyond the field trip age, and most of the class parties for Halloween and such. Patrick is still having some activities. Anyway, despite the rain, the park was fun. Thomas has been looking forward to it for the entire week. He found a friend by the name of Riley. He and Thomas have much the same personalities. After a talk by one of the park employees, who showed everyone some interesting fossils. He did very well with the kids, but I think he talked a little long. By the time he was done, it was 11 am and we were left with about 20 minutes to explore the park and eat lunch. Not much time with a couple of 4 year olds. We walked around, and passed the two Pre-K teachers. Riley wanted to follow them, and I agreed. In retrospect, that was a mistake. They were with a boy named Alex. He's the hands on, tactile type, which is the opposite of Thomas. I had given him the Batman raincoat, which was a magnet to Alex. By the end of the bus ride back to school, Thomas was in tears because Alex would not leave him alone. This was the subject on the ride to get Patrick, and the ride home. As I have mentioned before, you can see your worst personality traits reflected in your kids. Thomas has my habit of concentrating on the negative.

This is the week for car problems, apparently. We've been struggling to get the van to pass safety inspection. The station in Kaysville won't pass it because they say the lights are wired wrong. I countered that we have had the car since 1997, so why is this a problem now. We have since taken it to an independent shop, who did a repair on a ball joint and passed it. Thursday the Altima quit idling. It would run fine so long as you pushed on the gas pedal. The mass air sensor failed is what we were told. It was also suggested that the spark plugs and fuel filter be replaced. I noted that they did not suggest replacing the oil, oil filter, or air filter. That would have been bad, because I just replaced them last week. I have had repair shops tell me the oil needed to be replaced within 100 miles of the last oil change. So two somewhat expensive repairs ate up the money for the deck railing. April pointed out that this is the first repair the Altima has had in the last twelve months, and it has been running fine. 

We watched a friends kids Saturday and Sunday while the parents went to a company function in Park City. The mother was thanking us left and right, which kind of puzzles April and I. She picked up Rachel and Patrick and kept them for a couple of hours every Friday last year before soccer practice, so we felt we owed her. Coupled with the fact April was working and the van was being fixed, I wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't an imposition. Her eight year old daughter is best friends with Rachel, and her six year old daughter is  good friends with Patrick. The big concern was the three year old, whom I've always seen attached to her mother. She turned out to be a little angel. The best part of the time they were here was while watching 'Ella, Enchanted" Saturday evening. The three year old walked up to me, and asked in a quiet voice if it was ok to sit next to me. (Even Thomas smiled at that) She curled up next to me, and within five minutes she was asleep. 

Kathleen Dollard wrote an article for Visual Studio six months ago called "Save the Hobbyist Programmer". It generated a lot of comment, including a heavily commented post by Rory Blyth. Rogers Cadenhead fanned the fire again last week, generating a new post by Rory Blyth. Lots of opinions on this, and I added some of my own.  A sentence that got my attention was "Most jobs in IT aren't about human progress, they're about making humans obsolete and allowing fewer to control more." I disagree. Progress, whether in IT or elsewhere, is about making things better, cheaper, and faster. This process has been going on for the last 150 years or more. Making humans obsolete is the side effect. My dad points this out to me every once in a while. He retired from the optical business in the early 80's. He tells me that when he was working, it took five people to make a pair of glasses. He went back to the office for a visit a few years ago. He says now it takes one person, and they just enter the correction and frame selection into a computer. Automation does the rest. So that's four people displaced. I have to think, however, that without progress I would not be writing this, and I would not be employed doing what I do. I don't know if anyone has an idea of all the effects such changes have. I certainly don't have any answers. 

Some good freeware suggestions here from someone trying to put a system together from them. He missed SysInternal's Process Explorer. SC-Diskinfo looks good. No matter how big the disk space, I always manage to fill it. It does annoy me that half of the space is Windows. Microsoft announced last week that they were splitting the release of the next version of the OS. Advanced features (such as WinFS and Avalon) that may not be compatible with existing software will be removed and released in 2006. A study was quoted which shows after three years, XP only has 50% of the installed base of Windows systems. 
I have heard rumors, but here is the first I have seen where someone was fired for the contents of a blog.  I guess I need to watch what I put here.

I have done a couple of late night sessions with AOE II. Nothing online yet, still against the computer. Easy wins all. I had a scenario with just two players in a forest, each with a fortress that the computer kept kicking my butt. I must have erased it, because I can't find it. I'll have to try and recreate it. There was an online scenario called Agincourt, which would be fun to play. Unlike a lot of battles, there are a few good resources on the net for this. Most of the time, I can't find more that when a battle took place and between who on the net or at the local library. Growing up, I seem to remember better books on at least a few of them.
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