Pains in my neck -- April 2013 edition

Closures, Deferred Objects, Promises, and the ideological differences between Serena Dimensions and Git.

The ONE Comparison You Should Make Today

The only person you should compare yourself to is yesterday's version of you.
(Paraphrased with thanks to Steve Kamb from NerdFitness.com)

http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/04/04/comparison/

Ideas From NerdFitness.com

See what prompted this post

Level: 1

Race:  (Larger than average, intelligent ) Goliath?

Current Class:  Trainee

Target Class:  Ranger/Monk

QUEST LOG

** = Currently Tracked Quests

MAIN QUESTS

• **  Make a Quest Log of things I want to achieve
• With concrete, realistic goals and milestones
• Purchase a single family, 4/3/2, 1800+ sq. ft. house
• Sell current townhome
• Save money to buy out mortgage difference at time of sale
• Stay in current neighborhood
• Travel to Japan
• Learn to speak Japanese
• Hirigana / Katakana
• Kanji
• Particles
• Grammar
• Summer Movie Games
• **  Figure out how to work with ColdFusion ORM (Hibernate)
• See conundrum below
• Work out Wager UI
• Actions list
• Segregate CSS/JS by module
• Weigh 200 lbs or have <= 10% body fat
• Nutrition
• Purchased Meals
• **  10 purchased meals per week
• 5 purchased meals per week
• 2 purchased meals per week
• 1 purchased meal per week
• Fluids
• Water
• 1 bottle per day
• 2 bottles per day
• 3 bottles per day
• 5 bottles per day (1 / 2 / 2)
• Other
• 2 caffeinated drinks per day
• 1 caffeinated drink per day
• Exercise
• Once per week
• Twice per week
• Thrice per week
• Do 10 pull-ups (optional)
• Do 100 push-ups (optional)

SIDE QUESTS

• Homebrewing
• Fermentation Chiller
• Kolsch
• Comic Book Tesseract
• **  Develop and maintain an exercise plan
• Set weekly entertainment goals (no, really) and add to Side Quests
• Manliness / Style

/* ****************************** */

SUMMER MOVIE GAMES ISSUE

Persistent objects (ColdFusion Hibernate) and how to work with them on a site that delays tying the Entities to a User (i.e. can use the site without being logged in). Problem started from an old A List Apart article talking about how sign-up forms are bad. I agree - but to play with the toys of the site requires DB (does it?).  Need to check onSessionEnd() to see if I can clear unconnected Entities to prevent DB bloat.

Smells Like Someone Peed on a Herring

I'm pretty certain that a small, furry critter of some kind has decided to to turn our master bedroom wall into its own personal little mouse-olium. (See what I did there? That's very punny.)

Our pest control guy says we're basically SOL. All we can do is wait until the little bastardo dries out naturally. Until then, I will be investing in Febreeze, cinnamon brooms, Yankee candles and any other thing I can think of to mask the smell of life's inevitability. Also, my wife will be sleeping on the couch. The smell in the room is so bad it makes her retch.

By the Flying Spaghetti Monster's holy noddle, it f_cking stinks in there.

I Think The Future Is Gonna Be OK

My daughter plays with my wife's Nintendo DS, that makes me happy; however, she plays "Hello Kitty" on it, and that makes me ... well ... not-so-much.

My daughter likes to watch Beakman's World and even enjoyed an episode of Mythbusters with me -- this makes me hopeful that she won't be burdened by gender stereotypes. Then she asks to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic or Care Bears -- and this makes me worried. But, to be fair, she also likes She-Ra and cheers when Buttercup beats the tar out of Mojo-Jojo. I wonder if she'd like Kim Possible ...

She likes The Black Cauldron, The Dark Crystal, The Last Unicorn and The Secret of NIMH. She also likes Snow White, Elmo, some Crystal Kingdom Dora movie, and Rock-a-Doodle-Do. All-in-all, that balance of substance and fluff seems OK to me.

She listens to Gotye and Carly Ray Jepsen. She also loves Yakko's World and the theme song from Darkwing Duck. I once caught her singing Turn Me On (feat. Nikki Minaj) while she was taking a bath. This has made me declare radio in the car as off-limits.

She steals my polyhedron dice, my Ravenloft figurines, and my Monsters Manual ... to have a tea party.

I swear she has more books than the library of Alexandria. She reads Dr. Seuss, Aesop's fables, Grimm fairly tales, and anything else she can get her grubby, little mitts on. She even has her own books on my pull list at the local comic shop. I find nothing wrong with this.

She eats salmon and green peppers as well as hot dogs and french fries. God help you if she doesn't get dessert.

She cries at the end of school if she can't hug her friends good-bye. She cries during The Muppets when they don't meet their telethon goal. She cries when it's time to get in the tub, and she cries when it's time to get out of the tub. Yet, she'll trip over her own feet, faceplant on a hard laminate floor, and then pop right back up like nothing happened.

I hope someday we'll build a desktop trebuchet together. I hope she owns me in a game of free-for-all deathmatch or asks me to run her through her first dungeon. I hope she'll read things by Neil Gaiman and Gail Simone, Ray Bradbury and Anita Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Bronte. I REALLY hope she stays away from Reddit - at least until college - and finds social networking to be valuable, but not invaluable.

But really, more than anything else in this world, I hope she gets her own damn computer so she can get the hell off of mine and let me play Guild Wars 2.

An Informed Voter

[WARNING!! Politics incoming]

I understand that you have to be intelligent to graduate from Juilliard. After all, talent can only get you so far. However, Juilliard does not have a political science program and as such, the political opinions of their graduates should not heavily impact my voting decisions. To allow them to do so would be foolish on my part.

However, I also understand that the intellectuals that DO have the credentials to back up their opinions are by-and-large not so famous. Their voices tend to go unheard by the majority of the populous due to the simple problem of signal-to-noise ratio. IMHO, this imbalance between visibility and legitimacy is a major issue in today's politics.

(Additionally, there's the added question of what criteria gets defined as a legitimate credential, but that's another post for another time.)

As such, I propose that those who have the public's eye and ear should NOT promote any specific political candidates directly. Instead, they should advocate for the political brainiac of their choice that is capable of presenting a solid argument, with corroborating evidence, of why a specific candidate should be chosen to accomplish a defined agenda. Then, let's get these politico wunderkind together to debate the game theory that ultimately drives those legislative actions so that there can be actual intelligent discourse regarding our government and its inner workings.

Now that's Must See TV©.

Focus

Can't focus.

Want to focus. Can't focus.

Need to focus. Can't focus.

Too distracting. Need to be in there. Need to make sure she's OK.

Mommy's in there, making sure she's OK. I need to be here, doing what needs to get done.

I'm scared. I need to know she's OK.

She'll be fine, it's nothing. Children get these bugs. It happens.

Writing helps. It controls the mania. Gives an outlet for the panic. Can't cry - Mommy needs the support of a strong Daddy.

Don't want to be strong. Want to be in there.

My heart hurts. My head hurts.

I'll stay here. I need to focus.