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7/3/2009 Japan ho!I'm headed to Japan for two weeks with my girlfriend! This is the first traveling I've done in a while, so I'm really excited about it. We have a nice schedule lined up to hit lots of different towns and events in 14 days. I'll try to post some pictures of us doing/eating fun things while we're out there, but in case I can't/don't, I'll do a big post when I get back. Probably best to check my facebook for more regular updates as it requires less of a time commitment than blogging ;) Back issues (not the paperback variety)So I've been having some lower back pain off and on for a few years--most certainly related to poor sleep posture combined with bad exercise and biking. It finally spiked in the last two months and I needed to do something about it because it was affecting my ability to do things like sit or lay down or stand up or sleep :( Anyhow, when biking to work started to feel like something that was going to leave me in pain for the rest of the day, I finally started seeing a chiropractor. It's only been three weeks and I feel about 90% of normal again! We've even moved onto some other problem areas because the low back feels so much better.
I also moved to Plymouth from S. Minneapolis (but I've been biking mostly from New Hope this summer) since I stopped riding and started seeing the chiro, so a bike commute will be almost 40mi/day. Except for some shorter rides with Molly around town, next Tuesday is my first day back in the saddle for a real commute. I'm going to try to work up to it over the weekend with some trail riding, but if everything goes smoothly I'm looking forward to a hell of a great summer of biking. On Tongues and Tongue Lashings[I wrote this last month and then took a few weeks to decide if I should post it. There is no way to write something like this without being a huge asshole and validating the claimant on some level. I guess I'm a huge asshole...] So my soon-to-be-ex is out of the country and her mother is watching the house and the cat. I stopped by to visit with the cat and pick up some mail that was delivered there, and my soon-to-be-ex mother-in-law Maggie let me in on some interesting theories that she said she and her son Max have developed about the emotional abuse I'm supposed to have perpetrated against her daughter--which has apparently interfered with their relationships with her for some time. Maggie said that she and Max have been working on these theories for a few years. Although she was ready, momma bear-like, to personally attack me and heap scorn upon me while I was conveniently located within shouting distance, she and Max have apparently been too busy or too unconcerned to ever talk to Molly or me about it while the alleged theorizing was actually relevant to the alleged abuse. Presumably they had better things to do. Incidentally, this is the same excuse Molly offered on the numerous occasions when I asked her why she never called her mom or her brother and why we spent more time with my mom and nieces when they live 250 miles away than with her mom and brother who live in the same city as us. In fact, Maggie used to call me--several times a month sometimes--because Molly literally would not answer her phone or return voicemails when her mom called her. I would relay these messages to Molly and remind her repeatedly to call her mom, but enough messenger shooting occurred (from both ends) that I grew to dislike this task. Every time her relationship with her family was questioned, Molly would become very upset and act like it was just too big to ever deal with. I guess everything is fine now though, because now that I'm out of the picture they are one healthy, coordinated family front! Except, apparently, for substantive personal matters, such as the imminent arrival of a grandchild. You see, immediately after I greeted Maggie when we met this weekend, I inquired as to the due date of Max's baby (the aforementioned imminent grandchild). Maggie looked at me--rather stunned--for about second before announcing that, although she had guessed they were pregnant, that Max had decided for some reason not to share this information with her. The irony was completely lost on Maggie, who proceeded to administer the aforementioned tongue lashing of my recent life, detailing just how much I screwed up, failed, abused, and emotionally scarred her daughter. The implication (based on her many examples) was that all of the responsibility for her failed relationship with her daughter was on me. I wonder how she explains her failed relationship with Max and her daughter-in-law? The cognitive dissonance and resistance to introspection required to realize that I'm not the common denominator in these two scenarios is at once hilarious and sad. She also gave me a weird trip about how smart I am and how good at everything I am, and how she thought I never liked her family very much because they're too dumb or something. This is ridiculous of course; Molly is brilliant and amazingly talented and the whole family are (in my estimation) particularly gifted artists. I, OTOH, am artistically retarded. I don't even consider myself to be particularly smart, but I do try to be self-aware and introspective. When someone tells me something about me that contradicts my own self image, I try to take time to weigh my respect for that person with the tone and spirit in which the observation was offered. If I think there might be even a shred of truth and/or sincerity in what they said, I think hard and honestly about whether there is something I need to learn or change. What I learned [that] weekend when I went to pick up my mail is that it's really easy to blame all of your problems on someone you feel has rejected you, especially if dealing with your own problems is something you try hard to avoid. 6/9/2009 "Satellite Sheiks" on OTMWonderful story! I am obviously not exposed to enough decent coverage on moderate Islam, because this was a big eye-opener for me. Ahmad al-Shugairi feels comfortable not just *hinting* that specific examples of Muslim principles may be better embodied in non-Muslim societies--he's on a mission to literally make Muslims jealous of aspects of various non-believers' social norms. I had no idea that a message like this had an audience in the Middle East. This is something I would expect to see in a theoretical presentation at a Unitarian church, not broadcast across the Muslim world.
5/28/2009 Apocalypse HaikusI was reading about North Korea today and was inspired to write a haiku:
And as I was reading through a requirements document I listened to the NPR 24hr program stream and heard two people talking about accidental nuclear war. I brainstormed with a coworker for a while to come up with some themes about nuclear devastation. He asked me why and I said I wanted some material for Haikus. When he got done laughing at me, we came up with the following list:
So here they are, not necessarily in that order ;)
Happy Thursday everyone!! 5/27/2009 JapanimationI'm taking my girlfriend to Japan for two weeks at the end of July. We found a great deal on tickets and a little hotel in Kyoto to keep our stuff in while we're hauling ass all over the south side of the big island with JR passes. Molly is really into theater, so we're going to hit Kabuki play, a Bunraku play, maybe a traditional dance or two. Might be interesting to see a Japanese baseball game or Sumo match, depending if the season is right. We're going to try to visit a hot springs while we're there too, and try to visit a lot of cultural landmarks in Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Tokyo. I'm so excited! I can't wait tear it up Japan-style! Open letter to the people I encountered on the ride to work
Dear Nissan-driving Young Turk of Winnetka Avenue,
You're in the that big a hurry? Really? Not only did you fail to yield the right-of-way to every pedestrian in your path, you ran a stop sign so that you could beat me to the other side of the street--except "beat" in this case means "made me slam on my brakes to avoid being hit while crossing an otherwise empty street in the crosswalk on my bike". I was shocked when you stopped at the red light--and then un-shocked when right-hooked in front of the elderly woman trying to use the crosswalk when the light changed.
Dear dude who owns the $1500 road bike wearing $500 of fancy bike gear,
Oil your chain you dumb mothertrucker. That horrible metal-on-metal screech is the sound of your expensive transmission eating itself alive. This wouldn't happen, of course, if you didn't put your rig back in storage every year after your ceremonial three attempts to ride to work.
Dear tiny girl with all the facial piercings riding slowly to avoid the wind,
Yes, I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt in 50 degree weather, but I have 100 pounds on your skinny ass. Don't wear a baby-doll tee and rolled up jeans when you have 1% body fat and we won't have to swerve to avoid running over your frozen carcass.
Dear downtown cyclists who run every red light and act as unpredictably as possible,
Thanks for making everyone's ride more dangerous! We understand that you can't be bothered to obey simple traffic laws like stopping at red lights and staying in the bike lane--you provide a valuable example for us all when you're hit by cars and become statistics.
And finally:
Dear high school chick who took a header on 42nd after shouting "look at me, no hands!" on Sunday,
I didn't see you today, but I definitely thought of your example on the way to work this morning. The angle of your shoulder plus your anguished screams made me assume you had badly dislocated it. I hope your ambulance ride to the hospital wasn't too painful--I know what a bad dislocation is like for all involved. I hope you will keep both hands on your handlebars in the future--especially while riding down hill as fast as possible like you were. Maybe you'll also put on a helmet next time? On the plus side, your accident really filled me and Molly with a sense of community; at least six cars stopped immediately to come to your aid. We're moving a few blocks away and that really speaks well of the area :) 5/25/2009 Bikes and bikingSo I'm trying to bike to work whenever possible. I'm really out of shape right now, so it's a tiring experience almost every time. It's a little over 15.5 miles here from my girlfriend's apartment, and a little over 18 miles from the new place we're moving to in June. We're moving to Plymouth (just a few miles from her current place), so we are surrounded by some really great bike trails. I can take trails all the way into downtown Minneapolis, dedicated bike lanes to Franklin, then then it's pretty much a straight shot to my office from there. It's a really nice ride without too many killer hills or deadly pit vipers. I can't wait until the Luce Line interconnect is done so I don't have to ride through the office parks on 55 to get between trails, but even if it's not done this season I'll be fine with the rest of the ride as good as it is.
To put it into perspective, I used to commute to Boston Scientific from downtown Saint Paul, which was about 12miles. The first couple of times I road that I thought I was going to die, but I got used to it within a month. Right now I just a little more sweaty and tired than I will a month from now. Well, maybe more sweaty a month from now with the coming summer heat, but definitely not so tired.
My girlfriend has been riding the same bike since she was in middle school or something, and the list of stuff to rehab it this season was too long to justify keeping it, so we went to Eric's Bike Shop in Maple Grove and picked out a new one. Everyone there was super helpful, and she quickly fell in love with the first bike she tried. It's funny when someone rides a nice bike after years of avoiding biking because their bike sucked (only they didn't know it). They get so excited! So we brought it home, filled up our water bottles, and went on a 15 mile ride. She set the pace, and I was really proud that she went so far on our first ride out. We were just tooling around on the trails in Plymouth looking for some place to eat.
Sidebar: We stopped at a target to get some spray-on sunblock because her skin is so fair and we decided to try one of the new throwback pops. I get rashes when I drink HFCS, and these particular pops are regular flavors with real sugar instead of HFCS. I really liked the Mountain Dew. It was very smooth and sweet. After drinking only sugared pop in Thailand for a year, and then reacting so badly to HFCS when I got back to the US, I'm definitely excited about more mainstream flavors using sugar!
Back to the ride: We were both really tired when we got home, and she got more and more sore as the night went on. Poor legs! Her little stubs haven't worked that hard in a really long time. I was already pooped because I'd ridden about 50 miles earlier in the day, and even though we only went 15, I was getting saddle sore because it took about the same time to go 15 at her pace as it did for me to go 50. She knows she's slow ;) I'm not expecting her to get much faster--I'm just really enjoying riding for pleasure as a good form of exercise for both of us to get used to. We're close to some great trails and parks where we're moving next month, so we're both really excited about a nice long bike season this year. Luce Line Regional Trail rocks!Went riding this weekend with a friend on the Luce Line regional trail. A bridge was out about 15 miles in, but it was easy enough to walk around. The Quiet and the wildlife on the mostly crushed-limestone-paved trail is really nice--especially in the morning. There are also a lot of port-a-potties and maps, or at least there are in the first 20 miles of the trail. Luce Line goes from about 1/2 mile east of Highway 100 out west to Cosmo, MN--about 70 miles. The official eastern trailhead is off Vicksburg Lane in Plymouth, but the Three Rivers paved trail goes from there due east to that last 1/2 mile past 100. Later this year a 1/2 mile trail upgrade will finally connect the "dead end" of the eastern-most leg of the trail to Wirth Parkway and the Grand Rounds trail system. Can't wait, because that particular 1/2 mile is the only gap in my 15 (soon to be 18) mile commute where I have to cut through office parks and go off-road because Highway 55 doesn't believe in pedestrian access ;)
Anyhow, it was a lot of fun, and I will definitely ride it again soon. I got a new 100oz Camelbak and some of the camel caffeinated electrolyte pills that make your water taste like orange soda. Definitely a tasty way to ride. 5/19/2009 I just used a data URI for the first time in five yearsSo I decided that web development was a huge disgusting ghetto about five years ago when I was using an early beta version of FF 1.0 and it supported about 10x more CSS and W3C standards than IE6. I was working on a project that could have benefited from RFC2397 data URIs, and I'd been running the FF beta for a few months, so I decided to build the app I was working on against it. This was one of my earliest brushes with building a web client, and my only previous development was building a hybrid with lots of jscript and dhtml on top of the InfoPath 1.0 beta (which was actually pretty sweet, considering IE6 underpinned everything I was doing). Anyhow, data URIs worked perfectly, and I was able to encode all manner of data into a single HTML payload for delivery to clients. Then I tried it on IE6. Almost nothing worked. It was laughable how terrible it looked and how much was missing. I couldn't believe that data URIs--which had been out for almost five years at the time--were unsupported on Microsoft's <2yr old flagship browser. We ended up moving the entire client into an XSL-FO implementation and using FOP to crank out PDFs. I feel like we did it almost out of spite, because we were pretty disillusioned with MS's browser compat story as a team. Anyhow, I haven't done much web since then--except locally-generated reports for smart clients through the WebBrowser control (thanks to everyone I pester about CSS, javascript, and DHTML during these "phases" :). As it happens, I had another opportunity to use the WebBrowser control in an environment where IE8 is present on the client, and I was amazed at how compliant it was--and a little shocked that a decade after the standard was created, the IE team finally got around to implementing data URIs. Well, better late than never, and it definitely helped my app. Thanks guys! <omitted_sarcasm_about_next_ten_years_of_ten-year-old_features_goes_here/> .NET WebBrowser control + IE8 == AW C'MON IE TEAM!!I'm a fan of the .net WebBrowser control. I used all the hacks and patches and shims that have been out forever until they finally released a sweet little supported one like in the 2.0 framework that worked just like the web bridge used in InfoPath. However, I have now been through two browser revs with it, and it's been a different kind of balls each time. Here's how WebBrowser works by default after installing IE8: It works just like IE7. WTF? All I'm saying is that it didn't work like that when you went from IE6 to IE7, so what's up with that? There are two ways around this: the way that works, and the way that is stupid and doesn't work.
Way the first: The Way That Does Not Work
Create the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_NATIVE_DOCUMENT_MODE and add a DWORD value using the name of your WebBrowser control-consuming application's EXE and set the data to integer 70000 and you'll get IE7 standards mode (if you can manage not to dick up your doctype). Set the data to integer 80000 and you'll get IE8 standards mode. I could not get this to work at all, even after following the careful instructions offered on the IEBlog for managing these settings.
What's that? A setting that you need to apply for every user? And it doesn't even work after all that PITA goodness? And nowhere on that page to they mention the way that just works? And it only makes sense for legacy apps and doesn't matter for new development? That's our IE team! Some day they will realize that no matter how much cruft is out there today, there will be 10x more tomorrow if all they ever do is add to the problem.
Way the second: The Way That Just Works
Drop <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8"/> into the head and have a valid doctype and you will experience IE8 and CSS 2.1 nirvana. Thank you and COME AGAIN! 5/7/2009 Windows 7 is even better than Phantoms, yo!Just replaced the shittiest, slowest operating system I've ever run in my life (Vista Business 32bit) with the fastest, best-looking operating system I've run in my life--Windows 7 64bit RC (which you can download free from here) on my ThinkPad X61 Tablet PC. Instead of a side-by-side comparison of my performance miseries with Vista, I'll just jot down a short list of things that are ridiculously fast:
It's just so fast and snappy I can't even recognize my little tablet. By comparison, each of these things has either been an ongoing sluggish mess in Vista or only worked half the time. Boot/shutdown and hibernate/resume were so godawful slow that I avoided them at all cost. Suspend/resume on vista almost takes as long as boot/shutdown does on Windows 7. Well, I couldn't be happier. Heres a short list of really cool features that are new to Win7 that I love already:
The only things not working yet are my tablet buttons and automatic screen orientation changes. I assume I need an applet or something from Lenovo to make the OS aware of the buttons. I'll see if there is one available for Vista 64 that might work. 4/29/2009 Reading '09My finished book count is standing at a meager "2" at the end of April '09. What happened? I just looked at the number of books I have with bookmarks in them (indicating a partial read) and I stopped counting at 15. I'm going to narrow that down and finish four or five this weekend, but that still leaves a big ol' pile to deal with. Only five of the partials are from my "borrowed" pile...if I borrowed a book from you (dennis, molly, rick, brian, neil, etc.), it might be a while before you get them back ;) TV season is almost over, so I'll soon have one less excuse to avoid reading. Hopefully I can buckle down and get my read on all summer long.
-Jesse 4/28/2009 I saw a woman die last nightMolly and I were talking about dinner last night after I got home from the grocery store when we heard a blood-curdling scream for help from a woman in the hallway, followed by swiftly running footsteps away from the area. I opened the door and saw a woman collapsed in the doorway of her apartment about 20 feet away. I ran to her to ask if she was alright. She was breathing in slow gasps and was totally unresponsive to my voice. She looked older, like in her late 50s, early 60s. I had never met her and didn't know her name. Now, I can guess how to take a pulse, and I've seen CPR done on television, but I had no idea what I was doing. Luckily within a few seconds, the other neighbors starting opening their doors and the boyfriend of the woman who had originally screamed for help came running toward the scene. The across-the-hall neighbor seemed completely frozen. I asked if he had a phone and if he could call 911. He thought for a second, and then disappeared. I asked the boyfriend if he knew CPR. He said yes and began looking for a pulse. He said it was irregular and started calling her name and rubbing her back. His girlfriend reappeared. She was on the phone with the police, and they asked her to describe if and how she was breathing. We told her that it was in gasping breaths every 30 seconds or so, and that she was otherwise unresponsive. By the time we timed another breath, we heard the sirens and people started running for the doors to make sure they could get into the building. The EMT felt for a pulse and called her name a couple of times and then said "Full arrest" into his radio. Within a minute a couple of different teams arrived (the FD and PD are on the same block as Molly's building). They began working on her immediately with a chest compression machine and a mobile defibrillator. The defib eventually shocked her once, but there was nothing they could do to restore a normal pulse. They worked on her for what felt like 20 minutes before finally calling time of death. I'm leaving a lot out, but it's pretty clinical stuff and I don't have a lot of personal perspective to offer. The neighbors said she's been in and out of the hospital lately, and that she was taking a lot of different medications. The police stuck around for a while to talk to the woman who found her and the apartment building people in order to get some contact information for her son. What a night. 4/21/2009 School on PauseAlso I stopped going to school for a bit while I get my life back together. I miss Japanese...but not the homework ;) I really miss my firends at Concordia too, but I'm Facebook friends with them now, so there's that. Hopefully I can get back into it again this year, but I really need to settle into my job and into my new relationship before I commit such a big part of my time to school once again. 4/20/2009 New Job (Again)So I quit working at McKesson. I really liked the project and the people, but I had a couple of great opportunities come right up and knock on my door. I thought about taking a job in Saint Cloud very briefly, but I don't think my love life, sanity, or physical health would survive a 2+hr commute every day. I turned down another opportunity initially, but they approached me again and I decided to take it, so now I'm working at PROSAR with my friend Dennis. 12/13/2008 Lots of changes in my lifeSo in the last month, my wife and I separated, I moved into a new place in Minneapolis, got a new car, and started a new job. I've gone into detail about the separation elsewhere, so I'm not going to go on about it here. My new place is a little efficiency near the U of M campus, I got a 2009 Toyota Yaris, and I'm working for a company that makes...MEDICAL SOFTWARE! Yeah, that last part was probably a huge surprise to anyone who knows me--talk about a stretch for my career! OK, so it's not actually a stretch.
I love the car and the new place so far, so onto the job front: This year I had an on/off contract with a local company to write software for construction projects. In October, they gutted their construction department and made it clear that there wouldn't be any work for me until the economy improved. Since my marriage was already on the skids, I wanted to get a full time job anyway, and that definitely gave me the push I needed. I hit CraigsList and immediately saw a listing for the job I'm working at now. I figured I was a lock right away, but it took a really long time to not only get things rolling, but to progress through the process. In the intervening 7 or 8 weeks, I went on a few other interviews and pestered all my friends to hook me into their networks (thanks to everyone who helped, btw!!) and I generally worried as jobless claims went through the roof week after week on the news. Once I got my foot in the door at the place I'm at now, things progressed very quickly and I was working there within two weeks of my first phone screen.
I'm not going to talk a lot about the job yet, except to say that I'll be writing WPF applications that are used by lab techs in hospitals. WPF is new to me, but they hired me based solely on my ability to digest cheese and juggle geese. When I'm not properly processing lactose or tending the department poultry, I will be learning a complicated service architecture from a very talented group of developers, and hopefully learning how lay out some wicked looking WPF views. 11/6/2008 University of Minnesota Sets Flu Shot RecordAnd I helped! I went with my shitashi tomodachi from Japanese class during the record-setting event (11,538!!) and we got shot together. I'm going to be riding my bike a lot this winter, so I need to remain flu-free :) University of Minnesota makes flu shot record try - MSNBC Wire Services- msnbc.com 11/3/2008 Best response from a public servant evar:"Jesus, dude." That's what the guy at the DMV said when he saw my double-plus-expired driver's license today. Let's just say it was probably closing on felony territory. Anyhow, his response was pretty funny, I think even he was surprised that he said it--it was sort of under his breath--but then looked up at me a little startled, like, "oops, maybe I shouldn't have said that." I just said, "Don't worry, I drive a bicycle. Usually." :D |
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