Joey Gibson's Blog

Archive for the ‘general’ Category

Last Thursday, on the way home from the office, I got on I-285 and quickly merged over five lanes to the left. I then realized that my accelerator was no longer making the car go faster. Fortunately I was on a long, downhill slope, and I had some built-up momentum, so I didn’t get stuck. I then coasted over six lanes to get to the righthand shoulder. Once there, I turned the car off, then back on. To my surprise, the tachometer jumped up, as it should have, when I pressed the gas pedal. I was able to drive the remaining 28 miles home without incident. But I knew there was probably something wrong with the transmission, based on how hard it was shifting.

The next day, I took it to my usual shop, and after checking it out, they told me that there was something wrong with the transmission, but they could not fix it. Since Saturn is no longer in business, parts are already getting scarce. I had already decided that unless the needed repairs were extremely cheap, I wasn’t going to sink any more money into it. This settled it.

On Saturday, we test drove and bought a new 2010 Ford Focus. It’s a very pretty red. I really wanted a blue one, but none of the six dealerships anywhere near us had an SEL model in blue. But once I saw the red, I liked it enough to get it. So far, I like it. It comes with the SYNC system, which is nice, but not without its quirks and problems. The car is peppy (for a 4 cylinder), drives smoothly and is very quiet in the cabin, even at high speed. Every time I drive it, it grows on me a bit more.

If you’re interested, here are some photos of it.

Tonight, whilst reading my lesson for Sunday School, I came across a quote that I really like. I normally don’t get much out of quotes, since generally they are out of context, don’t stand alone very well and can be easily misused because of that. This one, however, is complete all by itself. And it’s quite deep. It was spoken/written by one of three men: Alexander Chalmers, Allan K. Chalmers or Joseph Addison. Whoever said it, here it is:

The three grand essentials of happiness are: Something to do, someone [something] to love, and something to hope for.

I really like that. The quote as I read it in my book had “something to love” instead of “someone to love,” but either one works. If you try to center your life on those three tenets, it seems to me, your life will eventually approach happiness.

Using that as a benchmark, my life is overflowing with happiness. And it is.

Yesterday was my 40th birthday. I was not happy about that particular number approaching, but now that it’s over, I feel great. My friend Steve Benfield emailed me early yesterday with the subject, “Welcome To Old…” which got the day off to a humorous start. I got tons of well-wishes from friends, many of whom I haven’t actually seen in several years. I had a demanding Tae Kwon Do class last night, and then I came home to a meal of tacos, lovingly prepared by my wonderful son, Thomas. He also baked me a cake, with chocolate frosting. Yum!

I have it pretty good. :-)

As you can probably tell, I haven’t been motivated to write anything in well over a month. I don’t know why, but that’s what’s happened. I didn’t finish my Lenten project, though I am still occasionally working on it. I did just earn my orange belt in Tae Kwon Do, so that’s cool. And I’m going to be 40 on Tuesday, which is not cool, but it’s sort of unavoidable. I had a lovely birthday dinner with my entire family on Saturday night at Stoney River, which is the most-bestest steakhouse in the world. I loves me some garlic mashed potatoes.

I have an idea for a post about direct vs. indirect quotations in the Greek NT text, but I haven’t fully scoped it out yet. Maybe it will be coming soon. Maybe not.

I’m doing a lot more playing around with Scala, though I am still a lightweight. Sometimes when I’m reading other people’s Scala code, I feel very uneasy about my skills. Scala is beautiful and elegant, but sometimes the terseness of it make it a little overwhelming.

I’m testing out Mercurial for version control. I also tried Git, but based on what I’ve read, and what I’ve experienced, I think Mercurial is the better choice, at least right now. Git is the new, sexy thing, but Mercurial is better established, and the tooling is far better than for Git. Git is gaining ground, but I’m going to stick with Hg for now. I just bought “Mercurial: The Definitive Guide” from O’Reilly, and I’m reading it now. My VP has started asking questions about DVCS and should we switch from SVN and such, so this experiment will be useful shortly.

I’m playing a lot of backgammon. I taught my mother-in-law to play a few weeks ago, and my mother last night. Both picked it up quickly. I’m reading “The Backgammon Book” by Jacoby and Crawford, and trying to commit all the charts and probabilities to memory and get some real strategy going. My game is improving, but I’m still easily beatable.

Oh, and I”ve lost 22 pounds since February 28. Yay, me!

So, there you have it. All two of you now know why there hasn’t been anything new here for a while.

Update, the First: As I said back on February 19, I’m working on translating the Gospel of Luke from Greek into English as a Lenten project. Once I changed the project from simply reading the text in Greek, to translating and analyzing the Greek text in two different forms and writing down a reasonable translation, I knew that my timeline was going to shift. I am now certain that I won’t be finished with the project before Easter. There’s just no way around it. I haven’t had nearly as much time for translation as I’d hoped, and the additional research takes up what little time I do have. Does this mean I’m giving up on the project? No. What it means is that even though I won’t be finished by Easter, I’m going to continue the work until it’s completed, however long that might take. If I’m still working on it in May, that’s fine. I will complete it, it just won’t be when I originally planned.

Update, the Second: As I said on March 1, I have started a new exercise regimen. I am getting up at 5:00 AM, Sunday – Friday, to workout. (To be honest, I have slept in until 5:30 a couple of days.) Each day I get up, do some warmups to get my blood pumping, and then practice every Tae Kwon Do kick, block and punch that I’ve learned so far, multiple times per side. I then go through my TKD forms (3 of them, so far), and then do pushups & sit-ups or squats. I may be dropping the 100 Push-Ups challenge from the regimen, for now, because yesterday when I tried to do a push-up, my right biceps made a sound that was not a good one, and it felt like if I continued, something was going to snap. Last Thursday, the last 5 push-ups really hurt, and not in that “pain is just fear leaving the body” sort of way. This was “if you do one more of these, at least one muscle in this group is going to break” way. I need to at least lay off the push-ups for a week or so and then try again. We’ll see.

The good news is that so far, I’ve lost 13 pounds. It’s been well over a year since I’ve been at this weight, so I’m quite happy with that. I just need to stay motivated and keep at it.

And finally, the trophy. I’ve been a member of Grayson NPS Tae Kwon Do since August 2009. This past weekend, 22 of us went to the ICMA Region 2 Martial Arts Tournament. I was part of the demo team, which took 2nd place (out of 7 teams) in the team demo competition. I also won 3rd place (out of 5) for martial arts forms (I did Taegeuk Ee Jang, for those of you familiar with TKD). Between us, we won 14 trophies, which is pretty darn good.

Much video was shot of the various competitions. As it gets posted, I will provide links.

I don’t know which country this commercial aired in, but it’s pretty good. And there’s a twist.

Didn’t see that coming, did you?

I saw this video linked from this Cracked article about lame “progressive rock,” and I just had to share it. The article is funny as heck, even though I love Rush, who are considered a progrock band. Anyway they linked to this video, which is pretty silly. Actually, musically, it’s quite good; It’s just the yodel solo and flute solo and the wild eyes of the yodeler/flautist that make it goofy.

My Windows 7 Party Kit arrived this afternoon via UPS, and I decided to be like the cool kids and film myself taking the bits out of the box and discussing them. I should have gotten Thomas to hold the camera for me, but he was doing something else at the time (I think). Anyway, I held the camera myself, so it’s a bit Blair Witch in terms of cinematography.

No, don’t start checking your thermometers to see if Hell has frozen over. Believe it or not, I’m actually hosting a Windows 7 Launch Party. I know, I know. I’ve become quite a Mac Bigot™ over the years, and have not had anything good to say about Windows for a very long time. But things are different now.

I’ve been using Windows 7 on my netbook for a couple of months now, and it works wonderfully well. My company gave us Windows 7 the day it went RTM, and my work laptop has been rock solid since I 86′d Vista and upgraded to Win7. And last Saturday night, my son’s 2006 vintage AMD machine stopped booting. After trying to repair whatever might have been wrong with the XP that was on it, I decided to see if Win7 would run on it. I installed it and it runs better now than it did before. And Thomas loves the way Win7 looks.

I like the fact that it doesn’t BSOD every 2 hours, like Vista on my work laptop did.

So, why am I doing this party thing? Well, when I first heard about it on TWiT, I laughed. A lot of people laughed. But then I thought about it a bit. For doing just a little bit of work, such as inviting friends who probably won’t come ;-), I get some neat collectible Win7 stuff, and a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate “Signature Edition” which, apparently, means Steve Ballmer signed the box, or something like that. That seemed like a fair trade to me.

I have invited several people to the party, but most have not yet RSVP’d. So, I’m extending this invitation to people who know me in the real world, live somewhere near Atlanta, and are willing to drive out East to where I live. The “know me in the real world” bit is very important, as I won’t give my home address to some crazed maniac I only know through the aether. Crazed maniacs I know IRL are fine.

The party is Saturday, October 24 at 8:04 PM. I will have my netbook out if people want to look at it with Win7, and you can feel free to “ooh” and “ah” over it. If you’re interested in coming, email me.

Here’s the text of the invitation that I wrote for houseparty.com to send out in the invitations:

Hey Friend of Joey,

You’re receiving this because I’m throwing a Windows 7 Launch Party. Yes, you read that right: the Mac Bigot is hosting a Windows party. Why? Because I actually like Win7, and I thought it might be fun. (And I get a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate…) If you come, we can stand around my ASUS Netbook or my Dell laptop, both of which have Win7 loaded, and ogle them and their awesomeness, for which there is no charge. There will be a modicum of food and libation, which means Cheetohs and Coke, most likely. ;-) As part of the “party pack” we get Windows7 plates and napkins and such, which will only enhance the joy!

All kidding aside, I hope you can come.

So, if that doesn’t make you want to come, I don’t know what will. :-)

As the title suggests, about 30 minutes ago a guy comes to the door, wanting to sell me some meat. That sounds like the setup for a bad joke, but it isn’t. My wife told him to wait outside, and then she came and got me. I went out on the porch and he proceeded to tell me that he was from “The Cattle Exchange” and that he had some great deals on “steaks, pork, chicken and seafood.” I walked up to his truck, and he proceeded to show me a box of nice-looking, vacuum-packaged steaks. After showing me all the meat, he whipped out a price list. Here’s a recap of the ensuing discussion

Him: Now, if you were to order this online, it would cost you $451. But when I’m out here, doing what I do, I’m supposed to get $299…

Me: Wow. That’s still a lot of money.

Him: … and if you buy the case, I’ll throw in a case of chicken for $20.

Me: That’s still an awful lot of money for meat.

Him: Well, what if I cut another $100 off that price?

Me: You know, I’m gonna pass. We just don’t eat that much steak. Plus, that’s still a lot of money, to a company I’ve never heard of, and a guy who showed up at my door wanting to sell me some meat. No offense. (That last was said in my best Paulie Walnuts voice, with the appropriate hand gestures.) I’ll look your company up online and maybe think about it.

He then packed up his wares and left.

The whole thing just felt wrong. My first thought was that either this guy is ripping off his company, and selling it for less than he was supposed to, or his company was ripping people off on their website. I came back inside and looked up the company. It turns out my Spidey Sense™ was spot on with this outfit. Check out this headline Atlanta Cattle Exchange Complaints – Door-to-door meat sellers rip off! The comments are pretty enlightening, too. Looks like I made the right decision in not trusting him. It’s basically a scam from start to finish.

So, if a guy shows up at your door trying to sell you some meat, you should… wait for it… send him packing. Get it? Get it? Meat… packing… Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week. Try the veal and remember to tip your waitress.

In Homewood, AL.

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A sad, abandoned (?), building across the street from #wcbhm09

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This grouping of Gummi Colas came in a bag Thomas got today. He thought it was funny, and both of us thought it resembled a gun belt. He demanded that I post the photo. ;-)

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YouTube – The Truth About Bottled Water.

I have to be honest, I do drink bottled water, but it’s all about the convenience for me. My company provides us with bottled water when we’re in the office, but I bought a Pur filtering pitcher that I keep in the fridge to refill the bottle after I drink one.

In April of 2008, the owner of the company I worked for told me that he was, effectively, shutting down the company and that I needed to find a new job by June. I was not happy. Over the previous 3.5 years, I had been the entire tech department, I had built every piece of software the company had, and I was extremely emotionally invested in the company. I started looking at opportunities and chased several opportunities, but none panned out.

Ironically, the company I was leaving was an online job search company…

Finally, I contacted an old friend to see if his company had any opportunities. They did, and I interviewed with the team the following week. It was a *six hour interview*, during which my friend stayed out of it, to keep any personal bias from influencing the team. A few days later, they made an offer, which I accepted. Did I mention the *six hour interview*?

I’ve been with them for nearly a year and I can honestly say it’s the best fit in a job I’ve ever experienced. While I enjoyed working completely alone, as I had done for the previous 3.5 years, the team I have joined is the best, and smarted, I’ve ever seen.

Looking at it now, my previous company closing was really the best thing that could have happened to me.

Yesterday about 4:30 I tried to check my email, but got nothing more than a string of 502 errors from the server. My mail server is a Google Domain Apps account, which means my MX record points to Google, and they handle the rest. I was about to leave the office, so I figured I would just check later when I got home. I checked from my iPhone a few times on the way, but it was still borked. About two hours after the problem began, it cleared up again, and is still working fine.

During the outage, I started thinking about this situation. I have 916 megabytes of email stored in my Gmail account. That’s a lot, though it is only 12% of my quota. That’s three years of email that I don’t want to lose. And I’m completely at the mercy of “the cloud” with respect to my email. There is no way for me to back that email up and Google makes no guarantees about data retention. They give us 7G+ of space, but they don’t claim to do any backups or that they can get your email back if it goes away. Is this just a cost of living in the cloud? I wouldn’t trade my Gmail account for anything, so I guess I just have to live with the danger, right? Is there anything a Gmail user can do to ensure their email has some sort of protection? I know that I could open another gmail account and have every incoming email forward to that other account, but is that really the only choice? Google does offer a plan that is $50/email address/year, and while it does have a 99.9% uptime guarantee, it doesn’t say anything about backups.

What would be nice is an interface from Gmail to Mozy or Carbonite or some other online backup service. Each Gmail user could then decide if he wanted to contract with one of those third-party services for backups, or just take his chances.

I complained before about the abysmal storage situation on our Wii. Well, our troubles are lessened, if not necessarily over. On March 25, Nintendo released the latest version of the Wii OS. I only got it three days ago, because our Wii has been acting up, hardware-wise, and I’ve had it turned off. IGN has the full skinny on the update.

Basically, it makes much better use of your SD card, allowing you to keep things on the SD card, and automatically swapping them to the system memory when you need them. I bought two SD cards Monday night, and have moved all our lesser-used channels we want to keep to one card, and setup the other as my Rock Band 2 downloadable content card. I now have nearly 900 free “blocks” on the internal storage, which should mean I won’t run out when downloading RB2 songs again.

For those of you who saw my tweets about losing all my Rock Band 2 data, here’s the full story. A couple of weeks ago, I was buying songs from the RB2 store when I ran out of space on the internal storage. I figured I’d just try again later, so I went to play a song. After playing a song, the game complained that it couldn’t save my progress. I exited the game and restarted, only to be asked if I wanted to create a new save file (uh oh). I said “no” and it said that since I didn’t create a new file, my progress couldn’t be saved. I exited and restarted, this time saying “yes” to create the file. Of course, it created a new one, and all my data was lost. Actually, it was already lost, but this was the final nail in the coffin. I’ve reconnected the new save file to my online account, but all of my character and band data are gone forever. That really sucks, because I’d unlocked tons of songs, cities and venues. Now I have to start over from scratch. :-( At least with the new OS upgrade, I shouldn’t lose my data again because of space issues.

As for the hardware issues I mentioned, the disc drive has been getting extremely noisy and, lately, flaky. Basically, the drive makes lots of noise and sometimes stops spinning altogether. Once it stops spinning, the game chokes and dies and you have to reboot. Based on some things I’ve read on the web, booting the Wii without a disc in the drive helps, and that’s what I’m seeing, too. I really don’t want to have to buy a new Wii, but we may have to before long.

I don’t know that I’d say I’m truly famous, but I am somewhat well-known, in certain circles. I am co-author of the book “Ant Developer’s Handbook”, published by SAMS in 2002. It sold moderately well. I have been published in Java Developer’s Journal twice, in 2002 and 2003.

I am also the creator of MiddleClickClose, a Safari plugin that enables the closing of tabs by clicking your middle mouse button, and for ExportToArchive, a plugin for iPhoto that allows exporting of photos to Zip and other compressed formats.

Some of my friends know that I was an uncredited extra in the box office flop, “Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers”, from way back in 1988. For three days in 1988 I sat around an abandoned YMCA camp in Waco, GA, waiting to be called to the set. I eventually made it into one scene.

This is a horribly cheesy, yet oddly fun movie starring the wrestler Roddy Piper. It boasts one of the longest, most tedious, fight scenes *ever* in a film. My favorite line features Roddy walking into a bank full of concealed aliens. He walks in and to get everyone's attention, he utters this classic line:

I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… and I'm all out of bubblegum.

We got a new Flip Video MinoHD Camcorder yesterday from Amazon. It’s a very neat little device. It records in HD and holds up to 60 minutes of video on its solid state storage. It attaches to your computer, Mac or PC, using a built-in USB connection, and the first time you attach it to a machine, it installs its software. The above video was shot by Thomas about an hour after we opened the box. I imported the video into iMovie and poked around until I figured out how to add the title cards. Not an Oscar-worthy production, to be sure! Still, it was fun making it. I look awful in it, so please be kind with your comments. :-)