Thursday, July 24. 2008
Road Signs
1. Systems Administrator (Unix)
2. Database Administrator (Oracle maybe others if the pay is right)
or
3. Software Developer focusing on web-based applications. Although I just finished a Windows Service in C#.NET.
Regarding #3, yes, I do dabble in windows.
In the past few months I've discovered things about myself that have precipitated this. I no longer enjoy being a generalist, I used to get a kick out of fixing people's computers, but no longer. Desktop support in a large organization? Nope not getting anything there either. But I'm finding that cuddling up to a new installation of Ubuntu and coaxing it's services to life is exciting. I'm also excited about the prospect of next year's budget including a provision for RAC. Solving some of the problems with the C# program I just finished has left me flush with pride. Obviously, opportunities exist where DB Admin and Developer can coexist if you're doing development inside a database.
I simply cannot carry on doing everything, computing has changed so much that it truly takes a super-hero to be able to track all technologies on all fronts.
Saturday, May 31. 2008
Several Updates
Two, I'm traveling to Huntsville, AL next week to assist another Credit Union with their upcoming core system conversion. It'll be interesting to be a consultant for a week ;-)
Three, if you haven't seen this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muP9eH2p2PI then you're living in a hole. This video gives an incredible nod to the YouTube culture, and is one hell of a catchy tune. The fact that my daughter can identify a lot of the references was somewhat disturbing. :-)
Look out for Chris Crocker, and others who make a prominent appearance in the video. (Hey, Numa Numa guy, You Rock!) If you're not paying attention to the whole social media outlet scene then you're falling behind. Kids these days are less interested in the underpinnings of the technology (Layers 1-5) and are more focused at the higher levels of it "just working" (Layesr 6-7). As time moves on guys like me who really are interested in the underpinnings will become a rare species. Damn, there I go getting old again.
Thursday, May 1. 2008
Change, fear it, or love it, it's still a constant. Part Deux
Tuesday, April 29. 2008
Change, fear it, or love it, it's still a constant.
Monday, January 14. 2008
I Like Rain.
First, obviously I'm slacking in my narcissistic duties as a blogger. I will try to post more often.
Some updates, I've recently partnered up on a project that processes data from helicopters that are used for firefighting. Each helicopter is equipped with a SCADA unit that tracks GPS coordinates, how much they dropped, altitude, and numerous other things. These units are fairly innocuous since they are only used for data acquisition, and take no part in controlling the aircraft. The part that I work on however is the data processing. Using the "point data" I am creating spreadsheets that are used in billing. It's fairly complicated since I really do not understand 100% all of the data being captured. So I'm learning a lot about how these little boxes work. This is a paid gig, so once I complete the first stage of the program, there should be a fat check waiting on the end.
But what about the title of this entry?
On my way into work this morning, I was struck by how generally bleh I was feeling. Then I started to think about the rain, and was once again feeling a little more optimistic. See, I grew up in and around farms. My grandfathers on both sides were almond farmers (yes pronounced amond, because "when they hit the ground it knocks the 'L' out of them", read aloud for full effect). On one side they also grew peaches, and apricots. I spent a lot of time working as a child, although surely not as much as some. But why like rain? Because rain gives life, but that answer also is not terribly satisfying to me. So what other reasons could possibly exist. To find that answer, we must travel back to my childhood. For some reason I have vivid memories of kindergarten. Other grades are a blur, until about 5th grade, but that first year was the year I was introduced to the "Rainy Day Schedule". Which for some kids was akin to a death sentence, it meant horrific games of dodge ball. For me, it represented an upset in the status-quo, a sudden change that removed the daily routine and replaced it with something that was *different*. I wasn't terribly social as a child, that was something I grew into. So instead of being alone on the playground, or trying to make friends, I could do things like self-absorbed play, and reading. One other thing that I like about the rain, forgetting all the scientific explanations, is the shear magical event that rain is. It's responsible for all things that we see green, that isn't irrigated. It falls from the sky and washes away all the pollutants in the air. It can also be destructive, but then forces the building of something new. For those of us who rejoice in a certain amount of melancholy feeling in our life, it brings dark ominous things. For all this we return to water, it can help things grow, it can kill, it can change landscapes , it can be used for torture.
Tuesday, September 25. 2007
Surgically Altered
So anyway here I sit in bed, in pain, trying to decide if I should just double dose the Norco tabs.
Wednesday, July 18. 2007
George, you're so funny.
Fast forward to this morning. He was very worried about surgery, but his next few moments would likely change that. They gave him an anesthetic that causes amnesia.
As he's going under, his eyes closed to mere slits, "Far out, man" he utters.
"Get some pictures of me Amanda", he asks.
He then turns to the nurse and asks, "Where can I get some of this?"
The nurse replies, "It's not good for you to take it."
George being the guy that he is, and those of you who know him can attest to says, "Lady, I party pretty f'ing hard."
I'm still laughing every time I type this.
He gets out of surgery at noon, so I'll update what happened then.
Update:
He got out at noon, was expecting to be released in the afternoon. They repaired two tendons that were completely severed.
Saturday, June 16. 2007
Speaking Out.
This my friends is a wonderful thing, the taxpayers who support this region now can see what they are really spending their money on. We as taxpayers have a responsibility to keep our representatives honest, and we also should have more oversight into our public services. I am of the opinion that we have a lot of waste in the government sector. I've been reading through some of the comments, and it seems that the employees have a firm grasp on the nuts and bolts of what is happening in their organization.
There is a lot of waste in this organization, and I suspect that if I had this kind of insight into my local government, I might even be more sickened. Hopefully now, the taxpayers who pay the bills will get word of what is really happening to their dollars and begin to voice their disapproval.
So rise up folks, stop accepting from your politicians "business as usual" and make this representative democracy work. If it's not already too late.
Tuesday, May 29. 2007
Iterators
Perl:
foreach my $value ( @values ) {
# -- Do something with the value
}
Ruby:
values.each do |value|
# -- Do something with the value
end
So not much different for either. Those are pretty pedestrian examples. Lets do something a little more complicated. Iterate through rows in a database.
Perl:
my $sth = $dbh->prepare("select col1, col2, col3, col4 from foo where bar = 'baz'");
$sth->execute();
while ( my $row = $sth->fetchrow_hash() ) {
# Do something here
}
$sth->finish();
Ruby:
sth = dbh.execute("select col1, col2, col3, col4 from foo where bar = 'baz'") # One step executes.
sth.fetch_hash do |row|
# Do something with the row
end
And there you have it, iterators in a nutshell. Ruby also support one liner iterators by doing this:
values.each { |value| a = value * 2 }
Note that curlies can be multiple lines, but the general consensus is that curlies are reserved for one-liners. Ruby also lacks semi-colons. These are reserved for one liners to seperate individual statements.
Friday, May 25. 2007
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Rubyisms
For example:
Perl:
my $string = "my shiny pony";
my $trunc = substr($string, 0, 2);
$trunc now equals "my"Ruby:
string = "my shiny pony"
trunc = string[0..1]
trunc now equals "my"It gets better in Ruby I can do this:
string[0..1] = 'The'
And guess what? "string" now equals "The shiny pony". These are just some simple examples on how ruby can shorten code. Next post I'll point out Modules and Classes which are even of greater simplicity.
Wednesday, May 23. 2007
Python, and why "RedHeads" are the new fashion.
So Python, I'll continue to respect you, you did try. But someone loved me more.
Monday, April 16. 2007
Brace Yourselves Perl Buddies.
I've always given the same response every time, "I could never get over the whitespace restrictions." Perhaps its my brief experience with FORTRAN, or maybe I'm just a free spirit. Most modern languages no longer make whitespace part of the syntax. So recently, I was asked some questions about what I knew about Python, and like all good hackers, I've dabbled with it by fixing bugs. However, I have never started a full-fledged project of my own. So using the wonderful intarweb, I'm going to learn some Python.
Good news though, from what I've read to date, Python scales well for large projects. So I may focus on some basic configuration utilities for servers at work.
On to other news, my daughter and I have gotten our Yellow Belts now. We've been taking classes in Ho Kuk Mu Sool at Laird's Academy. We both broke our boards, now we get to learn 4 more forms before advancing to our next belt.
Saturday, April 14. 2007
Feels good to be feeling good again.
So far, as advertised, Ubuntu is "just working". It came up just fine under pxeboot and is happily downloading packages as I type this.
The office is now more clean, and with a few more tweaks, I'll be ready to hack on the MAME cabinet.
Saturday, April 7. 2007
Where is my Camera?
- Carry the Mamiya or Yashica
- Carry the film I really want
- When finished with a roll, process it

