When the Diaper Genie instructions state: “Stop pushing diapers through when you feel resistence,” pay attention! Pushing too many diapers through will break the bag inside, causing foul diaper smell to escape with the foul diapers when you try to empty the container.
After our previous water problems were fixed, I expected that life would return to normal. To my surprise, I was greeted by half a dozen representatives of the water company, a representative of the cable company, a representative of the power company, and a backhoe when I got home from work on Friday. The line feeding our house had developed a leak, presumably from the increase in water pressure from fixing the prior leak. Thankfully, the backhoe was digging up part of the yard across the street and not my yard. All of the people present just made it a little difficult to get into our driveway. Since it was late on a Friday afternoon, they just jumped a small rubber line from our neighbors feed into ours and left. We were without water for 10 minutes or so, but I assumed that they would be back Monday to fix the problem.
Monday and Tuesday come and go with people out in our front yard digging around. However, there was no visible change to my eyes. The rubber jump line still went from our neighbors water line to ours. This morning proved to be a little different. I got up and my normal time and got in the shower. Halfway through the shower, the water was cut off. After letting fly a few choice expletives, I realized that there was not much I could do about it, dried off, and set about trying to gather up everything I would need for work, checking the water every few minutes to see if it was cut on again. After about 20 minutes, the water finally was cut back on. I peeked out the window and saw the water reps. filling back in the holes that they had made. I quickly jumped back in the shower so that I could finish getting ready for work. As I left for work, the workers were still filling in holes, but it looks like our water line has been repaired. Hopefully, we will not have to go through this again anytime soon.
It’s just another manic Monday
I wish it was Sunday
‘Cause that’s my funday
An I-don’t-have-to-run day
It’s just another manic MondayBut I can’t be late
‘Cause then I guess I just won’t get paid
These are the days
When you wish your bed was already madeHave to catch an early train
Got to be to work by nine
And if I had an aeroplane
I still couldn’t make it on timeBy: The Bangles
Yep, Manic Monday. That’s what today has been for me.
I feel the pull of Triple-Chocolate Splenda Ice Cream 
Why is it that car manufacturers feel the need to heavily use Macromedia Flash on virtually all of their websites? I mean, I can understand wanting to do a little bit of animation to show the cars moving, but a large number of the sites use Flash for content that is extremely static. All that accomplishes, really, is making it so that search engines cannot crawl through the data on the vehicles — which makes it that much harder to find manufacturer information on vehicles. Also, at least on every computer that I use, interacting with a Flash site just feels sluggish compared to a regular HTML/CSS website. The auto manufacturers could accomplish much the same effects (minus the animations) with a well-designed HTML/CSS page, with the added benefit of, oh I don’t know, Google searchability?
Where did all the people come from? It’s like someone knocked over an anthill…there were cars everywhere as far as the eye could see. I knew I wasn’t going to get into work anytime soon.
Man, it took me 40 minutes to get to work….and I only live 15 minutes away. What is it about the first week of school that makes Madison go absolutely crazy? I know, the parents of first-time school-goers are taking them to school, but still….is that any reason to have traffic backed up from the Volkswagon dealership all the way out to Wall-Triana? I’m thinking more people need to carpool. It’s environmentally friendly and all, but most importantly, people wouldn’t be in my way! 
That hybrid is looking better and better if more of my mornings are going be spent like this. At least everytime I hit the brakes it would charge my battery. If I’m gonna be stuck in traffic, it might as well do something for me. 
Here it is, coming up on 8:30am, and I have already been awake for four hours. That’s harsh. I considered getting up and coming into work when I woke up at 4:30 this morning (and by that I mean WOKE UP — there was no going back to sleep… I tried for an hour), but the need to put my car in the shop overpowered the need to go in, and thusly come home, early. So what did I do? Waste time on the computer upstairs reading webcomics until 6:30 at which point I was hungry enough to deal with the pups.
The funny thing is, I have been up long enough now that I am wide awake, so I will probably be insanely productive this morning. However, I will probably crash by midafternoon…
Well, we have been having technical difficulties here lately….thus the lack of posting. But, things seem to be up and running, for the moment at least, so some updates are in order.
This week started out pretty crappy with a pulled neck. Since then, I have been high on drugs and practically bathing in icy hot in order to get some relief. The end result has been a cranky old woman who smells like a medicine cabinet. I thought I had been doing well with the icy hot smell until I went to a friend’s house on Tues. When the conversation turned to “Oh, I wondered what that smell was when you came in…”, I made a mental note to myself to maybe not use so much next time. Oh well, I got to stay and hang out so the smell must not have been too bad. And I didn’t receive any funny looks at work, except when I was putting more on. I made sure to use up my 4 times a day of icy hot. Aaahhh, Icy Hot! What a wonderful invention. And you know, the smell could be worse. At least it has a minty smell to it.
So, I have been battling a stiff neck all week. Each day it has gotten progressively better. I am no longer doing the full body turn in order to see someone standing next to me….and I can now look at the ceiling without feeling intense pain. As a result, I can now look up at Jonathan with few problems, (you never realize how much you look up until you can’t )
Anyway, Jon has been having a rough time of it too. He hasn’t been sleeping well since last Fri. night. He managed to sleep better last night….meaning he didn’t get out of bed and go play on the computer or read, as far as I know anyway. Hopefully he is coming out of his insomniac cycle for the time being and I certainly hope my neck no longer hurts by the end of weekend. I am unaccustomed to sleeping on my back all night long. I really want to sleep on my side again…but it hurts enough to keep me awake.
Man, what a pair we are. I’m not sure what is going to become of us. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
As a software developer, working with abstractions is a part of my daily life. When I am reading a section of code and I see that a particular class exposes the interface for a Factory, I know what that class is supposed to be used for, because I know what a Factory is used for (namely, making things). Likewise, when I am designing a section of code, if I know that the purpose of the code is to make something, I will expose the interface for a Factory because that allows other developers to read my code and know what the code is supposed to do. Making software more readable and easier to reason about is one of the purposes of software abstractions.
In general, when designing a software subsystem, one should choose the simplest possible abstraction that will get across the point. Obviously, the abstraction cannot be any simpler than that or it will not communicate the intent of the subsystem. However, making the abstraction as simple as necessary can be difficult. Is the abstraction simple enough or does it contain unneeded complexity?
What is the point of all of this? While working on the design of a new subsystem, I encountered a place where a particular abstraction would be perfect. The interface for the abstraction was already designed and it was in use in several parts of the system, so it should be readily apparent to others reading my code what it is my subsystem does. Imagine my dismay when the nice, simple, clean abstraction that I remembered no longer bore any resemblance to the nice, simple, ideal. Over the years, more and more cruft had been added into the simple interface that is unnecessary for the problem at hand. Instead of having an interface Foo, I now have an interface FooWithWidgetAndFactory. So, I am torn between two alternatives:
Unfortunately, while alternative #1 is the best approach, it is also the most time-consuming and unrealistic of the two (probably several man-weeks). Ironically, if that approach had been taken the very first time this problem cropped up, I probably would not be in the situation of having to choose between the two (since everyone after the first person would have mimicked the first person). So, I suppose I will have to get over trying to do the right thing and choose #2, even though I do not like it.
Still wondering what the point is? I did not sleep last night and am cranky and this just irked me enough into posting about it.
Who would have thought that upgrading to a new DVD player would have been so difficult? For those of you playing the home game, here is what happened. Sunday afternoon, the driver motor on my Panasonic 5-disc HTS died. After doing some research, it turns out that this is a relatively common occurrence with Panasonic DVD players of any kind, not just the particular model that I have. Now, this is not a complete loss. I can still use the HTS as a rather fancy radio and a sound system for the GameCube — it just cannot play DVDs, nor will it ever provide 5.1 surround sound again (since there are neither digital nor analog 5.1 inputs to the system, only stereo inputs). I have come to realize that while the Panasonic was a good starter system — it lasted me for three years — I really do not want to get burned by another all-in-one unit. So, Sunday afternoon I set out on a quest to find a replacement DVD player with the intent of just getting a the player itself and upgrading the surround system with a receiver and speakers at some point in the future.
Now don’t get me wrong — I do my research. I searched many different sites, from electronics stores to review sites, looking for a DVD player that would fit my needs; that is, another multi-disc player that would have a variety of video outputs and at least analog stereo and digital optical audio outputs (I am thinking ahead to a receiver that will handle the Dolby 5.1 that the optical output will provide). Finally, I settled on one that I liked, a Sony 5-disc player whose biggest problem according to reviewers was that it could not shuffle among all five discs, but only in one disc at a time. It was reasonably priced, all I had to do was find it in town, which became the problem. No store had it. Let me correct that. Several stores had the unit as a display: Best Buy, Circuit City, Sears, etc. But not a one of them had it in the store, nor were they planning on getting any more in. My hopes dashed, I turned online. There, I could find it available through Amazon and other retailers, but with a several week lead time. It appears that I had to find another DVD player to fill the void left in my HTS.
After some more research, I found a replacement system. It is an Onkyo 6-disc changer. Now, the difference between the Onkyo and the Sony, beside holding an extra disc, is that the Sony appears to have a better video processing unit, while the Onkyo can perform the mystical multi-disc shuffle that Sony cannot. Also, the Sony supports SACD, while the Onkyo does not. Finally, the Onkyo is approximately $80 more. However, the price difference comes in from the quality of the player — Sony is on the high end of the low-end consumer electronics market while Onkyo is on the low end of the high-end consumer electronics market. However, I was foiled yet again in my attempts to find the unit in town. The only store that carries the unit is Circuit City and they will not have any in for a few more days. Further more, Circuit City (and Best Buy) are extremely misleading in their sales information. From the research that I have done, I have a pretty good idea of the feature sets and specs of every DVD changer that I have looked at in the stores. However, both stores have blatantly mislabeled their products, both online and inside the stores as to what the specs of their changers are. Either that or the manufacturer is wrong. However, given the two alternatives, I would lay the blame on the electronics retailers. I will not go into the kind of service I received, let us just say that I was more an expert on the system than the sales reps.
So, frustrated once again, I returned to Sony’s website where I found a new model of 5-disc changer that looks to be replacing the one that I found originally. Doing a side by side comparison of the manufacturer’s website, along with at Crutchfield, it appears to have a superior featureset to the Onkyo in every respect, except for the shuffle and the lack of support for one disc. But I think I can live without those two features since the price appears just right for me. Now, I just have to find one somewhere. I think that if I cannot find it in town this weekend, I will give up and order it off of the Internet, since it only has a one or two day lead time.
As a side note, I have to admit that I was tempted by the Sony 400-disc changer that was had a similar feature set to the one that I think I will ultimately get. However, even if I put all of my DVDs and CDs in the changer, I do not think I could fill it and I am pretty sure that I would never be able to find what I wanted to watch/listen to in it.
I hate Matlab……
That is all.