A Glimpse

I've mentioned Pat* before. Feast your eyes on this:

Pat: don't use byref. please for the love of god
Pat: haha
Pat: :)
me: what do you mean about byref?
me: it's appropriate in some cases.
Pat: i think it's confusing and rarely appropraite
Pat: it's too subtle
Pat: i don't want to debate software right now.

*Name changed, blah blah...

Someone Seems To Have Forgotten His Ten Arm Surgeries

"...Chad Pennington's ability to keep defenses honest aerially..."

Really now?

Sorry But I Can't Hold It In Any Longer

OK, I promised myself I would wait at least a month after leaving my current job before posting any bad stories about it, but I just can't hold this one in. My project has a custom filetype associated with it. I wrote code to parse the command-line arguments and open the file, like so:

myexe.exe -f "c:\filename"

So I was surprised when I came in to work this morning and my file association/command line code didn't work. I check the history in version control and find that my esteemed coworker, Pat*, had changed it. I decided to be diplomatic (since I didn't want to piss off people to whom I would not have a chance to reverse any more impressions) and sent out an email to the team:

Did someone change the code for using command line arguments for file associations? All of a sudden this morning I can't double-click and run a file. It looks like someone modified the command line stuff...

I get this response from Pat:

I fixed it, as it was broken. Come over and I'll explain.

(Note: this is one of Pat's annoying tendencies. When he has to explain something he did that invariably is a bad idea or mistake, he always wants to explain in person.) So I trot my butt over there to listen to his story. Turns out when he was setting up our project to work with our deployment software, he entered in the file association code the same as his last project. That is to say, without the space between the "-f" and the filename. So obviously the association wouldn't work.

Instead of adding the space to his code, or even bothering to look and discover what was wrong, he edited the source code of the project to work his way, which of course broke the rest of our builds once he checked in the code. Then he had the gall to suggest that this problem was my fault!

Thank God I'm outta there.

* All names have been changed to protect the incompetent.

Entropy Leads To Solar Power

This is a really brief post. Doing things creates entropy. Making energy creates entropy. That means that wind, hydroponic, coal, nuclear, gas, oil, and fusion energy sources all create entropy. In terms of energy production, entropy means pollution. Therefore, the best source of energy we can get is solar, since it's the only one that comes from outside our otherwise-closed system (earth).

Just had to get that out there.

Random

So I sucked it up and did some more troubleshooting with the 360... it's definitely red ringed, so I got the UPS label from Microsoft to ship it for repair/replacement. I hope I get one of the ones with a quieter optical drive.

In other news, I got a new job. Yeah, awesome. No more of the crap I've been dealing with, only new crap. The thing I'm most nervous about is going from being the big fish in a small pond to just another fish in a big pond (replace "big" with "professionally good" and you get the idea). I start next Wednesday, so stay tuned for more on that (or don't, or whatever).

And I've been updating my Todo list regularly as I fix things. I have a hard-copy of the current list in my moleskin notebook I've been carrying around... again.

Totally Freaked Out

My XBox just red-ringed, but it wasn't that simple. In a dark, quiet house at 11:23PM on Monday night, I popped in my GTAIV for a little stress relief. The console made sort of a braking sound, but then started to load as normal. Niko appears, I walk out my apartment, jack a red sports car, and check the map.

And the screen locks up with some static vertical lines flickering.

Ok, fine, a little weird whatever. I shut the XBox off and back on. It boots up, starts loading, makes the same braking sound, but then Niko appears. I move him to the elevator...

And again the static comes back with a crackly sound.

At this point I was actually scared shitless. I can't rationalize it, but somehow I thought that GTAIV is becoming self aware, or some other seriously scary shit. I don't know, but I was freaking out.

Freak. Ing. Out.

I jumped up and nearly ran to change the channel to TV or something non-threatening. With the Colbert Report on, I dared to turn on the console one last time.

Red ring of death.

I swear this was The Ring for how scared I was.

I won't be turning on the XBox until it's high noon.

Calling All Softball Players

Hey anyone who is reading, my softball team needs about 3-4 more people, 1-2 more girls. If you're interested in a recreational once-a-week league, let me know!

Fantasy Baseball Trade: Post Mortem AGAIN

Just like that, I fired off another trade in the same league: I got Jair Jurrjens for JJ Hardy.

New dude:
Jurrjens has been solid for the Braves so far, and I hope he doesn't get shut down early.

Cya later dude:
Hardy profiles like a lesser Tulowitzki (which is funny since I just traded for Tulo). He's been on fire lately, and I can only afford to trade him since I have Tulo.

Conclusion:
Seems like a trade that helps both teams. Hardy replaces Theriot on his team, and Jurrjens enters a rotation of Harden, Zambrano, Blackburn, Campillo, and Slowey.

Fantasy Baseball Trade: Post Mortem

I pulled off my latest trade in fantasy baseball yesterday*. I got Robinson Cano and Adam Wainwright for BJ Upton and Bobby Abreu.

New guys:
Cano is a notorious 2nd half player, and a very strong offensive and defensive 2B. He'll provide upgrades over Upton in every category except Avg. and steals. Wainwright will sit on the bench (until I decide to cut bait on Pronk, who currently holds my DL spot) until September or so, when he'll add some meat to my pitching rotation.

Long gone guys:
I love Abreu, and he's been crushing the ball lately. But he's 34 going on old, and he's shown some signs of slowing down. Plus I have a total logjam in the OF with Hamilton, Markakis, and Hart holding the 3 starting gigs and Abreu, JD Drew, and Ludwick (manning the Util for now). Upton was the focus of this deal. Since he was my 3rd round pick, I felt somewhat obligated to keep him for next year even though he'll lose his 2B eligibility next year. I managed to deal him and get a potential keeper back too.

Conclusion:
I think I overpaid for Cano, but given that I got rid of Upton, I completed my goal. Of course, now I have 6 potential keepers: Pujols, Hamilton, Markakis, Hart, Cano, and Tulowitzki.

*League stats: 10 teams, 5 keepers, 8x7 H2H scoring (add'l stats: H, OBP, SLG, K/9, K/BB), shallow rosters. I'm currently in 5th place (top 6 make playoffs).

UPDATE: The trade got vetoed, and no one will explain why they vetoed it. We renegotiated and removed Abreu from the deal.

Shut Up You Bum! No One Cares What You Think!

It's about time I spoke about baseball. Now, I thought about making a fan-esque blog (like my good ol' buddy Matt, whose blog was mentioned by Jon Miller on ESPN baseball), but I decided that others do it better, plus I wouldn't really be able to keep up with it. But I realized I had two things I could do. The first you can see here; it's just fledgling, but I think it has a lot of potential.

The second is a little more interesting. I've played fantasy baseball for a modest 5 seasons so far with moderate success. Typically, I draft poorly but manage well. I also seem to do very well on trades. I get these gut feelings on guys, and while I try to focus on the stats, sometimes these gut feelings are very strong. Melky Cabrera is one of these. I wanted the Yanks to play Melky in CF every day over Bernie. Bernie was old, Melky was new. Stats favored the Melk Man. But I had this feeling that Melky wasn't the answer. I ignored it, argued for hours with my dad that Bernie was a 4th OF at best. One look at Melky's stats tells a different story.

The latest feeling was about Erik Bedard. He was so highly hyped this offseason for fantasy and real life. It looked like the Mariners could use him to catapult to the top. Despite having him high on my draft sheet, I had a bad feeling about him. That feeling was right.

I know hunches are total BS. But I also know that the subconscious is a powerful source of intuition, and that maybe the back of my brain knows more than I do. So just maybe I'll talk about them here.

OK OK Enough I know! I'll shut up already.

Blogger + Opera = FAIL

I can't seem to log into Blogger on Opera lately. What the crap man?

Current To-Do List

• Buy wire shelves for basement Completed
• Hang wire shelves in basement Completed
• Organize basement Completed for now
• Buy plants for garden Done
• Plant plants in garden Done
• Return some things to Bed Bath & Beyond What a fun time that was
• Buy new coffee table and end tables
• Buy and use crab grass remover Not doing
• Start EBay auctions for Nokia phone and video games
• Mail Eric his games back
• Get window screens from basement and put them on windows Completed
• Try to fix the broken screen in the office Fixed
• Buy a new screen for the window above the sink Updated: attempt to repair screen Repaired
• Weed whack Completed
• Hand wash the pans and plastic containers in the sink Done, but will need to be done again
• Clean up the walkway leading to the front door Completed
• Get the mower fixed Fixed 8/16
• Mow the side yard Mow the whole yard Completed
• Return cell phone to Target
• Removed some weeds from the middle of the yard Completed
• Emptied dishwasher Done, but damn does this happen a lot
• Ordered flowers for Mom Happy Birthday Mom!
• File bills/paperwork
• Take pennies to Coinstar machine Done; used the money to buy a new mp3 player
• Get replacement license plate for Max Ordered; should arrive in 2 weeks
• Hang new shades
• Stain new ottoman legs Completed
  

A Eulogy For A Phone

All good things must come to an end. I've been using a Samsung T629 cell phone for about a year now, when all of a sudden this happened:

Through the looking glass.
A power cycle solved the problem for about an hour, then it reinverted. I just worked with the weird phone until I shut it off for the movie theater. Now it will not power up at all.

It is truly a sad day for all phone-kind.

What really sucks is that both Targets I've been to have been sold out of T-Mobile prepaid phones. What the crap man!

Wheel Her Out There!

Dan Wheeler has had saves in every season since 2004. Just saying.

Public Servivce Annoucement

This is random, but important. When moving into an apartment, TAKE PICTURES OF EVERYTHING and upload them to Flickr/Snapfish/MySpace or whatever. Document the state of the room/apartment before you move in, and then upload those to some 3rd party site so you can prove the photos came from before you moved in. Trust me, even if you move into your best friend's attic, take the damn pictures.

Yahoo, Give the Minor Leaguers Love Too!

In Yahoo fantasy baseball, managers (people playing the game) get to choose MLB players from the player pool for their teams. The player pool normally consists of everyone who is on an active MLB roster or was on a roster last year and has not formally declared retirement. The Yahoo team also has several minor league players added, usually the interesting ones (e.g. Evan Longoria). However, they do leave some notable minor leaguers out (e.g. Jay Bruce). This leads to interesting situations when those left-out players are called up to the bigs.

Having the #1 waiver priority is a huge advantage. It means that you get first dibs on the hot new rookies recently promoted to the bigs who were excluded from the player pool. You can snag that essentially free player, be it Clayton Kershaw or Jay Bruce, hitting or pitching, whatever you need. These excluded players really make the #1 waiver pick much more valuable than it should be.

In one of my leagues, Evan Longoria was drafted with the 180th pick (out of 400 players taken). But Jay Bruce, Johnny Cueto, Edison Volquez, Matt LaPorta, and other excluded players were undraftable, leading managers to draft such waiver trash as Jacque Jones, Luis Gonzalez, Lee Gardner, and Ronnie Belliard. 

Players who want to take a risk and hold on to MiLB stars can only hope those stars are in the select few added by Yahoo's sports staff to the player pool. Waiver priority is designed to decide who to allow to pick up dropped players. Instead, it can be used as a tool to drastically improve a manager's team midseason. 

Yahoo really needs to add all MiLB players in any team's 40-man roster to the player pool. There, that'smy piece. I'm done.

Wedding: The Only Bad Part

I plan to post a thorough review of everything that happened on my wedding day, because A) it was mostly awesome and B) I don't like having to tell the story 8000 times. But there was one part that totally sucked: the limo. 

During our booking process, we discussed various Excursion/SUV limos with the limo company and the owner, Brendan. When we visited Brendan to sign the deal, he showed us two Excursion limos, and pointed out one of them that likely would be the one we'd get if we booked that day. We booked the Excursion limo that night with Brendan and handed him a hard copy of our itinerary.

First of all, the limo driver showed up in a 14-passenger Town Car limo instead of the 18-passenger Excursion limo we had ordered. We spoke with the owner on the phone and he insisted we ordered the smaller limo. He asked me to check my receipt, which I could not find, and that the receipt clearly said 14 passengers. While I haven't been able to find my copy of the receipt, we spoke exclusively with Brendan about the Excursion limo. Brendan only ever showed us Excursion limos. The only place 14 passengers was mentioned was when we asked him if 14 people would fit in the Excursion limo. Brendan even admitted on the phone on June 14th that the limo he sent us would not fit 14 people. We had to make immediate plans for groomsmen to drive their own cars instead of being in the limo. 

Then, the driver was unable to turn on the electricity in the cabin for the first 15 minutes of the trip. This meant no radio and no air conditioning, a big deal on a hot June day. She did not have a copy of the itinerary that we sent in via email and by hard copy when we signed. We gave her the addresses and told her the time and schedule. After she dropped off the men at the church, she left the church to get lunch for herself without telling anyone. By the time she returned and we sent her to the hotel to pick up the bride, the wedding was delayed by 30 minutes. Our guests had to wait 30 minutes for us in the church, and we lost 30 minutes of the 5 hours we had booked for the reception. 

On top of it all, Brendan and the driver were rude through the whole process. The driver acted like she was doing us a favor driving us around, and Brendan didn't make any attempt to apologize or even be nice to myself and my best man. 

I am in the process of discussing this with the limo company, so I don't want to mention their name yet. We'll see how they respond to my query.

Movie Review: Iron Man

Holy carp, this is like the best movie I've seen in years. I can't even describe how awesome it was. I saw it on Friday night and it still fills my idle thoughts. Awesome. Just go see it.

A few things that I really liked about it:

• They managed to avoid tedious explanation bits that often drag down a movie without confusing the viewers.
• The whole deal with the bad guys is never laid out directly in a "Haha, I'm the evil bad guy and here's my plan! Now you die Iron Man!" It's inferred!
  
• OK the graphics are fucking awesome. You can't ignore this; graphics don't make a movie, but they can make it excel.
• Tony Stark is a dynamic character; he actually changes. When was the last time that happened in a superhero movie?

If I had to say something I didn't like, it was the Burger King product placement. It was tasteful, but I just disagree with it's placement. 

But seriously, go see it now.

Wakim Soareeah

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Joakim Soria is going to be the best fantasy baseball closer this season. He has an infinite ERA+ at this (small sample size) point. HOT.

Intelligent Feature Design

So I'm working on a critical high-visibility project that is aiming to be deployed in seven months. It's an app that will only be deployed for 3 months a year, and after we deploy it this time, we'll be working to add more features for the next deployment. Most importantly, we have a "GO-NO GO" date (like rocket launches) in 4 months where we make the call if we're going to be able to deliver the product.

One of the features requested is the ability to change the instruction text in the app on each page from year to year. My first thought was "We can push that feature to next year since we're going to be working on it then, and we'll just hard code the text this time." I said this to the project leader, and he insisted we should do it this time around: "It's just 'select *', that takes like 10 minutes, right?" Well, it's not just that:

• Modify data file to include this text.
• Get text from database into the file.
• Add code to the app to read this specific text and change the labels. 

Now, this is pretty much a 4-hour feature. And he's probably right that adding this feature will not affect the ship date, and we'll still be "GO" in 4 months. But why risk it? 

The project leader countered with institutional knowledge: "We have applications from 10 years ago that we still have to redeploy to change text in them. That's a waste of developer time." True, but the lesson learned here is not the correct one. Why haven't we spent the time to fix these apps? We're already committed to development on this app after the deployment, so why add any risk now? 

I'm not the first and I won't be the last person to mention risk and features in the same sentence. But this goes back to the sentiment I express the most: Be smart. The feature in question is on the feature list, but it'll be the last one I develop.