Bǎi sī bù jiě

Feels like Caturday

2008-05-15T09:52:00.000-04:00

Pete, Shawn and I stayed late last night to crank out the integrated ecomm stuff that has been demanded of us. While it was extremely frustrating from a I-think-they-will-yank-it-in-6-months point of view, it was actually fun to hack away and actually produce working results. Pete pointed out that we had more consecutive coding hours in the office than we had been able to pull off in months. This managing thing really sucks your day away. Plenty of the other guys stayed later than normal to help (or at least offered to do so), plus Shawn insisted on staying until we were all done. Made all the difference, having the team unified like that. Oh, and our California colleague was right in it with us, though three time zones away (and he had to do all his work in C++).

With all it's frustrations (and late nights) I love my job.

Since it is supposed to rain today, I had Kelly pick up some compost. Don't worry, they loaded it for her. But with the late night I was out seeding and composting 'bout 10:30. Kinda makes you wonder what the neighbours thought. Oh, I did screw it up a bit. I went down stairs and grabbed a bag of grass seed to come up and over seed the spots I burned with fertilizer. Well it was dark and I didn't notice it was fertilizer and was able to dump a few good handfuls on a couple of the already burned spots. So I proceeded, in the dark, to try and pick it back up. I ripped up the dead grass, scrapped the dirt--barehanded--to get as much as I could. Noticing there was still a decent amount in the healthy grass next to the dead spot, I got out the hose to wash it out and attempted to scoop it up with my hands. This mostly resulted in what one could call a muddy mess. I did get alot back up, I just hope it is enough to save what healthy grass.

What am I doin'?

2008-05-09T12:40:00.001-04:00

"We have created an economy based not on actually doing anything, but on facilitating, supervising, planning, managing, analyzing, tax advising, marketing, consulting or defending in court what might be done if we had time to do it." --Sam Smith

From his blog

Prioritize your projects

2008-05-09T11:20:00.000-04:00

I went and saw Dr. Malani, who gave me antibiotics, and in about a day and a half I was feeling much better. Now I feel good enough that I'm guilty for not going to the gym. I really need to work out.

I've made good progress on the ceiling. Started the painting, and took down the hermetically sealed plastic dust barrier, which make our living room much more pleasant. I need a few more coats of paint and some blue touch up on the walls and we can move our furniture back to where it goes. I can't wait.

Now we have to prioritize the next few projects.

1) Paint the stairwell
2) Carpet the stairs (dependant on #1)
3) Clear out the guest room to make it Leah's new room
4) Purchase furniture, paint and other niceties for Leah's new room (prereq: #3)
5) Patio
6) Repair lawn with compost and overseeding (stupid fertilizer/pesticide, I just wanted to get rid of the ants)

Between home projects, the fact that this month is chaos at work since we are about to go live with my big project and the work contest it is looking a little overwhelming. Why is it when we are overwhelmed we get less done, but have more to do? Not helpful.

In fun new, little miss has a new favorite song. The ABC's. She will get all excited and ask for "more-more" even before we finish. She dosn't know all her letters, infact she normally says "C-C-C" but throws in a few random letters, maybe a "B" maybe a "R." She definitely knows "Z," her favorite letter, which she screams as loud as she can. And once the song is down we throw our hands up in the air and yell "touchdown!"

I can't wait till she goes to kindergarten and wants to know why everyone else says something as obvious as "now I know my ABC's" at the end of the song. Those losers.

Oh, a co-worker was able to convince work that I need to go to the RailsConf at the end of the month, so I am psyched about that. I should check with Paulo to see if he is going again this year.

I heard a frog try to say "beep-beep"

2008-05-05T17:00:00.001-04:00

It hasn't been the best week. The pollen count has been crazy high, so my allergies have been going crazy. I think this lead to some sort of infection, one that thought it would be fun to make me unable to open my eyes in the morning. Not conjunctivitis, iv'e had that, that'd be worse, this is just a little insult over the cough and congestion that is normally associated with this season. To top it all off I seem to have lost my normal speaking voice, in its place I have this raspy thing that likes to crack and squeak a lot. Especially when I am trying to talk to my little miss. You can't say "beep-beep" at all like this. Really can pull the fun out of playing.

[Wow, vim takes nearly 30 seconds to look up conjunctivitis with spell check]

So the house has been as problematic as my sinuses. Once we finally got fed up with the stair contractors and paid them to leave an unfinished job, the upstairs toilet decided it didn't like to hold all that water in the tank and let it drip on the floor. The tile floor, in an amazing delegation effort decided that it too was not going to be burdened with the wet stuff, and passed it on down. The living room ceiling really tried to hold it up, but it was just poorly equipped for the job. So I got to spend last weekend ripping it down (I guess I punished it for not doing a job it was not designed to do, oh well), and replacing it. Drywall is just the sort of thing a severe allergy suffer loves. Monday the wife discovers that the power room toilet was constantly running, and quietly turned off the water and decided to spare me until I was in a better place. Apparently work is a better place, cause she told me on the phone while I was there. Luckily it was a pretty easy fix, and has yet figured out how to cause more damage. While it was an easy battle, it was a battle non-the-less. And I am tired and don't want to play plumbing any more.

[I have been on the platform for about 20 min, and still no estimate when the next train will be here, sure it's 1 in the afternoon, but I need me a train]

I think the other thing that's really a bummer is the house prices in Burke. Of course I knew they dropped, but didn't think they had gotten as low as they have. We were in the lucky 5% of Fairfax that the assessed value didn't fall, but everything in the neighbourhood seems to be selling for less than that. Kinda takes the fun out of home projects if the value is drooping.

Work has come up with a bit of fun, we have decided to hold a programming contest, complete with an alluring prize. I felt pretty cool when everyone decided that I was the favorite to win and as such a number of people have asked to team up. I am pretty excited about how competitive people have gotten while remaining helpful. Everybody shares their ideas and the competitors will even offer advice on how to get those ideas to work. It really shows how cool the engineers are at the company.

We will see if everyone can continue to play nice together (this is a gentleman's game, after all) and if the power-that-be are happy with the results--maybe we can do it again.

My biggest problem is deciding if I have enough time to get involved in the silliness.

On the train now, should be at work no later than 2, and boy could I use a nap.

Chris didn't really want to go to bed did he?

2008-04-22T21:21:00.002-04:00

Guest Post by Kelly

So, we're all pretty tired today after being out late last night for Colin Hay and we have to get up and out early tomorrow for one of my wonderful pregnancy mandated tests so we were talking about going to bed early. We even got Little Miss down a good 30 minutes before normal and were finishing our prep for a quick exit in the morning.

But then I suspected that Chris didn't really want to go to bed so I had to save him from himself and find a plan that would keep him up, and ideally work him up so that he wouldn't be able to sleep even once he finished dealing with whatever scheme I came up with. So like a good wife, I thought and thought for a few minutes and then settled on a brilliant plan.

Drywall. Plumbing. Ceiling. Leaks.

What more could a guy ask for?

Currently Chris is standing on step stool, cutting holes in our ceiling and occasionally asks for more buckets or towels. You see, about a week ago we discovered that our toilet was leaking so Chris turned off the water and drained it and planned to fix it when he had a moment to breathe. Then sometime between Friday and today the water got turned back on and left on so the toilet kept on leaking. Right into our living room ceiling. We're hoping that one sheet of drywall will be big enough to replace everything he's tearing down right now.

So, any of you project-savvy blog readers who are just itching for a home project to work on, have we got a fun one for you!

At least we've scored some tupperware, a grocery bag, and some assorted crap that we found between the ceiling and flooring.

Fun times at Fort Truxion!

Fading Goats.

2008-04-21T23:14:00.004-04:00

I really think fuzzymonk.com is way over due for an update, something to simplify things, but don't think I am going to get any time to deal with that any time soon. Would really like to migrate the cookbook and dictionary to rails. Would be stupid easy.

We just got back from Colin Hay. Was our second time seeing him at the Birchmere, he was every bit as good as he was last time. We even had an extra ticket so were able to drag my esteemed colleague from the west out. I think everyone had a good time, nice chill show with some funny enter-song commentary.

I think the best part of the evening was coming home to and having our delightful babysitter, Mer, tell us how wonderful our daughter is. We always worry she won't be good for other people, if for no other reason because we want them to come back and babysit again. But our worries were for nothing, and she was sweet as could be. Apparently liberal with the kisses and hugs, as well as easily entertained and didn't mind going to bed. Score one for the little Sexton girl.

Oh, that silly girl:

Pretty dress on a pretty day

Cookin' in the kitchen

T-Minus 3 days

2008-04-06T16:48:00.001-04:00

We have passed the halfway mark of the great Leah famine of 2008.

Just in case you don't know, Leah went to Texas with her Grandmother who wanted to take her to see the bluebonnets and visit family. I thought this would be a great time to get a lot of stuff done around the house, Kelly thought this would be a good time to go insane. Now that is probably the good and healthy for a mother who's baby girl changed time zones with out her.

As I mentioned, I was hoping to get a bunch of stuff done, but the preceding weeks have been a little rough and we are mostly using the time to rest, recover and spend quality toddler free time with the wife. My goal has shifted from getting Leah's new room cleared out to eating out at nice places and going to the movies. If it hadn't been for the stairway-to-debacle project or the surprise trip to Austin i'm sure plenty of progress would have been made on little miss's new room, but I'll take what I can get.

Aside from the phone call's from Kelly's mom about the massive deviations from Leah's normal schedule and the news of a fever, we are handling this pretty well. She will return home on Wednesday, and there is no way that either of us will stay home from the airport. However, I am a little scared to get between Leah and her Mom when they are fresh off the plane, least Leah choose to come to me first. I would not want to suffer the consequences if that were to happen. And there would be consequences.

We did go downtown for brunch today, but it was wet and dreary so we decided to skip the walk around the tidal basin for the Cherry Blossoms. A bit of a bummer, but Kelly got the pedicure and I got to hang in the coffee shop and play on the MBP.

I think we are going to finish off the weekend nice and easy: Kelly has a book, I am playin' rails, and maybe some wings for dinner.

Anyone want some wings?

Playin' HR

2008-03-23T19:04:00.002-04:00

I've been doing a bunch of interviews for programmers these days. I have been elected the phone screen guy, so whenever we get a new resume from the recruiter I get to give them a call to see if they are worth bringing in. Alot of them are not.

I have made a few rules for interviews. If any of these rules are broken, I promptly thank them for their time and get off the phone, otherwise I would simply be getting their hopes up.

Rule 1: Do not beg.

I don't care how much you want the job, begging don't help. Especially if you are under-qualified for the position.

Rule 2: Answer the question asked.

Seriously, I like when people say "I don't know," if you ramble off in an unrelated direction, I just get annoyed.

I am going to start writing down quotes. Here is a quick excerpt from a recent phone call:

Me: What is the difference between recursion and iteration?
Them: Oh, well, recursion, yeah I had a project that really needed that and I was going to implement it last year, but I didn't get a chance to.

Later in that call:

Me: Can you name a few design patterns?
Them: Um, sure. Creator .... Polymorphism .... Protected.

I am sure there are plenty of rules where those came from.

Bash + Rake +

2008-03-23T16:39:00.003-04:00

i wanted tab completion for rake tasks with bash on OS X, so...

I Installed the gem:


 sudo gem install rake-command-completion

Then I added this to .bash_login (or .bashrc)


complete -C /usr/local/bin/command_completion_for_rake -o default rake

Chicken gets a phone call

2008-03-08T16:31:00.002-05:00

Hey chicken, It's for you!

Guess they wanted to talk to Leah

Added a Trac-Hack

2008-03-07T21:18:00.002-05:00

I heart trac, and I also heart VibrantInk, as well as my VibrantInk-based color scheme for Vim and Visual Studio.

Earlier this week I spent a little time making a few tweaks to the css of Trac, and was able to get the code browser to show up in my beloved color scheme. After walking around all proud of my self, but everyone I told was more or less utterly unimpressed. So I decided to do the selfless thing and brag about it to the Trac community. Thus the VibrantInkCodeTheme was born.

My visual studio scheme is form John Lam's settings with a few minor tweaks
My vim scheme is based the VividChalk theme by Tim Pope. I've done a fair amount of work on this one, making it work under gVim, Windows CMD, gnome-terminal and the Mac Terminal. The tri-platform thing was a bit of a pain. Every time i got it just right under two of the three, it would break on the third. Seriously, you'd think in the year 2008 we could get at least 256 colors in *all* the terminals.

Rocket Man

2008-02-18T22:46:00.002-05:00

What happens when you have 4 engineers gather for a tasty dinner?

Pyrotechnics on a micro level.

I just spent the evening with a fully geeked out nerd fest, and it was a blast.

Kelly, Danny, Chris and I built match stick rockets.

Chris took the early lead with an impressive 12'10" flight, which he shortly topped with 13'4" jump. Danny stuck with the more experimental designs, but his gamble didn't pay off, he had a mere 3 flights that got him off the table. I was able to manage one or two extra-table launches, but was getting no where until Kelly said she would pledge her undying love to the winner and this was my last attempt. Well, not willing to let the mother of my child go to another Chris, I wrapped the foil extra tight and had set the launch angle extra low. No one beleived it. 19'1" and I get to keep my Wife's love. Huzzah!

Next up, Caps robots.

Focused rails tests in vim!

2008-02-12T11:35:00.000-05:00

Rails.vim allows you to run focused tests (ala TextMate) buy placing the cursor in the method and running :Rake.

This is teh coolness.

Wait a second, what happened to January?

2008-01-30T23:21:00.000-05:00

I am nto sure what happened to january. I think I remember christmas, and I know there was CES, but I think that was just the other day. Now my computer is telling me it is time we start thinking about February. Who knew!

I have been talking every last second of my free time to geek out on rails recently. One of our prestigious swapfriends is in town and I am stealing every bit of knowledge I possibly can while he is trying to do real work. It is working. I am learning alot. Of course this process leads to me reading/coding on the train, bus, at work, over lunch and at night when I should be sleeping. Heck I even tricked people into staying after work to "ya know, hang out and code". It worked. Yes, I asked people to volunteer to stay and continue to work after work. They did. Sure some bailed once the pizza was gone, and a few more after a couple of beers, but we have a few rock out to the dev-tunes.

Anytime I am not squandering away with work is family time. I need to make sure to keep the family time top priority, because things are starting to slip, and I see it getting cut. But it is still top in my mind. And Leah and really become alot of fun. She can really play now. Proper little kid playing. Make believe, rough housing, dancin', the works.

I cannot believe how surprised I am every time she shows her abstract abilities. A few of thing things I am the most impressed with are: Language comprehension (she can't say it, but she knows what the elephant is, and how to find the matching shoe when you ask), imagination (changing dolly's diaper, dressing up like mom), and trying to manipulate her parents (Yeah, I normally see though it, I just sometimes let it happen -- it is just easier). I am sure all parents out there are equally astonished, but can't understand how abstract thought can be learned, but I am watching it happen right in front of my eyes. Teh cool.

Leah Does Stuff

2008-01-09T15:31:00.000-05:00

Guest post by Kelly

So, at a little more than 18 months I think we're starting to see both a very independent streak appear in Leah, right on schedule, as well as some other behaviors I wasn't quite ready for yet.

The little girl seems to be loathe to accept help from her parents on just about anything these days, unless it is to use our bodies as a step stool. One of the most poignant examples of this happened Monday night. We had just returned home and I caught a whiff of some pants that needed changing. At the same time Leah wandered over to her diaper bag and pulled out the changing pad. She proceeded to set down the pad sort of in front of me and lied down. When I tried to adjust the pad to be right in front of me I was showered with a chorus of "No, no, no!" and giggles. We repeated this almost a dozen times, sometimes trying to adjust the pad's position in relation to me, sometimes trying to adjust Leah's position in relation to the pad, but all attempts to alter Leah's chosen configuration resulted in "No, no, no!" I eventually decided that I am the parent and we'll do things my way and wisked her off to the changing table to do things right. Much less laughing and much more pouting. (Man it sucks to be the responsible one sometimes.)

Leah is also showing a lot of maternal instincts with her dolls. She holds them, feeds them, "changes their diapers", pats them on the back, etc. Monday night she also took to educating them. As she was reading "That's Not My Dinosaur" she would "read" the page and then take the dolls hand and put it on the touch & feel part of the page. Ta-adorable!

Lastly, Leah is becoming her Dad. At least in the mornings. Two days ago when she woke up after coming to our bed she stretched, looked around, crawled over to the bedside table, turned off the light, and curled back up with her eyes closed. Clearly, it was too bright and she was trying to sleep. Geez mom! This morning she just kept shifting from one side to the other and curled back up in a little ball at every attempt to waken her. It probably didn't help that Dad was curled up right next to her and soundly sleeping too, but she was determined to sleep. I thought we'd have until she was a teenager to have to pry her out of bed but I guess when you adore Dad you pick up his habits early.

Sock mouth is born

2008-01-02T19:45:00.000-05:00

Leah and I just finished playing a nice round of sock-mouth

Sock mouth dates back to yesterday when we were eating some eggs for dinner. One of the bigger bits of eggs was still too hot when she put it in her mouth. so she spit it out and gave it a very suspicious look. You know one of those, how could you do that to me type looks. Well to make her feel better I treated that bit as if it were gross. I pushed it away and said yuck. She thought this was great. So she pushed it away too, I grabbed her hand and said yucky yuck! and the game was born.

At least the game of yucky eggs.

Tonight when I went to change her diaper she was very sad to be leaving the couch so I tried to cheer her up. She gave me the idea when she took off her sock and handed it to me. I shook it and said yuck, made a face and set it on the table next to her. She immediately associated the face and word yuck with the egg game and thus sock-mouth was born.

She tries to put the sock in her mouth and I make faces. She tries to put the sock in my mouth and I make faces. Then we run around squealing.

If it is a game, then there must be some way to win. I had to turn to Leah for inspiration on this one. But she sure found the definitive win condition.

First one to vomit wins. Shove a sock into your mouth till you throw up 2 fish sticks.

Oh wait, it’s Christmas now

2007-12-23T14:42:00.000-05:00

I have been running round like crazy at work and getting ready for the holidays, that I entirely forgot that it is gonna be Christmas. Still sorta feel like it is a week or two away.

Work has been alittle nuts because I am doing some last minute stuff for a lil networking company that wants neat stuff to show off at the CES. I am pretty pumped about the show, especially now that we are bringing more people and staying on the strip, but find it a little frustrating that they all get free trips (i.e. they don’t have to do any panic coding for bipolar partners FOR the show). The bad part about the panicked coding is that I had to wrap up my real work so that I could get to it.

Now I need to get good at Ruby fast (which is actually a little frustrating because I am finally comfortable in Python). Oh, and enforce deployment processes. Strike that, automated deployment process. The Doc is the testing nazi, I the equivalent for version control, and it looks like I get to be it for deployment too. I don’t want that job.

Kelly got what appears to be a stomach bug, and has been pretty weak – so much so that we had to send little miss to grandma’s so that she could rest. Poor girl got hit with it as soon as her vacation started. Fortunately we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel now, she woke up feeling much better. Then felt worse, but not nearly as bad, and, the best part, ate an entire meal for breakfast. Yay for pamcakes!

Beej and Katie (and Maggie and Luke) also came out for breakfast, where we exchanged presents and set up plans for some new years boringness. Which from the sound of it the Eshlers will get to partake in. It was awesome hanging out and talking after we ate. Mags and Luke were so quiet and happy the entire time and we had lots to talk about (read: babies and electronics).

Well, everyone is down for a nap, I am wired from a half dozen cups of coffee and gonna go read Why the Lucky Stiff for a bit.

Tired of your mop?

2007-12-17T09:28:00.001-05:00

You should try mopping the inside of the oven while you are baking a cake.

Kelly decided to make a new exciting cake for my birthday, something she had never made before. I remember that she even noted that it looked like it was going to be more batter than the pans could hold. Apparently she dismissed that because maybe the cake was really dense. She should have listened to her instincts.

Once we got the baby down, and the cake in the oven Kelly and I were going to hang out in the basement. Well, I ran up to grab something and noticed that smoke was rising out of the oven. I cracked it open to have a look and was slammed in the face with an eye-stinging cloud of smoke. I noticed the cake was bubbling up and out of the pans. Immediately I ran up and popped the battery out of the smoke detector so that didn't wake up the baby, and returned to investigate solutions to our smoke problems. I noticed that the cake that was still in the pan was just fine, that all the smoke was emanating from the batter that was setting on the floor of the oven. So I did what any guy would do. Soak a towel in cold water and strap it to the end of a broom handle and try to mop it up. Well, a towel rubber-banded to a stick makes a poor mop, and as I furiously la-na-za'd the bottom of the oven, there should be a commercial product that would enabled better mopping. But wait, a mop!

I grabbed our little sponge mop, soaked it up and started pushing the batter around on the bottom of the oven. Not something that really cleaned up the oven, it was more of a move-the-mess-around type activity. By the time I had established my process, Kelly finally got tired of shouting "what are you doing?" and came up to investigate.

Once she got over the initial confusion, she had the idea that we should take the half baked cake out of the oven and try to finish up the job. I concurred. At this point we took the sloshy cakes out and turned off the oven. Once we had the oven shelves out my process worked much better.

Once we were done we decided that we should at least try to finish baking the cake, so we popped it back in the oven. A little while later we discovered that twice baked cake is not nearly as good as twice baked potatoes.

My birthday cake this year was smores. I am not complaining.

Vim on Vista

2007-11-22T18:22:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I wasted a good part of thanksgiving day trying to get vim workign again on vista. I am not sure what happened, but it went nuts. It may have been the recent windows updates or the face that I in stalled .NET 3.5, but it was unusable. None of the plugins/syntax highlighting/menus that I have grown to love. So here is what I did:

Vim on Vista

Installed gvim71-2.exe to C:\vim (from here)

Copy the folling files into C:\vim\vim71\

iconv.dll (from here You can find the dll file in the bin directory of the "libiconv-win32" archive.)
libintl.dll (from here Get "intl.dll" from the bin directory in the gettext-win32 archive and store it as "libintl.dll" in the same directory as gvim.exe, overwriting the file that may already be there.)
gvimext.dll (from here)

Here is the thing that stuck me for hours, if you had previously installed vim
to the recommended location of C:\Program Files you won't be able to associate
files with the new location until you edit the registry. Go to:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\gvim.exe

Make sure the edit\command and open\command Keys have the following default value:

C:\vim\vim71\gvim.exe "%1"

If you want the "Edit with vim" in windows explorer:

Run C:\vim\vim71\install.exe
Choose no when asked if you want to uninstall, then enter "d 14"

If you get a gvim not in your path error with the "Edit with vim" shell ext, make sure you don't have gvim.exe set to run as Administrator, as that will break it.

If you don't want to run around and get those files, you can download them here.

Also, I added my suite of vim files here.

I just want to get home (or to work)

2007-11-17T16:39:00.000-05:00

Getting to and from work has been a little frustrating the last couple of days. Maybe I am a little sensitive because I am writing this on the bus, but not the bus I wanted to catch. I got to see that one pull away as I ran up to the stop. Nope, the one that shows up 20 min after that.

Today wasn't too bad. Yesterday was the real debacle. I tried to take the bus in, and apparently I missed it. I know the time it comes into the neighbourhood, and I was at the stop at that time, but it must have been ahead of schedule, cause it never showed. So I waited in the shelter, since it was raining. The next bus rolls past, and stops a little after the stop. So I run over and hop in. The driver scolds me for standing in the shelter "just cause you can see me doesn't mean I can see you." I apologize and go sit in the back. 20 minutes into the ride I notice we don't get on the freeway. It hits me, I got on the local bus. I swear it said "express," but it wasn't. I was on the 17A. Burke to the Pentagon via Landmark Mall. ugh. Eventually I get there, hop off and have the nice walk from Navy Memorial to the office.

That evening Sean and Nina were coming over, and I thought I would be sneaky and bum a ride so I could skip the bus. I walk out the door only a few minutes late, pretty happy. I get down to the platform to find it mobbed. The board says there are residual delays. It took longer than normal but we get on the first orange line train that comes to the platform. And all was looking good until the operator couldn't work the doors anymore. By the time we got to Foggy Bottom (the last stop in the district) we had to deboard the train. Now that platform was pressed-up-against-strangers packed. And we watched as packed train after packed train showed up to take 2, 3 people away. One of them even contained C-Dub who silently mocked me. After this happened 6 or 7 times I hop on the train going the other direction and get on there. It seemed pretty quick. As soon as I got to Farragut West I was able to run and get on an orange line train immediately. However by the time I got back to Foggy Bottom the platform was empty and it was very easy to get on the train I was on.

Luckily when I finally did get there Sean and Nina were still waiting. And we embarked in a whirlwind drive though Arlington in a lil pickup with 2 and a half seats.

Sometime I worry Randall Munroe knows too much me

2007-11-03T12:25:00.000-04:00

Three hundres and sixty eight steps, awww yeah.

2007-10-09T10:07:00.000-04:00

Now that we are home and I can look back on the trip, Cinque Terre was probably the highlight. We showed took the train from Florence, a quick stop over in Piza for a leaning batido, and continued on to Monterosso. As we were getting close the train would pop out of a tunnel for a split second and give us a glimpse of the Med, with a bright sunny sky and the turquoise sea, and then disappear again. Even when got to the little village we were stunned by the view. Gorgeous beach, sail boats and pastel Italian buildings.

We didn't waste much time there, though we probably should have, but we set out to find the trail. The guidebook told us of two trails, Trail 1, which was easy; and Trail 2, which more scenic but much harder. We wanted trail 1. We didn't find it. But we had a beautiful hike. A beautifully hard hike with a full pack. We basically scaled up and down the coastal mountains through vineyards and lemon orchards. Occasionally we would be blessed with a fairly level stretch, but that was pretty rare. The number of stairs was out of control. But as we wound around the mountains that jutted into the sea we could see the little village we were headed to, and turn and look back to the shrinking town we left.

Aside from the view, the best part of the trip was the magical hole in a fence on a very steep stair climb about half way between the two villages. It was magical because for the bargain price of 2 euro, you could get fresh lemonade from fresh lemons. It was squeezed on the spot by what appeared to be a football hooligan. The only problem was the group of Italians in front of me (and eventually a nice British couple, who queued up behind me). I had the girls climb up a bit so they could sit and wait while I stood in line. Unfortunately there was a very chatty guy and his 5 or 6 best friends (many of whom were shirtless, yet appeared to be wearing a sweater). I didn't mind waiting for them all to get their drinks, but as their friends showed up, they too got in on the action, then the first few wanted refills. It was a little frustrating, especially when one of the younger fellas was pointing out that there were people waiting for some precious lemon flavored sugar water. Eventually I did score the drinks and brought them back up to the girls. Where, it turns out, we were a bit too winded to really enjoy them.

According to Kelly, the hike lasted about an hour and a half. Clearly all the climbing went to her head, it was easily five times that.

When we did get to Vernazza we were able to find a little pizzeria with an unobstructed view of the sunset and some of the best pesto ever made. It was over this pesto that we discussed the merits of taking the train to the next town--which contained our hotel for the night.

Corniglia was not as much fun as Vernazza, that was mostly due to two little reasons: 1) It was not down on the sea, but up on a cliff overlooking it and 2) There were 368 stairs between the town and the train station.

We eventually found our hotel there. We did this by going to a resturant with the same name, asking the waitress who instructed us to follow her, hike back into the center of town and back into one of the stacked buildings there.

The next morning we discussed continuing the hike, but wussed out and took the train. We were sore. Oh, and the strep I gave Kelly was really kicking in at that point.

Happy Birthday Kelly!

2007-09-26T10:46:00.000-04:00

For my beautiful wife, mother of my darling daughter, on her birthday -- I gave her Strep!

Trip to ColoSpngs

2007-09-17T20:45:00.000-04:00

This was Leah's second plane trip, and last time we bought her a seat and her grandma came along to help out. Unfortunately we didn't luck out enough to get a row to ourselves, and had to share space with some poor unsuspecting traveler. The flight out she never really cried, but was a little fussy and very fidgety the entire trip. The way back she was very sleepy and cranky, but after a tour standing up at the front of coach dad was able to trick her into sleeping. Despite the evil glares from a business man (who had an empty seat next to him). And Kelly and I (and the poor lady in our row) had a couple hours of still and quite.

When we landed early in Denver, early enough that jeannie had not even left the her house in Colorado Springs yet, and was gonna be a while. So we gathered all our babies and baby related stuff and set out to find a place we could let Leah get down and run. And run she did. It was way past her bedtime, and she was hyper like only a hyper one year old can be. We were running around a column playing 'catch the baby which eventually blossomed into a proper game of hide and seek. I would take her to the corner and tell her to count to 3, then count with her while trying prevent her from peeking. then run off a few feet away and 'hide' by the wall, or behind some of our luggage. Once we got into it she was playing along good. So much so that I overheard passers by saying "oh, look! she's counting" while she had her head buried in the corner with a "du...du...du." our games involved lots of running, flailing and screeching. Impressive thing is, she didn't even crash right away in the car, she lasted a good 30 minutes.

One best parts of visiting the McPenberthy's at Monopuss Manor, are the Dogs. We would sit out back and throw a ball for hours. In addition to the fun puppies to entertain Leah (and her dad), the weather was gorgeous, no humidity and no bugs. Dirk, Jeannie and Kelly kept making these amazing meals that we could eat on the back patio. Strap the baby into her chair and we could chow down on Alaskan Salmon, King Crab and Stuffed Blueberry French Toast Croissants. I think I gained a few pounds. Which is not surprising considering how many pounds of Fondue I ate.

Leah's favorite backyard activity must have been collecting rocks. Dirk and I took her out behind the back yard so that he could run the dogs a bit more, and she started picking up rocks as best she could and when he noticed that she could only carry three at a time, Dirk set out to get her a pail. Turns out a Tupperware bowl is a lot like a pail. Especially when filled with rocks. From then on, we where in serious rock collecting mode. So the rock beds all around the edge of Monopuss Manor were really handy.

We didn't say at their house the entire time, though I would have been happy to hang out there -- between the back yard, the dogs and FotC on OnDemand, I really didn't want to leave. However, we were in CO, and there were fun things to go do. And we did a few.

First one was the Air Force Academy. Which is across the street from their place. Kelly and I being a couple of AF brats, we had a good time. Checked out the Chapel and looked at a few planes on display. Pretty fancy campus. We went from there to the Olympic Training center and wondered around. We were there late so they didn't have any tours still, but Leah had a good time running around in the little courtyard.

The highlight of our excursions had to be the Zoo. We went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, which was a really fun little place. Little miss was pretty overwhelmed while we were there, but was also very interested in everything. She was clearly tired but never got fussy. Just went hard until she crashed in her stroller.

Leah is more fun than programming

2007-08-26T11:37:00.000-04:00

I know I have been really bad about about keeping up with my blog. In the past I would make long senseless posts about wushu between the fun adventure posts. Well, since I haven’t been doing much of that (and when I do I mostly just work basics and get sore), I don’t have that stuff to post about. Now, there are more adventures, nearly all inspired or caused my the little miss, but work has been nuts so I am falling behind on them.

I could replace the wushu posts with programming posts, but I am not sure that is what my audience (read: Kelly) wants to read about. Not that they wanted to read about wushu, but it was an easy topic that was constantly on my mind. So now that programming is my idée fixe I figured maybe I should write about that. So here goes:
I just spend the last few days trying to figure out some weird C Runtime Library (CRT) issues with our new installer. We had always built things as multithreaded, not multithreaded dll, so it was never a problem. We would much rather have larger exe’s than to redistribute the msvc dlls. Well, turns out that you can’t build C++/CLI mixed mode code as multithreaded, so you have to dynamically link to the CRT if you want to build with /cli. Drat. I just want to statically link and be done with it. This was annoying because I didn’t notice until after I deployed on a machine with out the Visual Studio installed, and it would crash hard and give me this fancy FileNotFound error. I read all about manifests and how to embed them, but Visual Studio’s linker automatically does that for me – eventually I figured out that we were trying to use the redist dll’s from VS2005, but built out lib with VS2005sp1! Egads! Now that I have the correct version of the dlls, I think we are in business.

And that’s why they call them business socks.

Hmm, maybe, I shouldn’t write about that stuff – and if I want to I will need to make the articles useful, and that takes lot of time. Plus my audience really just wants to hear A) Stories about Leah B) Funny stories or C) Funny stories about Leah.

They would prolly love to hear about how Leah got my wallet, emptied it’s contents, stuck the post-it’s on her belly and handed me the empty shell with a big grin on her face. I think she hid one of my credit cards. Hopefully this is not foreshadowing.