I spent the weekend out in the sun at War of the Roses. I had a lot of fun and got a lot of sunburn on my face. Mark from Ellenville (more or less) came up with a friend of his, Dennis. Mark got qualified in Sword and Shield and fought in the town and bridge battles. Dennis took lots of pictures. I'll see what I can do about getting some of them onto the site.

I need to work on my fighting quite a bit. The force of my hits is more in the "polite" category than the "serious" category. I need to find some fighters in my area that won't mind cranking the power up a notch or two. My point work isn't what it could be. I haven't been doing my spear drills. And my body isn't used to fighting hard anymore. Getting to more practices will help that a little.

Rob/Phwellan/Tual got to the the semi finals in the King's and Queen's Rattan Champion's tourney. He also loaned out his shield for most of Saturday so that the new guy, Mark, could fight at his first event. Congratulations and thanks Rob!

Engadget.com has daily blurbs about technological gadgets. If you have a geek's "Must Own" button, this site will tend to push it.

I got that link from this blog's "other links".

Jeff/Finn has some gallery space on my machine now. Finn's Pics

Today's hot programming tip:

When trying to write PHP code, the Perl manual is NOT helpful.

Visibone's Color Lab is a great tool for web writers. It gives the hex codes for different colors so that you can set font and background colors.

Site of Alexandria's ancient library uncovered (Yahoo News, Reported on SCAtoday)

My Un-Resume:

• Bad at looking for jobs
• Poor interviewing skills
• Unable to program in COBOL, FORTRAN and APL/2
• Made cheaper products work so was unable to gain experience on over priced industry standard systems including VxWorks, Allen Bradley PLCs, Oracle, SQL Server, IIS
• Experienced with only a fraction of software produced.
• Have read less then 1% of books published to date.
• My 5 years of experience have not made me a recognized expert.
• Most of my users have never spoken to me again after training day.
• Terrible at exaggerating abilities.

Bob Hamlin lives in Troy and is looking for work as a Network Administrator. His resume(.doc) indicates that he is experienced with administrating Unix and Windows systems. Bob is a friend of mine.

Browsing the Air Force web site today I noticed their Posture Statement(pdf 2.2MB). In it they use the phrase "space force" from time to time. Wonder what they mean.

"Air, ground, maritime, and space forces worked together . . ."

"During this comparatively short history, we became the best air and space force in the world through our focus on the development of . . ."

I started using a new DynDns update client so I should have better uptime. Now my main obstacles are my DSL line and my power.

MathWorks the makers of Matlab get today's dishonorable mention. On their website, they require that you register with an email and postal address before they will tell you how much Matlab costs.

The web revolves around Accessible information. If your competition posts their price and you don't post yours, consumers compare "yes" to "no".

I went to the Concordia fight practice tonight. It was good to fight a new group of people. I'm enjoying teaching more than stretching my own skills. I just feel bad about beating skittish people with my poleaxe.

Gas Efficiency tips from AlbanyGasPrices.com

Nothing too surprising, don't use the AC, don't drive like a maniac, inflate your tires to spec.

Oh, I forgot to mention it yesterday. Dell is including flat panel LCD monitors with their desktops right now. I was contemplating getting their $500 box so that I could have a WinXP machine.

Web pages served

Perl is cool

Microsoft came close to winning my respect this week. Their latest language, C# (C Sharp), has a free-to-download compiler available from Microsoft. This would allow me to add this language to my resume and perhaps would increase my chances of getting work. Sadly though, the installation program for the compiler checks which version of Windows I'm running. After which it refuses to install at all. So I can't use the 'graciously' provided free compiler unless I buy another of the operating systems. They almost got me to like them.

There is an open source project, Mono, which has a C# compiler. The latest version is still a beta test. I am hesitant to put in effort to learn on a shaky platform.

My Debian box (used to be Lindows) is so VERY close to being a comfortable environment.

1. It's slow but I gets what I paid for there.
2. I can't get my mouse to behave the way I want. (Specifically, I have 5 buttons on my mouse and in Windows, I can assign buttons to act as keys. This allows me to type with my left hand and Backspace, Shift and Enter with my right. Those three keys allow me to keep my hand on my mouse through most work. I still touch type when I'm editing my webpage or typing emails, but all the rest of the time, I type with only my left hand. But I can't get Linux to hear my mouse buttons that way.)
3. The copy and paste hot keys (Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V) don't work in GAIM, a Linux instant messenger. Not a huge deal, but 90% of my web log content comes through GAIM from my Windows box.
4. My sound just stopped working a while back. I haven't gotten around to fixing it yet.
5. Our printer (Canon i450) isn't supported by any print drivers that I can find. So I have to print everything from my Windows box.

One Little Victory(lyrics) by Rush

I joined Jeff in doing a small fighting demo at a martial arts school out near Ellenville. Lots of fun. They all picked it up really fast.

New pictures added to gallery. More Georgia pictures including some pictures of Georgia's Capital.

We appreciate your interest in the opportunity posted. Please be assured that your application will be reviewed. Should your qualifications match the position, we may contact you for further information or to schedule an interview.

"Thanks for the resume. I'll look at when I get a chance. If you aren't some random nut-job who responds to every ad on the net, I'll think about calling you."

Capital Region Help Wanted Dot Com gets negative props for adding formatting to my resume AFTER I save my final version. Today they decided to center align each line of my paragraph formatted resume.

NYS Senate
NYS Assembly

I found this Fantasy Adventure Generator and modified it, sent it and it got posted. Sci Fi Adventure Generator. I've found them to be very useful in making story lines for roleplaying games.

I love reading job ads. It just hurts.

Requirements are:

*A+ Certified and above (preferred)
*3 to 5 years PC based Hardware and Software experience
*Strong MS-Office Suite knowledge
*HP Laser Printer and Plotter Repair Experience
*Accounting Degree or work related experience. in Retail, Wholesale, Distribution or manufacturing

This one wants a skilled computer fixer. With an accounting degree? WTHeck?

I had an enormous headache yesterday. I think it may have been mold related. Sooo,
"A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture, and Your Home" from the EPA.

Mold control seems to boil down to moisture control. They recommend protective gear for cleanup though.

US Navy Marine Mammal Program

Last month I wrote some COBOL code to show my server's access log in a webpage. That took 180 lines and I cheated (used another program for some of the processing). I rewrote it in PERL in 16 lines. And I was able to implement everything I wanted to. The new version shows the searches that people executed to find my site.

Searches That Found Me

by Steve Benson, of the Arizona Republic, on Page 7, PoliticalCartoons.com

Georgia Trip Pics
These were the ones that didn't need any work. I'll see if I can make some of the remaining pics look good enough to post.

1100 miles down and 1277 back. We stopped in Norfolk VA to visit my sister, Sara.

We are back.

April 2004 blog