Bloody hell...

Music - !!! - Pardon My Freedom

I'm not actually whining about the heat, I can deal with that sometimes (by taking a trip to the mall for a movie)... I'm whining about the fact that with the Air Con turned *on* here at work I'm still sweating.

I put my arm on the desk and I can feel how sticky the air actually is. Shouldn't having the A/C running cure this and pull the moisture from the air? Shouldn't I be comfortable sitting in my seat while at work?

Then again this is the same company who told us to bring indoor and outdoor shoes in the winter because they didn't want to pay someone to mop the floors...

If only things were easier and I could run my own business, then I'd freeze the office out.

Funny things....

that I find amusing.

music: The Shins - Turn on Me & Holy Fuck - Safari

Three funny things that have happened since I started back at work:

1. I realized how neglectful I've been of this blog. I will attempt to rectify this in the near future.

Why is this funny? Because, everyday when I show up to work, while I'm surfing the internet on my break at lunch I think of really important things that I need to share with people. I formulate exactly what needs to be said and how I need to say it and then I completely ignore putting anything down. Its like I'm thinking that everyone will just read my mind and assume to know what I'm talking about and thinking. Yeah, if only I was so lucky. Wait, that would be a bad thing....

2. That we're actually going to my sisters wedding in Mexico. Not really funny, but its important. I'm still undecided on whether or not we'll tell people or let them find out on their own. Its funny because I called my sister, which I never do and should call her more, to tell her but she was out having some food. So, I left a message. She gets home and hears that I called and immediately telephones.... her twin. Why? To find out if I called her because she swore that my wife was pregnant. Why not call me to find out why I called? Though, I can't say much, I'd have done the same thing.

3. While driving to an AWESOME holiday vacation in Cape Breton my wife decided to have fun with me in the car. She began demanding that I call her by a special name that I had called her once before. Now, I call her many things, Sweet Pea, Honey Muffin, Pumpkin, Pumpkin Pie, Jerkhead, Ass-Munch. Basically whatever I'm feeling like at the time. She had something in mind that I had use about a year and a half ago. I don't remember what it was anymore.

We spent 6 hours in the car driving to my mom's house and an hour of that trying to guess what she was thinking. I gave up and decided that she needed a new pet name that would be special and NEVER EVER used for anyone throughout time. I took two things that I was looking at and called her "Road Tree". She looked at me kind of puzzled and continued to sing to the music.

About 20 minutes later I asked her if she wanted to do something maybe stop for a bite to eat or I could have been tickling her, she looked at me sternly and said, "Road Tree says NO!" I near killed us I laughed so hard.

Java Problems

Did you ever build something completely from scratch to fill some purpose in your life?
Did you ever get to the end only to realize that someone else built something just like it?
Did you ever test it and decide that it works just fine?
Did you ever want to show someone what you build and have it break on you?

Thats where I am at present. I built an application for one of my clients in town.

They wanted it to keep track of their own clients and allow them to do a search through it based on key words. Its basically an overly simple search tool that they could have easily cooked up in Access given the right amount of time.

It didn't take me long to build and test, in all about 12 hours is what I billed them for. I brought it into the office for them to view and they absolutely loved it. They had a few suggestions for me to add functionality, which was worth it.

A few months had passed when I realized that they didn't actually receive their copy of the software. I gave them a call to mention it to them and share a laugh; turns out that they had actually forgotten that they paid for it. They had actually had been concerned with finding a new laptop to upgrade their P3 desktop computer.

(I'm not evil and didn't make them pay for it twice, though I did under charge them in the beginning.)

Back to the point.

After bringing the software to their office I copied the files onto their new laptop and installed the tiny database and Java Runtime. Took less than 2 minutes.

I double clicked the executable, and with a grin on my face waited for the interface to load....

I swore.

I swore like a sailor.

NullPointerException....

If you've ever worked with Java, this is basically the worst error message you can receive. Its general, vague, and difficult to track down since it can be caused by many different factors.

Think of it like having a talking smoke alarm.

A good message to receive: "The lamp in the corner of the living room is smoldering on the east side of the 2nd floor of a 10 story building."

This is what a nullPointerException message would be like: "I smell smoke."

Now, you can sense the frustration that I was feeling.

Whats the point anyways?

Now, I'm not really much of a fan-boy for much of anything these days. My loyalty with software, hardware, and computers in general is only limited by what is going to offer me the best bang for my buck.

Case 1: I own an iPod. Yes, I caved and spent the money to get a 30GB iPod for myself after years of “thinking” about getting one. I absolutely love it. I especially love the scrolling wheel it makes playing with the settings that much funner. But, I've also been looking at other devices on the market, and at the time when I purchased mine there wasn't much in the way of competition to the iPod in a feature for feature comparison. In about 3 months I'll have changed my tune because I know there are newer items in development soon to be released to the market place that I would gladly replace for my iPod.

Case 2: I own my very first official copy of Windows. I loathe XP, and all subsequent Operating Systems offered by Microsoft. Its not the fact that they're the dominant OS on the market. I spent two solid weeks searching the Internet for drivers to replace my wifes installation of Vista with the more user friendly XP. I had almost given up and installed the latest version of Ubuntu Linux when I found one in a last ditch effort.

Case 3: I won't use Office 2007, ever. Now, I know that O2k7 was developed to be integerated seemlessly into the Vista environment, but you think they might have included a guided tour of how the new interface and “menu” structure correspond to the older interface. I know many people who can't find a bloody thing in the software and have given up completely on it. A good solid recommendation for someone like that would be OpenOffice, it fully supports Office 2003 files and even has a built-in export to PDF.

Case 4: OOXML. I'm of course referring to Office Open XML, which is Microsoft's attempt at an international standard for documents. Notice how its OpenOffice backwards? I think that they did that so that they could try to hook users of OpenOffice without knowing. Their first attempt at a standard failed as many of the voting countries refused to adopt it (Canada, India, China). The main problem, you can't have an open standard that requires a user to use one and only one product, that defeats the point of being open. Note: you should be informed that OpenOffice had their document format approved by ISO almost 2 years ago.

If you couldn't tell I'm a huge fan of Open Source software. Software should be free, hell, many people pirate software to begin with because it is too expensive to buy. Open Source software allows a community of users to develop and provide input in creating alternatives to off the shelf software. What people are scared of with Open Source is they feel it is not secure and contains spyware, Open Source contains less spyware and harmful code than regular off the shelf software. If thats true, what is everyone scared of? Their own shadow? Or Change?

I've given XP a deadline of 3 months to get the hell off of my systems so that I can use something a little more “real” and affordable. I'm referring to installing Linux on my computer. The only thing at this point that is holding back from installing is the lack of Wi-Fi support for my wireless card. I have a newer card that is not readily available, if I had a standard wireless card the installation of Linux would pick it up in most cases. The problem with mine is that there are NO drivers at all for me to use. My iPod works great, my camera card reader works great.

I've got time to kill while waiting for the new files to become available, until then I plan on finding all of the replacement software that I can find.

Initial Rambling

It seems fitting that I open up a blog again to keep myself entertained and amused while I should be working. What is the point of it? I haven't decided what I will say here but if I get some kind of idea, I will sure as hell put it here.

Starting off I should mention that I woke up this morning thinking it was Monday and that it was my last day of work for the week. Boy was I sadly mistaken. I guess it helps that I've been completely out of it for the last few days. I don't know whether up is down and down is up. The only thing I know is that play on my iPod tends to make me happy.

I guess I should mention something personally about myself. Screw it. I don't want to.

Ciao