this past saturday

this past saturday i went out with some people for the evening... it was a birthday celebration and we went out for what i characterized as 'food & funny' - dinner at the old spagetti factory and a skit comedy show at second city...

it was an interesting evening with lots of stuff going on... first and foremost, the comedy - i loved the comedy... i'm 30 years old and i've never seen live comedy before and boy have i been missing out... second city reloaded was a blast... i hope i get to see more live comedy in the future...

the food was pretty good too, though i found the spagetti a little hard to deal with on a plate that was more like a bowl than a plate... i generally don't bother with the spoon when winding up the spagetti on a fork (in fact, i don't recall ever doing it, i'm not even sure i know how - i'm so uncivilized) so getting it wound up on the fork in the bowl-plate-thing i had was a challenge because i kept getting too much, it was difficult to properly separate the desired amount of spagetting from the rest... having meatballs with the spagetti was a treat, though, i haven't had spagetti with meatballs in ages...

during diner there was a lot of interesting conversation... some of it about computers and some specifically about blogs... why do people write these things? your inner-most thoughts are inner-most for a reason... y'know, for the longest time i couldn't understand why people kept diaries and really i still don't... those really are your inner-most thoughts and feelings and gosh what always seems to happen to diaries on tv? they get read by people who weren't supposed to see them... a weblog isn't like that - a weblog is a journal but it contains things you actually want to share with people... maybe you haven't gotten around to sharing it any other way, maybe the opportunity just has never arisen, maybe you're just more comfortable with this mode of communication - whatever, but these are not the inner-most private thoughts and feelings of people, no, these are just the things that haven't been satisfactorily shared by other means...

another thing that came up that interested me illustrated that ordinary folks really are learning security best practices - but that's something for a different post in a different blog (yes, i have 2 blogs - check my profile)...

finally, and definitely most strangely, someone asked me if i was a plumber... they said i looked like a plumber, actually a specific plumber as it turns out... that was the strangest comment i've heard in a long time - my first thought was "am i showing too much butt cleavage?"... i assured her i was not the plumber she was thinking of - really the only plumbing i do is simple repair work, no new installations and nothing that might require an acetylene torch, just an amateur (hey, as red from the red green show says, if they don't find you hansome, at least they'll find you handy)... i didn't go out of my way to tell her what i really do for a living, however - a guy's gotta have a little mystery about him after all...

what is a guid?

ok folks... i've seen your searches, i feel your pain... you want to know what a guid is well just head on over to this wikipedia page and you can read all about it...

if you're looking to actually create guids even if just to see one, well, here's an online guid generator...

what does any of this have to do with me or my blog? well, i got tired of various online services telling me that the name i'd chosen (often my own name) wasn't unique enough so in an act of symbolic rebellion i decided to start using 'place guid here'... it's kind of like a threat - i figure if anyone ever tells me that 'place guid here' isn't unique enough, i'm going to start using real guids... a globally unique identifier better darn well be unique enough (at least until the aliens come - then i'll need a uuid)...

followup on snowboarding

it occurred to me that maybe i can write down some of the things i learned, just in case it's a while before i get back out to the slopes...

1. when someone tells you to bend your knees more, make sure you bend over at the same time... my natural inclination when bending my knees is to bend at the ankle as well and keep my torso vertical, however the boots used in snowboarding effectively prevent movement in the ankle so when i was trying to bend my knees i invariably would wind up leaning too far backwards and fall over... the only real way to bend your knees and keep your center of mass over the board is to bend your body forwards at the same time (this is something they don't generally tell you, by the way)...


2. although snowboarding is very similar to skateboarding, there are some ways in which it is very different - like turning, for example... on a skateboard if you lean to one side then the board turns, however on a snowboard if you lean to one side and that side happens to be the edge of the board that is facing down the hill you will fall... the leading edge of the board will dig into the snow and stop suddenly and you will keep going... not a good thing to do...


3. only ever lean into the side of the board facing up the hill... what this does is dig the trailing edge of the board into the snow and depending on how evenly you apply the pressure can slow your descent or adjust your direction... the more gradually you lean in, the more gradual your deceleration will be... if you lean in quickly you will decelerate quickly or even stop - you could even fall, but you should fall up the hill rather than down it and i find that to be the preferable way to fall if you have a choice...


4. weird as it may seem, twisting your torso can turn the board... hold your hands straight out from your sides and the board should pretty much go where you point so long as you're not leaning to either side of the board... once the turn has progressed to the point that the board is a little passed pointing straight down the hill you can lean on the trailing edge of the board and make the rest of the turn much more sharp or slow down or even stop if you so choose...


5. if you fall and find yourself on your butt with your feet facing the bottom of the hill it can be difficult to get up because the board will want to move out from under you as you try to stand - you can roll over on your stomach and get up much more easily so long as you don't mind having your back to the base of the hill...


6. if you do mind facing away from the direction you'll be travelling when getting up, you really need to get good at digging the trailing edge of your board into the snow while getting up off your butt (so that the board doesn't slide down the hill as you try to stand)... the more tired you get, the harder this will be...


7. the more you fall and have to get up, the more tired you will be... by far the most strenuous part snowboarding for us beginners is making and recovering from our mistakes... in that sense, the better you get at it, the more easy it will be both from a difficulty sense and from a pure work sense...


8. the easiest controlled descent down a hill is with your board perfectly sideways and the trailing edge digging into the snow just enough to slow you to your desired speed...

now hopefully i'll do a better job of remembering this stuff for the next time... or perhaps i'll just take advantage of socrates' observation about how reading and writing has given us the luxury of forgetting things (because we can just go back and reread what we've written when the need arises)...

i need to go snowboarding more often

that's the conclusion i've come to - i need to go snowboarding more often so that the things i learn don't get completely forgotten by the next time i go snowboarding...

i went snowboarding once something like 6 or 7 years ago? i don't remember how long ago it was, but it was a long time, so when i went to snow valley this past thursday with a bunch of guys from the office i had basically forgotten everything... now there are a bunch of kurt-shaped holes in the snow leading down the family slope from me bouncing down the mountain 5 times in a row...

it was fun, sure, and i did relearn what i learned the first time and then some, but after the cold wore off and i started being able to feel again i discovered i had become a giant walking bruise so clearly i'm going to have to either never go snowboarding again (which doesn't sound like fun at all) or try harder to stay in practice...

and i suppose if i do then i should probably get some equipment, like for example some sort of snow pants ('cause denim gets wet and cold pretty quick)... and a certain piece of protective gear that probably saved my butt from serious tailbone injury...

well then i guess i'll just have to post about pbwiki, won't i

i got an email today telling me that if i post something on the internet about pbwiki they'll double my free storage space...

what? who? how? when? huh?

ok, i understand, you need some backstory... pbwiki is a simple to use hosted wiki provider - how simple? well, the pb in pbwiki stands for peanut butter... they're supposed to be as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich... it's one of many, many online tools i've found over the past year or 2 that have really changed the way i use the internet...

so am i a big corporate sell-out now? well, no... i've been using pbwiki for a while now to hold and organize information that doesn't really fit in too well to things like online bookmarking sites or stuff like that - like a personal knowledgebase... i've also been meaning to post about all the cool tools i've uncovered and make use of online (often daily) and so a post about pbwiki was probably going to be coming sooner or later anyways, the email was just a little extra push... maybe now i'll also post about how easy it is to use blogger (you're reading my blogger blog right now), or how useful del.icio.us is, or any number of other things...

well intentioned unhelpfulness

an observation i've made recently is that some people don't really understand a natural born problem solver... it's weird because to a certain extent all men are thought to be problem solvers, but still the misunderstanding persists...

for example, i sometimes come across the phrase "we have to do this"... i call it the edict from on high... it's usually said in frustration in response to detailed accounts of the many problems developers have faced or will face trying to implement some feature... it generally doesn't come with any clear indication of how "this" is to be done, how to overcome the obstacles in our way, or even any compelling evidence that it can be done in a reasonable way...

this leads naturally to the oft repeated "anything is possible"... anything is possible is a philosophical opinion, and it's one that is contradicted by the real world... computer scientists familiar with the halting problem know for a fact that some things are not possible... anything is possible is the mantra of motivational speakers, not workers trying to get a job done...

i consider myself a natural born problem solver so when i got to someone for help on a problem i'm finding difficult to solve i'm not looking for motivation, i'm looking for innovation... i'm looking for ideas because i have run out, i've exhausted the possibilities that i can see and i need a fresh perspective... and it's frustrating getting these kinds of answers because it indicates that the people i'm asking don't understand me or the problems i'm encountering...

i should have looked harder

as a follow-up to my last post about a mr. potato head r2d2, here's all 3 of them as one package



what could be better than starwars as told by mr. potato head?

they've finally done it

from my blog to product designers' ears - it's finally happened... a mr.potato head R2D2!



i knew it was a good idea to re-subscribe to boingboing...

blogger, thy name is irony

y'know, it's kind of sad when someone who clearly has a firm grasp on some concept (like effectively integrating into software development teams) is unable to apply what they know...

hard work and real results really are the key... if you don't deliver the deliverables then you just wind up being a burden on the rest of the team when they enevitably have to do your work for you...

one thing i disagree with in that article, however, is the point on politics... i find it very hard to believe that scarcity of career advancement opportunities are really enough of a day to day concern that they would have any bearing on a new hire being accepted in the team... that level of focus on one's own position and advancement is actually incongruous with team-like behaviour (there is no i in team)... as a developer myself i can honestly say that i am not looking for a promotion and i don't care about being the boss' favourite - i just want to get the job done (i hate when things are incomplete)...

just learn and practice the culture and patterns of the development team and get your job done - so long as you're a team player and pull your weight there really shouldn't be any problems... anything else is likely a perceptual bias that you bring to the table yourself...