mahalo.

work has been moving really fast recently. instead of going out on a client outing in the city, i got a migraine. went hiking in marin county this weekend.

that’s about it for me. i’ve all but given up at the idea of buying a house around here, so if nothing looks good soon, i’m going to start looking for a nice apartment to stay at. it’s not that i dislike living at home, but i think i am physically running out of space to live in.

oh yeah, and after breaking my wonderful stick of 5+ years and replacing it with a newer version, i think i just lost that new stick. and the IRS just stuck me with unpaid taxes. and service on the volvo was $1k. the pain.

did i mention that san francisco is a forsaken city with too many cars and no where to park them? that’s not totally true, costco and safeway both have lots thank goodness. but how’s a guy supposed to grab a nice bite of in n out once in a while? and is it so bad to add a left turn lane if there’s already a thick median in place? i understand wanting to maximize the flow of traffic by not allowing non-right-of-way left turns, but if you can add a protected left turn lane into a median that is otherwise occupied by a muni stop, doesn’t that seem like a harmless improvement?

dude, creepy sounds from saturn
From NASA

their stupid truck died at the gas station yesterday after i filled up. and yes, i did use diesel gas. turns out the battery just decided to go out. and no, i didn’t leave the cargo light on. in the end, it took 3 hours to get a mechanic to figure out what was wrong, jump and start the car.

on the bright side, konfabulator was bought by yahoo! and they’re giving it away for free! for those of you who don’t know what it is, konfabulator is best recognized as the application that allows mac users to have neat little translucent widgets on their desktop, although i believe mac has their own version (dashboard) in the newest version of their os. Check it out though, it’s good stuff.

i know this has been around already, but i just have to post it because it’s so pretty and people should see itoptimus keyboard

keyboard with LEDs on the keys so that each key can display it’s function depending on the application that’s running

the summer was holding back, but it looks like it’s just letting loose now. wasn’t it still just around 80 two mondays ago?

and is it just me, or does it feel like it’s more humid nowadays?

As developer learning the tricks of the trade, thought I might as well pass along handy little tidbits to any other developers with a similar kind of relative inexperience.

Today’s cool little trick:
perl -piext -e ‘command‘ files

What it basically does, is run command on every line of every file in files (wildcards okay of course… this is running from the command line). This is especially useful for a global query-replace. ext is just the extension to store the backup copies of files in.

For example:

perl -pi.bak -e ‘$_ =~ s/old_pattern/new_pattern/g’ *

Replaces every occurrence of old_pattern with new_pattern for all the files in the current directory. It also makes a copy of the original file in original_filename.bak.

Handy little command.

(from ESPN)
agreement in principle to new CBA

that’s one form of a tease. just give you a little bit… just enough that you want more.

the other kind, i’m a starting to get a little tired of now. the one where you’re so close, but just not quite close enough. after going 8-1-1 last season, we’re now 0-6. with five out of those six losses being one goal games!

we lost 3-2 tonight, and i think every goal was caused by me. first one, i left someone i should have been covering. second one, i think i screened the goalie, and the third one, i kicked in with my own skate while trying to stop a centering pass. some guy on their team pat me on the butt and thanked me for it afterwards. as it is, i’m not so cool with the butt patting. in this particular scenario, it was just insult to injury.

it’s time for everyone on our team to start running some stairs. five 1-goal game losses after a dominant season usually means one thing. a lack of energy or effort.

today was just another reminder of how cool javascript is.

yes, C++, C and Java are the well-known “hardcore” programming languages that you’d probably get no respect for as a programmer if you don’t know at least one of the three. But like Scheme/LISP, Javascript is awesome because it is probably the most prominently used higher-order language out there (but probably many people don’t know it).

Unfortunately, its standard use is as a wimpy little web-scripting language used for swapping one picture for another when joe-shmoe user moves their mouse over something.

But we cannot forget the lambda function!
(function(message) { print(message); }) (’Eat this C!!!’);

saw it tonight. really entertaining. the back and forth was hilarious.

saw it friday night. also a good movie. suspenseful. regardless of what tom cruise says in his interviews, he’s still a good lead. he’s always been good with the “cool-guy-whatever” attitude, but he’s also good at portraying empassioned fear or a sense of urgency (also in minority report).

bought it at target for $10. good deal i think. i’ve run out of room on my dvd rack for all my dvds… time to add a new dvd rack to the wishlist… speak of a wishlist.

things that i want to buy, but must hold back on:
1. a new computer - this one has been having trouble starting and has been rebooting from time to time… it might just be an old power supply, but i think after 4+ years… it’s about time to move on

2. a palmone treo 650 - it’s just a cool device. and at work, we have a server set up for real-time synchronization between the treo and outlook. also, the screen resolution would make it so that i can actually take real advantage of my pcs vision. i would use the internet on my phone more currently, but the sanyo 5300’s screen resolution is so low that it’s just too much of a hinderance. also, uses SD as expansion, so if i ever choose to get an ultra compact form factor digital camera, this would help ease the transition.

3. a mountain bike - it’s just super expensive… but i would totally use it. and biking is the typical cardio training you hear about for hockey. it’s also great cardio because i’ll be able to keep my heart rate up for a longer period of time compared to running, where my legs give out first.