Happy birthday Snooks! Hopefully I can buy you a beer (or ten) later on today. 
Author: ryan
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Happy Snooksday
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Lunchtime links
During lunch, while eating a delicious chicken sandwich and scanning my usual lunchtime news sites (Digg and Slashdot) I found the following tidbits that I thought I'd share.
Web developers, just say no to Internet Explorer
An interesting little read from a frustrated developer (presumably, doesn't say what he does for a living, just what kind of company he works for), a site dedicated to trying to make 2007 and 'IE-free year', given it's poor standards-compliance. I know first-hand the pain that IE causes. Anyway, Read it! (www.nomoreiehacks.org)Pentagon: War on terror in Iraq, caused more harm than good
From an article of the Sunday Herald on December 26th, 2006, the Pentagon has been attributed as admitting that the war on terror in Iraq has done more harm than good in terms of the objective, to win the hearts and minds of the people, removing the power from terror goups. Read It! (findarticles.com) -
Blog tweaks
Spent some time tweaking the blog the past couple days, minor modifications and improvements. Registered users will notice that they can now set avatars, and that I fixed a bug that kept the blog from reading the cookie data properly that would cause logged in users to have to fill out the entire comment form, including image verification. There were many plugins I looked at (including more dynamic, AJAX-style commenting), some of which may be coming soon. Yay, nerdy fun! Didn't get much else accomplished around the house this weekend. Oh well. May have to play some Call of Duty 2 now.
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Beer, with added workiness
Ah, friday. I say that as if it was a long week or something, I only worked 3 days, but they all were long, brain-destroying days. One nice thing was that at the end of the day the company hosted another small happy hour in the break room, so I had a beer or two and chatted before Kelly picked me up around 6:30. We decided to go to the Moon & Sixpence again, have a few pints, some snacks, etc, and relax.
The pub was packed when we arrived, so we ended up with a small table near the door. About an hour later I hear my name called out, it was one of my bosses and his wife. They sat with us and we had a great time chatting, mostly non-work related. Towards the end of the evening my esteemed coworker seemed to be getting a little droopy-eyed, so we drove them home. Fun evening all around, and a good way to end the week.
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Videos: God, Inc., episodes 1 and 2
Found some fun videos on YouTube while eating lunch today, two episodes of God, Inc. by Francis Stokes. You can watch them on his website, francisstokes.com. The comedy reminds me of The Office, or Office Space, but with a twist, the employees in this office work in the corporate offices of God, handling public affairs, marketing, etc. A fine example of the comedy is this:
A new employee is meeting about her new role in the company…
Manager: Sarah Melody Church, you're going to be in product development, right?
Sarah: That's right.
Manager: OK… birth
Sarah: June 3rd, 1976
Manager: OK, and death?
Sarah: November 5th, 2006
Manager: How did you die?
Sarah: Leukemia
Manager: Oooh, ouch. That sucks.
Sarah: Yeah, it was pretty painful, but I had the support of my friends and family, so, that meant a lot.
Manager: Yeah… Isn't there a cure for that? (looking puzzled)
Sarah: No (also looking puzzled)
Manager: (looks at a sheet behind his desk) … Oh, yeah, that's next year. (Makes "tough luck" face)
Sarah: … (looks at floor, sadly)Apparently he's working on Epsiode 3 now. I think these along with Chad Vader are among my favorite web videos of all time. Enjoy!
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It’s 2007!
Happy New Year all. Had a small gathering this evening, loads of fun, ate too much, drank too much… guess that's the point? Overall had a very nice evening, and am looking forward to the new year. Happy New Year and here's to a better '07. (PS, I can't believe that it's 2007… I feel that I should have a flying car, a cold fusion-powered home, and a robot maid by now).
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New computer: built
Continuing on my week of productivity, today I built myself a new PC, a Core 2 Duo, two gigs of DDR2, and an nVidia 7950gt video card. After spending most of the day and evening getting all the hardware and basic software installed, I installed Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (which came with the video card) and Call of Duty 2, and briefly played each one. I will say that after upgrading from an older system, the new one is quite speedy, and while it's fun to have a new machine, it's a big pain reinstalling all the software and getting things set up the way they were prior to the upgrade. I'm guessing it'll take a couple more days to get things set up the way I need, and to back up all the junk from the old hard drive, but it's nice to have a modern system. Oh, and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is pretty fun.
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Storage shelf: constructed
Spent the day (and evening) building a monster (and manly) shelf in my garage today. Since moving into the house a year and a half ago, we'd had piled up plastic storage bins on the floor… bothering me. One of the things I mentioned on my Christmas wish list was some tools and assistance building a big shelf a couple feet from the ceiling to place said bins on. I got some tools, and last night my brother Travis came over with his truck so I could pick up lumber and other hardware to build the shelf. Today I got it all built. Took me nearly 7 hours to do from start to finish (not counting all the cleanup) but it's so nice to finally have done. 12 feet wide, nearly 2 feet deep, hanging about 2 feet from the ceiling. I can fit 8 bins on it, and was able to move some other things around under it, freeing up room for the cars. I'd shout out a big hooray, but I'm exhausted. So all I can muster is a weak 'yay'.
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100 tidbits of knowledge
Reading though my list of usual news sites this morning, I came across this from BBC News: 100 things we didn't know last year. Did you know that the lion costume from Wizard of Oz was made of real lion skins? Did you know that more than 90% of plane crashses have survivors? Fascinating.
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Dinner at the Mortuary
Tonight Kelly and I had dinner with our friends Miranda & Brian at the new McMenamins pub that opened near where we live. It's called the Chapel Pub, and is located in a building that was constructed for and used as a mortuary from 1939 to 2005. Again, McMenamins did what they do best, snapped up the great building and renovated it. A server told Kelly and I that originally the building was to be nothing offices for their corporate headquarters, however they figured out that there was enough room in the large brick building to put a small pub in the front. And boy has it been a hit, Kelly had heard that on opening night a few weeks ago there was an hour-long wait to get seated. Yikes!
The wait wasn't too bad (20 minutes) and we were seated in a nice spot by the windows that face Commercial St. Dinner was good, and had a great time hanging out with Miranda and Brian. At first I thought it might be a little weird to have dinner and drinks in a former mortuary; however it really wasn't strange at all once there. The pub has a warm, comfortable vibe, and very a 'McMenamins' atmosphere, with interesting art and great old photos of the area adorning the walls. It's not a big place, but it's worth going to check out. Oh, Miranda & Brian and Kelly & I exchanged gifts, and I got a Serenity ornament. Way cool! Thanks again!
