A Nitrous Crouton

A headache day. I’ve been struggling to fight through some major code refactoring with nagging sinus issues that just won’t subside. Grar. There are certain benefits to my many years of experience working in large bodies of code where I wasn’t the original author. The one I am thankful for at the moment is the ability to analyze chunks of code, and take a chainsaw to the source tree with the effect accuracy of a scalpel. Many projects begin life as prototypes crammed into the codebase of a previous project. That previous project might not be a good architectural fit, but it’s there, it compiles, runs, and you can start banging on it right now. Of course, what then tends to happen is the prototype, good engineering practice to the contrary, ends up becoming the production codebase. If that happens, at some point there needs to be a reckoning, a pruning, and a major refactoring. Yeah, that’s where I’m at today.

One of my major problems with this blog is I haven’t gotten routine in writing to the point where it becomes an engrained habit. As soon as I start becoming a bit more regular in posting, I end up going out of town for a week for an intensive on-site client visit. Then I return and am wiped, but still trying to maintain productivity and writing falls by the wayside. Next thing I know, it’s a couple weeks later and typing up a blog entry seems like starting a marathon cold.

Yes, the iPhone looks insanely slick. No, I’m not going to be an early adopter this time. I did buy the original iPod the week it came out, but however much geek lust it inspires, an iPhone is not in the cards for me this year.

I do have to replace my ailing stone-age phone from 2001. If the iPhone were available now, it would be extra difficult to resist. June makes it easier, as does the fact that I’m on Sprint versus Cingular. Current strategy: retire medieval phone in the coming weeks with something cheap on a one-year contract, probably flip to second-generation iPhone model in the first half of 2008.

I have two days left to ping-pong internal monologues regarding the pros and cons of attending the 2007 Game Developers Conference. On the pro side, now that E3 is gone, this is the primary opportunity to catch up with folks, network, and do business development. On the con side, the sessions get less useful every year and the convention gets more commercial, making it purely about the networking benefits. And the main con is cost: both of attending and the break from billable hours while attending. Ordinarily, it would be a no-brainer. But, the timing seems just off in terms of doing business development with where I’m at right now, and my middleware projects are nowhere near ready to try and flog. Still, I’m pretty sure I need to bite the bullet and go.

January has been a frustrating month. I’ve continued the trend of being able to get everything done that I’ve absolutely needed to get done, but I still feel like I’m falling behind of a bunch of things that I really want to get done. Even taking the new expansion pack into account, I can’t really blame World of Warcraft either. I think it’s time for some readjustment, and part of that is going to involve posting status updates with as much detail as I can muster, barring confidential or overly embarrassing detail. This should help me get into a posting rhythm again, albeit a bit dry. That, however, might help inspire me to do something interesting with my posting instead of, well, what I have been doing.

Coming tomorrow: a mini book/movie review round-up of what I’ve consumed in the past few months. For now, I must put head down and bang out several hours of solid code.

Step 1: Open a web page in your browser (http://www.amazon.com works well)
Step 2: Copy and paste the following text into the address bar:
javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);
Step 3: Hit return
Step 4: Profit! (and waste CPU cycles galore)

Sometimes I will switch to a different piece of software, service, or web site if something comes along that is head and shoulders better than what I am currently using. I marveled at MapQuest in 1997. Yahoo Maps proved much less irritating and quickly replaced it. Yahoo pretty much remained the standard until Google Maps appeared and blew everything else out of the water in terms of interface. I presume Yahoo Maps has improved since then, but I have no motivation to bother checking.

There is another motivating factor: when an upgrade goes horribly wrong. Since I’ve been using the Web since the early days (would that be Web 0.5?), I’m used to doing everything I can via the Internet, including my TV listings. I’d always used Yahoo’s TV listings, which while a bit clunky, were perfectly functional and worked well enough to let me see what was on in the timeframe I was interested in.

In recent weeks, it seems Yahoo has given their TV listings site a huge upgrade. Previously it refreshed the page when you jumped around on the timelime. Now, it has the requisite AJAX crap going on so you can drag a scroll bar around to update the time view. This would be great, except it manages to look absolutely horrible, feels just as clunky if not worse than the old site, and most damning of all, sometimes loads incorrectly or not at all under a vanilla Firefox 2.0.

I am now using Zap2It.

There is actually a third motivating factor: my needs change. Interestingly this did apply, but wouldn’t have been a tipping factor. What changed is that I recently broke down and bought a LCD TV with an integrated HDTV receiver. Yahoo’s broadcast listings, for whatever reason, still only include analog channels. If there was a way to turn on digital listings in the new site, it wasn’t immediately obvious. Zap2It displays all the channels.

Since I generally am only checking for channels that have analog counterparts anyway, that annoyance probably wouldn’t have been enough in and of itself to make me switch from Yahoo. Coupled with the broken site upgrade, it’s pretty much set my new TV listings ‘provider’ in cement.

As an aside, holy crap does Southern California have a lot of digital broadcast channels. What was also interesting, although not shocking to me, was even though I’ve always had very marginal reception using cheap indoor antennas, most of the digital channels come through very well with a minimum of fidgeting using the same antennas. Viva technology.

And now back to productivity. There is much to do in 2007.

Well, there will be once my brain is engaged. While I am not a morning person, and have a tendency to stay up later than planned and thus arise later than planned, my main client is in the Eastern Time Zone, making this problematic. I slipped into old habits over the holidays and forced myself up earlier than usual this morning. The caffeine hasn’t quite broken through the brain fog yet. Since I am in no shape to write any code yet, I might as well jump on an additional discipline of trying to be more regular with my writing. A short blog entry, a Monday brunch, and hopefully I should be set to knock out my programming to-do list for today. At least the morning email is out of the way.

I’m trying not to be too hard on myself for blowing off the second half of my New Year’s Weekend to-do list for vegging out and playing Battleground PvP WoW for much of the weekend. I do feel better rested, although since I haven’t quite been able to shake the feeling of running slightly behind on everything, the rest is kind of riddled with an undercurrent of stress.

While great fun, the sibling holiday visit of 2006 was also exhausting. Long days were part of it, as well as lots of driving around Southern California. But going to densely peopled areas, especially Sea World definitely drained me. I am definitely a classic strong introvert. I am even less used to being in a sea of people these days and it take a lot out of me. It was worth it to see the Shamu show, however. Aside from that, Sea World really wasn’t that interesting as an adult with no children.

I’m pretty daunted by 2007. I’ve got a big long list of stuff that Needs to get done (pay the bills) stuff I Want to get done (advance world domination), and stuff that would be Fun to do (he says that now). Getting back into a regular exercise routine is going to have to get bumped to the head of the queue, because right now I just don’t feel the energy to do much more than tackle the Needs and veg out in unproductive tasks. I did manage to hit all the critical goals for 2006, but it was frustrating how little I managed besides that. At the same time I have to recognize the magnitude of what I did pull off, but I don’t see myself getting less ambitious, just more tired.

At least I’ve finished off all the Jelly Belly flavors I like from the box sent by my mother. Mainlining sugar over the holidays really hasn’t helped my energy levels or mental state. The funny thing about Jelly Belly is I only really like the quirky flavors and don’t care for the traditional fruity ones (with the notable exception of Watermelon). This inevitably means half of them go to waste. At least this year, the handy box had them separated into cubbies with a bean legend that lets me easily delineate my preferences:

Really Yummy
(I’d eat these into a sugar coma, or possibly a stroke, or stroking out during a coma while unconsciously flapping around like a hummingbird)

Chocolate Pudding
Bubble Gum
Tutti Fruitti
Sizzling Cinnamon
Cotton Candy
Watermelon

Yummy

Buttered Popcorn
A&W Root Beer
Dr Pepper
Licorice

Kinda Yummy

Caramel Apple
Caramel Corn
A&W Cream Soda
Jalapeno
Coconut

No Thanks

Everything else