Beware of Blog

Granny Star

2011-06-18T23:23:00.000-04:00

Photo of a Granny Star I made for my honey. Directions were on this blog.

Latest News, June 2011

2011-06-05T16:00:00.000-04:00

So what am I doing now? Well, I've discovered, thanks to my wife this company called Advocare.This company is having an immense impact on my life.

Prior to starting this new diet, I had no energy. I would wake up fifteen minutes before work, and feel "in a fog" until the afternoon. After work, a hard day of sitting, I had no energy and would sit and watch TV for the rest of the evening. I had little interest in any of my hobbies. My weight, while staying mostly constant, was higher than it should be. I had continual health problems.

When I started the plan provided for me by Advocare, I noticed a difference right away. I had a lot more energy. I woke up at 7am instead of 8:45, and I started working before 8 instead of 9:05. I was able to concentrate on complicated issues in the morning, instead of putting them off until the afternoon. I maintained a high energy level throughout the day and in the evening, I still felt good enough to go out or do other things. I've lost 9 pounds in the last 3 weeks, and I will probably continue to lose weight, as I have not just gone on a diet, but I have actually changed my lifestyle.

The change has not just made me feel better, but it has changed my personality. I have been unmedicated for depression for some time, since my health plan did not pay enough of the cost. I was not as down as I used to be, but there was definitely room for improvement. With the new diet, I am generally quite "up." I feel like doing things, going out, interacting. Little things do not seem to bother me as much. I find it easier to be around people, my family for instance.

Rebecca and I went for a walk on June 1st at the Blackstone Valley Bikepath. I had a lot more energy on this walk than I had the last time we went for a an outing like this, which was at Dana, MA, one of the "lost towns" near the Quabbin. We walked a total of about 1.5 miles, and took pictures of flowers and trees we saw on the way. It was a lot of fun. I took a few pictures of Rebecca.

Ambient Light

2011-01-21T01:32:00.001-05:00

Through a Beer Bottle
Originally uploaded by oweinh

So what have I been doing with myself lately, you ask? Well, I've been taking a little hiatus from crocheting after Christmas.... I'll have to upload pictures of the two afghans I made (with help from Rebecca) for my children. I've been fulfilling a lifelong desire to learn German with the help of busuu.com, a free (-ish) online language learning tool. And I've been thinking about how light shines through an empty Sam Adams beer bottle. Go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/oweinh/ to see my other recent photographs.

Rose the Kitty

2010-11-10T23:35:00.002-05:00

Rose the Kitty
Originally uploaded by oweinh

So several days ago my son, who walks the dogs in a wooded area near our condo, found a kitten. It was in rough shape but he fed it and put some flea & tick stuff on it, and one day brought it home. We took it to the vet where they gave her a distemper shot and looked her over. She had more fleas and ticks (the standard stuff we gave her was not strong enough) so she got something stronger. She Also had some sort of stomach parasite. She's in 2 days of quarantine in our upstairs bathroom. Then she can join the population again. We have a litter box in there for her and she is using it, which is good. The vet said that the kitty is 10 weeks old. We named her "Rose" in keeping with our "Keeping Up Appearances" theme.

So almost 4 months...

2010-07-21T19:30:00.000-04:00

... and no posts. Because I have a dull life. And I have nothing to say. *sigh*

Moore State Park

2010-04-05T10:50:00.002-04:00

Moore State Park Gristmill river
Originally uploaded by oweinh

We went to Moore State Park in Paxton on Saturday and hiked over about 2.5 miles of trails. We were there between 12:30pm and 2pm. In general it was a very nice place to walk. There were a few places where the trail was muddy and under water, but we were mostly able to go around these "puddles" (although I didn't bother... I'm all-terrain). There was one place where the trail became overgrown and we had to turn back because we were not able to follow it any longer. We ran into a trail runner whom Rebecca asked if she knew her way around back to the bridge (we could see it from where we were), and she guided us along another trail that took us there.
I've come to the realization that I do not seem to benefit from food along the trail. Rebecca brought fruit and protein bars for each of us, and I ate the bar, but it made me feel crampy... I could have done without it. After talking with Rebecca about it later, I learned that she starts to feel weak and the food "energizes" her. I felt no immediate effect. I think our blood sugar levels and the way they are maintained are markedly different. In the future, I'll probably avoid eating on the trail unless I feel hungry or weak.
There are more trails at the park, so we plan on going back soon. We may bring Daisy, since dogs are permitted on the trails. Violet is too old and arthritic, although I feel bad that she would be left alone for some time. She's not used to being alone at this point.

So now I'm giving JRuby a spin

2010-03-25T15:16:00.000-04:00

... because I've had it up to here *places palm near forehead* trying to install various Ruby MRI packages. JRuby is not up to 1.9 yet, but I'm sure it will be soon. And it will be easy for other people who might use my code in that, everyone has Java, so this is just an extension of Java.

How to ask a question

2010-03-19T16:44:00.000-04:00

Ever have a question to ask of a vendor, site, or whatever, and before you can enter the text of your question in a convenient text-box, you are directed to read a document titled "How to ask a question" or something like that? I've run into that a few times, and my advise is to forget it. A person who directs you to do this considers your time as frivolous and their time as too valuable. Forget the question, forget the product, forget the site, and look for something else. Here is my take on this:

1) I know how to ask a question. I state what I want to know, add a "question" word to the beginning, and a question mark at the end, and when I read it back to myself, remember to raise the pitch of my voice at the end to make it sound "questiony".
2) My time is just as valuable as the person whose time I'm taking with questions. Just because they (possibly) know the answer and I do not does not make them better or more valuable than me.
3) When someone asks me a question, I take an interest in discovering what they want and how to answer them because there are times when I have questions too.
4) My questions are intelligent because I am an intelligent person. If you feel you get too many "stupid" questions wasting your time, consider a) developing some humility and b) perhaps there is a problem with the documentation/support for your product, service, whatever.

So there. Nyah.

Two Ways (At Least) To Do It

2010-03-07T23:23:00.000-05:00

So I was working on my Text Adventure Game when I should have been sleeping, and I am considering how to automate the independent movements of monsters in the game. Characters in the game move in each of the eight directions; north, south, east, west, and the four in between those. So anyway, in automating a monster, it should probably not just move randomly, but move in a certain direction until it cannot and then turn and try to go another way, etc. A tool to achieve what will eventually be sensible movement is a "wheel" or a "spinner." A wheel is essentially a set of choices that can be rotated around so that different options come around to the "pointer." I get the truly brilliant idea that a wheel can be represented by an array with all the possible choices, and the wheel can be spun by 'shifting' the array and then pushing the off-shifted element back onto the end. The wheel can turn the opposite way by popping the last value off and then appending it back on to the beginning. So without further adieu, here is the wheel class as I first envisioned it:

class Wheel
  def initialize( wheel )
    @wheel = wheel
    @roll = 0
  end

  def roll( roll )
    if roll > 0
      @wheel.push( @wheel.shift )
    elsif roll < 0
      @wheel = [ @wheel.pop ] + @wheel
    end
    @roll += roll
    return @wheel[0]
  end
end

And I'm keeping track of the @roll value mostly for my own info so I can track this, and I'm feeling pretty good about myself because here I have modeled a wheel... with a... wheel. It does, after all, rotate.
But then, so do numbers when you modulate them, and I realized that what I was doing was physically moving array elements around a 'pointer' (which is @wheel[0], see?) when I could just as easily (if not more so) rotate the pointer! Here is the new Wheel class:

class Wheel
  def initialize( wheel )
    @wheel = wheel
    @roll = 0
  end

  def roll( n=0 )
    @roll += n
    @roll %= @wheel.size
    return self.read()
  end

  def read
    return @wheel[@roll]
  end
end

Now, the wheel does not turn, the pointer does. The pointer is modulated by the wheel size, much like the hand on a clock is modulated by the 12 digits on its face. Easier, but, why am I sad the wheel does not turn?

2010-02-19T15:44:00.000-05:00

I didn't go to the gym today, but I did sleep better. I was also in a better-than-usual mood for most of the day, probably due to endolphins *snort*. The special diet I'm on is difficult, if only because there is very little I can eat, and mostly not stuff we have lying around. I'm supposed to go shopping today to pick up stuff... that should solve some of the issue.

2010-02-18T16:48:00.000-05:00

Back in the day... well, sometime in the '80's, I used to get up two or three mornings a week at 3am, and go bicycle riding. For quite some time I was very physically active and in very good shape. Someone even persuaded me that I should join the track team at school, but I ended up just going once to see what it was about and never returning. Maybe I didn't get up that early... I think I might have stayed up that late. Anyway, I would do stretches and such, and then hop on my bike and ride around town for what gmap says is 6.5 miles. Part of it was up the hill on Williams Street, a rather steep hill. I always tried to stay in as high a gear as possible. I was going for power, not speed. I seldom saw other bicyclists on this route, but they would have easily passed me on this section.
Anyway, I think of all this because I went to the gym today and rode an exercise bike for 10 minutes. I went about 3 miles, and was really exhausted after, but it felt good. I think I may go tomorrow too, if I don't hurt too much from this morning. I didn't get up at three a.m. either, I got up at five, and that was tough, but lately I don't sleep well. Maybe I'll sleep better now.

2010-02-10T21:58:00.001-05:00

So it has been a while since I have updated all of you on my life. So here goes.

Work: Well, things are the same as ever at work. I continue to provide support for hospital interfaces between Meditech and clinical information systems. I enjoy finding new and creative ways to meet the customers' needs.

Home: We recently refinanced our mortgage, giving us a lower rate, slightly smaller monthly payment. Of course, after making 12+ payments, we are now back to 30 years. Wheeeeeee! I'm thinking of continuing to make the same payment on the mortgage as before and pay it off more quickly. No penalty for that.

Writing: Not currently working on story. I just downloaded something called CreaWriter which I saw on LifeHacker. I have a pretty background and no distraction. I'm writing the text of this post on CreaWriter and I'll save it and send it to the blog.

Hobbies:
Crochet: Nothing recently.
Reading: I'm trying to read "Code Complete 2," though I don't have much time for it. I have laughed at several things I've seen so far as they are things I already do. I'll comment on those at some point. Maybe my blog could become a Julie/Julia kind of thing but for programming books. LOL. ROFL. :D
Ruby: I have gotten really in depth on the text adventure game I have been working on. Despite the fact that I've never been particularly good at games, I think I'm doing quite well in the writing department. Originally, my first offering was overplanned, and I never got anything really useful down in code. But now, I went for simple, and I have simple. So far, I have XML cave definition files, which plot out all the rooms, objects, and such, and I can move about this virtual world by issuing simple commands like "go north" etc. Its really fun, but going from a map that I have drawn to an XML file is a slow process. I need to set up a "map creator" mode to allow me to "move" into new rooms I have not defined, and save the XML when I'm done.

Personal: I'm going to be joining a gym with my wife shortly. I have grown heavy after disappointment in the "Slavation Army" and a sedentary home-based job. Time I got in better health. Wish me luck.

In conclusion: I think I might talk more about the adventure game in the near future. I find my development process highly interesting, and I would be interested in comparing it to others' experience.

Everything in Moderation

2009-11-16T15:22:00.002-05:00

I have added comment moderation to this blog and enabled the feature to force commentors to type a word they seem in a box for verification, since I found a "spam" comment advertising viagra on this blog. Give me a break!

Charlton Orchard

2009-09-14T00:39:00.002-04:00

My Pickers
Originally uploaded by oweinh

We went to Charlton Orchard today. We have been looking for things to do locally, and this is just a couple of miles away, practically on the same street as our house. Afterwards we drove into Sturbridge and visited a yarn store I've wanted to see for a while, and then went to eat at Cracker Barrel.

Follow the link to the picture to see more photos from our trip to the orchard.

New Look

2009-09-10T00:10:00.002-04:00

You may have noticed (all two of you who read this) that "Beware of Blog" has recently gotten a facelift. I got tired of the old look, so played around with various themes until I found this one. It has a picture of my laptop keyboard on the header. The only thing I don't like is that there is no space between paragraphs... I need to tweak the stylesheet to add margins below each paragraph. I already fixed the code issue.

I added some features to my project timer application, written in VB. It now integrates with a "project" file, and updates the accumulated time for that project. I still have to get it to add new projects, and edit existing projects.

I was also working on my rmagic project (MAGIC in Ruby) which is in need of mathematical ability. MAGIC treats all data as strings (weak typing) and so allows addition of things like "A"+1 and such. The results are somewhat nonsensical, but predictable. I am not sure how all of the results are arrived at, but I made a breakthrough when I discovered that I could obtain the same result a small percentage of the time. The method has to do with subtracting the ascii decimal offset (48) from the character value, doing the math (without checking if the result is in the appropriate range) and then adding 48 back to the result. Results are still not completely consistent to MAGIC systems, but at least I have a starting point.

Maybe I'll post some code here when I have something interesting.

Writing again

2009-08-30T00:57:00.002-04:00

Well, I'm inspired. My sister is writing an urban fantasy -type book, and Rebecca is planning a Christian mystery book that Isaac will help with (and I will too), so I have started writing a Christian inspirational book. I have not written in quite some time. As a teen, I had always started these epic science fiction novels that were so epic they never ended. Sometime in my twenties I thought to myself, I consider myself a writer, but I have never finished anything. So I took inspiration from my last year in high school (11th grade) when we studied short stories, and began writing a series called "FoodMonster," which was a parody of my days at Stop & Shop, but with a girl as the main character, and it was in the future, and surreal... Well, they were were pretty good, I thought. Definitely not Christian.
I tried a few times to come up with ideas for Christian books, but for ages good ideas eluded me. I would end up disliking the characters and plot. The stories I came up with just did not seem all that good.
Maybe as a sign of my getting older, and seeing that Christians do not have a lot of good Christian authors to choose from, I have begun a story that I think might come out better than previous attempts. I will not say much more about it here for now, other than that it is based on an almost Seinfeld-esque premise of a guy moving in to a house across the street from a church, and it turns out he is the new pastor. Huh? Huh? Yeah but its not stupid. Really.

Laptop Fail

2009-08-19T12:31:00.001-04:00

My personal laptop, the one with my Ruby dev environment, Java dev, and VB.NET environment is DOWN. Somehow it got prematurely shut off and it will not boot. I cannot locate original boot disks.I have been without my baby for two days. One more reason I NEED to get an external HD.

(also posted to Pressing Things)

Where are we now?

2009-08-12T23:44:00.003-04:00

So right at the moment I am trying to figure out what to do with this blog. I have another at http://owein.wordpress.com. Its more of a hobby blog, I guess, but what would it be without the occasional rant?

Please Wait in the Lobby...

2009-04-23T20:50:00.003-04:00

"Mr. Obama signed his lobbying order on his first full day in office, banning anyone who was a registered lobbyist from working for any executive agency they had lobbied in the past two years or in any other agency on an issue they had lobbied on in that time. As a practical matter, the order meant that most registered lobbyists could not take jobs in their areas of expertise. The policy was praised as “groundbreaking” in a letter from groups like Common Cause and the League of Women Voters."[1]

"Groundbreaking??" More like, naive!

The article goes on to say, "The coalition of groups protesting the policy said Mr. Obama’s stance was actually hurting transparency by discouraging people from registering as lobbyists. Some nonprofits registered many staff members even if they did little lobbying, but now, the groups said in an April 9 letter to Mr. Obama, the attitude has changed from “when in doubt, report” to “don’t report unless clearly required.”"

1. Baker, Peter. "Nonprofit Groups Seeking Exceptions to Lobby Rule." The New York Times 20 Apr 2009: 22 Apr 2009 <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21lobby.html>

"That government is best that governs least"

2009-04-15T13:44:00.004-04:00

One of the interesting things about Meditech culture is that they are so sure of their market that they can say things like "that's the way it works" when a bug is found that is not worth their while to fix. As an interface programmer for hospitals with Meditech software, I occasionally see such bugs. For example, a customer notices that edits in the Medical Records application to the name do not get sent via our ADT (Admission, Discharge, Transfer) interface. The edits show up in the Admissions module, which is what the interface queue is supposed to track, but they don't go across. It turns out that the interface queue (in Meditech) does not track these edits.

I asked the customer to open a ticket with Meditech and ask them about this. This is what Meditech said (emphasis mine):

"The interface is not to [Medical Records], so edits made in [Medical Records] are not going to create a message in [the Interface]. This is as it has always been. Interfaces have never been connected to [Medical Records]."

Now, the interface may not be to Medical Records, but the Medical Records edits go to Admissions, and the interface is connected to that. But, Meditech is a huge investment for a hospital, and changing vendors to another Healthcare Information System would be a big fail, so customers deal with "that's how it works." In my 7.5 years at Meditech, I know I said that quite a few times. Sometimes against my better judgment.

With the company I'm at now, I suppose we are a little more easily replaceable. So we have a can-do attitude. In fact, I think we somewhat pride ourselves on being able to say "Yes" to things Meditech says "no" to. I feel a little better about that. I like being able to say, "yes, we can get the system to do that for you."

Anyway, my solution. Use the same queue Meditech uses to move edits from Medical Records to Admission, the ADM transfer queue. I search the queue for Demo Recall Edits, and then search those patient records in Admissions for edits to the Demo fields. Any edits cause a message to be created.

2009-04-14T19:57:00.005-04:00

So I opened a free account with github... and I can't figure out what it is all about. I've never used a code repository before. I have no idea how to get it to work. I got an initial commit to work, but I made another commit, and nothing changed. Oh well. I am trying to put my adventure game up on it.

2009-04-11T15:58:00.011-04:00

So here is the mess to which I alluded in my previous post.


class Character < Being
  def initialize( name, description )
    super( name, description )
    @stats = Stats.new
    @position = Position.new( 0, 0, 0 )
    # About 50 pounds
    @inventory = Inventory.new( 22700.0 )
  end
  # method_missing hook for allowing access to internal objects
  def method_missing( method, *args )
    # character#posx, posy, posz, posx=, posy=, posz=
    if method.to_s =~ /^pos[xyz]?$/
      @position.send( method )
    elsif method.to_s =~ /^pos[xyz]?[=]$/
      @position.send( method, args[0] )
    elsif method.to_s =~ /^(str|con|dex|int|wis|cha|all)[=]$/
      @stats.send( method, args[0] )
    elsif method.to_s =~ /^(str|con|dex|int|wis|cha|all)$/
      @stats.send( method )
    else
      raise NoMethodError, "undefined method \`" + method.to_s + "\' for Character."
  end
...

As you can see, I have contrived a nasty syntax for allowing access to the Stats object enclosed by the Character object. Why? Because I could. I was experimenting with the #missing_method method to understand it better. To get the a character's strength for instance, I could say char.str and it would call the Stats#str method. But I think that if I leave it there, I will be seriously mocked by real programmers... Of course, to allow access to the stats, position, and inventory objects, I should just say this:


class Character < Being
  def initialize( name, description )
    super( name, description )
    @stats = Stats.new
    @position = Position.new( 0, 0, 0 )
    # About 50 pounds
    @inventory = Inventory.new( 22700.0 )
  end
  
  attr_reader :stats, :position, :inventory
...

This of course will allow me to access the stats via char_obj.stats.stats_method rather than calling char_obj.stats_method and having char_obj recognize that it needs to send the method to the stats object. So instead of char.str I have to call char.stats.str . Big deal. Interesting that if you had to do that, you could, though, like if you had to hide an object inside another... although I am not 100% sure why you would.

2009-04-10T15:39:00.002-04:00

I am writing an old-style adventure game in Ruby. I saw somewhere that Ruby was particularly a good language for this kind of thing. I am agreeing with this. So far, the attempt is messy. I created a few classes, and then started an inheritance free-for-all. My base class is "Thing", and then I have a "Container" class which contains things, and a "Room" class which is a Container... blah blah blah. Beings are Things that respond 'true' to #alive? and Characters are Beings with attributes... but characters get all messy because the attributes are themselves stored in an object which is stored in a Character, so rather than write methods for all the accesses I played with #missing_method and regular expressions... yikes! I think I have some of my OO interpretations a bit backward, but I'm not sure of the best way to work with objects that "have a" object as a field within them and that object responds to complex interactions with other objects in the game.

Everything happens in the interface.

What??!?!

2009-01-15T23:11:00.002-05:00

Just realized I'm not posting anything to this blog... oh well. No one else noticed either.

Tanglewood

2008-08-07T15:45:00.008-04:00

Rebecca and I went to Tanglewood this week. We went for the "Tanglewood on Parade" production, which actually includes events throughout the afternoon and evening. We just hung out on the lawn for most of the afternoon. For us the concert is the main event. They had several conductors. Of course, the evening concludes with the 1812 Overture, augmented by real field cannon supplied (and fired) by the Army National Guard. Then there are fireworks. The whole show ends at about 11pm. We each drank a bottle of champagne. It was fantastic. We had talked about taking Isaac, but in the end Rebecca asked him, and he did not sound interested. In the long run, I think it was nice for just the two of us to go out and have a romantic evening.

We ended up sitting near a path. Don't do that if you go. The less cultured traipse up and down the path, gab on their cells, and are just generally a nuisance. I wanted to sit in the middle of the lawn, but we had no umbrella or other cover, so we would have baked.

A Feeling for the Machine

2008-07-26T00:10:00.000-04:00

I am an interface support programmer with Iatric Systems, and 95% of what I do is diagnosing problems with interfaces. The other 5% is customizing existing interfaces to enhance their functionality. The diagnosing bit can be tedious, but I think I'm good at it. I don't do crosswords or sudoku or solve rubik's cubes, or other stuff like that, but I like solving problems. Some issues can be fun and interesting.
Someone one time asked me how I got so good at programming. I had to think about it. I haven't taken many classes in programming, none in computer science at all. I haven't studied design patterns or... well any of that stuff. Really, most of my insights are hunches. I have a feeling for the machine. I know how it should work, and when it doesn't, I have a better-than-average intuition about what might be wrong.
I could be wrong, but I think that it is the 'feeling' that separates the good programmers from the average. Some people try to collect steps to solve problems. A checklist for every situation. But while I save information about every ticket I work (mostly because I tend to be forgetful), I do not try to write up a set of steps. Each problem is different, and each problem requires a fresh look as much as it requires a consistent plan.

Moving on

2008-07-25T23:30:00.003-04:00

Well, I guess I'm ready to move on. Its been over a year since I was forcibly (r)ejected from the Salvation Army. It still hurts. I was wronged. But I need to forget about it. I cannot allow it to render me ineffective for Christ for the rest of my life. I have a good life, a strong faith that can weather these times, and something to offer the kingdom, the people.

Sweet Land of Liberty?

2008-07-04T23:54:00.002-04:00

Sweet Land of Liberty?
Originally uploaded by Jibby!

This post, and the accompanying photo, are from a contact of mine on flickr. I copy them here out of respect for his opinion.

"Our President has violated the Constitution, suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus. We now hold prisoners without charges, and we humiliate and torture them.

Our President conspired to get us into a war. As a result, Iraq has been laid to waste, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed. Let me repeat that - hundreds of thousands. One estimate is as high has 600,00. Think about that for a minute. None of them ever did anything to us.

This nation has overused and abused our soldiers. These people have the hardest jobs in the world, and our present administration treats them wretchedly. They are human beings, not equipment.

Our House of Representatives has allowed this and countless other Presidential crimes to go unpunished. “Impeachment is off the table.” Yet Bill Clinton was impeached for a sexual affair. Are our priorities really that screwed up?

There are well over 40 million people in this country with little or no insurance. They literally cannot afford to get sick, and if they do, they cannot afford to get healthy again.

Jobs are dying. Well paying positions are being replaced by low paying service jobs, if they are being replaced at all. The lower class is growing as the wealthy become more affluent. The middle class is rapidly dying.

Our country values only the wealthy and ambitious. Being poor is treated as moral weakness. The meek will definitely not inherit this world.

The media have become flaccid mouthpieces of extremists. Sound bites are treated as stories and we discuss lapel pin flags as if they were a serious issue. Americans have become enthralled by pablum. Our politics are conducted on a sixth grade level.

Our nation is spending itself into ruin, along with most of its citizens. It is blatantly obvious we can no longer afford our own standard of living. Yet we never avert a disaster. Instead, we let it happen, then act surprised, then call for somebody’s head. Some day soon the disasters will be too large, and too numerous.

Unless we take a serious look at what we are doing wrong, our fall will be epic. It will also have been glaringly obvious in hindsight. Americans must develop better foresight, and we must do it now. We HAVE to be better than this.

If you think I’m being disloyal or unpatriotic for criticizing our country and its leadership, then our republic is already doomed.

Happy Independence Day. I could go on forever, but instead I leave you with the better words of Abraham Lincoln:

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.""

My Computer History

2008-06-30T22:51:00.007-04:00

My first (and only) true programming class was learning to use BASIC on CBM32's at the high school. I was still in elementary school at the time. My father thought I would like the classes, or perhaps he thought he would like them and he brought me, but whatever, I began to learn BASIC.
Sometime thereafter, I received my first computer. It was the Timex-Sinclair 1000. It was very small, featured a membrane keyboard, and 2K onboard. We soon got the 16K expander module. I never had a printer for it. It used a tape recorder for storage. Data and code saved together. I also started to learn machine language on the TS1000.
Some years later my parents bought me the Commodore 64 for Christmas. I had the C64 for some years and also got into programming in assembly language for this.
While in High School, or maybe it was shortly after, I bought a Commodore Amiga 1000 from my sister. It featured a GUI reminiscent of the Mac, and an advanced BASIC programming language that did not use line numbers (wow!). I never got into assembly language with that.
After that, I had a used Macintosh (from my parents), then the first computer I ever bought new, an NEC Windows 98 Box. A few years later, I bought a Dell Windows XP (personal) box which I still have. And last fall, I got a Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop with Vista.
While I was living with my parents (up through the Amiga) I worked off and on on a program I called "Studenfinder," or "Classify". It was to be the premier teacher's organizer, scalable from a personal tool for a teacher to an academic institution enterprise-wide application. It tracked student personal information, grades, projects, classes, schedules, maintained calendars, and controlled access. Every now and then I still work on it. Of course... my parents have both retired in the meantime, so I'm not sure who would use it. Like my writing, my coding goals often exceed my... grasp.

Not So Smart

2008-06-22T00:25:00.002-04:00

Saw Get Smart with Rebecca and Isaac tonight... well last night, 'cause its tomorrow now. I kinda liked it. Again, it was in the spirit of the original series, so I think today's kids don't get it. There were some teens in a car next to ours and they left halfway through. I think they were expecting something different.
I do have to say, I am still in shock about what Steve Carrell did to the Rock. It was just wrong.

More things I don't like

2008-06-18T22:46:00.002-04:00

2. People who don't answer their email. Professional, job-related email.

What I Don't Like

2008-06-13T21:04:00.002-04:00

1. I do not like it when people set up a situation to see what I'll do. I find it manipulative and cruel and ignorant. If presented with this situation, I will not react consistently, so one cannot say "Owein does this" or "Owein does that." Owein gets pissed off and doesn't play.

Not So Hawt

2008-06-11T23:25:00.000-04:00

Today was much better. Hmmmm. Maybe I should change the tagline of the blog to include quips about the weather.

Way 2 Hawt

2008-06-10T22:05:00.002-04:00

So I actually had to stop working today... it was too hot. I think I'm going to Uxbridge to work tomorrow because it is just toooooooooo hot. Ugh.

Back on Track

2008-06-09T23:10:00.003-04:00

It seemed like things were falling apart, but we received a letter from a troublesome (former) creditor proving that we had paid a debt which was showing up on a credit report... and the mortgage loan officer is assisting us by faxing it to the credit bureau... so my credit score should rise in the next few days. And, if no one changes the rules in the meantime, that should make us eligible for the mortgage.

So, maybe the house will still be ours.

We're Havin' a Heatwave!

2008-06-09T00:17:00.002-04:00

I spent part of the weekend at my parent's home in Pittsfield MA, along with Isaac and Daisy. Rebecca spent the weekend alone, working on CEU's for nursing and unwinding. I guess I'm a bit stressful to be married to. I nearly fell apart Friday because a collection agency we had paid off several months ago had not taken us off the Transunion credit bureau report, and were insisting they had, but the credit bureau said no, and I just kept going back and forth until I eventually called the Loan Officer at Coldwell Banker... I'm sure I did not make much sense.
Anyway, we did get a letter from the collection agency saying the debt was paid, so we are going to try to have the credit bureau remove the debt from the report based on the letter. I've decided that the collection agency is the liar, which puts them right in the same league as the "Salvation Army." A bunch of lying, self-serving bastards.
Anyway, I "got away from it all" this weekend. I am helping Mom with some genealogy stuff, and I feel a lot better. Rebecca also seems in better spirits. So, forward.

At the Liberry

2008-05-30T15:49:00.002-04:00

Ah iz at teh liberry.

I keep shifting into LolSpeak... oh well. Isaac has a class today on Manga... so I left work early and took him across town. So I decided to sit here at the library and look at VB.NET while I wait for him.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

2008-05-28T23:10:00.002-04:00

Wheeeeeeeee? We? Oui? NO!!!1!

Wii!

After 6 months of looking (off and on) and hoping we FINALLY GOT A Wii!

I took Isaac to PetSmart (for his obedience training... Daisy goes along to show him how), and while he got PetSmarter, I went to Target (as an ex-SlavoArmy Osciphur, I LOVE TARGET!) to get myself some more clothes, and I wandered by the electronics, and there were actually three Wii's in the cabinet. I couldn't believe it! I was figuring one of these days I would have to camp out for a while, wait for the truck to come, trample irrate mothers... but no, I wandered by and they were right there, lonely, waiting for a compassionate soul.

Mom bought Isaac a second remote and Nunchuck and 2 Avatar games for his birthday... and we could not get a Wii. And the stores were charging $400 or so for them. But Target had it for $250, just the amount we had seen it before Christmas. So now we have a Wii.

You know, life is not so bad, all of a sudden. Take that, Salvation Army bastards!

Moderately Ill

2008-05-26T20:00:00.002-04:00

I am moderately ill today. I think in my old age I am becoming allergic to pollen. It is really bad here, or I am really bad, one of the two. I have a Japanese maple right outside my office window, and I think it was just too much for me. I could not sleep last night for lack of breathing, and I could not pull myself to work... I'm not clear on whether anyone worked. I thought we did not have holidays, yet I think everyone (mostly) was off today. At any rate, I hope to do better tomorrow. Rebecca bought me Benedril, which will help me sleep regardless of whether it clears my sinuses.

The Week in Review

2008-05-25T00:44:00.005-04:00

So here we are at the end of another week. I have been working for Iatric Systems for almost 6 months, and I like it. I have felt a little underused, if anything, so I decided to increase my usefulness by learning VB 2008 on my own time. Work will pay for the book I bought, but other than that, I am doing this on my own. I hope to get a hold on some of the VB code we have and see if I can trace what it does.
We are getting extremely close to owning a house. The date is tentatively set for us to take possession on June 27^th.
We are planning to get a new beagle... well new to us... as a friend for Daisy. We've read beagles like buddies. My sister lothie rescued a beagle recently, which she said we could have if we like. We like.
Otherwise it was a very busy week. Time has been just flying by for me. I bought my first all-in-one due to a need to scan and print things for work. It is wireless and linked into my home wireless network, and I am still entranced by the ability to print and scan things to/from a device physically connected to nothing. Its just sitting there plugged in to the current, but also on the network. A little silly in a way too, since the wireless router is located directly below it on the bottom shelf of the drum table. Who knows what the configuration will be in our house, though.

2008-05-22T13:41:00.003-04:00

Waiting for some code to upload. We are in the middle stages of buying a house. We have made an offer, and the bank has said, "We think you can honor that offer," so now all we have to do is supply a bunch of paperwork and then close the deal. We are scheduled to take possession on June 27th. We went to Bob's discount furniture and set aside a living room and dining room set. The livingroom set is pink plaid (OMG!!1!) and comes with a 'cocktail' table and end tables. The dining room set has a table with fold-out leaves so it goes from 4-person to 8-, and has a bench for children! We also got a matching corner hutch, although we don't really have a corner per se. We will fit it in. I'm sorry I did not bring my camera to the store (or even my phone for lo-grade pix), the couch and chair in pink plaid are ... awesome?!

edit: Here are the diningroom set and livingroom set (or one close to it). I don't have pictures of the corner hutch or cocktail tables. These photos came from Bob's website. The fabric might not be exact on the livingroom set.

Yet Another Programming Language

2008-05-17T19:13:00.003-04:00

So, I really don't want to learn every programming language, and I am really enjoying Ruby, but a recent email at work about the fact that MicroSoft was discontinuing support for VB6 prompted me to say "So how do I learn about VB?" and someone answered. So now what? I am learning VB. I even bought a book for which work is reimbursing me. Many of their non-Magic interfaces are written in VB. My first programming language was BASIC, so VB is oddly familiar in syntax.
My second language was Assembly Language, by the way. For the TS1000 (ZX80).

"The Girl with Colitis Goes By...."

2008-05-17T19:12:00.007-04:00

Pillow Dog
Originally uploaded by oweinh

Someone in the house is not feeling well...
Last night, Daisy was having trouble pooping. This morning she was shaking and panting. I looked it up on the internet and this can be a sign of digestive problems. I called the vet and got an appointment right away. They ended up doing an xray, but did not find anything but her colon was swollen, so they prescribed some antibiotic and a high-fiber diet and sent her home. Poor Daisy. She looks really low right now. So here is a picture of her relaxing on a pillow. Right now she's relaxing in her crate.

23 Dixfield: Front

2008-05-13T21:41:00.001-04:00

23 Dixfield: Front
Originally uploaded by oweinh

Yet again I find my life not reaching blog status... do I really lack time, or do I lack incentive? Who knows. Today I travelled to North Worcester, or more properly, the village of Summit, which is north or North Worcester (yet still in Worcester... go figure) to oversee the inspection of this pictured beauty. We made an offer on it last week contingent on the outcome of the inspection, and let's just say the inspection went very well. Only a few minor things, and oh, the Radon tests will take a few days, but we are hopeful. This half duplex has a spacious living room with a vaulted ceiling and skylight, a large kitchen, deck, fenced in back yard, quiet neighborhood... I love it.

2008-04-02T21:17:00.002-04:00

So I've worked for Iatric Systems for 2 months. Things are going well. I am still learning Ruby in my spare time, not that there is much spare time. I went to see my parents in Pittsfield this past weekend. It was a really nice visit. Mom has made a lot of progress on her genealogy project.

First Week

2008-01-05T11:36:00.000-05:00

So I worked Wednesday through Friday. I love this job. I so missed programming. Now I help code interfaces between MEDITECH and other vendors. Yay!

BAM! TAKEN!

2007-12-17T22:25:00.000-05:00

I got a call tonight. I am now taken. I am no longer searching for a job like a pitiful lump of unemployed humanity. I am a Programmer! Hear me code!
I will be working in Uxbridge for 2 months, and then if all goes well I will work from home.
I am so relieved. I HATE looking for a job. Thank you, monster.com.

Complications, complications

2007-12-16T17:28:00.000-05:00

So I have two good possibilities. One is a drive, located in Newton, MA about 45 miles away, but sounds like a nice environment. Two is a 'virtual' company, located in my livingroom...
Both sound good, both have drawbacks. I'm not used to having multiple possibilities like this. Well, I haven't gotten an offer yet, so I guess I am counting my chickens before they hatch.
Watch this space for developments!

They're Just Rolling In

2007-12-12T21:14:00.000-05:00

Well, not exactly, but the jobs are coming faster than I expected. I had not originally expected to be looking for work in the central part of the state... but now that I am here, I am finding opportunities in the Worcester, Westborough/Framingham, and Boston areas. I wasn't offered a position with Harrington Memorial in Southbridge (which is close to Sturbridge), but now I have a possibility with a company in Newton, which is near Boston. Not quite as nice a commute - I have to take the Pike - but that's life. Maybe I'll take the "please hire me," whine off the ol' profile.
Anyway, I have an interview tomorrow at noon in Newton. I had two phone interviews before, and now they want to meet me. I think I have a bit of an 'in' since the person I spoke to on the phone recognized me from MEDITECH. I mentioned I was "the Error Guy," and he said he had used my utility to look up errors before. Yay!
Another change, besides location, was that Worcester has a dedicated website "WorcesterWorks.com" which it uses to help those of us who need employment. It is affiliated with Monster.com. So I created an account and uploaded my resume, and BOOM I got contacted. Wow! I'm not sure if I would not have had as much of a response if I moved here and stayed on Yahoo "hotjobs," but I think Monster.com is a little more popular. Anyway, I have agencies helping me with finding possibilities, so whereas I thought I would have to "hit the bricks" to find a job, I'm just sitting around the house checking my email! Hey, I can deal with that.

²"They will make you outcasts from the [Slavation Army], but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God.
³"These things they will do because they have not known the Father or Me [Jesus].
⁴"But these things I have spoken to you, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them These things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you."

John 16:2-4 NASB95 adapted for the Slavation Army

That passage (slightly modified) made Rebecca cry, because we're sure they thought they were serving God, but they were serving themselves.

A Joke

2007-12-09T15:50:00.000-05:00

Q: Why was the chameleon unable to change his colour?

A: Because he had a reptile dysfunction!

Encouraging Words

2007-11-22T23:09:00.000-05:00

Of course, I always expect to find encouragement from the Word of God, but I have found it rather difficult lately to even look at the Bible. It's all just too close right now. But we choked our way through a devotional tonight, and the passage we looked at was the November 22 installment from The One Year: Life Lessons from the Bible, entitled "A Costly Investment: Jason." The interesting passage here stated:
"You may not receive much attention for your service to Christ (in fact, you may receive only grief), but God wants to include you in his work." and "Obedient service is a valuable investment, but it isn't cheap."
Don't I know it. I lost almost everything. But I still have my family, and we are doing Ok. A lot of people I thought were friends don't speak to us. But that's ok. They have to live with the consequences of their actions like those who put us here. My eyes are more open now, I am less trusting, and I think it is unfortunate that I have to be so on-guard around other so-called Christians, but so be it. I found these words from the Bible encouraging, like no words from foolish men (you know who you are) ever were.

My Past Life...

2007-10-31T00:00:00.000-04:00

Your past life diagnosis:

I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Mongolia around the year 1300. Your profession was that of a warrior, hunter, fisherman or executor of sacrifices.

Your brief psychological profile in your past life:

You were a sane, practical person, a materialist with no spiritual consciousness. Your simple wisdom helped the weaker and the poor.

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:

You should develop self-love and ability to implant hope into hearts of people. Ambition is not everything. True wealth is buried in your soul.

Do you remember now?

from thebigview.com.

Another Salvation Army Tirade

2007-10-29T01:16:00.000-04:00

I went to visit Rebecca and the kids Saturday and Sunday. Rebecca and I drove to Walmart to pick up a bed (she has been sleeping on the floor for the last few months - thank you Salvation Army Bastards!) I did not realize she was not doing better than she was... I thought she had really gotten a good job and a nice place to stay, she bought a relatively new car (8 months old, a 2007), but apparently she makes barely enough to make ends meet and really does not have a lot of the stuff she needed. She would not have had anything (thanks Salvation Army Bastards!) except a friend (thank you Lori) got her church together to donate a bunch of furniture and stuff, and another friend (thank you Linda) had shared her house (to stay in until Rebecca got her own place) and is also homeschooling Isaac for us. Linda has done so many other things for Rebecca too. I am so glad. But we are so far behind where we were.

I am a programmer, and she is a nurse (RN). In 1999 we joined the Salvation Army (yeah I know the THE is supposed to be capitalized, and I DONT CARE), and in 2004 we gave up our home (apartment really), our jobs, our cars, and MOST of the things we had accumulated in 10 years of marriage and placed our lives in God's hands to become ministers in the Salvation Army.

It was two hard years of school where we gave up freedom and privacy, and dignity since we were treated like children even though we were both in our late thirties, treated and spoken to harshly sometimes, and generally the only thing that made us keep going was the thought that 1) it was only two years, and 2) It was for God. We did quite well, not incredibly well, but quite well.

We were assigned as "Captains" to New Castle, PA, and served the Army FAITHFULLY there for ALMOST a year. However, apparently the little Hitler in Western Pennsylvania "Major" Reel, part of the Army's crony network, did not feel I adequately kissed his ass or the asses of his incompetent staff. So I (we, but mostly because of me) were asked to leave.

Actually, I was told that I had a choice. I could stay, and there were things that would happen that were not completely disclosed to me (I think the "Major" would have me before the "Officer Review Board" to review my appointment) or I could resign. I was told, "The second choice is the best one." Hint hint.

Well, I did cry. I was sad. I had dedicated my life, and it was not wanted. I was made to feel unequal to the task. I was made to feel that I was in some way harming the mission of the Army. (I was not. In fact, I was doing well. Not perfect, but well. And I was getting better). I decided to take the first choice (the not-best one). But that evening, I spoke to Rebecca about it, and she said, "they didn't say we had a choice." (She and I were separated at some point, and spoken to separately). "They told me we had to leave."

So later "Major" calls, and Rebecca poses the question to him, and I state that I had heard I had a choice. Well, I did hear I had a choice. But did I not understand? The second choice was the better one. Ha ha ha ha ha!

So, I DID'T have a choice, get it? It’s almost funny; like gangster movie funny. Like crooks saying one thing but meaning another funny. I’m quite dense really. Apparently I understand what I hear, not what they say.

Well, why I am so angry now, is that if we had stayed with the Army for at least five years, loans we received to go to the school would be forgiven. But now, because we were FORCED to leave by incompetent cronyistic bastards, we each are supposed to cough up about $10,000 each for the privilege of attending their idiot school. And Rebecca was sleeping on the floor. And I have a serious health condition and no medical insurance. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! And there was no reason for it except that I don’t kiss ass good enough! Ha ha ha ha ha!

You lothesome, nepotistic, crony bastards. The day I give the “Salvation” (huh!) Army a single cent is the day that Satan declares HELL OPEN FOR DAY VISITS!!

Wow. A few more of these entries, and I might start to heal.

Oh, one more thing. The “Army” calls things “mature” that go their way. In other words, we would be considered “mature” if we pay the money we “owe.” So I guess that makes me immature. In their eyes. I didn’t use deceit or manipulation in my dealings with them. I did not lie. So I do not see how they can stand in judgment of me. SHAME ON THE “SALVATION” ARMY. You are not a church, you are a cult. You are a beaurocracy. You do not deserve any longer the status you have enjoyed. All the great things the Army did are in the past. You stand on the shoulders of giants, but you have been placed in the hands of lesser men. You should fold. Give the work to more able, honest people who can better “Do the most good.” It would be the best choice.

Octopus=evil

2007-10-26T01:36:00.000-04:00

I am so glad there are people out there warning us about the less scrupulous invertebrates out there.

2007-10-24T23:17:00.001-04:00

Today I purchased some things I needed. I got a tripod for my camera(s). Yes, I bought batteries for my Film camera, a Minolta X-700 35mm SLR that I got about 20 years ago. I was shocked to hear that camera manufacturers do not use "standard" mounts. The picture girl at Ritz Camera said that this is not the case... bummer. I figured could always add new components, new lenses (lensi?) to the basic setup I have. I guess not. Compatibility is not good business sense. At least I have a little flexibility. I have the camera body, a 50mm lens, an 80-200mm zoom lens, a 2X extender lens, and of course a few filters (those I might still be able to buy) and a Vivitar flash. I suppose 20 years is too long to expect things to be compatible, but RitzChick says 5 is the most...

Minolta X-700:
Wikipedia
Ken Rockwell Review
A Malaysian site?

Actually, it looks like the X700 was a popular enough camera that I should still be able to get components for it even now. Check out the links above. That's what my camera looks like. Mine has the all-black body, no silver.

I Finally Spend Some Time Outdoors

2007-10-23T02:50:00.001-04:00

Ladybird Beetle macro
Originally uploaded by oweinh

I seem to have been spending so much of my time indoors. Partly I have not been sleeping well, so I sleep off and on through the day. So I spent some time outside. I took over a hundred photographs of various things and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I also deposited the check I received from H&R Block, so I can pay for the car. I think I'll have enough to buy a new computer too. I like my Dell desktop, so I've picked out a Dell Laptop that's even more powerful. Back in the day, my Dell Dimension 4550 with Pentium 4, 256MB RAM, and 60GB drive was on the high end of personal home desktops. Now. I'm looking at a laptop with a Duo 2 Core, 4GB RAM, 320GB hard drive... Wowzers.

Check out my "shared articles"

2007-10-21T23:01:00.000-04:00

Why read newspapers when you can sit in front of the computer all day and read the news YOU want to hear about? Check out GoogleReader...

Check out the article I shared called "Dinosaur of the Day." I like the comment about the meaning of the scientific name of the new animal.

[@] Its name [Futalognkosaurus dukei] is a combination of the Mapuche indigenous language words Futa (giant) and lognko (chief), the Greek saurus (lizard), and dukei after the company that sponsored the research, Duke Energy Argentina. So the name means something like Giant Chief of the Lizards and CEO of Duke Energy.

If You Go Hunting For Snakes...

2007-10-20T23:49:00.000-04:00

... make sure none of your partners is named "Brady Barr."

Whoawhoawhoawhoa! LookoutLookoutLookout! Where's- the- head? Where's- the- head? Where's- the- head?

Rule #1: Say things only once. Do not shout them. Snakes may not have good hearing, but I do.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

Rule #2: I don't care if the snake has ripped open your thigh (it was your fault), don't scream. At the very least, take it like a school-girl, you muffin!

I really hated this episode of "Dangerous Encounters with Brady Barr: Snake Bite." Brady proved to be a real woman (sorry, women). I could have made a more interesting episode of Dangerous Encounters. Other people would be screaming.

Not all of Barr's work is bad. Check out this show description from another episode of the same program:
"Dr. Brady Barr has always wanted to find ways to study crocs in the wild without having to restrain them. Now, he makes his dream a reality by creating a specially designed suit that would protect and camouflage him so he can approach these crocs. To design this suit properly, he tests different ideas on a range of ferocious beasts ranging from grizzly bears to wolves to rodeo bulls. After making final modifications, Barr heads to Tanzania to test his new croc suit in the field."
from National Geographic Channel

Ha ha, you should have seen him in that "Croc Suit." Does he see himself as filling a void left by another outlandish (but easier to take serious) scientist who shall be unnamed, but could possibly have been known as "Steve-o?"

Anyway, he gets in this suit and crawls into a group of crocs basking on the riverside. The crocs don't seem to notice he isn't, uh, real, and just ignore him, (although one does come really close to crawling over him). Once he gets into this mass, he seems to have some second thoughts... and so then makes his way out again. All in all, an incredibly successful encounter. I laughed all evening. That may not have been the effect he was striving for. I just could not get out of my mind the thought, "What would Steve Irwin think of this." I'll bet be would laugh too.

More Java

2007-10-20T00:59:00.000-04:00

So, in an effort to create as many useless and badly written Java Classes as possible...

Maybe they are not useless. Maybe they are not badly written. I really don't know. Anyway, I had a desire to create a class to express numbers of arbitrary precision, and methods to manipulate them. This came from years of working with MEDITECH's MAGIC platform, which is a weakly typed language. In fact, you could do things like say 1+"A". You might get "1A", but generally the results seemed pretty random to us. I'm sure the systems programmers knew how it worked. Anyway, I'm not that crazy (I once suggested to my supervisor that MEDITECH should update its platform... they could only have 255 byte strings, and symbol-tables and stacks were 512 bytes... I was laughed at), but I would like to be able to work with huge (or miniscule) numbers if need be. Of course, it usually is not a problem to 'pretend' numbers are bigger or smaller than they are... its when you want to do something with a really BIG number and really SMALL number that things get messy.

SO... I have created an LNumber class which stores a numeric value as a String, and also stores a separate decimal pointer (tells how far from the right of the string the decimal point appears) and a signum character to tell if the number is positive or negative. So far I can add and subtract, and I added multiplication today, and I am writing the algorithm for division. Oddly, all of these processes are similar to the way a person would do them by hand. They involve lining up place values, switching the minuend and subtrahend so the larger number is the minuend. Switching signs, etc. Multiplication is a process of multiplying by each digit of the mutiplier, collecting 'subtotals,' which are then added together to obtain the product. Division looks to be challenging, and there will have to be a way to prevent the code from just going on forever. From these, I will probably go on to powers and roots, and logarithmic functions. I anticipate the code being slow (compared to the processing of true numeric types) but precision precision precision!

All this is part of my little effort to put together a totally useless language that looks frighteningly like the MAGIC and MagicFS from my former workplace.

Things I have done...

2007-10-19T02:17:00.001-04:00

141-10 05.10.94 1351 EDT 1:3.9 macro
Originally uploaded by oweinh

I am a special person. Everyone else went ot school that day and read about the eclipse in the paper. I photographed it using two techniques: I took pictures directly through welder's glass and by the method illustrated here: indirectly projected onto paper by a 'nocular. Well, it was a binocular, but I only needed one of the 'noculars.

I guess that is why I have so much trouble with situations in my life where things seem to not go well. Shouldn't smart people, or talented people, or good people (I'm not saying I'm all of those, and certainly not all at once) have some measure of success? I don't even mean monetary success... I just want to be happy. Can't I have that?

The day I took this picture, I experienced something that no one in any of the classes I skipped that day experienced. It wasn't religious. It was just an adventure. I love it when life brings adventure.

99 Dodge Stratus

2007-10-17T22:54:00.001-04:00

99 Dodge Stratus
Originally uploaded by oweinh

So here it is... my totally awesome car. Ok, so maybe the Dodge Stratus (no longer made for a reason, perhaps) is not the greatest car ever made. But I am so glad to once more have a vehicle, you would not believe. In order to go to the "Salvation" army's "training school," I had to give up my (our) vehicles. Of course, TSA provides their officers with a vehicle that can be used for personal uses. But having been undeservedly ejected from this organization, I was left without a car.

Let's review. No job. No money except my IRA which was supposed to be for my retirement. No health Insurance. No home. No car. And no really good explanation for what I've done with my life for the past 3+ years. Thanks, TSA bastards! And they want $10,000 for the "privilege" of going to their training school. Hah! I want $200,000 in lost wages. $7000 for the minivan we sold for $300. 3 years of my life back!

At least I am starting to get things back in line. I refuse to pay them. If I had been an officer for 5 years, they would have "forgotten" the debt. Well, they can forget it now. So, I am going to North Carolina in hopes of finding a job. That should also take care of the money situation. And health insurance ( BTW, I have a condition that requires I take meds, which TSA knew about. I wonder if they'll pay for them if I run out). And, the IRA paid for the car.

Wow, I feel a lot better letting all that out. No more TSA. You are nothing. If you are reading this, consider giving nothing to the "Salvation" army. "Doing the most good" for themselves.

Maybe a car...

2007-10-06T03:04:00.000-04:00

I may have found a car. A '99 Dodge Stratus. Provided the engine does not catch fire, it might turn out to be a pretty nice little car. If all works out well I shall pick it up next week.

Salvation Army Sucks

2007-09-29T23:37:00.000-04:00

Don't get me wrong. I respect the mission of the Salvos. But I cannot abide by the attitude they have. And I do not believe that they are capable of "doing the most good" when they hurt people so. And would it have killed them to check on me? "Are you OK?" "Is there anything we can do?" But I have not heard one thing from them ... so they have lost the right to call themselves a compassionate agency in my book. And certainly they are not a church.
Oh well. Looking forward to moving on with my life. This includes telling everyone I can not to donate to the Salvation Army. You might say, "but what about all the people they help?" Don't worry. God can take care of his people than any corrupt self-serving agency can. If the SA falls, He shall raise up another organization.

Where To Go Now ... Part Two

2007-09-28T00:35:00.000-04:00

So I may be going to Charlotte NC... My younger sister (not younger than me, mind you) has offered to let me come down to her area and look for a job there.

So, I need to get the rest of my IRA out (Thank you Salvation Army bastards!), so I can get a car, and then I hope to also be able to buy a PC, possibly a laptop, and then I (and Daisy-pet) shall depart for NC...

Rebecca and the kids are coming to visit Sunday. I really miss them. I don't know how I will deal with being away from them, but maybe I'll be able to get my life together enough to fix that. I hope so. I need something to go right.

Oh, thank you again you fraudulent, nepotistic, corrupt Salvation Army bastards.

Where To Go Now...

2007-09-24T22:15:00.000-04:00

Well, its official. MEDITECH does not want me back. I'm beginning to think no one wants me.

People Suck

2007-09-17T23:35:00.000-04:00

I am so sick of people. People suck. Not you. Just most others. The last few months of my life have taught me to trust no one, believe in nothing, and expect less. I still believe in God, but I am beginning to think that there is no one on earth qualified to represent him. Thousands of years of civilization, and this is the best we can do? Ha!

The Days Just Fly By

2007-09-11T00:10:00.000-04:00

I called Rebecca and we talked a little. She is coming out with the kids on Sunday to visit me. It's my Birthday. Then, the following Saturday is our anniversary. #13. We will not be together; a first, I believe. I also spoke to Isaac. He seems to be doing Ok.

Has It Really Been So Long?

2007-09-08T00:36:00.000-04:00

I did not realize it has been soo long since my last post. I have been writing the definitive fantasy novel of our time... writing it, incidentally, in a notebook with a pen because it is so uncomfortable to sit at my computer for long periods. I think I write better on tree products, though. What with iconic operations like cut, copy, paste, block delete, spellcheck, etc, writing on a computer may be more convenient but it is also so non-committal. After all, what's the point of writing well if I can easily go back and change it later? When you commit to paper, you write carefully.

Jeez, my posts suck. You wouldn't know I understand English.

Well, I have considered scanning my writing and trying some OCR to get it into the computer. My handwriting is difficult. I figure, each letter does not really need to look unique, as long as I can read the word.

Can you raed tihs? Wdors olny need to hvae the frsit and lsat ltretes in the rgiht ptnoiss, and all the rset of the ltretes need to be trehe.

45 out of 100 people supposedly cannot read the words above. Are those the same people who demand automatic spellcheck on their computer?

Oh well. I'll try to put something meaningful together in the near future. In the meantime, here's a subject, discuss amongst thyselves: The definitive fantasy novel of our time: a sexual fantasy?

Still Not Much

2007-08-30T00:32:00.000-04:00

Life is dull these last few days.

Sunday I drove out to Worcester to see Rebecca and return Isaac. I think Isaac had a good time. I brought Mom with me because I was not feeling all that great in the morning... meds probably. I felt much better later on. Mom took us to Vinny Testa's in Shrewsbury after. Rebecca was staying at her friend Linda's house and Linda was away, so she hadn't had anything to eat except cereal.

I'm going back on Saturday, and I'll bring some stuff, the TV and DVD player, some inflatable matresses and sheets, etc. The Salvation Army sucks.

Not Much

2007-08-25T00:00:00.000-04:00

Not much. How many other ways to say it? Worked a bit on my Wordfactory java program. There is now an Alphabet object which Wordfactory polls for letter, syllable pattern, and rule information. Now I need to be able to load the data from a disk file so that I can dynamically run different 'language profiles' through it. Yay.

Watched LoTR:TRoTK with Isaac. Tomorrow I plan to go out for a while, but then we may watch Star Wars I-VI.

Rebecca will come on Sunday and we'll go out to lunch.

What Happens When I Drive

2007-08-22T23:09:00.000-04:00

So I drove out to Logan Airport on Tuesday, which is only on the other side of the state. Fortunately, Logan is exceptionally easy to get to now. Before you had to get off the Mass Pike and drive on ramps and take exits and such to get to Logan. Now, you just follow the Pike to (new) exit 26, and you are there.

I picked up my son Isaac, and Rebecca and her mother there. Their luggage arrived on the next flight... nice touch, thanks Delta! Rebecca drove from the airport to Palmer, where her mother stores her car. Then Rebecca took us out to eat at Friendly's. We parted company and I drove back to the kingdom of Berkshire, and Rebecca and her mother went (I think) to Worcester.

I slept most of the day today. I got up for a while in the mid-morning, had coffee, talked to Isaac a bit, etc, and then went back to sleep. Around 2pm Isaac and my mother went shopping. My nieces' Christina and Diana's birthday are coming up at the end of the month. Isaac was very good and got a game or two for his PSP.

I then slept from then until 5.30, so I am not sure when they got back, but I feel bad that I wasn't around for Isaac. I want to enjoy him for these few days because I haven't seen him for two months (thank you Salvation Army bastards!). I have a little programming touches I want to make on my linguistic suite and then hopefully I can sleep tonight. We plan to either have a Lord of the Rings marathon, or a Star Wars marathon.

Java++ Me.add( Java ) CAFEBEBE!!!

2007-08-21T00:25:00.000-04:00

Didn't Java class files used to start with codes that translated to the hex 0xCAFEBEBE? If they did, I'm not sure they do any longer.

I have been working furiously on my Wordfactory class which creates words that are supposedly pronounceable. It includes a Word class, a Letter class, and an Alphabet class, which all work together to allow the user to define an alphabet and enable the computer to create random words that have a 'flavor' of a language. It is my hope that given a set of rules and a specific alphabet, this code could create words which appear 'English,' or 'Finnish,' or whatever. Obviously it would be a great help to those who wish to create conlangs. It might also be of some help to those who wish to study languages. Without working with too many rules it is able to create 100,000 words of 2 to 5 syllables in just a few seconds. I am sure that performance will drop with added functionality. Right now I am trying to determine the best way to translate rules into something the code can interpret at runtime.

An example rule is that for the most part, I do not like to see two of the same letter in a row, like 'pp' or 'zz', unless the first is in one syllable and the other in the next. Having a rule that allows this breakdown also prevents 'zzz', etc. The rule tokenized looks like this:

[ss] & [c]=[p]

which says 'if we are in the same syllable ([ss]) and the current letter ([c]) is the same as the previous letter ([p]), then reject'

on a code level it would look like

if ( same_syllable && current_letter.equals( prev_letter ) return true;

(true causes the rule to force the current letter to be excluded). I'm not sure if I can translate the code and then evaluate it (like a BASIC val() function) or if I have to actively interpret the tokenized rule. If I could translate the rule, it could be done right when the rule loads (all this data is stored in a file), and as long as the val() function was relatively quick, it would not kill the processing speed. If I have to interpret the rules each time, I can see going from 100,000 to 10 words created in a few seconds.

Well, that is what I am doing.

Java Java Java

2007-08-16T22:51:00.000-04:00

So I am working my way through the book CoreJava. According to sources, I won't know if I can get my job back as a programmer. I definitely feel that three years in ministry has not damaged my brain. I intend to look at the copy of the company's proprietary language which I still have (whoops) on my home PC and try to learn it back. Its very cryptic, in part because it was designed to have a limited code footprint on micro and handheld-devices. It has very powerful windowing and socket protocols built in which make it good with interfaces. I look forward to getting a chance to go back and work with this company.

I am also wading into the deep end in the book Nostromo by Joseph Conrad (some of us had to read Heart of Darkness in school...). It is amazing to see that many of the stereotypes formed of South American countries were formed back then (early 1900s). Anyway, I'm about halfway through, and as the preface predicted, I am having trouble keeping the characters straight. Still, it is interesting.

Daisy is chewing on her rope toy. They don't last long, and she swallows the strands of rope she pulls apart. It doesn't seem to harm her and has the added benefit that she has "poops on a rope." She just came over to say hello to me. She likes to be around people.

Well, that's all for now.

Drink Your Blog!

2007-08-14T01:57:00.000-04:00

Not much to report today. Worked in my room on Paintshop all day. Here's something just in from the newsdesk:

It Truely Is the Oldest Profession
AP columnist Khaled Kazziha reported recently that noted paleontologist Richard Leakey was upset by news that the oldest hominid fossil remains were going on tour in the United States. Of the remains, put on tour by Ethiopia, the country where they were found, says Leakey "It's a form of prostitution, it's gross exploitation of the ancestors of humanity and it should not be permitted."

Lucy could not be reached for comment, but sources close to the 3 1/2 foot tall, 3.2 million year-old woman stated that she seemed glad to "be getting out for a bit."

I always knew she was a slut.

Well, that's all for now. bu-bye.

No Blog today

2007-08-13T01:12:00.001-04:00

Mount Greylock from Stony Ledge
Originally uploaded by oweinh

I'm going to sleep early... only 1.12am. Here is my latest masterpiece: a panoramic photo of Mt Greylock. Smaller than I expected. Paintshop made it look bigger. I still have the original scans so I'll try again.

Just to Annoy Everyone...

2007-08-12T02:31:00.000-04:00

... I think that is my mandate in life. If life cannot be convenient for me, why should it be convenient for anyone else?

Oh well. I re-found an old site on the internet I like. Its at check this out: Free Wallpapers! I think the photos they have on this site are absolutely beautiful. I love nature pictures, seascapes, and castles, and they have all that. Oh, and you can meet Russian women. Hey I just go there for the free wallpapers, honestly.

I was interested in the castle that they show in many of the pictures. It is little more than a broken tower, but it looks lovely there by the Black Sea. I did a search (russian-women is kind enough to label the pics as coming from Balaklava in the Ukraine. I also found at least one person on Flickr who geotagged a picture of the tower, but I think he tagged it for the town of Balaklava itself and not the actual location of the tower. In a world of wiki and tagging, are we losing accuracy? Left to themselves, people make mistakes. I think that sucks. If you're not going to do it right, just forget about it.

Before I go on about geotagging, I'll mention that Yahoo responded to my query about the RSS feeder on My Yahoo page was not keeping up with me... they said (in slightly different words) that it was optimized for how they wanted it to work (read: without crashing our site, dude) but I could access the Yahoo API and work it out myself (read: good luck, dude). Wait, I think I have just invented a new tag: the "Site Assistance" translator! Yes, now the responses to your tech queries to webhosts and ITers will contain the new <uscrewed> tag. It works like this:

Let's say you want to do something simple, like DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT on a totally obnoxious site you have a subscription to, or something like that, but nothing you do works, so you click on the "contact us" link (which warns you you must do EVERYTHING possible to solve it yourself first because techies are VERY busy. Your response might look like this, in html (version 9.0):

<html>...ok, lets skip to the chase here...

   <p class="letdown">we regret to inform you that in order to accomplish what you are trying to do requires us to completely reset our servers, bringing them offline for two days before restarting them, not to mention that Dennis Nedry is the only one who knows the secret access code to get the programs running again and we haven't seen him since he went out on that job on Isla Nublar...etc etc etc</p>

<uscrewed class="forget_it">Buy a new computer, get a new account, change your name, address and social security number, because we don't know how to opt you out</uscrewed>

Where was I? Oh yes, geotagging. So I axed the totally astute question on Flickr forum today, "Do you geotag the source or the subject?" [my astuteness]. Of course, someone pointed out that geotags are/will be(ing) automagically placed in picture files along with all the other EXIF data (see this page for an example of EXIF data, sadly without the geodata). And when/as that is/will happen, (Are/will you go(ing) nuts with my new verb tense? I call it Presently Indecisive) the location that will be tagged will be the source, id est (and now for some Latin, because Latin is for Lovers!) YOUR CAMERA! The discussion that caused my interest in this, however, originated in a picture of a mountain that I took from 2 miles away (ok, see this.

So, in our ever changing need to be PRECISE, (despite others attempts NOT to be, see above), I suppose that there will be a future ubiquity of tags. Since I am not presently compliant in XML, I will just say that the concept of geotags might be like this:


location:type:source lat:=42.627348 long:=-73.125413 alt:feet:=1500
location:type:subject lat:42.651132 long:-73.162422 alt:feet:=3200
vector:type:photoframe heading:deg:=280 pitch:deg:=5 length:feet:=10600

So, both subject and source are tagged, and to be completely redundant, we draw a line from one to another... of course, a camera with a GPS and some gyroscopic bits could calculate the source and the vector. The subject could be automatically calculated with the completely accurate and up-to-date representation of the earth as a computer model being worked on by Google Earth as we speak. Maybe not, but they should at least work on it before shifting their attention to other bodies in the universe.

And now you know the rest of the story... (giggles heard in background)

I Blog You

2007-08-11T03:14:00.000-04:00

Today went by so quickly... I played Mahjongg for a while, which really is quite an excellent game. I own a somewhat older version than is offered at the linked-to website. The price is quite reasonable considering the work that went into this.

I sent a complaint message to Yahoo because their RSS feed of my twitter page was behind... which is extremely important if I wish to check what I am doing. OK, I have the feed there on My Yahoo so I can verify it works, which makes it all the more annoying that it does not. In fact, I have my sister Lothie's twitter feed there as well, and I have noticed it lags also. What up?

In fact, I am so lame that I just checked my phone to see what I twittered (yeah, whatever) today, so what I post on my blog will match... I can see the near future where I might get a comment as follows:

Excuse me, but I noticed that your blog says you were home all day, but my feed of your twitter page says you left around noon to pick up farm implements at Agway. I was just wondering where the discrepancy here lies?

Me, My Blog, and I

2007-08-10T00:11:00.001-04:00

Mosses and foliage - Canoe Meadows MA
Originally uploaded by oweinh

I am suitably impressed. I am experiencing something akin to a borg assimilation, as I become more connected to the internet. The very details of my life are becoming public knowledge. I have a twitter account (over there on the left panel) that I can update via txt messages from my cell phone. I have this blog, which I am actually updating from my flickr account... I have been isolated and out of the loop for 3 years, and look at all this incriminating functionality!

O thank you, Anonymous One, for your suggestion of checking out the BlueJ Neatbeans IDE. Check back here and hopefully I will have an update on how that went.

An All-Nighter

2007-08-09T06:11:00.000-04:00

I have no idea why but I stayed up all night. I am rather tired now. I want to write out my own guide for Java, with all my notes organized for me... The CodeJava books are nice, but they are not indexed well (I hate it when indices are sparse!), so I would like to create a reference work of my own.

Number one problem I see with Java is that the API is so big, its hard to be completely familiar with all of it. There tend to be more than one way to do things. One for example was I needed a way of varifying input from a window which returned a string, but was asking for a number. It would do something like this:
int n = Integer.parseInt(s);
And of course, if s contained non-numeric values, you could get a IllegalNumberFormat exception. So what to do? Well, I thought about writing a routine to look through the string and if it contained non-number values, reject it... and then I found a routine in the API, I think it was under the class description of Double or Integer, which used regular expressions...

But, lo, I presseth on to the mark, that I not miss the mark, and be called a hamartian.

Another Day with Java

2007-08-08T21:46:00.000-04:00

Ok, I wasted a ton of time today because I was not understanding how packages and such work. I had set my classpath variable like so:
set classpath=C:\jdk\code
and I was working with Cay Horstmann's Format class, which is part of the com.horstmann package. So I figured that if the path to the class is as follows:
C:\jdk\code\com\horstmann\Format.class
then java and javac should be able to work with it fine, right? Well, I kept getting NoClassDefFound: Format exceptions. It took me several hours to figure out that the current directory had to be at the classpath definition for javac to find the package. I had to do:
cd C:\jdk\code -or actually cd code
It was not enough to have the environment variable set, I also had to have the current directory correct. Oddly, I'm not sure the doc says anything to that effect. I am upset with me for not noticing that sooner.

I love Java but it is very complicated. I downloaded Netbeans IDE 5.5.1 but it is actually too complicated for me at the moment. I am doing better with the command line. I am also looking at an old version of CoreJava, for J2SE 1.3, and I think we are up to the Java 2 SE 6 (or 1.6, or whatever). So I also have to look at the new for loop features, generics, assertions, etc...

Just Another Lousy Day

2007-08-07T23:32:00.000-04:00

No, its not really all that bad. Its just really humid. I'm going to bed soon. Follow me on twitter, another lame way I have connected my life to the internet. Let's see... what else can I do?

Java Java Java

2007-08-06T21:54:00.000-04:00

I downloaded the Java SDK from java.sun.com yesterday onto my parent's iMac, and moved it to my PC, which is not connected to the internet. Sun gave me whatever version of the SDK I wanted, but MicroSoft is unwilling to let me download the latest updates to the OS that I want. They have to connect to my computer. "You must be running Internet Explorer 6 or higher to use this site." What a bunch of weenies. So, I was unable to download service pack 2 for my PC. Sure, there was a way you could do it manually, but I found everything very cryptic on that part of the site and so I did not trust it.

It was a little hot today... I really did not go out. Spent most of the day trying to figure out Java. I started looking at it before I tragically gave my life away to those who did not want it three years ago. For some reason, the SDK I got did not come with documentation. I unzipped the source code and tried to run the javadoc utility over it, but I was only able to get it to create docs for one package. I want to create for all I have source code... is that not possible? I shall keep looking into that. Either I will find the docs to download from sun.com, or I will try to find better documentation for the utilities that come with the SDK.

Where the Pets Are

2007-08-06T00:48:00.000-04:00

I was able to go to Petco (where the pets go) to get a crate for Daisy. Mom wanted to buy it. I think she wants to help me until I get on my feet again. I think the crate was about $90, and we also got a pad to go on the floor. If I have to leave her alone at some point it would be cruel to put her in the travel crate. It's too small. This is 30 x 22 x 24" high.

Then we went to Barnes & Snowballs (as my son calls it) and had blueberry frappiccinos (whatever) which are really good...

Idiots Anonymous

2007-08-05T02:34:00.000-04:00

OK, so now the guy across the street calls and threatens to hurt my dog just because she is barking a little. I've seen this guy and he would not want to run into me. This is the second time he has made a threatening call. Mom called the police, but they didn't want to do anything (face it, Pittsfield is a third-world country), so she will probably go to the station Monday to report it in person. I think the neighbor thinks its just Mom and Dad, and they both walk with a cane. I am somewhat younger and could pound this guy if he goes near my dog.

Daisy is a beautiful 2yo beagle. Check out the flickr account listed at left for pictures. It takes a big man to threaten a little dog. He called the first time saying that the "neighbors" did not want a dog barking all the time (she's not out that much). I wonder how the neighbors would feel about a whore-mongering embezzler? Oh well.

New Blog

2007-08-04T10:38:00.000-04:00

So this is the birth of a new baby blog. Isn't it cute? I really have nothing to say right now. I will have much to say soon. Not that my opinion is particularly important... maybe it will just make me feel better about what has happened to me if I can rant a bit.

I do not like "The Salvation Army." They have hurt me and my family beyond what is acceptable for a "church" to do to its members. I think that there is a lack of spirituality in the leadership of this "church," and if there is anything I can do to hurt it, to move this beast of materialism, I would do it. Of course, given how badly we have been hurt, I would just as easily deny its existence and move on.