Another dark and gloomy winter day here in Geneseo. And the record continues to climb. No end in site. Good for me; bad for everyone else. I am just about the only person in the world who would prefer to live in a world without direct sunlight. Except for Wilfort Carrol who used to work for Nicklin Associates a few years back. He didn’t like sunlight either. Just thought that I would mention him in case anyone ever does a web search for him they will discover one thing about him. That he likes rain and overcast days. There you go Wilfort.
Coldplay screws its customers. Yet another story of a band and record label, in this case Virgin Records, who produce a CD that isn’t really a CD and make it not work correctly in an attempt to keep the people who paid for the album from being able to enjoy it to the same level as those people who just stole a copy. What are they thinking? If they want to make more money why don’t they go after pirates instead of going after their customers. Basically what the manufacturing of this album is all about is making something that people will buy without knowing whether or not they have any way to use it. Its like buying music in an unknown format and hoping that they put it into a format that you just happen to own a player for but they might have put it into a format that no one has ever heard before so no one even known what it is. This is totally obnoxious. I hope that no one ever buys their records again. I sure won’t but then again, I have never heard of them.
I listened to a talk by Robert Lang who spoke at OSCON this year. Robert is an absolutely amazing oragami artist. You could spend quite a bit of time on his site looking at some of his artwork.
My biggest project today was working on a database design for the company’s new purchase ordering system. I really like database design work and this is pretty fun. It is really nice when you have total knowledge of the domain and don’t have to go to anyone else for extra information. That lets things move forward pretty quickly.
I worked most of the afternoon and then at 5:30 I ran downtown (downtown Geneseo that is) to look for an art supply store that Dominica remembered being down there. Apparently that was some time ago because all of the stores that were near where she remembered it being have been there for quite some time. So I grabbed some dinner at Micelli’s Deli on Main Street. The girl making the subs was wearing a Station 42 tee shirt which I thought was really strange. I asked her about it and she said that it had been her grandfather’s. She didn’t even know Station 42. She said that she was born in 1985. Josh and I along with Steve Romano, Michael Slane and Heather Shaeffer had worked there during the summer of 1992 but the restaurant had closed by the end of the summer never to have opened again. Now it is just someone’s house. It was located between Avon and York in a little crossroads called Fowlerville on Fowlerville Road. If you look at the area on Google Maps you can even see the railroad still marked on the map that the building used to be the passenger station for but that railroad is long since gone. It is too bad. It would have been so neat to have had a railroad go there.
Oreo and I sat on the couch and watched the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes that Dominica watched last night without so that we would be caught up. These early episodes are so incredibly cheesy. I can’t believe that we all thought that this was the greatest show ever when it was first one. But the reality is that nothing was ever like this at all back when it first aired. It is actually from the 1980’s which is actually pretty hard to believe.
It has gotten colder outside and there is actually snow falling here again. It has been at least a week since I have seen any snow come down. Maybe the sky will clear a little by tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow: I have a doctor’s appointment (just a regular checkup) tomorrow afternoon in Batavia at 2:15.
I got my database completed by 10:15. I am really happy with the work that I did. I am sure that I will have to do more with it later on once I really start testing it but so far so good. I love it when projects actually work and move forward. I need to do more of that more often. I have also had really good luck today making my way through tons of content from IT Conversations. I am making a point of trying to catch up with all of their old content. There is just so much to learn. Once in a while there is a totally ridiculous interview with someone who doesn’t know anything about the technology that they are talking about. Just as I was writing this paragraph I came across one of those that I decided to delete. I save almost everything and burn it to DVD so that I have it archived because I think that the content is so good. The interview I last heard though was some idiot complaining about all kinds of things from low emission fuels to American broadband. He went so far to say that DSL and Cable are not even broadband (I guess that he thinks that they narrowband) and said that in Korea that they have 8Mb/s and that that is true broadband. Of course, just about everyone that I know has speeds like that and at prices close to what he was saying that they pay over there. He was saying things that would lead one to believe that Americans only ever get 200Kb/s. I suppose that some people with satellite service might end up with speeds like that but that is totally unfair to compare super rural America to high density urban Korea. And to only compare us to the most densily technologically deployed nation on earth is a bit over the top. How about comparing us to average or something. I guess we are pretty near the top as far as average high speed deployment.
Dominica got home at 10:45 and we were off to the living room to watch more of TNG. We think that one of the funniest things ever is “Acting Captain Wesley Crusher” taking control of the ship. That bit is really hilarious. No trains tonight. We were both kind of tired and just looking to relax.
Just before turning in for the night I came across this interesting blog entry on one word descriptions of UNIX variants. Being a UNIX guy this is close to my heart I guess. Most of you probably won’t even know what he is talking about but I thought that this was kind of cute but quite authentic. Anyway, I liked it. Very, very true. Hit the nail on the head, I think.