Christmas 2007: Still Breathing

This year, instead of packing up and taking to the road for the holidays, Turtle and I hosted her mom and dad, her sister, and her niece here in Texas. For the past week, I'd been dusting, vacuuming, cleaning, sneaking in a few last-minute shopping expeditions, and driving halfway to Oklahoma to find a wet (not “damp”) where I could buy fixin’s for adult liquid refreshments.

My father-in-law is insanely allergic to the cats. Even though we had the carpets cleaned and despite my having thoroughly dusted and vacuumed the house from top to bottom three times in two weeks prior to his arrival, he can only handle being in the house for about as long as it takes to use the bathroom. Longer than that, and his eyes swell up, his sinuses fill with mucus, and he sneezes violently and continuously. He and my mother-in-law booked a room at a nearby hotel, but he (and I) spent all the Christmas festivities out in the garage, where I'd set up lawn chairs, a folding table, and an electric oil radiator with a small fan blowing across it to provide some heat.

And we went “bumming”. I knew going in that Turtle's dad probably wouldn't be able to spend any time in the house, so I planned to take him with me to some electronics stores to shop for a new TV to replace the 26-inch Magnavox I've had since 1989. We were successful, and Turtle and I are now enjoying the bright picture, wide screen and (some) HD clarity of a 40" LCD Samsung set (LN-T4061F, for anyone who's interested in particulars). Now all I have to do is find a set of surround sound speakers we can afford.

Christmas day was a little unusual. While the women had themselves a noisy hen party inside, Dad and I hung out on the front porch. It was chilly and breezy but, as long as we occasionally moved our lawn chairs to stay in the sun, pleasant enough. A little before the crockpot turkey was ready, we set up a long table in the garage and dolled it up with a red table cloth. How many of you can say you had your Christmas feast in the garage?

This morning, it's a dreary, rainy day. My parents-in-law and my niece are driving home in the yuck. We drove my sister-in-law to the airport at 5:00 this morning, and by now she's touched down and fighting her way through throngs of fellow holiday travelers to recover her luggage. The house is quiet (the housekeeping staff are on strike for the day), and the cats have come out of hiding. The place feels a little lonely, but we have some fun memories.

Oh yeah: Merry Christmas!

IE8 on Acid(2)

In a move that almost certainly had nothing to do with Opera's lawsuit [cough], Microsoft has announced that an in-development version of Internet Explorer 8 has successfully rendered the Acid2 browser test.

Taking this announcement at face value (no pun intended), one might be tempted to think that Microsoft's browser development team has finally seen the error of its non-standard rendering ways. But... I've been verbally abusing Microsoft for a long time and can't just turn on a dime. I'm skeptical.

True, it seems that years of pressure and ill will over the debacle that was IE 6 have convinced Microsoft that it can't just run rough-shod over the W3C recommendations that standards based browsers follow. The IE 8 announcement makes some pleasing noises in this regard, but it seems to me that there's also quite a bit of tap dancing going on:

When we look at the long lists of standards (even from just one standards body, like the W3C), which standards are the most important for us to support? The web has many kinds of standards – true industry standards, like those from the W3C, de facto standards, unilateral standards, open standards, and more. Some standards like RSS or OpenSearch lack a formal standards body yet work pretty well today across multiple implementations. Many advances in web technologies, like the img tag, start out as unilateral extensions by a vendor. The X in AJAX, for example, has only started the formal standardization process relatively recently. As some comments have pointed out, CSS 2.1, one of the key standards that Acid2 exercises, is not “finalized” yet. Different individuals have different opinions about different standards. The important thing about the Acid2 test is that it reflects what one particular group of smart people “consider most important for the future of the web.”

Which, to me, reads a bit like – and I'm quoting my internal paraphrasing here – “We see Firefox's market share increasing and feel Safari and Opera nipping at our heels, and we admit that there's a demand for standards compliance. But we're Microsoft, dammit. We'll comply with the W3C standards where doing so is to our advantage and continue to push our own where it isn't.”

The future of web standards

Perhaps in response to Andy Clarke's recent call for the disbanding of the CSS working committee – in turn prompted by Opera's lawsuit against Microsoft – James over at The B-List has uncorked a truly perceptive analysis of The future of web standards.

Read it, if you're geek enough to care.

Settling in

I'm taking a break from putting together my task list of things that need to get done before my in-laws arrive for Christmas and thought I'd "send up a flare" to let everyone know I'm still around.

The move to the new office building is complete. At 6' x 6', my new cube – more of a stall since it has only two full walls – is less than half the size of the one I was in before, and this has underscored for me the lesson that no matter your situation, things can always get worse. And yet, aside from the cramped conditions, I feel like the work environment is going to be better. The aisles are wider, so despite having less desktop and storage space, the conditions aren't claustrophobic. Even better, the moaning, endlessly Eeyore-ish woman who kept me on the brink of homicide each day is on another floor. Even better, my new neighbors and team members are quiet and enjoyable to work with. It's also rather reassuring to have most of my former teammates officing in the same building again.

Things are finally starting to gel in terms of my new position, as well. I can finally start focusing on doing my job instead of trying to figure out what that job might be. I feel more like I'm starting to move forward instead of in circles.

Meanwhile, Turtle and I are beginning that frantic dash to complete all those Christmas tasks that we probably should have been working on two weeks ago. We've both been a little blue, lately, and the result was too much procrastination.

I've now been off my bike for 33 days. I've got to find time and motivation enough to ride another 25 miles if I want to reach 2000 miles for the year. Some of that motivation may come tomorrow, when Turtle and I attend a Christmas party being held by one of my MS 150 teammates. You can bet St. Bob will be there and trying to get everyone revved up to get out in the cold to start training for the 2008 ride!

I had another birthday and will save you the bother of asking the question with the simple response "pretty darned old". Turtle is always hard pressed to come up with gift ideas for me, and this year was no exception. However, she knows how much trouble I have with my back and remembered how she had to pry me out of the demo chair when I tried out one of those Shiatsu massage pads at the mall a couple years ago. She also knows that I'm kind of picky about this sort of thing, so on my birthday she took me out for lunch and then to the store to pick out just the model of massager that I wanted. The store was having some sort of sale, and Turtle had a coupon, so we ended up getting this delightful contraption for about 40% off its usual price.

This is going to be so awesome the next time my back is killing me as the result of yard work or honey-dos! I can now have a massage any time I want without Turtle having to aggravate her carpal tunnel giving me a massage.

Monday update

I'd apologize for the lack of original postings here, but I don't want to sound like a stuck record. I could post about my confusion and frustration over the way in which things are being managed (or more to the point, not being managed) since my company was purchased earlier this year – but I won't. I'm pretty sure the only people who aren't in exactly the same boat are those who work for themselves.

No bike riding for the past three weeks. Worse, I'm not feeling very motivated to do anything to change that. The good news is that, after my cardiologist appointment this past week, I'm cleared to ride. I just have to get out from under the laptop and do it.

Turtle and I did roll up our sleeves and put up our Christmas decorations, this past weekend. As a token of my affection, I stoically set about shuttling boxes out of the space above the garage, spent an hour or so debugging and untangling strands of lights, and then a couple more hours putting it all together. But as usual, I had to admit it looked nice, once it was all up and I was able to kick back with a beer, a couple Advil, and a Darvocet.

Also this past week, Turtle orchestrated the process of having most of our carpeting and all the tile floors cleaned. We're hoping that this will allow my father-in-law to spend at least a little time inside the house, when Turtle's family joins us for Christmas. Pop's deathly allergic to our furry dependents, so he and I spent a lot of time hanging out in the garage with a space heater, last time he and Mom came for a visit. It's not too bad, as garages go, but it would be nicer to be inside.

Then again, no one tries to talk us into playing board games when we're in the garage...

The Dictionary of Image

My first attempts at contributing to The Dictionary of Image (pool) on Flickr.

Roots

Roots
Originally uploaded by FooRider

Contentment

Movement

The inner workings of my great-grandfather's Seth Thomas black mantel clock. It was given to him and my grandmother on the occasion of their wedding and again, to Turtle and me, on the occasion of ours.

Worn

Cashew-nut

UFOs

That would be “unidentified fecal objects”, in this case. Don't laugh; this is serious business. Until my dad posted a link to the “Space Toilet” video on YouTube, I had never really given a lot of thought to the engineering implications of bodily functions in outer space. The video appears to be taken from a serious presentation by Col. Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency, but you'd think it was a stand-up comedy show. I guess that no matter how you slice it, poo is kinda funny.

While I'm at it, Turtle called this morning to tell me about a video of two cats having a conversation. After watching it on Yahoo!, I thought I might go looking for a copy on YouTube but was too lazy to actually do so. As luck would have it, the Space Toilet video has a link to the talking cats. Check it out; it's cute. For those of you who don't speak Cat, there's a dubbed version.

Flickr: Photos from Paul Grand

When it comes to art – what ever you reckon art to be – I'm one of those people who knows what he likes when he sees it. Sometimes, I even have a flash of inspiration for some imagery I'd like to create, but I don't have the PhotoShop skills to pull it off.

Paul Grand has the eye and the skills. Combining photography with typographical elements and a helping of age (or grunge), his is a style that really appeals to me. I don't know what a trained artist would call it, but I'll go with "mixed media" or maybe "scrapbook-ish".

Flickr: Photos from Paul Grand

One of these days, when I have a bunch of free time, I've got to enroll in a PhotoShop-oriented design class. Or buy some decent filters.

If you like Grand's work, there are quite a few talented, like-minded surrealists hanging out on Flickr's Man Ray group. Check it out!

Stop draggin' my heart around

Almost exactly a year ago, I was taking advantage of my use-'em-or-lose-'em vacation days to get some doctor appointments out of the way. My internist and his PA heard a heart murmer that they hadn't heard the previous year, which prompted an echocardiogram and two attempted appointments for cardio stress tests. The scheduling nurse couldn't pull her head out of her... Cosmopolitan long enough to get it right, and I ran out of vacation days. I figured I'd get it rescheduled after the first of the year, but then things got busy and I never bothered. If hitting 190 beats per minute on my weekend bike rides hadn't given me a massive coronary, how bad could it be?

I went for my annual physical today, and the murmer's still there. The doctor is perplexed, because the echocardiogram didn't show anything to suggest where the gooshing noise is coming from. And he wants to know where the gooshing noise is coming from.

So now, I get to add a cardiologist to my growing collection of specialists and hope that he'll find nothing worth cracking a sternum over. I prefer to keep my medical issues in the realm of abrasions, contusions, and dislocations. You know: stuff you get from bike crashes.

The up side is that my labs came back good, all my boy parts passed muster, my neck and back haven't flared up since earlier this summer, and I have a new pair of bifocals that I can actually see through without giving myself a headache. It's a pretty good place to be, heading into Thanksgiving week.

Artwork of note(s)

For those of us who just can't get enough of secret codes and fine art and music, there's a new twist on Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper".

Discovery News : Discovery Channel: "[R]ather than conspiracy theories, the new code points to a hidden musical score, a sacred text and a three-dimensional chalice."

The first I'd heard of this theory was this morning, while I was watching ABC's Good Morning America. Although they did play a bit of the composition in the clip, they apparently felt that the reporter's running line of chatter was more important than the music, which was relegated to background noise. However, there's a video on their site that will allow you to hear a bit, if you're interested. I can't link directly to the clip, as it's obfuscated by JavaScript; however, you can find it by going here and looking for the Nov. 9 video in the search results.

Pala's theory is not without its detractors, of course.

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web

Speaking of things that are handy as pockets on shirts, if you love fonts and have ever had the need desire to more fully understand the whys and wherefores of web typography, have I got a deal for you.

Check out The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web - a practical guide to web typography.

I'd tell you to tell 'em Foo sent you, but they'd probably be all like, "Foo who?" And then you'd probably be all embarrassed for me and like, "Tee hee." Unbecoming one of your obvious breeding and discernment, that's all I'm saying.

Handy as a pocket on a shirt

Back in August, I posted about my choice of utility over fashion, when it comes to dressing myself. Today, I have further anecdotal evidence.

It's about 80° here today, so Turtle and I went out for one of our customary bike tours of our neighborhood and those surrounding. The smell of beef on someone's grill smelled really good, so when we got back to the house we decided we'd have burgers for lunch. Still in my cycling jersey and shorts, I was doing my usual balancing act with a plate of burger patties, spatula, and three different bottles of seasonings. I approached the kitchen door with no free hand to turn the knob, and it suddenly dawned on me that my cycling jersey had three pockets in the back.

Three pockets. Three bottles of seasonings. Problem solved.

I wonder if someone makes a cycling jersey with "Kiss the cook" printed across the chest.

Got CSS? Get Firebug.

Check out this powerful Firefox plug-in for examining and tweaking your CSS:

Firebug - Web Development Evolved

A tip of the hat to I Love Typography.

Saddle(d) up

After what seemed like a lot longer than the 16 days I actually was off the bike, I took advantage of my vacation day and the gorgeous, 70-degree weather to sneak out for a short ride around the neighborhood. Here's how I break it down:

Minus	Plus
My legs don't feel nearly as strong as they did earlier in the season.	I'd still rather ride than jog.
I had to come to a full stop twice for the same school bus (in accordance with my status as a vehicle), which had its flashers on and its stop sign out.	I grinned and rolled my eyes at the driver, and he cracked up. And the kids cheered me on as they disembarked.
Some of the cheering sounded like "Get a car, old man."	At least they weren't confused by my "mannaries" and got my gender right.
One woman pulling out of her driveway looked right at me and kept creeping forward, seemingly intent on making me stop for her.	Because she was looking right at me, I was able to convey, by adept employment of pantomime, that I was fit'n ta go all Texas Chainring Massacre on her driver-side door. She stopped.
The seam of the cheap-ass chamois in my new Bellwether shorts chafed the heck out of my right thigh.	Fortunately, it was worst when I was walking, and at least it wasn't The Boys that got rubbed the wrong way. And I now know what kind of shorts not to buy in the future.
At 17.9 miles and an average speed of 16.8 mph, it wasn't the memorable sort of ride to which I'd typically devote blog space.	This posting should reassure Slow Joe Recumbo, who was starting to wonder if I would ever post anything about cycling again.

Now playing: Rob Dickinson, Fresh Wine For The Horses

We're baaack

It took us about 13 hours, but we're back from Destin, Florida.

Not a lot to write about, except to say that Turtle and I had a nice time relaxing and spending time with her mom and dad.

There are a few more pictures on Flickr.

Where on earth are Foo and Turtle?

Despite the post title, my grand plan was less to make a real contest of it than to provide a place to drop some vacation photos. Unfortunately, after the first couple, the weather turned and there haven't been many photo ops.

It's been raining here, and when it's not raining it's so humid that when we went out for a while yesterday, all the store windows were steamed up. Last night (10/22), the waves were quite large - by my landlubber standards, at least - and all the "local" TV stations were issuing tornado watches. On the up side, the locals have really been needing the rain that we (apparently) brought with us from Texas.

Here's a quick shot out the door from this morning. I'm hoping I'll get to take some more interesting pictures before we leave this weekend.

Don't start with me

Over the years, I've installed a lot of Windows applications on my computers, and I find it irritating when a new addition has the arrogance to set itself up to start every time I boot up my computer. Often, the solution is as simple as setting a configuration option, but sometimes the application doesn't provide the option to turn off auto loading.

This morning, when I installed an application that allows me to synchronize my Palm handheld with my Yahoo! calendar, I quickly discovered that it was one of the rude variety that insists on starting up, whether I need it or not. That's when I paid a visit to Annoyances.org, a handy site where you can find lots of tips about how to deal with all sorts of obscure little Windows... well, annoyances.

In this case, I learned that the solution to my auto-run problem went like this:

1. Open Start -> Run and type in "msconfig". Press enter.
2. When msconfig starts, select the "Startup" tab and find the offending program in the list.
3. Uncheck the box next to the program you want to stop auto-loading.
4. Click "Apply" and then "OK".
5. When you reboot, you'll receive a message telling you that you've changed your configuration and do you want to run msconfig and see this message every time you reboot? Check the box that says not to show the message again, and... voila!

Link

Missing

I strolled in to my cube this morning with plans to dive back into Beginning XML 1^st ed., which I'd been studying when I left. Weighing in at over five pounds (by my estimation), about 2½" thick, and with a cover printed in the WROX standard red and gold, it's hard to miss. Yet missing it was. In that spot next to the pile of ASP.NET and C# books, there was no nerdily-grinning photo of the book's author—only bare desktop.

I promptly fired off an e-mail carpet bomb, requesting that whichever of my developer colleagues had "borrowed" the book in my absence should please promptly return it (or state their ransom demands). They promptly fired back notes disavowing any knowledge of my book.

Which leads me to one of two conclusions: either one of the cleaning staff has higher aspirations than emptying my waste can, or He is trying to tell me that my seven-year-old 1st edition isn't going to cut it, and I should order Beginning XML, 4^th ed. (and expense it).

Update: The XML book never did turn up. I need it to prepare for my new job responsibilities, so I went ahead and ordered a new, 4^th edition copy of the same title from Amazon, yesterday morning. Yesterday afternoon, I got an e-mail from the receptionist informing me that I had received a package that was too big for my mail slot. I thought, No frickin' way. But sure enough, it was the book I'd ordered earlier in the day. Now, I did spring for 2-day shipping, and the book did ship from just the other side of the Metromess, but... holy cow, that's fast. It usually takes at least a day just to process an order.

Weekend update

This past week, my employer sent me, along with two of my colleagues, to a five-day ASP.NET training course. Two days of C# with one instructor followed by three more days of Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET GUI training. The C# side didn't really cover much that I hadn't already picked up from books and web tutorials, and the instructor had a tendency to wander into personal anecdotes unrelated to the material. But the ASP.NET section was awesome. The instructor was very knowledgeable in the material, but perhaps more important, she did and excellent job of keeping us engaged and focused. There were cow jokes involved.

I find training classes like this exhausting but worthwhile. Sitting in class, trying to cram everything into my brain is tough enough, but the training facility was clear on the opposite side of the metroplex, and the classes ran 9am-5pm. In other words, I had three hours of rush hour beep-and-creep driving--for the first couple days, at least. After that, I decided I'd rather get up and do my morning drive at my usual time, in lighter traffic. In my mind, it's much better to spend 40 minutes driving and kill the slack 2+ hours 'til class time reading a Dan Brown book than to spend 1½ hours clawing my way through traffic and arriving in a Really Bad Mood. The return trips still stank, but I did manage to find a route that cut the drive time down to about an hour.

But I digress. It was a good class, and I learned a lot of good stuff--not the least of which, that I need to learn to "let it go" and accept the fact that using Visual Studio to create ASP.NET 2.0 web applications means that I don't have to code everything myself, from the ground up. Weird... but cool.

There's a dark side to increased productivity, as illustrated by this morning's Dilbert, which Turtle just brought to my attention.

Next...

Back to work, tomorrow. I haven't heard anything from my new supervisor, this past week, so I'm assuming that I'm not to report to the new office yet. I'll be back at the old place, where I'm scheduled to sit in on a "webinar" and learn how substantial the benefits plan cuts will be.

I'm trying to impress Turtle with my efforts to embrace change, but I'm feeling a bit like a cork being tossed around in the ocean.

Veteran Removes Illegal Mexican Flag

In Reno, Nevada, a local Veteran may be brought up on charges after cutting down a Mexican flag being flown illegally above the U.S. flag. A local television station had received numerous complaints from residents and went to investigate. When their reporter arrived, the Veteran took the opportunity to make a public statement. He quickly lowered the flags and used his army-issue knife to cut them down, taking possession of the U.S. flag and leaving the Mexican flag where it fell.

The man commented "I'm Jim Brossert and I took this flag down in honor of my country with a knife from the United States army. I'm a veteran, I am not going to see this done to my country. if they want to fight us, then they need to be men, and they need to come and fight us, but I want somebody to fight me for this flag. They're not going to get it back."

Link (Infowars.net)

According to the Infowars article, similar events have been reported in Maywood, CA., Tucson, Arizona, and Jupiter, Florida.

Earlier this year, there was a flap when it was discovered that someone had climbed the broadcast tower of a local conservative talk radio station and planted a Mexican flag there. It took a couple days to get someone to climb up and take it down, during which time the radio station faced fines for the infraction.

Call me reactionary, but I can't help feeling a bit like we're under siege and just too polite to do much about it. Except for Jim Brossert, I mean.

A tip of the hat to Cowtown Patty.