Almost

I'm sure everyone has heard the old saying that "'Almost' only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes". I think most would agree that the same principle applies to 'wants' and 'intentions'.

Well, if His Obamaness can win the Nobel Peace Prize for his intentions to change the world and all that when he took office, then I by-God want my Nobel prizes in Math and Physics, since I fully INTENDED to get degrees and make big advances in those fields when I was younger.

I mean, fair is fair...

Multitasking

Here's why you shouldn't (at least while driving)




I mean, just so you know...

Demonstrable Geekiness

While I'm nowhere near "professional grade" at programming, I have managed to finish my little learning-to-program-in-Java project.

It's a simple, basic little utility to let someone interested in building a small (home/cabin) solar panel (Photo-Voltaic) to generate and store some amount of electricity.

The program lets the user enter and adjust a variety of different loads (a fridge, TV, etc), how many of what sizes of solar panels and batteries, power inverters for those things that NEED regular "line" power, and a few other little helpful options. As the different user-input values change, the program recalculates everything. The user has the option to either print the information to a printer, or save it to a computer file that can be imported to a spreadsheet (where they can get serious about playing with the numbers, if they want). The program is called PVcalc, and is available for download from my website.

If you're interested, curious, or just like to watch trainwrecks, go on over and get yourself a copy and let me know how bad I suck at programming :-)

Not for mere mortals...

I've been teaching myself the Java programming language for the past couple of weeks. It has been something of an "adventure", but I've actually rather enjoyed it.

I wanted to learn Java, specifically, because it is widely touted as being a cross-platform programming environment: something written in Java is supposed to run on a Windows box, a Linux machine, an Apple, or damn near anything else that can handle Java.

The downside of that kind of power and flexibility (TANSTAAFL!) is that doing things the Java way is appreciably different than what I've been used to. Doing math stuff in Java, for example, leaves one with a thorough grounding in touch-typing as a consequence of the refusal/inability of Java to automagically convert between types of numbers (integer, real, etc).

I've got my learn-by-doing program almost finished, and have run into what I reluctantly have to consider a major weakness: the inability to EASILY print simple, basic text to a (default) printer. By way of illustration, if I were using another programming language, I could do something relatively simple, like
printer.print "This is some text that I want to print"
to whatever the default printer was, using whatever passed for a default font and size.

In Java, however, it isn't that straightforward -- almost every cotton-picking little detail has to be declared, defined, and described... regardless of whether I'm printing a short line of text or rendering a copy of the Mona Lisa. While I don't doubt that the capabilities of printing in Java are wonderful, at this point it's SO damn flexible to me that I can't get hold of it well enough to actually do anything simple and basic with it.

Further aggravating my situation is that all of the tutorials that I've looked at have been of the starting-from-scratch, all-by-themselves variety; there doesn't seem to be anything that explains or demonstrates how to include printing basic text from within an existing program -- or, at least, not that I've been able to find/understand. If, or when, I finally get my head around how to print from within a Java application such as I've written, I may have to have a try at writing a "Java Printing for Dummies" tutorial.

In the mean time, it's various permutations of headache remedies and alcoholic beverages for me...

What the hell happened to Saturdays?

When I was but a wee lad (mid- to late-50's), Saturday mornings were for cartoons -- Bugs Bunny, Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Tom and Jerry, Popeye, and other such entertainments.

This morning, just for drill, I had a look at our local selection of programs and didn't see a damn thing that looked even vaguely amusing.

WTF is a Yu-Gi-Oh? I've seen/heard about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Power Rangers (some years ago, it was on in the afternoon in the Dallas area; when the program ended, the kids in the apartment complex would go outside an re-enact various scenes with one or two of them getting karate-chopped or -kicked every so often). Similarly, I've heard of Pokemon (a friend's kid wanted Pokemon underwear for cryin' out loud!), Care Bears, and so on.

Where's the mindless laugh-yourself-silly stuff that so many of us grew up on? Yes, it was violent (tough to get much more violent than the Coyote's schemes against the Roadrunner, for example), but we KNEW that it was cartoons, that Real Life didn't work that way. Now all we've got is techno-fantasy crap and play-nice-and-be-happy drivel.

*snif*

I miss Looney Tunes.

Radar on Guard

Radar, in the Belly of the Beast (the Box Monster)

On the attack against the Plastic Bag from Hell

Her most dangerous foes, the Poisonous Plastic Bug and the dreaded Purple Stuffed Mouse

See? We can all just get along...

I'm trying to nap here, dude...
You woke me up for THIS?

Guard Cat

Radar, the kitten, is proving herself to be quite the guardian around my apartment.

For her size, she's surprisingly ferocious -- thus far, she has fought and defeated:

• the Shoelace Snake
• the Foot of Death
• the Box Monster
• entire swarms of Kibbles
• the Blinky Ball of Doom
• the Plastic Bag from Hell
• the dreaded Purple Stuffed Mouse
• numerous Bed Mice (the 'mice' that run around under the covers), and
• the Poisonous Plastic Bug

Elf has gotten used to having Radar around, and is pretty tolerant of the little fuzzball -- except when Radar gets too rambunctious, and starts trying to include Elf in playtime.

Charity telemarketing

In the last few days, I've received several calls from assorted charitable organizations seeking donations.

The thing is, each and every one of them has started out with the person on the other end asking for someone other than me ("Marsha", "John", etc).

I'm wondering: is this simply a case of several telemarketers individually trying to recover from an error (mis-dialed or erroneous number), or an example of a new technique in telemarketing -- an attempt to somehow get past most people's initial negative reaction to being solicited for money?

Inquiring minds want to know...

Kitten School

In the last couple of days, Radar the kitten, has gone through the following courses:

Class 1

• Jump up on Dad's lap, sit while watching what he does on the computer.
• Sitting is too tiring, so lay down on his leg.
• Fall asleep.
• Try to roll over, fall off leg.

Class 2

• Get into laundry basket.
• Discover all the things you can beat up.
• Jump out of laundry basket, try to drag something out to play with.
• Discover that item is way bigger than you thought, drag harder.
• Succeed in pulling Dad's bluejeans out of basket.
• Get covered by bluejeans.
• While trying to escape bluejeans, manage to burrow your way into leg, get trapped.
• Yell for help.

Class 3

• Play with assorted cat toys.
• Get tired of assorted cat toys.
• Go looking for new toy.
• Spot twitching tail.
• Ignore that twitching tail is connected to (way) bigger cat.
• Ambush tail.
• Get soundly thumped on the head for your efforts.

Most important lesson
Do NOT suddenly jump up on toilet while Dad is standing in front of it.

Major tech support secret revealed!

[ via XKCD web comic ]