Blog of Billy

Just wanted to post the pictures of the downed tree from Ice Storm 2008. (Ice storms can only be associated with January. This one just came early.) The pictures are big, so they're below. Maybe if I have extra after-Christmas time, I'll make some quick thumbnails. Click to expand them, in true Web 1.0 style.

War is over now.

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The power of November is in taking the possible good things that come of the Random, and tainting them:

Good: Sendmail 8.14.2 contains a patch that I wrote while I was at Hertz that corrects a flag-timing issue I found.
Bad: My name's not on it. The name on it is the senior guy from my group. He's a good guy, and I love him quite a bit. As far as my resume goes, though, this creates a little complication in the story.

If the message transfer time to sendmail (when acting as server)
exceeds Timeout.queuewarn or Timeout.queuereturn and
the message is refused (by a milter), sendmail previously
created a delivery status notification (DSN). Patch
from Doug Heath of The Hertz Corporation.

Good: No intense family time over Thanksgiving.
Bad: Vern, my paternal grandfather, is in a bit of a way.

Good: Not really a good part here
Bad: Rebekah Burgess died earlier, leaving her little girl without a mother, and a good number of people without a friend.

Good: I've been far enough ahead in my studies to where I haven't needed to go to class.
Bad: Work has kept me on the road for solidly half of the month.

Good: Denise was in town. Yay!
Bad: Denise had family stuff going on for most of her trip here that kept us from hanging out.

Good: My halloween costume won me some tickets to the movies.
Bad: There's not been a movie I want to see, nor has there been anyone to take. December promises an Aaron Sorkin film called Charlie Wilson's War that has my long-lost West Wing heart all a-twitter.

Good: I've been coding up a storm at work.
Bad: I've not been in the mood to code (or study) at home.

Good: I started a different exercise program.
Bad: I'm achey all the time now

Good: Mike and Heather came to town for Thanksgiving. Yay!
Bad: Trying to get everyone together in the same room dredged up all the old drama with all the new awkward situations.

Good: Christmas is coming!
Bad: I have no idea what to get people. Also my house is not decorated due to me being gone a bunch and CB apparently having a grinch-heart.

Good: Got to see everyone at the UCO tournament. Made better friends with Mikale and some of the new kids.
Bad: I received exactly 0 rounds to judge. It made for some long rounds with nothing to do.

At least it's over. On to December with a more positive outlook!

Reindeer, reindeer, reindeer
I caught one of your horns
And even if it rains here
It's much worse in the north

November has roller-bladed in with all the grace and gentle maneuver of an epileptic hippopotamus. The drama that has taken place in just the first two days makes me want to nap past Thanksgiving. How has the month been treating me? Open book time.

1. I'm sick again. My throat is all sore, my muscles achey. Hertz/Postal Tim is similarly afflicted, as is Denise, which makes me think it's an actual plague as well all got sick immediately on the first. Oh well.
2. Work is being annoying. There is no direct, approachable way to do the things I need to do. Specifically, the XSL-FO spec by design has no provision for blocks that span a number of columns smaller than the total number of columns on the page, but larger than one. So, I have to write insanity using third-party extensions to XSL-FO. Usually I would be energized by such a challenge, but the tools that I have to work with limit the number of ways that I can describe that insanity. I'm a huge fan of TIMTOWTDI, and XML is based around a single "right" coding strategy that covers 80% of what I want to do, but leaves the non-trivial 20% as a sacrifice so that implementations take off. This is what happened with "span." It's hard to make blocks span arbitrary numbers of columns, and the XML group wants the FO standard (and XML) in general to be implemented widely so that the terror of SGML doesn't happen again. Their response is to nerf the standard so anyone (except apparently the Apache group) The problem is that an almost-completely-useful standard is also almost-completely-frustrating. Oh well.
3. New relationship drama. Though it seems to have cleared itself, there were some awkward conversations and non-discussions. I'm concerned, but have no basis for how to change behavior or conversation patterns. On the one hand, this is frustrating. On the other hand, I'm having a hard time feeling guilty without knowing the cause. Oh well.
4. Old relationship drama. Being nice to exes causes problems. Being civil to exes causes problems. Being a jerk to exes causes problems. Ignoring exes causes problems, and is impractical. I'll just have to cause problems being nice as that's the way I deal with the world, regardless of complexities or weird coincidences. Oh well.
5. No good way to deal with the above. My better conscience has me at a debate tournament helping out Blake this weekend, so Tulsa is out. Boston is like a million miles away, so queso is out. There go my two best support structures for a few days. Oh well.

My congressman won't let me give my brother a clean syringe.
If he should get AIDS and die, that's just too bad.

Yes, it's been a while. Doug was right in his betting. Summary time!

Good things happened in the last two months. I knelt before my altar of consumerism and extracted therefrom some discs to make the all-too-near winter more comfortable. I got the second season of the Muppet show, a copy of Krrish, and Katamari Damacy.

Probably more importantly than just the discs is the new medium of play. I finally gave in to the compulsion I've had since, probably, 2002ish and got myself a giant TV. It's a 46" LCD 1080p monstrosity from Polaroid that has already gone down in price by $50 in the couple of weeks since it's been in the TV loft. The good part is that the picture is beautiful, it has all the inputs I need for cable, DVD, computer, and gaming systems. The bad part is that it's probably going to explode at any moment. Eh, such are the chances you take buying the off-brand. I've had good luck in the past, so I'm not feeling any real trepidation (he said as he knocked wood).

More good: I've been hanging out with the esteemed Dr. Kim more and more. We hit up the Stone Lion Inn murder mystery extravaganza and found ourselves well entertained. It's a really big and pretty house, very well kept, and the evening's entertainment was welcome. Good times were had by all.

Less good was the chunk of September that I spent sick. Across this great land of ours spread a plague of coughing and hacking and wheezing and aching that could not be stopped but for the power of one magical beverage. Behold! The Tussin Cocktail!

• 2 shots Maximum Strength CVS Tussin
• 2 cups PCFOJ
• 2 shots Tanquerey Gin
• 1 tablespoon Grenadine

Pour the tussin in a glass, fill with the orange juice and gin, then stir. Add the grenadine on top. The whole result looks like a fruity drink that Dave Foley would order during the "coconut monkey's head" sketch. The acidity of the orange juice helps clear some of the phlegm and the gin and tussin calm the cough reflex while also making you stop caring about coughing in the first place. It's an overall win.

You're fear in the face of strength I guess spinning 'round till dizzy better suits you.

One of the defining characteristics of the past weeks is the growing number of board games that I've been playing. Chris Brodt and I started off with a festively hosted game of Axis and Allies with some friends of mine from Hertz. Similarly, Chris's new thang was sweet enough to treat us to a game or two of Settlers of Catan. Both are really entertaining, and a good excuse to get people together to chat and make merriment. It will happen again.

Speak of Hertz, I must admit that I'm pretty happy I got out while I did. Now that the new CIO has pretty much come out and publicly said that outsourcing is where the company is headed, I'm feeling a lot better about having a job that has been around for ~250 years, and can legally not be moved out of the country. That being said, I'm honestly pretty pleased that all of this has been made public, because now the people who want to get out can. I'm always a fan of putting cards on the table and letting people decide what to do with them. Apparently, what several of them have decided to do is complain. Can't say I blame them.

Today, I sit in beautiful Baltimore, Maryland, the second of a set of unending trips that I will have to take up here for my job. The meetings that I'm attending are the kind of boring that makes my kidney cry. Luckily, I have my mastery of Will Shortz to keep me from falling asleep for the first hour or so. Between that, HBO in the hotel room, and the amazing crab cakes, I find ways to keep myself entertained that don't involve Ravens and Orioles.

The other problem with Baltimore is that it means that I can't get up to visit the lovely town of Tulsa as often as I'd like. So now, there are broken air conditioners and soap dishes that need looking after, yummy pizza to eat, and cute girls to entertain.

You shut your mouth
how can you say
I go about things the wrong way