BonesMoses.org

Secret Agent

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 13:46:28 -0500

Last week I started working on a project, and this time I wanted to see what would happen if I did what all the “cool kids” are doing and “vibe coded” most of it. Let me just say it was an absolute disaster. I ended up with about 18k lines of iffy spaghetti code that only kind of does what I asked, is chock full of bugs, and isn’t anything I would ever willingly publish in my name.

I (Don't) Want My MTG

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 11:08:32 -0600

Back when I was a Sophomore in High School, my incredibly astute power of observation noticed a couple friends playing a card game after finishing some work in our Russian class. They asked if I wanted to try it, and I shrugged and assented, because hey, why not? A Short History I had no idea what I was doing. After the draw phase, I ended up with various cards and a Royal Assassin, which you can use to destroy a tapped creature.

The Lower 48

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 14:31:00 -0500

I turned 48 last week, and it was almost as uneventful as I’d hoped. I preemptively took the week off so I spent most of the time relaxing, eating out occasionally, or otherwise doing absolutely nothing constructive. I really needed that. The only problem is that I started coming down with some kind of cold on the 10th. It progressed into an insanely sore throat that resembled gargling rusty razor blades, which I suspected was either the current variant of Covid dubbed razor-blade throat or strep.

Bittersweet Eulogy

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 13:57:55 -0500

Well I’ve never prayed, but tonight I’m on my knees, yeah I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah – The Verve The primary event in the news since September 10th is the assassination of Charlie Kirk. When I first heard that he’d been shot, my first instinct was simply to exclaim, “No way. What?!” It’s always a surreal feeling to know that a prominent figure has been attacked, because at least for my part, it’s difficult to believe anyone would be so blind.

Five Day Fast

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 15:33:09 -0500

Last week I’d mentioned I was taking part in a 5-day fast. That went from Monday the 25th to Friday the 29th of August. I never really explained why I would do such a thing, but it really just boils down to “I wanted to see if I could do it.” I did a 3-day fast back in 2022, and figured I could extend it a bit to five days since I felt basically OK on the beginning of day four.

Busy as Hell

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 19:50:18 -0500

Boy have I not posted in a while. As excuses go, I actually have a pretty good one for once: I’ve been swamped in being ridiculously productive. The best part about it is that it’s been so fun I don’t even mind. And to think it all started when I finished a video game. Beginning the Expedition I think this deserves a bit of backstory. I completed a game called Expedition 33 back in June, and it was so good I played through it a second time in New Game+.

Travel Shmavel

Sat, 03 May 2025 05:35:58 -0500

I may finally have some respite from my hectic schedule full of flying all over the continental United States. On the other hand, I’m typing this very post from the airport, so perhaps not? The yearly EdgeFest company event was the last item on my itinerary after several conferences, and let’s just say the return trip is an ongoing dumpster fire. EdgeFest itself was long, because the team that works on the Spock extension decided to get together and get some actual work done before festivities and other requisite meetings.

I've Got Mail

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 15:29:46 -0600

I’ve finally gotten tired of maintaining my own mail server. I’ve been maintaining it since 1999 in one way or another, and I think it’s just time to take it behind the shed and put it out of my misery.

As to how I reached this decision and what I intend to do about it, well… that’s a story.

Around the World

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 14:14:24 -0600

This year has gotten off to an utterly ridiculous start. Now that I’m working with pgEdge, they’re encouraging me to submit to every possible conference that will have me. So I have. In addition to that, there are a few company events which require travel, so I’m globe-trotting for those too. All in all, this is what my schedule looks like this year so far: Feb 3-7 - Spock developer symposium in Alexandria March 5-8 - Presenting What’s our Vector, Victor?

Living on the Edge

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 13:04:43 -0600

I’ve been somewhat tight-lipped about my job hunt, but not through any particular desire to obfuscate. No, I’ve just been laying low because I caught Covid right before Christmas and spent the last couple weeks recuperating. Just my luck, getting sick again so soon after whatever got me following Thanksgiving, and effectively missing the holidays as a consequence. Still, I had an informal offer before being incapacitated, so I only had to worry about recovering.

Seeking Purpose

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 06:16:19 -0600

There’s a phrase that’s now become ubiquitous on various parts of the internet, and it goes like this:

The purpose of a system is what it does.

At first glance it’s a meaningless non sequitur, a sort of self-referencing zen koan seeking to make something simple seem profound. Obviously systems work as they’re designed, right? It’s tempting to discount it out of hand and move on. And yet, there’s a lot of linguistic trickery going on here that I want to unpack, and it carries far deeper implications than mere language.

PG Phriday: Kubernetes Killed the High Availability Star

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 12:26:38 -0600

Postgres Conference Seattle 2024 partnered up with PASS this year to present a united database front. They accepted my “Kubernetes Killed the High Availability Star” talk, which I graciously gave on the last day of the conference. The next talk in that room wasn’t for another hour, so I had plenty of time to talk shop with attendees, about the future of Postgres, high availability, and Kubernetes in general.

If you weren’t there and missed out on the fun, this is your chance to catch up and enjoy a few of my notorious bad puns along the way. Let me tell you why the concept of Postgres HA is dead.

PG Phriday: Whats Our Vector Victor

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 09:12:04 -0600

Postgres Conference Seattle 2024 partnered up with PASS this year to present a united database front. They accepted my “What’s our Vector, Victor?” talk, which I graciously gave on the first day of the conference. If you weren’t there and missed out on the fun, this is your chance to catch up and maybe get a bit more information that was cut for length. Let me tell you why RAG is the future, and how Postgres and pg_vectorize make it a reality.

By Any Other Name

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 14:14:43 -0600

About two months ago while browsing X, one of the people I follow posted a video recorded in 1985. It struck me in a way things of that era often do, and I sought a word that would adequately describe the feeling. I was only 8 when this video was recorded, but I still feel it down to my bones. I need a word that's a mix of melancholy, nostalgia, wistfulness, and poignancy, because it's all of those and more.

On the Road Again

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 15:31:10 -0600

Things always start in an unassuming way, don’t they? Having recently returned from a short paternity leave, the Tembo CTO wanted a short meeting last Friday morning, and I assumed it was so he could catch up with our projects. Instead, he informed me that the company was changing direction, and my services would no longer be necessary. I knew the company was beginning a sharp pivot, but was hoping my project would survive the tumult.

Building Blocks and Stepping Stones

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 17:41:56 -0600

Last week I attended Postgres Conference Seattle 2024 as a speaker for two sessions. The first, titled “What’s our Vector, Victor?” discussed the merits of the pg_vectorize extension for Postgres. The second, titled “Kubernetes Killed the High Availability Star” served an advocacy piece for the ultimate deprecation of Postgres High Availability tooling in general. On day two of the event, I ended up having a long conversation about system architecture with Harry Pierson from DBOS.

I'm Not Voting for Trump

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 18:18:31 -0500

There seems to be a lot of debate on both sides of the political aisle, and I’m far from a disinterested observer. While I strive to remain objectively detached in most circumstances, I’ve found that this particular election cycle makes that impossible. Being the polarizing figure that he is, the fundamental reason for this is obviously Donald J. Trump. This isn’t click-bait; I’m not voting for him. The reason for that is much more nuanced than some might expect, so I feel it’s important to explain my reasoning.

A Birthday Epiphany

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 15:32:35 -0500

I never got around to it, and I was going to write about how my birthday went last week, but I just experienced a kind of “Eureka” moment. It was a nice day where Jen and I went to brunch at Original Pancake House, did a bit of shopping for pants and other necessities, and then had dinner at Baxter’s Grille. I had a ribeye (of course) and I indulged myself with their flourless chocolate truffle cake.

Sustained Inaction

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 16:23:25 -0500

I woke up from a dream this morning where someone from my past was being incredibly unfair to me. At some point, I exploded in rage and started to yell about said injustice, and referenced being autistic. This being a dream, the person felt really bad about how they were treating me, and that’s about all I can remember. It’s very common for my dreams to “prime” me for the rest of the day, so of course I spent the next hour or so pondering my past as a result.

Bouncing of Ideas

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0000

This is a verbatim conversation I had with an older LLaMa 3 model hosted on my PC via Ollama a few days ago. It started because I wanted a translation for the name of an X account named gatos fazendo gatices, and it just kind of spiraled from there. The topic eventually touched on how AI could be improved, the effects on society, and the nature of cognition itself. It’s clear the LLM has a tendency to restate the question as part of the answer, or at least mine was.

PG Phriday: My Postgres is Rusty

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Postgres and Rust go together like peanut butter and chocolate, or ice-cream and root beer, or Batman and Robin, or mice and cheese, or sand on a beach, or crabs and elephants! Err, maybe scratch that last one.

Hmmmmm…

Well regardless, there’s a whole lot of Rust going on in the Postgres world these days, especially thanks to contributions from the PGRX project. As a relative novice to Rust, I figured it was time to see what all the fuss was about and tentatively dip a foot into those turbulent and unforgiving waters.

Tripping Out

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Last week was a very odd conjunction of coincidence I’m still trying to understand. The aftermath of which left a reverberating melancholy and nostalgia, difficult to dispel, and all too tempting to embrace. It was one of those times where I question the entropy of the universe itself, as pure serendipity would be an impossible convergence. And yet.. An Expert Opinion I drove to Chicago on Tuesday to present a talk on the pg_timeseries extension to the Chicago Postgres User Group.

Fourth of Denied

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 20:54:00 +0000

Though there is unpacking yet to do, we’re settling in rather well. It’s just a matter of time now, as all things usually become. I no longer become hopelessly lost driving around without navigation. Jen is making progress on her office. Fun times all around! What’s important is the core of the house is essentially done, and we can work from there. Nice, eh? The sideboard / TV-stand is now, as is the cabinet bookcase.

PG Phriday: Taking Postgres for GRANTed

Fri, 31 May 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Not every database-backed application needs to be locked down like Fort Knox. Sometimes there are even roles that leverage blanket access to large swathes of available data, if not every table, simply for auditing or monitoring purposes. Normally this would require quite a bit of preparation or ongoing privilege management, but Postgres came up with a unique solution starting with version 14: predefined roles. This topic comes up relatively frequently in Postgres chats like Discord, Slack, and IRC.

Getting Settled

Mon, 27 May 2024 18:46:28 +0000

The dust has mostly settled and we’re finally unpacking in the new house. Since it’s Memorial Day, I’m taking some time to rest and gather my thoughts to chronicle this whole affair. There’s still a lot to do, but hopefully the most grueling elements have passed. In Closing Our closing date for the house was May 17th, meaning we could take possession later that day. It would be a good opportunity to get a second look to refresh our memories and drop some emergency supplies off to make sure there was room for the cat carriers on Monday.

PG Phriday: On the Move

Fri, 10 May 2024 20:13:36 +0000

Sometimes when we have an existing database and schema full of tables, there comes a time when we need to perform a migration. Maybe it’s because we want to move to or from a cloud service. Perhaps we have a small database and want to do a quick version upgrade via dump / restore. Whatever the reason, we may decide to clean up some technical debt while we’re making the transition.

Many Postgres experts recommend against creating objects in the public schema. This is the default schema that exists in nearly all Postgres databases, and there are often implicit grants that could make our objects available in unexpected scenarios. It’s also a cluttered namespace if all tables, views, functions, etc., are created there by default. Using it is sloppy and makes future data or operation segregation much more difficult.

So how can we move a bunch of existing stuff out of the public schema safely?

PG Phriday: Papa's Got a Brand New RAG

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Remember this guy? Robo-Postgres returns! AI is all anyone talks about these days, isn’t it? Even when it comes to databases like Postgres, devs are finding new and innovative ways to leverage LLMs in everyday use cases. Can you really blame them though? This is an exciting new technology that will transform how we work and potentially society as a whole once it finally matures. We even covered building a crude RAG app a few short weeks ago.

On the Move

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 21:10:42 +0000

It’s no secret that Jen and I have been thinking of moving out of Macomb for a while now. The change in jobs has given me a much-needed kick in the pants to reorganize my life in general. Those interest rates aren’t going any lower until at least 2025, so there’s no time like the present. So we’ve been on the hunt. But where to go? I want to abscond from Illinois on pure principle, but given the amount of family in the area, I can bide my time.

PG Phriday: Under Observation

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 16:30:04 +0000

Have you ever wanted to use a non-superuser role in a Postgres database to perform actions that are normally restricted? Even something as simple as reading from the pg_stat_activity view requires special permissions to view the query column because it could contain sensitive information.

PG Phriday: Wanton Animal Cruelty

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 19:11:54 +0000

The last few PG Phriday articles have been somewhat dense content, so how about something a bit more irreverent? Rather than wax on about AI, HA architectures, or conceptual advancements to Postgres clusters, why not write a game instead? To keep things simple, let’s just build a no-frills Tamagotchi virtual pet for bored database professionals. There’s a lot of SQL in this article, so check out the git page for this blog if you want to follow along.

PG Phriday: A Dirty Postgres RAG

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 14:34:28 +0000

Has it really come to this? AI is everywhere these days Postgres and AI go together like elephants and chocolate. At first glance, it seems like a silly combination. Postgres is an RDBMS for storing data with ACID compliance, functions, views, and maybe some extensions or foreign data wrappers. Where is room for AI in that? It may be trendy to take something, rub some AI on it, and then declare it a breakthrough technology, but that isn’t necessarily reality.

Bones Inc.

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 21:24:10 +0000

One of the job prospects I was interviewing with presented me with a question last week: “We’d like to schedule a final culture interview with you, but before we do, we were wondering if you would entertain a contractor role?” Given I don’t know what’s actually involved with that, I went with an honest answer of “I don’t have the necessary background to act as a 1099, so it would have to be full time.

PG Phriday: Why Postgres is the Best Database Engine

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 15:57:43 +0000

Last Phriday we explored just where Postgres could end up in the future. One possible question which may have occurred to a reader was probably something along the lines of “That doesn’t even really sound like Postgres anymore. Why not just write another database?” Let’s just be outright about it: Postgres is the best RDBMS engine currently available. It’s certainly bold to claim that any database engine is “the best”, and as the saying goes, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Tinker Town

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 22:48:28 +0000

With my newfound “free time”, I’ve spent a lot of time catching up on my writing. Two PG Phridays in a row, and I have ideas for many more to come. I finally decided to “Open Source” my homelab setup, and since that’s a work-in-progress, it should see many commits in the future. And I finally started earnestly working on the ol’ home lab. Definitely keeping myself busy!

PG Phriday: Redefining Postgres High Availability

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 01:27:19 +0000

What is High Availability to Postgres? I’ve staked my career on the answer to that question since I first presented an HA stack to Postgres Open in 2012, and I still don’t feel like there’s an acceptable answer. No matter how the HA techniques have advanced since then, there’s always been a nagging suspicion in my mind that something is missing. But I’m here to say that a bit of research has uncovered an approach that many different Postgres cloud vendors appear to be converging upon.

PG Phriday: Getting It Sorted

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 20:36:40 +0000

When it comes to reordering the items in a list, databases have long had a kind of Faustian Bargain to accomplish the task. Nobody really liked any of the more common solutions, least of all the poor database tasked with serving up the inevitable resulting hack.

Postgres is no different in this regard. Consider a list_item table like this, demonstrating five items in a to-do list:

Free Agentry

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 15:16:46 +0000

Potential layoffs are a persistent fixture in some industries, like some kind of Sword of Damocles looming over them in perpetuity. With the recent advances in AI and the weak economy battering industries of all description, the rate is only accelerating. Perhaps anecdotally, Tech is one of the worst affected in the current climate, with nearly 50k laid off already in 2024 alone, and over 250k in 2023 according to the Layoff Tracker.

Project: Kubed Chaos

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 21:54:33 +0000

I’ve had something of a “busy” week thus far. My sleep has suffered unfortunately thanks to it, but it’ll settle down eventually. See, when I get an idea in my head, it essentially consumes me. I go to bed yearning to work on it, and if I wake up at night to use the restroom, it’s all I can do to go back to sleep. Sometimes, I simply can’t. It was that kind of week, when my urge to tinker absolutely devours my faculties.

Incomparably Square

Sat, 24 Feb 2024 17:01:32 -0600

Well, I’ve finally reformatted my Dell R730 project system and replaced TrueNAS SCALE with Proxmox VE once again. Now that I want to go deeper into virtualizing so I can do more Kubernetes experimentation, using a NAS device as the Hypervisor only serves to complicate the process. There wasn’t anything critical on the system, so that made it convenient to reformat, and just start from scratch. Why all the re-shuffling? EDB wants me to start digging into our cloud products, and that means I need a more convenient place to stage and experiment with that kind of thing.

Review: Sea of Stars

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 13:40:12 -0600

Sea of Stars has been the subject of a vast amount of hype. Whether it’s sincere or astroturfed, I can’t say. However, after watching a couple reviews from respected members of the JRPG community, I decided to give it a shot. I’m glad I did, but there’s a caveat I need to apply: I effectively had to force myself to finish the game and I have no desire to complete all of the achievements.

Into the Hole

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 09:05:27 -0600

Geez, play a few games and then I just fall off of the Earth! Has it really been nearly three months since my last update? Dear lord, I need to summarize quickly! Leisure Activity Which games? In order of completion or last play time according to my Steam Library: Armored Core 6 - I managed to defeat this despite the challenging difficulty. I even got all three endings! It’s great and I highly recommend it!

Acceleration

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 17:08:39 -0500

Over the weekend, Hamas stormed Israel and committed what can only be described as a series of atrocities. Thanks to the specter of Social Media, they gleefully posted a series of videos as the invasion commenced, so proud were they of the massacre. These videos demonstrated a lack of humanity so profound, I’m at a loss to comprehend how someone becomes so twisted. A mostly naked woman with broken limbs in the back of a pickup, surrounded by men praising their God and spitting on her comatose and possibly dead body.

Birthday in the Swamps

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 10:58:52 -0500

So my 46th birthday has come and gone. As per usual, I took the week off and played video games. The primary focus of this time was spent on Armored Core 6, a mech-focused game by FromSoftware of Dark Souls fame. It’s an excellent pastime, and even though I suck at it, I’m having a blast (pun intended) blowing stuff up with mechs. Unfortunately during my second playthrough in pursuit of the second of three possible endings, I noticed a lot more eye floaters than usual and a weird squiggle of bright light in the periphery of my right eye.

Visually Repaired

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 12:06:32 -0500

So I already noted in my previous post that my Macular Degeneration had returned. I hated to admit it at the time, but it meant finally doing what I’d been putting off since this whole adventure began. I had to prepare myself for potentially slowly going blind. My existing desk situation was going to have to change. Goodbye old friend Getting Carded Given that I work with computers all day, I knew that meant I needed to replace two things: my monitor, and possibly my video card.

Summer in the Sun

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 16:16:45 -0500

Looks like I’ve fallen a bit behind in my updates. The tl;dr of it is that June was all about travel, and July wasn’t. I traveled to London for a few work meetings from July 4-8, and then literally a few days later, Jen and I went to Florida from the 12th to the 18th. Then we went to her parents’ to celebrate Jim’s birthday. At that point, it felt like we’d be in some kind of vehicle until the end of time.

Oh Woe ISP

Wed, 03 May 2023 20:53:05 -0500

Given all of my work on my basement project server, it occurred to me that I would eventually need to override my router’s DNS settings if I wanted general availability through the house. I can modify the DNS settings of my desktop or laptop, but that doesn’t really scale to every cellphone, TV, media device, or other janky tech strewn around our domicile. There’s just one problem: ISP-supplied equipment does not allow that.

Project R730 Part 2

Sun, 16 Apr 2023 13:56:44 -0500

Following up on Project R730 - Part 1, it’s time to expand the tale. It took a while, but the few remaining parts I still needed to finish the R730 finally arrived. I installed, upgraded, or otherwise swapped several components, and I got the server up and running with TrueNAS SCALE. It wasn’t just a job, it was (and still is, really) an adventure! Tripwires The first complication I encountered was in regard to the m.

Ursula the Unlikely

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 17:49:20 -0500

Since her adoption, Ursula has spent two weeks with free reign around the house, yet she primarily constrains herself to my office. Perched atop the cat tree, she surveys and judges, and growls should any other feline dare to darken her domain. Or at least that’s how I imagine her view of the world. Because Ursula has also finally attended her official veterinary checkup, and the findings are a bit surprising.

Project R730 - Part 1

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 12:58:32 -0500

Warning: this post contains copious amounts of impenetrable technobabble; read at your own risk. It’s been a while since I’ve started a project, so of course that means it’s time. As it stands, my r720 is getting a bit long in the tooth and R730s are now the same price I paid for that system. So to Lab Gopher I went in search of a great deal. For anyone who is looking for a server, that is seriously the best thing I’ve found for sorting through all the eBay cruft.

Poor Unfortunate Souls

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 11:21:07 -0600

Jen and I went down to the local animal shelter a couple of weeks ago and delivered 16 pound bag of kitten food after they asked for donations on their Facebook page. While there, we went into the section where they keep the cats, because I wanted to look at a couple they had on their weekly bulletin. There was supposed to be a tortie named Mama. She’s been on the flier for months by that point, but she wasn’t there.

Inner Tube

Sun, 05 Feb 2023 13:34:02 -0600

The MRI followup of my Echocardiogram was scheduled for February 2nd. Given we live an hour and a half away, and it would take a minimum of two hours plus prep time, Jen and I figured it would be an all-day affair. It actually ended up taking closer to three hours, and we started late because the patient ahead of me also needed a bit more time than they expected. We ended up getting home around 6pm as a result, so it was a good call to take the day off.

The Subsequent Shoe

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 15:57:24 -0600

Pretty much ever since my heart surgery in 1984, I’ve resigned myself to a kind of semi-permanent suspense. Would I need another surgery? Am I “fixed” now? What would life be like now that I could play outside and have a reasonable expectation of not passing out? How long would that last? A common refrain from those in the adult community of congenital heart defect survivors is “You are never fixed.

Insane in the Fake Brain

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 10:26:21 -0600

AI has reached an inflection point that I feel should be concerning to anyone who works in a white-collar job. The capabilities of natural language and creative-based AI engines were often ridiculed over the past few decades, but recent advances have changed the picture substantially. The reason I say this isn’t really what most would assume. The problem in a nutshell, is that while current AIs are not perfect, the sobering realization is that they don’t have to be!

Thanksgiving 2022

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 14:22:17 -0600

With Thanksgiving past, Winter is now upon us. Let these coming, colder days and nights bring us closer in the gloom. May we find solace in each other, and thanks for the company and bounty we share. Jen and I traveled up to visit her parents for the holiday, along with Aunt Joyce. Everyone else had to bow out due to one or more members of the family being sick, so it was a small affair this year.

Searching for Sleep

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 10:53:35 -0600

Ever since I stopped taking Lexapro, I’ve had chronic sleep maintenance insomnia. Nothing I’ve done over the years has helped alleviate the problem, from medications, to meditation, to CBT-I administered by a sleep psychologist. I have a veritable pharmacy of sleep meds in my closet from past attempts. A Little Backstory A few years ago, I’d heard of a new type of sleep medication that doesn’t work through the GABA system like most of the others.

A Fist Full of Quarters

Sun, 25 Sep 2022 08:51:31 -0500

I took a week off of work for my birthday, and as can probably be expected, I spent much of that playing games. Stray Being in a cat-like mood, I started with Stray. Meow It’s a relatively short 7-10 hour game where you control a cat on a quest to rejoin its friends after being separated from them. Like any cat, you can’t talk and must interact with objects using only your mouth and claws.

Reminiscence

Sun, 18 Sep 2022 14:51:18 -0500

The man stared weary ‘cross the valley o’er all that he had wrought, what he had yet still to do, and felt a yawning despair overtake him. – Anonymous Forty-five years, eh? Malformed though I am, I somehow surpassed my expectations to reach this point, and it’s certainly been an interesting life thus far. College, marriage, a few books, and perhaps even the pinnacle of my career, and then what?

Visual Cues

Fri, 02 Sep 2022 09:05:23 -0500

I generally try to stay out of politics, primarily because they tend to be highly charged and particularly polarizing. One of the discussion panels I watch semi-regularly did a live viewing party of Biden’s speech last night in Philadelphia. Disregarding their commentary for the moment, what I saw and heard on that stage was extremely alarming. I now believe it’s a moral imperative to vote Joe Biden out of office as expeditiously as possible.

An Adventure With Covid

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 16:12:06 -0500

Well, it finally happened. A caught Covid a couple weeks ago starting Monday July 25th. Despite being in Italy in early 2020, I somehow dodged the initial outbreak and then remained Covid free for the next two years. I was even beginning to believe I’d already caught it asymptomatically some time in the past and was actually immune now. Like that time I had a random two-week long dry cough in 2020.

Something That Sucks

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 13:58:55 -0500

Jen and I have been using a Dyson DC-15 Animal ever since we got an apartment together in 2007, and it has been showing its age for a while. The brush driver was extremely hard to turn by hand, it frequently left things behind, and one it has always emitted a high pitched tone that drove me to don firing-range hearing protection. I’d recently disassembled the agitation brush system to clean out a bunch of cat hair and dust that had caked itself into the gear assembly that drives the agitator.

Sounds Like Credenza

Sun, 15 May 2022 14:58:10 -0500

The TL;DR here is that my long vehicle search is over. The last few weeks have been a ceaselessly expanding and contracting series of criteria based on whatever seemed available at local dealerships and Facebook Marketplace. I probably should have just ordered something at a dealer to get exactly what I want, but the supply chain is still extremely precarious, and I’m not convinced the 3-4 month order pipeline will remain viable.

Salesmanship

Sun, 01 May 2022 16:19:55 -0500

Salesmanship This weekend, it was time to examine the Toyota RAV4. The local Toyota dealership in town had a 2021 XLE Premium model on the lot, so I figured we could head down and at least take it for a drive to compare it to the Forester and CRV. The weather looked like it would soon take a turn toward some pretty bad storms, so we didn’t want to drive very far.

Car Trouble

Sun, 24 Apr 2022 16:22:02 -0500

The last two winters, Jen’s parents have let me borrow their “extra” car because Jen was out of town, or I had to park at an airport, or some other reason. While a Porsche Cayman (S trim or otherwise) can drive in most such scenarios, this winter was particularly brutal, with several storms depositing more snow than such a low car could handle. This made me extremely glad I had an alternative.

End of the Walker

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 21:40:26 -0500

I finally found a way to get Final Fantasy 14 working again thanks to a GitHub gist. The author essentially replaces the Final Fantasy 14 Protonfixes launcher script with one that installs FFXIVLauncher into the same Wine instance Steam uses to invoke the game itself. It then uses this launcher instead of the broken one Square-Enix demands. Since Steam invokes the script within Proton, the replacement launcher passes the expected steam account ID to Square and everything magically works.

Harmonic Seating

Sat, 26 Mar 2022 14:13:33 -0500

We are living on the brink of the apocalypse, but the world is asleep. – Joel C. Rosenberg I’m one of the most pessimistic people I know. Yet it’s this same unique trait I exploit while designing High Availability architectures. I expect things to fail, and plan for the worst almost constantly. I’ve based my career on it. Granted, worst case scenarios rarely come to pass, but my motto is and always will be to “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

Final-est Fantasy

Sat, 19 Mar 2022 20:48:28 -0500

Final-est Fantasy Last weekend, I went to try and play Final Fantasy 14 like I normally do, and ran into a nasty surprise. I’ve been playing on Linux this entire time after jumping through a few hoops, and while the game works just fine, the launcher is another matter. Apparently some of the workarounds I put in place were to institute the “old” launcher because the new one uses MSHTML of all things.

Getting Testy

Sun, 06 Mar 2022 20:40:19 -0600

Getting Testy I had some blood tests done recently to check a few things because hey, I’m in my 40s now, and I really haven’t seen a doctor for a while. For the most part, things were as expected, but a couple results surprised me. Though looking back on it, maybe they shouldn’t have. First surprise was a good one: my testosterone has basically doubled since the last time I had it tested three years ago.

Pressing Out the Words

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 03:45:09 +0000

I’ve been using WordPress on my blog for so long, I don’t even really remember when I converted to using it from my homegrown system. My post archives suggest it happened some time in 2010, so that’s a long time to be on a platform I ultimately disliked. Heck, I hated the Gutenberg block writing system so much I followed a guide to disable it. And then I installed an actual plugin to disable it permanently.

Not So Fast!

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 21:00:57 +0000

On Saturday the 12th, I completed 3-day extended fast. Technically it was closer to 88 hours because the last meal I ate was around 7pm Tuesday night and I didn’t eat again until 9am Saturday morning. Still, it’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done, which I find a bit odd given how scarce food must have been during human evolution. How soft are we that 2-3 days without eating is a notable period?

Deeper Cooling

Sun, 06 Feb 2022 16:50:19 +0000

Given it was the weekend, I finally decided to install the Deepcool Castle 280ex and 32GB of extra G.Skill Trident-Z NEO RAM I ordered a couple weeks ago. Given how things can go unexpectedly while wrestling with the innards of a computer, I gave myself ample time to do everything, and I’m glad I did. But first things first. I haven’t really cleaned my computer since I built it in July of 2020.

Boob Tube

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 20:57:50 +0000

Well, they finally came and chopped down our Ash tree. The neighbors had their own Ash tree that needed removal, so the arborists were pretty busy until 2 or 3 pm. Luckily I didn’t have a lot of meetings, because the only thing anyone would be able to hear is the constant refrain of several chainsaws and the occasional house-rattling thump. It’s really a shame to lose shade trees to invasive pests, and it’s not like they’re easily replaced.

A December to Remember

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 11:49:02 +0000

It is the month of Holidays, I’m currently on vacation, and I’ve stocked up on snacks just to enjoy it for the time being. I’m spending the time playing Final Fantasy 14, and just waiting for the snow storm tomorrow. Christmas is over, and I want to thank Jim and Linda again for having me over, and thank everyone for the gifts. I’ll definitely make good use of the sardines, macadamia nuts, hot sauce, gift cards, and fleece hoodie.

Another Month Gone By

Sun, 21 Nov 2021 15:07:39 +0000

I meant to write this over a month ago, and boy how time flies these days. My beef supplier didn’t have any grass-fed cows available until next year, but she did have a traditionally fed coming in. So I picked up a quarter of quite a few great-looking cuts, and even convinced the butcher to include 4 bags of fat so I can make tallow. I also like the way the new butcher packs the meat in paper rather than plastic, making it much easier to unpack when the time comes.

A Phenomenon Potpourri

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 21:46:52 +0000

My 44th came and went without much fanfare. I sorta wanted to post a “Lordy Lordy, look who’s turning 4040!” meme from Aqua Teen Hunger Force though, because of course I do! Besides decade-old cartoons, I took the week off and just played Final Fantasy 14 for the whole time. I started it about a week earlier than that and am actually enjoying it quite a bit. I never thought I’d say that about a MMORPG, but hey, they clearly know what they’re doing.

Bringing it Home

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 13:35:15 +0000

Well, it’s finally done. I just finished all the inspections, negotiation, offers, paperwork, and bank wire necessary to buy a house. Of course, Jen and I have already gone through all of this after moving out of Urbana, but this time the house wasn’t for us, but for my mother. It’s not a grand affair; just a 3 bed, 2 bath for around $125k basically in the middle of nowhere. Despite that, the mortgage costs less than her current apartment, for more space, with actual equity in the property.

Second Shot at Sight

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 15:45:39 +0000

I got my second eye injection on Thursday, and so far the experience has been roughly the same. My eye’s still a bit score and scratchy, but oddly enough, I don’t seem to have gained any more floaters compared to the last injection. The doctor says the bleeding under my macula appears to be receding and suggested I may not need any further shots after this one. We’ll see in six weeks, I suppose.

Ocular Occlusion

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 22:00:05 +0000

While I was vacuuming up some fur-based tumbleweeds around the house Sunday morning, I noticed that it seemed as if I’d stared too long into a light bulb. That misshapen blob that suggests light has seared an indelible purple smear into my vision until it eventually fades. “Huh, the bathroom lights must be brighter than I thought,” I thought to myself. I shrugged in annoyance and kept vacuuming. But it didn’t go away.

Mysteriously Missing Melatonin

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 21:50:35 +0000

Well I just discovered something pretty interesting while watching a conference talk from Christian A Stewart-Ferrer. He’s a psychologist that seems to specialize in autism-spectrum disorders, and he spent roughly three hours outlining tendencies and dispositions of people with Asperger Syndrome. At one point, he said something almost out-of-hand about melatonin production and quickly moved on. I’ve known about my Asperger’s for over a decade now, but I never really did much research afterwards, and it turns out that was probably a mistake.

To The Moon

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 12:11:07 +0000

In late August 1999, a long-haired calico known only as “Mama kitty” due to her numerous pregnancies gave birth to a litter of kittens in a garage on a farm somewhere in Iowa. Winter came early that year and was not kind. The kittens quickly succumbed to upper respiratory infections that eventually spread to their sinuses and eyes, sealing them shut behind a wall of crust. They all needed to see a vet, and fast.

Harvest Moon

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 15:06:42 +0000

Luna’s health doesn’t seem to be improving after her visit to the vet. If anything, she has gotten markedly worse. While the steroids did increase her appetite for the first day, she continued to weaken further over the weekend. Whatever benefit the steroids initially provided has been overwhelmed by her steadily waning constitution. It’s all she can do to walk two feet from her heated bed, so I’ve provided her with a bowl of water and a tray of food she won’t (or can’t) eat.

Lunar Quake

Fri, 19 Mar 2021 21:23:38 +0000

Two days ago, Luna’s health seems to have started rapidly declining. Jen noticed that she was standing next to the refrigerator and gently swaying for over an hour, and when I tried to pick her up, she yelled and bit me. I couldn’t tell if it was from pain or confusion, but I was being extremely delicate given that I know how old she is. Even after that episode abated, she seemed unable to really walk.

A Quiet Retirement

Sun, 07 Mar 2021 16:35:33 +0000

Not too long ago, I bought a heated cat bed for Luna. Her age is really starting to show these days, and she can barely get around as much. We noticed that she was sleeping near the heating vents in the house, basically flattening her whole body against them. Not only does she love the new bed, she hardly ever leaves it. She gets out occasionally if she’s too warm, and lays down literally one foot away next to the cold air return grate.

A Weirdly Productive Sunday

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 21:59:22 +0000

I woke up today at a time I never thought I’d see again: 8am. As someone who usually wakes up around 5:30-6am unable to return to sleep, it was definitely a welcome surprise. But more intriguing was the sleep chart from my Fitbit. What’s this? Normal sleep?! This is practically a template for a perfect night of sleep. Early dive into deep sleep for several short durations, and then a remainder of REM and light sleep.

Cat Scream Fever

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 21:15:45 +0000

Luna has acquired a new skill that I can only describe as “yowling in utter distress”. This has been happening for a while now, but she’s been steadily increasing the volume and urgency with every passing day. With that said, that sounds a lot worse than what’s actually happening. Luna is old. Super, duper old. I’ve addressed this multiple times in the past. Well, she’s now at the point where she’s starting to go a bit senile.

Key Bored

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 20:26:18 +0000

So now that I have the GMMK, I decided to see just how bad my old Logitech G710 keyboard was after five years of service. It… wasn’t pretty. Imagine five years of never once cleaning it in a four cat household, and never even doing the usual cotton swabs soaked in rubbing alcohol every few months. Well, imagine no further! Here it is with all of the key caps still installed:

We Don't Need No

Sat, 13 Feb 2021 20:57:14 +0000

I’ve considered this once or twice in the past, and I’ve come to the conclusion that Colleges and Universities may very well end as an institution. They’ve long since outlived their usefulness as centers of collaboration and education and devolved into mere adult daycares. Even back when I was attending in the late 90s, it was basically High School 2.0, but with a Boarding School atmosphere and no parental oversight. These aren’t the great institutions we used to read about that once produced by the likes of Newton, Darwin, or Turing.

Blargh Wars

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 20:13:05 +0000

What I find interesting about this whole controversy with Gina Carano is that nothing she stated was inaccurate. Tribalism and othering are one of the hugest flaws in Human design that I can even imagine. It kept us safe in the beginning because we would band together in the face of adversity and increase our survival, but on a global scale, all it means is that we aren’t really happy unless we have an enemy.

JoJo Mojo

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 21:40:34 +0000

So I finally decided to watch JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure out of sheer curiosity borne from the memes, and I have to say… it totally makes sense. The show is so ridiculously over the top that it practically begs to be memed. I mean, seriously “Your first [kiss] wasn’t JoJo! It was me, Dio!” is the stuff of dreams. Practically every other line of dialog in the whole show is hammed up to 11, making it not only impossible to hate, but perfect for drinking games galore.

A Full Bundle

Mon, 08 Feb 2021 20:04:09 +0000

In the process of working on a customer migration and came up with a neat query for finding tables that don’t have a primary key: SELECT c.oid::REGCLASS::TEXT AS table FROM pg_class c JOIN pg_namespace n ON (n.oid = c.relnamespace) LEFT JOIN pg_constraint p ON (p.conrelid=c.oid AND p.contype = 'p') WHERE c.relkind IN ('p', 'r') AND n.nspname NOT IN ('pglogical', 'information_schema', 'bdr') AND n.nspname NOT LIKE 'pg\_%' AND p.conrelid IS NULL; For anyone out there that is using pglogical, this is how you figure out if there are any tables that won’t work in the default replication set.

Of Buried Tales

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 09:37:33 +0000

For some reason last night, I dreamed that I was going to give a speech some time later, and as part of it, I wanted to recite the opening of the Canterbury Tales. I believe my intent was to denote that the beauty of the prose can only be truly conveyed with proper pronunciation of the Middle English that has essentially been lost to time with the evolution of the language.

But for the Shouting

Sat, 06 Feb 2021 11:41:29 +0000

So, it’s nice to know that Time Magazine has essentially admitted that the election was manipulated. At least they’re being honest about it now, though using Weasel Words to obfuscate a bit for plausible deniability. “Steering media coverage” is the definition of manipulation I was going to post some huge analysis of how there were tons of inconsistencies, the fact that the challenge lawsuits never even made it to court so the evidence was never heard, or the fact that we should all want audits to reach consensus to finally put this to rest.

A Cat in Time

Sat, 29 Aug 2020 17:25:34 +0000

Though I don’t quite know the exact day Luna was born, I know it was some time in late August of 1999. This means a cat I adopted shortly after I graduated from college is now 21 years old. I had just brought Luna home. When I stop to think about it, that’s a staggeringly long time. Up until now, the oldest cat I’d ever seen was my grandma’s cat Boo-Boo, a beautiful Russian Blue she found playing in one of her wood piles one day.

Forever Wandering

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 21:53:00 +0000

How often I think about all the things I want to do. The tasks I want to complete, one by one. The games I want to finish. The software I want to install on my web server and VM host. The Anime I want to catch up on. My Cayman, sitting neglected in the garage in need of having its bumper cover restored, among other bits and bobs. Even the time I want to set aside for meditation is just another thing on the list to fit into a day where there simply isn’t enough time.

America Redefined

Sun, 19 Jul 2020 12:38:00 +0000

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” ― George Orwell, 1984 America is burning around us. Much of the justification is flawed, and many of the instigators are being sheltered from criticism by a litany of voices and spurious reasoning. And our institutions which are supposed to protect us from misinformation leading to this, are merely fanning the flames.

Sleepless in Everywhere

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 07:30:33 +0000

Sleep is the crank that turns the engine, and mine has long since snapped at the axle. I don’t blog much anymore, a thing I realized once it became obvious even to me. I didn’t wax nostalgic about turning 40. I didn’t say goodbye to the home where I’d spent the last six years. I didn’t gush about the Porsche Cayman I recently purchased to fulfill an old childhood dream. No espousing about Keto, either recipes or studies.

R720 or Bust

Sat, 16 Mar 2019 18:01:46 +0000

Ever since my previous foray into building a server, I’v been trolling Lab Gopher for an upgrade. My preference would have been for a Dell PowerEdge R720xd 3.5-inch format since it could hold 12 full-size hard disks. But those are relatively rare and deals were scarce. Instead, I stumbled across a Dell PowerEdge R720 2.5-inch format with an additional drive cage. So while 2.5-inch drives were lower capacity, I could use 16 of them if necessary.

Wondering What TODO

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 18:15:08 +0000

I’ve been thinking of adding a Kanban board to my site for a more advanced TODO list. So far I’ve looked at: Kanboard - Interesting and right now the main contender. It’s fast, easy to set up, and can use Postgres. It’s somewhat ugly, and the existing themes are few and far-between. It’s also PHP, which isn’t winning it any points. Also, every single theme breaks the code syntax highlighting in the hover tool-tip of the Board view.

Straying From the Path

Sun, 16 Sep 2018 16:32:58 +0000

People are so blind to their own flaws. Through certainly no bastion of saintliness, I try to at least remember to listen. It’s better to be wrong and learn, than remain steadfast in my ignorance. And there is always so much left to learn. May there be so many mistakes yet to come. On the cusp of my 41st birthday, it’s inevitable that a certain amount of melancholy or nostalgic regret seizes my attention.

Sometimes

Sat, 18 Aug 2018 10:00:33 +0000

In the lonely hint of darkness, for there are nor wit nor wail. It matters not how things began, for all is doomed to fail. In despondence, it occurs that few things persist so well as uncertainty. That constant, maddening drip, penultimate and voracious through and through. The criss and cross, flaying and barreling forward, draining into yawning steel or simpering infinity. It’s there. And so, these times that conspire to wrest recollection from failing and questionable histories, that ascribe nostalgia to a litany of inconsistent but unfailing missteps, revenge is both meticulous and triumphant.

Politically Bankrupt

Sat, 19 May 2018 17:14:24 +0000

Dear subhuman filth, I know you’re probably too busy fornicating with your toothless inbred sister to read this, and your unkempt diaper-strewn trailer likely isn’t compatible with such technological advancements such as the internet, but we need to talk, provided you’re even capable of understanding English sentences that don’t include phrases such as “Y’all” or “Hold my beer!”, you hopelessly ignorant Redneck. Stop beating your pitbull with your fourth extra copy of the Holy Bible for one goddamn second, and listen here.

Adventures in Server Sitting

Sat, 11 Nov 2017 18:57:19 +0000

To support more of my tinkering in an effort to test various Postgres cluster configurations, I decided it would be really nifty to have a virtual server. I could not only spin up VMs and containers to validate architectures, but experiment to my heart’s content with other potential technologies. At first, I was going to buy an Antsle. But the fact such a thing existed made me wonder what other kinds of dedicated virtual device hardware might exist.

PG Phriday: Community Edition

Fri, 28 Apr 2017 11:50:16 +0000

Postgres is one of those database engines that carves out a niche and garners adherents with various levels of religious zeal. The community, while relatively small when compared to that of something like MongoDB, is helpful almost to a fault. Members from the freshest minted newb to the most battle tested veteran will often trip over themselves to answer questions found in the various dedicated forums, mailing lists, and chat rooms.

PG Phriday: Who Died and Made You Boss?! (The Investigatining!)

Fri, 21 Apr 2017 11:22:43 +0000

The Postgres system catalog is a voluminous tome of intriguing metadata both obvious and stupendously esoteric. When inheriting a Postgres database infrastructure from another DBA, sometimes it falls upon us to dig into the writhing confines to derive a working knowledge of its lurking denizens. The trick is to do this before they burst forth and douse us with the database’s sticky innards and it experiences a horrible untimely demise.

PG Phriday: Design Pattern Workshop

Fri, 31 Mar 2017 12:20:46 +0000

Recently on the pgsql-performance mailing list, a question popped up regarding Postgres RAM usage. In this instance Pietro wondered why Postgres wasn’t using more RAM, and why his process was taking so long. There were a few insightful replies, and they’re each interesting for reasons that aren’t immediately obvious. Let’s see what is really going on here, and perhaps answer a question while we’re at it. Pietro presents several postgresql.conf settings, but here are the ones that matter:

PG Phriday: CONFLICT of Interests

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 12:20:10 +0000

MySQL has had a REPLACE INTO syntax to perform “UPSERT” logic since practically the very beginning. For the longest time, users who wanted to switch to Postgres, but for whatever reason relied on this functionality, were essentially trapped. Postgres 9.5 changed all that, but why did it take so long? As with much of Postgres history, it’s a long story. To really understand where Postgres started, we need to look at the “old” way of handling a row merge.

PG Phriday: RESTing in the Corn

Fri, 17 Mar 2017 11:33:24 +0000

Last week we explored using Postgres as a central communication nexus between several data sources. At the time, I made a fairly hand-wavy allusion to REST interfaces. Since I hadn’t really explored further, I had assumed PLV8 could use core node.js or other similar libraries to invoke HTTP APIs. Of course as a trusted language, PLV8 isn’t allowed to do that. It’s more of a language for easily manipulating JSON and JSONB objects within Postgres.

PG Phriday: Stuck in the Middle with Postgres

Fri, 10 Mar 2017 12:18:41 +0000

Earlier this year, I implied Postgres was some kind of super middleware for dragging data out of every external resource it could locate. But that example only used the Postgres foreign data wrapper to contact another Postgres server. Why be so unimaginative? The future is as unlimited as it is terrifying. Meet the new Postgres mascot Let’s start with a few prerequisites. We want to see the combined functionality of a few different Postgres capabilities, so let’s try and combine data from MySQL, Postgres, and Javascript using V8.

PG Phriday: Through the Window

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 13:40:27 +0000

Now that we know how Postgres window functions work, why not play with them a bit to get a better understanding of their capabilities? So long as we understand window functions are applied after data gathering and aggregation steps, much of their mystery and complexity is defanged. Let’s start actually using them for stuff! Captain Murphy is tired of your nonsense (Note: I’m a bit under the weather today, so this Phriday will probably be a bit truncated and potentially incoherent thanks to the drugs.

PG Phriday: In the Window

Fri, 24 Feb 2017 13:32:35 +0000

I’ll be the first to admit that I found Postgres window functions fantastically confusing when I first encountered them. They’re a powerful and versatile tool for building reports and summaries, but that functionality hides behind a fairly steep learning curve. One of the ways to combat their inherent complexity is to fully explore how they work, instead of just trying to wrap our heads around the expected results. Window doggies have gotten decidedly smug

PG Phriday: Getting Assertive

Fri, 17 Feb 2017 12:57:08 +0000

There are a lot of languages available for authoring Postgres functions, but there’s nothing quite like the the classic PL/pgSQL. It’s SQL! It’s not SQL! It’s a kind of horrifying mutant crossbreed suitable only for terrifying small children and generating complex reports from a cavalcade of dubious sources! And deep within its twisted entrails is an often overlooked feature usually only available in far more mature entities. That’s right, it’s obvious we’re referring to the ASSERT statement.

Postgres

Fri, 10 Feb 2017 22:21:54 +0000

I’ve been an active Postgres user and advocate since 2001, but didn’t really dive in until 2005. Over the years, I’ve contributed a respectable amount of utilities, presentations, and even a book or two. Books While not extensive, I do have published books related to Postgres. It’s my way of being useful beyond stuff I blog about on Friday. PostgreSQL High Availability Cookbook - Third Edition In 2014, I wrote a book to help other Postgres DBAs and users put together a solid cluster environment that could practically survive an outright Apocalypse.

PG Phriday: Down in the Dumps

Fri, 10 Feb 2017 14:14:28 +0000

These days with multiple Postgres database environments a commonality, it’s not unheard of to copy data from one to another. Perhaps a production extract is necessary to properly vet data in a staging environment. Maybe the development environment needs to update its data to reflect an especially pernicious and intractable edge case someone observed. In any of these scenarios, we are likely to extract data from multiple tables to import it elsewhere.

PG Phriday: Getting Back Up

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 12:16:10 +0000

In light of recent events where GitLab suffered a massive database loss, this is a great opportunity to examine what happened from a Postgres perspective. Since Simon Riggs over at 2ndQuadrant has already chimed in on improvements Gitlib might consider in their procedures, maybe we should walk the conversation back slightly. This isn’t the first time Postgres backup tooling has been misused or misunderstood. The topic of backups hits forums and mailing lists rather frequently.

PG Phriday: Alien Incursion

Fri, 27 Jan 2017 12:17:13 +0000

Foreign tables have been a headline feature of Postgres ever since the release of version 9.2. Combined with extensions, they’re the secret sauce that allows Postgres to pull data from other database engines, flat files, REST interfaces, and possibly every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, hen house, outhouse, and doghouse in the area. But that kind of power comes at a significant cost. Since the remote data comes from what is essentially a black box, there are a lot of performance optimizations Postgres can’t apply.

PG Phriday: Everything in Common

Fri, 20 Jan 2017 14:06:32 +0000

Not a lot of people remember what Postgres was like before version 8.4. In many ways, this was the first “modern” release of the database engine. CTEs, Window Functions, column level permissions, in-place upgrade compatible with subsequent versions, collation support, continuous query statistic collection; it was just a smorgasbord of functionality. Of these, CTEs or Common Table Expressions, probably enjoy the most user-level exposure; for good reason. Before this, there was no way to perform a recursive query in Postgres, which really hurts in certain situations.

PG Phriday: Why Postgres

Fri, 13 Jan 2017 14:59:00 +0000

There are a smorgasbord of database engines out there. From an outside perspective, Postgres is just another on a steadily growing pile of structured data storage mechanisms. Similarly to programming languages like Rust and Go, it’s the new and shiny database systems like MongoDB that tend to garner the most attention. On the other hand, more established engines like Oracle or MySQL have a vastly larger lead that seems insurmountable. In either case, enthusiasm and support is likely to be better represented in exciting or established installations.

PG Phriday: Who Died and Made You Boss?!

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 11:18:02 +0000

Postgres is great, but it can’t run itself in all cases. Things come up. Queries go awry. Hardware fails, and users leave transactions open for interminable lengths of time. What happens if one of these things occur while the DBA themselves has a hardware fault? While they’re down for maintenance, someone still has to keep an eye on things. For the last PG Phriday of the year completely unrelated to my upcoming surgery, let’s talk about what happens when your DBA becomes inoperative due to medical complications.

PG Phriday: Planner Pitfalls

Fri, 09 Dec 2016 12:07:14 +0000

Recently a coworker asked me this question: Should I expect variance between minutes and hours for the same query? And I was forced to give him this answer: Potentially, but not commonly. Query planning is an inexact science, and regardless of the query being the “same query,” the data is not the “same data.” This isn’t generally the case, but on occasion, changes in data can affect the query execution path.

PG Phriday: Ambling Architecture

Fri, 02 Dec 2016 14:26:35 +0000

It’s about the time for year-end performance reviews. While I’m always afraid I’ll narrowly avoid being fired for gross incompetence, that’s not usually how it goes. But that meeting did remind me about a bit of restructuring I plan to impose for 2017 that should vastly improve database availability across our organization. Many of the techniques to accomplish that—while Postgres tools in our case—are not Postgres-specific concepts. Much of database fabric design comes down to compromise.

PG Phriday: Extended Elections

Fri, 25 Nov 2016 11:33:27 +0000

One of the best features Postgres boasts is the ability to adapt. Any schmo off the street can write an extension and bolt it onto Postgres with nary a second glance. As proof, I’m going to whip one up really quick. That should be enough to convince anyone that it takes no skill at all to add functionality to Postgres. Just so our extension actually does something, let’s start off with the instant-runoff code we wrote a few weeks ago.

PG Phriday: Primal Planner Prep

Fri, 18 Nov 2016 14:22:16 +0000

The Postgres query planner is house of cards built upon the ever-shifting sand of our data. It has the utterly impossible mission of converting our ridiculous and inane requests into a logical series of fetch, filter, sort, join, and other instructions. Then the resulting steps must be ruthlessly efficient or the execution phase could very well saturate every hardware resource available; Set Theory isn’t very forgiving. Forewarned is forearmed is very apt when applied to database query planners.

PG Phriday: Instant Runoff Through SQL

Fri, 11 Nov 2016 14:47:41 +0000

The United States held an election recently, and there has been some … mild controversy regarding the results. Many raised issues about this before the election itself, but what if we had used instant-runoff voting instead? More importantly, can we implement it with Postgres? Well, the answer to the last question is a strong affirmative. So long as we don’t break the results down into voting districts, and make wild unsupported assumptions regarding rankings, that is.

How Donald Trump Happened

Wed, 09 Nov 2016 14:36:06 +0000

I know a lot of people watched the election results in disbelief last night, or woke up this morning and thought something like this: There’s a bit of sad truth there. But the real problem is how we reached the point where this was even possible. The amount of incredulity on display here is actually quite shocking to anyone that was paying attention. I knew Trump had some small chance given the political environment in America right now, yet I never thought he could actually win.

PG Phriday: MySQL Mingle

Fri, 28 Oct 2016 14:05:13 +0000

Through the wonderful magic of corporate agreements, I’ve been pulled back into (hopefully temporarily) managing a small army of MySQL servers. No! Why can’t this just be a terrible nightmare?! Does anyone deserve such debasement? Side effects of using MySQL may include… Hyperbole? Maybe a little. If MySQL was really that terrible, it wouldn’t be in such widespread use. However, as a Postgres DBA for so many years, I’ve come to appreciate what really sets it apart from engines and development approaches like those showcased in MySQL.

PG Phriday: Broken Parts

Fri, 21 Oct 2016 11:48:49 +0000

Partitioning tables in Postgres can be an extremely risky endeavor. Unfortunately on many larger systems, it’s also essentially a requirement; the maximum size of a Postgres table is 32TB. This isn’t just because converting an existing table to a series of partitions is expensive or time consuming. We must consider how the query planner will react to the partitioned version of a table. There’s also the very real risk we will (or already have) implement flaws in the trigger or constraint logic.

PG Phriday: Perfectly Logical

Fri, 14 Oct 2016 13:29:06 +0000

One of the things Postgres has been “missing” for a while is logical replication based on activity replay. Until fairly recently, in order to replicate single tables from one database to another, we had to encumber the table with performance-robbing triggers coupled to a third party daemon to manage transport. Those days might finally be behind us thanks to pglogical. But is it easy to use? Let’s give it a try on our trusty sensor_log table.

PG Phriday: Pesky Partition Plans

Fri, 07 Oct 2016 14:05:51 +0000

For all of those warehouse queries that never seem to complete before the heat death of the universe, there’s often a faster version. Sometimes this is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of how queries work, or how Postgres specifically functions. The trick is knowing when to back away slowly from an ugly but efficient query, and when to inject a flurry of predicates to fully illustrate the original intent of the query so the planner makes better decisions.

PG Phriday: Postgres 9.6 Pluses

Fri, 30 Sep 2016 15:00:55 +0000

Timing can often be extremely fortuitous. Yesterday marked the official release of Postgres 9.6! Yaaaaayy… I’ve covered 9.6 previously, but that was a beta and clearly doesn’t count. Besides, while the beta was undoubtedly high quality, the frequency of patch turnover is enough to produce a significantly different final release. So let’s skim through the release notes a bit for stuff that really stands out or seems different from last time.

PG Phriday: Bodacious Benchmarks

Fri, 23 Sep 2016 14:56:45 +0000

When it comes to putting Postgres through its paces, we often turn to benchmarks to absolutely bury it under a torrent of oppressive activity. It’s a great way to obtain maximum performance metrics and also observe how Postgres reacts and breaks down under such pressure. But these kinds of tests aren’t really practical, are they? After all, many such simulated workloads are nothing but bragging rights measured against previous Postgres releases, or for hardware comparisons.

PG Phriday: Working Together

Fri, 16 Sep 2016 16:00:49 +0000

There seem to be quite a few popular Postgres conferences peppering the globe these days. This year, Simon Riggs of 2ndQuadrant gave the sponsored keynote at Postgres Open. I’m not entirely sure it was intentional since it wasn’t the title of his presentation, but he uttered the words “working together to make Postgres better for everyone” at one point. The phrase “Working Together” really stood out, because that’s a significant part of what makes Postgres so great.

Unexpected Existentialism

Tue, 13 Sep 2016 16:15:22 +0000

There’s a bit of loneliness in the world, I think. But not the kind we’ve all come to recognize. Not the feeling that we are alone, unknowable, or otherwise separated from our peers. It’s something I never expected to encounter, and yet that’s exactly what makes it so penetrating. It’s a kind of emotional nostalgia, and the realization that the novelty of life itself is fleeting. I used to wonder what adults thought to themselves as they watched us play and grow, forever discovering, always surprised and delighted or perturbed.

PG Phriday: Irrelevant Inclinations

Fri, 09 Sep 2016 11:32:15 +0000

Say hi to Princess Kittybutt. She’ll be our mascot (and subject) for today. We’ll get to her in a minute. When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail, right? With Postgres becoming more of an environment than simply a database engine, this colloquialism is starting to resemble reality. Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing! As Postgres accumulates copious and varied extensions, its role as an adaptive middleware solidifies.

PG Phriday: Cult of Functionality

Fri, 02 Sep 2016 14:00:25 +0000

It’s no surprise Postgres does more than merely store data; you can’t do everything with SQL. Often, it’s often more beneficial to process data locally without transmitting it to a client interface. Local manipulation can save hours in network traffic alone, let alone client-side allocation and per-row processing. Databases like Postgres are specifically for bulk data operations, so why not take advantage? But doing that requires functions—anonymous or otherwise—and a Turing-complete language to write them with.

PG Phriday: Forensic Fundamentals

Fri, 19 Aug 2016 13:42:45 +0000

All database engines, even Postgres, occasionally present a seemingly intractable problem that will drive everyone insane while attempting to isolate it. All it takes is the perfect storm of situational circumstances, and even a perfectly running stack of software will grind to a screeching halt. It’s situations like this that we must turn to various Postgres forensic tools to track down the issue before management starts firing people in frustration.

PG Phriday: Inevitable Interdiction

Fri, 12 Aug 2016 11:48:24 +0000

“Hey! That row shouldn’t be in that table! How the heck did that get there!? Alright, who wrote the application client filters, because you’re fired!” Good application developers know never to trust client input, but not all realize that a single app is rarely the only vector into a database. Databases don’t just preserve data with various levels of paranoia, they’re also the central nexus of a constellation of apps, scripts, APIs, GUIs, BMIs, HMOs, and STDs.

PG Phriday: Elephantary, My Dear

Fri, 05 Aug 2016 12:38:19 +0000

Occasionally with a lot of similar-sounding terminology, there’s ample room for misunderstandings. This is especially relevant with overloaded terms like ‘index’, which can be anything from a data lookup to a term used in mutual funds. This is further complicated if a developer’s first experience with databases is with another variant with sufficiently divergent syntax, methodology, or assumptions. To prevent future code refactors born of misunderstandings, let’s build a basic Postgres glossary to act as an executive summary for app devs.

PG Phriday: Constipated Connections

Fri, 29 Jul 2016 11:53:49 +0000

We’ve all had it happen. One day, we run a query or function and we wait for the result. And we wait. And we wait. Eventually, we realize something is wrong and find a DBA and yell at them. “Hey Postgres dude!” we scream. “The database is slow!” Or maybe we can’t even get a connection. Postgres just keeps saying something about too many clients. This application isn’t launching and there are ten managers breathing down our neck and we panic.

PG Phriday: The Audacity of NoSQL

Fri, 22 Jul 2016 12:55:44 +0000

The pure, unadulterated, presumptuous impudence of NoSQL. Engines like MongoDB recklessly discard concepts like ACID in some futile quest to achieve “web scale”, and end up accomplishing neither. RDBMS systems have literally decades of history to draw upon, and have long since conquered the pitfalls NoSQL platforms are just now encountering. There may be something to a couple of them, but by and large, they’re nothing we really need. At least, that’s something I might have said a couple of weeks ago.

PG Phriday: A Postgres Perspective on MongoDB

Fri, 15 Jul 2016 15:06:24 +0000

I’ve been almost exclusively a Postgres DBA for a seemingly interminable length of time. While this is good for specializing, nobody wants to be a One-Trick Pony. And aside from the occasional bit of Python to write more advanced tools when Bash isn’t up to the job, it’s All Postgres All The Time. While few things would make me happier, it pays to branch out occasionally. When NoSQL databases hit the scene a few years ago, I pretty much ignored them wholesale.

PG Phriday: All in a Name

Fri, 08 Jul 2016 16:29:40 +0000

Naming objects in a database can sometimes be an exercise in frustration. What kind of guidelines should we follow for schemas and tables? What about columns or variables? Should the same rules apply to indexes, constraints, and sequences? Functions and triggers are much different than all of those elements, yet still exist within the same namespace. Then we have to contend with Postgres reserved words, many of which are probably only obvious to someone well versed in database lingo.

PG Phriday: EXCEPTIONal Performance

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 11:41:45 +0000

Like any programming language, the PL/pgSQL Postgres procedural language has plenty of handy control structures. Among those thankfully modern accoutrements is the humble EXCEPTION block. While not the more prevalent try/catch methodology, we can use BEGIN anywhere to start an embedded section for the same effect. Knowing this is the case, what are the costs of actually using them? Postgres is fairly streamlined, and as such, can take several shortcuts when there are no exception blocks within a chunk of PL/pgSQL.

PG Phriday: DIY in the CLI (Part 1)

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 12:35:42 +0000

On a higher level, Postgres has a bevy of libraries, interfaces, and clients for accessing a database instance. From language APIs to GUIs like pgAdmin, or SaaS entries like JackDB, every flavor of interaction is covered. And yet, that’s only a small part of the story. For those who dare to tread into the watery depths, there’s also the world of dark incantations that is the command-line. While most are aware of psql, the Postgres command-line client for accessing databases, there are far more creatures lurking in the black oblivion which deserve more visibility.

PG Phriday: Let There Be Jank

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 13:26:37 +0000

One way the Postgres project is subtly misleading, is that it becomes easy to forget that not all other projects are nearly as well managed. This becomes more relevant when delving into niches that lack sufficient visibility to expose the more obvious deficiencies. As much as we like Postgres, it’s not quite as popular as it could be. This makes some of the side projects infrequently used, and as a direct consequence, they can often resemble jerky automatons cobbled together out of spit and bailing wire.

PG Phriday: Moving to 9.5

Fri, 10 Jun 2016 14:01:15 +0000

There comes a day in every young database’s life that it’s time to move on. I’m sorry 9.4, but the day has come that we must say goodbye. It’s not like we haven’t had our good times. While I truly appreciate everything you’ve done for me, we must part ways. I’m far too needy, and I can’t demand so much of you in good conscience. May your future patches make you and your other suitors happy!

PG Phriday: Rapid Prototyping

Fri, 03 Jun 2016 14:16:22 +0000

Ah, source control. From Subversion to git and everything in between, we all love to manage our code. The ability to quickly branch from an existing base is incredibly important to exploring and potentially abandoning divergent code paths. One often overlooked Postgres feature is the template database. At first glance, it’s just a way to ensure newly created databases contain some base functionality without having to bootstrap every time, but it’s so much more than that.

PG Phriday: Converting to Horizontal Distribution

Fri, 27 May 2016 13:28:04 +0000

Now that we’ve decided to really start embracing horizontal scaling builds, there is a critically important engine-agnostic element we need to examine. Given an existing table, how exactly should we split up the contents across our various nodes during the conversion process? Generally this is done by selecting a specific column and applying some kind of hash or custom distribution mechanism to ensure all node contents are reasonably balanced. But how do we go about figuring that out?

PG Phriday: Trusty Table Tiers

Fri, 20 May 2016 11:00:38 +0000

I always advocate breaking up large Postgres tables for a few reasons. Beyond query performance concerns, maintaining one monolithic structure is always more time consuming and consequentially more dangerous. The time required to create a dozen small indexes may be slightly longer than a single larger one, but we can treat the smaller indexes as incremental. If we want to rebuild, add more indexes, or fix any corruption, why advocate an all-or-nothing proposition?

PG Phriday: Bountiful Beta Benefits

Fri, 13 May 2016 15:41:52 +0000

The Postgres developers recently announced the availability of the first public beta for Postgres 9.6. I would be highly remiss to ignore such an opportunity to dig into any interesting functionality listed in the 9.6 release notes. All in all, it’s a pretty exciting series of advancements, and assuming this is a glimpse of what we see when 9.6 drops, I’d say we’re on the right track. Plentiful Parallelism Probably the most high-profile addition for 9.

PG Phriday: Big Data is Hard

Fri, 06 May 2016 12:43:43 +0000

Let’s just get the obvious out of the way early: dealing with multiple Terabytes or Petabytes in a database context is something of a nightmare. Distributing it, retrieving it, processing it, aggregating and reporting on it, are all complicated—and perhaps worst of all—non-intuitive. Everything from tooling and maintenance, to usage and input, are either ad-hoc or obfuscated by several special-purpose APIs and wrappers. One of the reasons a self-scaling database is such a killer app, derives from the failure rate from having so many moving parts.

PG Phriday: Derivation Deluge

Fri, 29 Apr 2016 14:46:14 +0000

Having run into a bit of a snag with Postgres-XL, and not wanting to be dead in the water with our project, I went on a bit of a knowledge quest. Database scaling is hard, so I expected a bunch of either abandoned or proprietary approaches. In addition, as a huge fans of Postgres, compatibility or outright use of the Postgres core was a strict prerequisite. So, what options are out there?

PG Phriday: Growing Pains

Fri, 22 Apr 2016 14:36:18 +0000

Postgres is a great tool for most databases. Larger installations however, pretty much require horizontal scaling; addressing multi-TB tables relies on multiple parallel storage streams thanks to the laws of physics. It’s how all immense data stores work, and for a long time, Postgres really had no equivalent that wasn’t a home-grown shard management wrapper. To that end, we’ve been considering Postgres-XL as a way to fill that role. At first, everything was going well.

PG Phriday: Postgres Password Practices

Fri, 15 Apr 2016 12:49:59 +0000

Connecting to a Postgres database can be a headache for end users and DBAs alike. Not because of the work involved, but the general irritation of managing passwords—an issue common to any system that requires authentication controls. The user wants to say, “Who am I? None of your business!” While the database is more comfortable with, “Go away, before I taunt you a second time!” Well, there’s some middle ground everyone can enjoy, and a few Postgres-specific caveats which add a bit of flavor to the whole interaction.

PG Phriday: JOIN the Club

Fri, 08 Apr 2016 12:13:14 +0000

I’ve been going on and on about esoteric Postgres features for so long, sometimes I forget my own neophyte beginnings. So let’s back way off and talk about how JOINs work. What are they? What do they do? Why would you use one? What can go wrong? It’s easier than you might imagine, but there are definitely some subtleties to account for. To make this more relatable, let’s start with a club of pet owners that likes to keep track of everything:

PG Phriday: 5 Reasons Postgres Sucks! (You Won't Believe Number 3!)

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 12:09:56 +0000

I’ve been a Postgres DBA since 2005. After all that time, I’ve come to a conclusion that I’m embarrassed I didn’t reach much earlier: Postgres is awful. This isn’t a “straw that broke the camel’s back” kind of situation; there is a litany of ridiculous idiocy in the project that’s, frankly, more than enough to stave off any DBA, end user, or developer. But I’ll limit my list to five, because clickbait.

PG Phriday: Mining for Metadata

Fri, 18 Mar 2016 12:26:02 +0000

Every good database engine has a system catalog that describes the myriad of structures that model and preserve our data. Of course this is expected, as it would be somewhat silly for a database system not to use tables to represent its internal mechanisms. But that doesn’t mean they have to be humanly readable, or even make sense without a series of views or esoteric functions to decipher them. The information_schema standard serves a necessary role in that regard, and the Postgres implementation is extremely comprehensive.

May the Worst Man Win

Wed, 16 Mar 2016 10:52:17 +0000

This Super Tuesday, it became readily apparent that Bernie Sanders and his unprecedented run were finally done for. So now that we’ve finally dispensed with the one candidate that genuinely cared, who remains? Donald Biff Tannen Trump, Ted Insane Zealot Cruz, and Hillary Nixon Clinton. Well, if those are my choices, then I may just vote Trump to finally burn the whole thing down, because we clearly deserve it. But wait, Hillary isn’t a narcissistic populist or a religious fanatic, so why do I hate her?

PG Phriday: Secret of the Ooze

Fri, 11 Mar 2016 11:54:36 +0000

A few days ago, a developer came to me with that inevitable scenario that every DBA secretly dreads: a need for a dynamic table structure. After I’d finished dying inside, I explained the various architectures that could give him what he needed, and then I excused myself to another room so I could weep silently without disturbing my coworkers. But was it really that bad? Databases have come a long way since the Bad Old Days when there were really only two viable approaches to table polymorphism.

PG Phriday: Being A Tattletale

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 13:26:22 +0000

In a heterogeneous database environment, it’s not uncommon for object creation and modification to occur haphazardly. Unless permissions are locked down to prevent it, users and applications will create tables, modify views, or otherwise invoke DDL without the DBA’s knowledge. Or perhaps permissions are exceptionally draconian, yet they’ve been circumvented or a superuser account has gone rogue. Maybe we just need to audit database modifications to fulfill oversight obligations. Whatever the reason, Postgres has it covered with event triggers.

PG Phriday: Corralling the Hordes

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 12:28:10 +0000

Ah, users. They log in, query things, accidentally delete critical data, and drop tables for giggles. Bane or boon, user accounts are a necessary evil in all databases for obvious reasons. And what would any stash of data be if nobody had access? Someone needs to own the objects, at the very least. So how can we be responsible with access vectors while hosting a Postgres database? We already covered automating grants, so let’s progress to the next step: building a “best practice” access stack.

PG Phriday: Replacing Business Logic

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 14:01:53 +0000

Back in 2005, I started a new job with a company that did work for other businesses. Their data model was designed by developers and they had no DBA, as is pretty common in smaller organizations. A critical part of our main application relied on an event log that captured customer activity and relayed their final decision to the client for reconciliation. One day someone noticed that there was a bug in the system that resolved the final decision from the event stack, and panic ensued.

PG Phriday: Database and Schema Basics

Fri, 12 Feb 2016 12:58:01 +0000

Sure, managing a Postgres cluster is great. We’ve got the software installed, more tool wrappers than we can wave several sticks at, and a running cluster that’s ready to do our bidding. But what do we do with it? In fact, what is a Postgres cluster anyway? How are databases involved? What about schemas? There’s critically important nomenclature that new users may find somewhat non-intuitive, so let’s demystify things a bit.

PG Phriday: Tackling Intractable ACLs

Fri, 05 Feb 2016 11:11:35 +0000

Say that three times fast! Joking aside, managing database object access is a headache for users and DBAs alike. Postgres isn’t really an exception in that regard, but it does provide a few tools to greatly reduce the pain involved. The crazy thing is that few people even know this feature exists. I’ve known about it for a while myself, but it always slips my mind because it feels so wrong not to explicitly grant permissions.

PG Phriday: COPY and Alternative Import Methods

Fri, 29 Jan 2016 12:16:11 +0000

I recently noted that the COPY command in Postgres doesn’t have syntax to skip columns in source data when importing it into a table. This necessitates using one or more junk columns to capture data we’ll just be throwing away. During that, I completely forgot that friendly devs had contributed alternative file handling methods as Foreign Data Wrappers. Most people think of foreign wrappers as a method for interacting with remote databases.

PG Phriday: Joining the Big Leagues

Fri, 22 Jan 2016 11:05:49 +0000

I’ve maintained since about 2011, that the problem with scaling Postgres to truly immense installations could be solved by a query coordinator. Why? Most sharding systems utilize an application-level distribution mechanism, which may or may not leverage an inherent hashing algorithm. This means each Postgres instance can be treated independently of all the others if the distribution process is known. On a cleverly architected system, the application is algorithm aware, and can address individual shards through a driver proxy or accessor class.

PG Phriday: Database Creation Workshop

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 13:15:52 +0000

Postgres theory, feature discussion, and advocacy are fun. But even I’ll admit it’s nice to have some practical application every once in a while. This week, we’re going to build an actual database. But what would be small enough for a proof of concept, yet somewhat interesting? Well, I’m a fan of Hearthstone. It’s a silly card game much like Magic: The Gathering, but has the distinct aura of “eSports!” Regardless, it’s a fun little time waster, and has a few hundred data points we can manipulate.

PG Phriday: How Far We've Come

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 12:10:02 +0000

With extremely fortuitous timing for my first article following the holidays, Postgres 9.5 was officially been released into the wild just yesterday. I tend to think about past releases when new versions come out, and consider everything that has changed since the early days. How early? I’ve personally been using Postgres since 2001, when my new employer bellyached about their Postgres 6.5 database crashing frequently and generally making their lives more difficult.

PG Phriday: JSON and JSONB Revisited

Fri, 18 Dec 2015 12:25:36 +0000

With Postgres 9.5 on the horizon, I figured it’s a good time to see how things have advanced since my last dive into that particular ocean. This is probably particularly relevant since even MongoDB, a JSON-driven NoSQL database, is now partially powered by Postgres. A lot of people found that particular revelation quite shocking, but maybe they shouldn’t, given the advancements embedded within the last couple of Postgres releases. As it turns out, there are quite a few advancements that really make JSONB a powerful addition to Postgres.

PG Phriday: Postgres-XL and Horizontal Scaling

Fri, 11 Dec 2015 15:51:07 +0000

With all of the upheaval in the Postgres world thanks to advancements in extensions, foreign data wrappers, and background workers, it’s getting pretty difficult to keep track of everything! One of these rapidly moving targets is Postgres-XL and its role in helping Postgres scale outward. Large warehouses have a critical need for horizontal scaling, as the very laws of physics make it effectively impossible to perform aggregate queries on tables consisting of several billion rows.

PG Phriday: Displaced Durability

Fri, 04 Dec 2015 11:41:49 +0000

A lot of DBAs are quite adamant regarding ACID compliance. I count myself among them. But unlike the other parts of the acronym, there are times when data durability isn’t actually a high priority. Data staging holding areas, temporary tables that need visibility across sessions, and other transient information do not require zealous protection. As a DBA it feels weird saying it, but there’s just some data we simply don’t care about losing.

PG Phriday: Cluster Control

Fri, 20 Nov 2015 10:45:06 +0000

It has occurred to me that I may have been spending a bit too much time being excited about new Postgres features and developments in the community. One of the intents of this weekly article was for educational purposes, so this week, let’s get back to basics. To that end, the topic for this week boils down to the tools available for managing Postgres instances, and how to use them. Surprisingly, it’s not as straight-forward as you might think.

PG Phriday: Parallel Sequence Scans

Fri, 13 Nov 2015 11:49:43 +0000

A couple days ago, Robert Haas announced that he checked in the first iteration of parallel sequence scans in the Postgres 9.6 branch. And no, that’s not a typo. One of the great things about the Postgres devs is that they have a very regimented system of feature freezes to help ensure timely releases. Thus even though 9.5 just released its second beta, they’re already working on 9.6. So what is a sequence scan, and why does this matter?

PG Phriday: Sidewinder

Fri, 06 Nov 2015 14:18:00 +0000

Maintaining a Postgres database can involve a lot of busywork. This is especially true for more robust architectures that allocate at least one replica for failover purposes. It’s still fairly common for a DBA to create a replica to accommodate emergency or upgrade scenarios, only to have to repeat the process when it came time to revert to the original master system. It’s not safe to simply subscribe the original primary to the newly promoted secondary, so this leaves either creating a new clone, or using rsync to synchronize all of the files first.

PG Phriday: Massively Distributed Operation

Fri, 30 Oct 2015 12:12:46 +0000

Postgres has been lacking something for quite a while, and more than a few people have attempted to alleviate the missing functionality multiple times. I’m speaking of course, about parallel queries. There are several reasons for this, and among them include various distribution and sharding needs for large data sets. When tables start to reach hundreds of millions, or even billions of rows, even high cardinality indexes produce results very slowly.

PG Phriday: Parallel-O-Postgres

Fri, 16 Oct 2015 11:58:11 +0000

I wasn’t able to write an article last week due to an unexpected complication regarding tests I was running to verify its contents. So this week, it’s going to be extra special! Also long. What’s the fastest way to load a Postgres table? If you believe the documentation, the COPY command is the best way to unceremoniously heave data into a table. Fortunately after all of our talk about partitions, our minds are primed and ready to think in chunks.

PG Phriday: When Partitioning Goes Wrong

Fri, 02 Oct 2015 16:33:10 +0000

I’ve been talking about partitions a lot recently, and I’ve painted them in a very positive light. Postgres partitions are a great way to distribute data along a logical grouping and work best when data is addressed in a fairly isloated manner. But what happens if we direct a basic query at a partitioned table in such a way that we ignore the allocation scheme? Well, what happens isn’t pretty. Let’s explore in more detail.

PG Phriday: Database Infrastructure

Fri, 25 Sep 2015 12:07:41 +0000

This PG Phriday is going to be a bit different. During my trip to Postgres Open this year, I attended a talk I had originally written off as “some Red Hat stuff.” But I saw the word “containers” in the PostgreSQL in Containers at Scale talk and became intrigued. A few days later, I had something of an epiphany: I’ve been wrong about servers for years; we all have. That’s a pretty bold claim, so it needs some background.

PG Phriday: The Bones of High Availability

Fri, 18 Sep 2015 18:07:53 +0000

Well, the bell has tolled, the day is over, and at the end of it all, Postgres Open has ended its fifth year in service of the community. I will say it was certainly an honor to speak again this year, though now that it’s not conveniently in Chicago, I’ll have to work harder to justify hauling myself across the country next year. Of course at this point, I’d feel guilty if I didn’t at least try, assuming any of my submissions are accepted.

PG Phriday: Dealing With Table Bloating

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 11:51:47 +0000

Most Postgres operators and informed users are aware that it uses MVCC for storage. One of the main drawbacks of this versioning mechanism is related to tuple reuse. In order to reuse the space, VACUUM must complete a cycle on the table. Unfortunately this isn’t always possible to “optimize” for larger tables. How so? If a large table needs to have a calculated column added, or some other bulk query updates a large portion of its content, a large fragment of the table is now empty space.

PG Phriday: Postgres as Middleware

Fri, 04 Sep 2015 12:32:39 +0000

One of the cool things I like most about Postgres, is that it’s probably the most inclusive database software I’ve ever encountered. It’s so full of features and functionality these days, it’s practically middleware. Almost anything plugs into it, and if it doesn’t, there’s usually a way to make it happen. Want a demonstration? SciDB is often used for large analytical data warehouses. They even use Postgres for metadata storage. Despite this, they still haven’t written a foreign data wrapper for back-and-forth interaction.

PG Phriday: Fancy Partitioning

Fri, 28 Aug 2015 12:00:23 +0000

This week we’ll be covering another method of Postgres partitioning. This is a technique I personally prefer and try to use and advocate at every opportunity. It’s designed to straddle the line between traditional partitioning and standard monolithic table structure by using table inheritance as a convenience factor. The assumption here is that end-user applications either: Know that partitioning is in use. Only load “current” data and don’t care about partitions.

PG Phriday: Basic Partitioning

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 11:32:15 +0000

Most Postgres (PostgreSQL) users who are familiar with partitioning use the method described in the partitioning documentation. This architecture comes in a fairly standard stack: One empty base table for structure. At least one child table that inherits the base design. A trigger to redirect inserts based on the partitioning scheme. A constraint on each child table to enforce the partition scheme, and help the planner exclude child partitions from inapplicable queries.

PG Phriday: Partitioning Candidates

Fri, 14 Aug 2015 11:36:39 +0000

What’s a good table to partition? It’s not always a question with an obvious answer. Most often, size and volume determine whether or not a table should be broken into several chunks. However, there’s also cases where business or architecture considerations might use partitioning to preserve a shared table structure, or drive aggregate analysis over a common core. In Postgres (PostgreSQL), this is even more relevant because of how partitioning is handled through inheritance.

Just Call Me Peter

Sat, 08 Aug 2015 15:51:39 +0000

I just realized I am a victim of the Peter Principle. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a very quiet and withdrawn person. When people see that, they need to assign a cause. Well, if someone isn’t talking, they must be listening or thinking. If they think a lot, they must be smart. So every adult I ever met when I was a child always treated that way. Of course, I am then pressured to push myself—to fulfill their expectations.

There Will Never Be World Peace

Fri, 07 Aug 2015 19:39:53 +0000

Humanity simply doesn’t have a brain capable of it. People can only mentally relate to a certain number of people or ideals. Anything else becomes foreign. Our animal brains see foreign things as potential threats, and puts up guards. Suddenly, a person starts to wonder: why don’t those other people do it the way we do? The ‘it’ here can be anything: Religion, politics, pick any subject. That question evolves into a disagreement, then an argument, then a schism, and so on.

PG Phriday: The Case for Partitioning

Fri, 07 Aug 2015 16:37:32 +0000

In the next few weeks, I’m going to be pushing a long discussion regarding Postgres (PostgreSQL) table partitioning. I’ve covered it in previous articles, but only regarding basic performance considerations. That’s a very limited view of what partitioning can offer; there’s a lot more variance and background that deserves elucidation. So for the next few articles, the topic of discussion will be partitioning. There’s not really enough of it, and a lot of the techniques used in the field are effectively pulled straight from the documentation.

PG Phriday: 10 Ways to Ruin Performance: Sex Offenders

Fri, 24 Jul 2015 12:20:16 +0000

We’re finally at the end of the 10-part Postgres (PostgreSQL) performance series I use to initiate new developers into the database world. To that end, we’re going to discuss something that affects everyone at one point or another: index criteria. Or to put it another way: Why isn’t the database using an index? It’s a fairly innocuous question, but one that may have a surprising answer: the index was created using erroneous assumptions.

PG Phriday: 10 Ways to Ruin Performance: Indexing the World

Fri, 17 Jul 2015 11:42:28 +0000

An easy way to give Postgres (PostgreSQL) a performance boost is to judiciously use indexes based on queries observed in the system. For most situations, this is as simple as indexing columns that are referenced frequently in WHERE clauses. Postgres is one of the few database engines that takes this idea even further with partial indexes. Unfortunately as a consequence of insufficient exposure, most DBAs and users are unfamiliar with this extremely powerful functionality.

PG Phriday: 10 Ways to Ruin Performance: MAXimized Value

Fri, 10 Jul 2015 12:46:10 +0000

I apologize for putting this series on a short hiatus last week for the 4th of July. But worry not, for this week is something special for all the developers out there! I’m going to try to make your life easier for a change. Screw the database! As a Postgres (PostgreSQL) DBA, it’s easy to get tied up in performance hints, obscure syntax, and mangled queries, but it’s really all about the people.

PG Phriday: 10 Ways to Ruin Performance: In The Loop

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 11:18:29 +0000

As a database, Postgres (PostgreSQL) is fairly standard in its use of SQL. Developers of all colors however, might have trouble switching gears and thinking in set operations, since so many language constructs focus on conditionals and looping. Last week in the performance pitfalls series, we discussed a bit of Set Theory, and how ignorance of its implications can be disastrous. But what about the more mundane? What happens, for instance, when we treat a database like a programming language?

PGCon 2015 Unconference: A Community

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 15:30:24 +0000

Well, I’ve returned from PGCon 2015 in Canada, and after a couple days to decompress, it’s time to share. I wrote about the PGCon 2014 unconference after returning to Chicago last year, so I felt it was only fitting that I start there. I feel as strongly now as I did a year ago, that directly interacting with the PostgreSQL maintainers at this level helps the community thrive. Even though PGCon is generally a more developer-focused conference, being able to brainstorm with the bigwigs, even if nothing comes of it, means the ideas have been given a fair shake.

PG Phriday: 10 Ways to Ruin Performance: Functionally Bankrupt

Fri, 19 Jun 2015 12:01:23 +0000

Functions are great. Having cut my teeth on a database that didn’t even provide the ability to define functions, I’ve come to almost take them for granted in Postgres (PostgreSQL). However, with this kind of ubiquity, sometimes they can be overused in ways that don’t seem to be part of the common programmer lexicon. In this week’s PG Phriday series on performance-killing missteps, I’m going to talk a bit about set theory, and how a certain amount of familiarity is necessary to properly interact with a database.

PG Phriday: 10 Ways to Ruin Performance: Out Of Order

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 12:14:34 +0000

There are a lot of database engines out there. As such, a developer or DBA will naturally have varying levels of experience with each, and some of this might conflict with how Postgres (PostgreSQL) operates. These kinds of embedded misunderstandings can cause potential issues by themselves, but in this particular case, corrective action is fairly simple. So this week, I’d like to talk about indexes. Many people treat them as a “make query faster” button, and this often results in egregious misuse.

Review: Learning Heroku Postgres

Sat, 06 Jun 2015 17:09:30 +0000

I recently got the opportunity to take a look at Learning Heroku Postgres, a new book by Patrick Espake that seems intended to help new PostgreSQL database administrators get their data into the cloud. The chapters are short, concise, and the questionnaires at the end are a nice touch. But does it hit the mark? Almost. Before I get too far into this review, I should point out that Heroku is a proprietary service that presents a modular deployment system for various programming languages, applications, administration, monitoring, and other related services.

PG Phriday: 10 Ways to Ruin Performance: Cast Away

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 12:31:32 +0000

Unlike a lot of programming languages that have loose typing, databases are extremely serious about data types. So serious in fact, many patently refuse to perform automatic type conversions in case the data being compared is not exactly equivalent afterwards. This is the case with Postgres (PostgreSQL) and surprisingly often, queries will suffer as a result. Fortunately this is something we can address! There are easier ways to demonstrate this, but in the interests of making this more of an adventure, let’s use a join between two tables:

PG Phriday: 10 Ways to Ruin Performance: IN-Sanity

Fri, 29 May 2015 12:17:32 +0000

When working with a database, sometimes performance problems are both far more subtle, and much worse than a query itself might suggest. The topic of this week’s Postgres (PostgreSQL) performance killers article concerns the use of the IN clause, and how misusing it can catastrophically obliterate the database in mysterious ways. To that end, we’ll use a slightly revised single-table test case since it’s served us pretty well so far:

PG Phriday: 10 Ways to Ruin Performance: Forgetting it EXISTS

Fri, 22 May 2015 18:41:33 +0000

For the second of my ten part series on hidden Postgres (PostgreSQL) performance killers, I’m going to talk about something called an anti-join. It’s not a well-known approach outside of the database world, but due to how it works, it can impart almost magical plan revisions that drastically improve query performance in the right scenario. Developers can add it to a growing bag of tricks when working on database-driven content, since it comes in handy more often than you might expect.

PG Phriday: 10 Ways to Ruin Performance: Forgetting to EXPLAIN

Fri, 15 May 2015 14:47:12 +0000

Yesterday I gave the developers at my company what I call a DBA Chat. It’s something I try to do every month to keep them apprised on various features, caveats, performance considerations, and so on. I find that educating the folks who regularly work with the database does wonders for application performance and my sanity. The benefit of this long format is that I can go over more information than a time constrained set of slides.

PG Phriday: Functions and Performance Attributes

Fri, 08 May 2015 15:56:42 +0000

Users both old and new are likely aware that Postgres has functions. Some lucky readers may have even written one or two. For those without much experience in this area, or are thinking about contributing a few functions to your database for the first time, there are a couple things you should know. This week, I want to cover a few of the function declaration decorators. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then this is probably something you’ll want to read regardless of your experience level.

PG Phriday: Reducing Writes With Unlogged Tables

Fri, 01 May 2015 11:16:02 +0000

Last week, I covered how MVCC, Postgres’s storage system, works on a very high level. Near the end, I also mentioned that it doesn’t quite lend itself well to certain use cases, such as rapidly mutating session storage. Well, there is one caveat to that statement that I’d forgotten about because of its relatively limited utility: unlogged tables. Here’s what the Postgres documentation has to say about unlogged tables: Data written to unlogged tables is not written to the write-ahead log, which makes them considerably faster than ordinary tables.

PG Phriday: Let's Talk About Data Storage

Fri, 24 Apr 2015 11:48:06 +0000

As a DBA, I strive not to live in an isolated ivory tower, away from the developers that are destined to fill our databases with volumes of data from a myriad of applications. It’s important, I think, to occasionally come back to the basics. So I’d like to discuss one of the core elements that Postgres DBAs might be intimately familiar with, but comes up often enough that some clarification is warranted.

PG Phriday: Anonymous Blocks and Object Manipulation

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 10:45:19 +0000

Postgres has had anonymous blocks since the release of 9.0 in late 2010. But it must either be one of those features that got lost in the shuffle, or is otherwise considered too advanced, because I rarely see it used in the wild. If that’s the case, it’s a great shame considering the raw power it conveys. Without committing to a function, we can essentially execute any code in the database, with or without SQL input.

PG Phriday: Functions and Addressing JSON Data

Fri, 10 Apr 2015 11:30:14 +0000

Fairly recently, a friend of mine presented a problem he wanted to solve with some JSON he had in a table. After he presented the end result he was trying to reach, I made the assumption that this would be pretty easy to do. But then I looked at the JSON Functions to try and find that quick fix. Though I read extensively and used rather liberal interpretations of the functions, there’s no way to directly manipulate JSON object contents with PostgreSQL.

Comments Working Again

Mon, 30 Mar 2015 09:58:27 +0000

This is what happens when you don’t have a QA department. :p Sorry everyone. I upgraded WordPress and a bunch of plugins a few weeks back, and didn’t realize the reCAPTCHA plugin changed providers, and has been marking all comments as spam since then. I went through the spam backlog and recovered anything obvious. Though just to make sure, I’m going to dig through any tertiary settings and make sure legit email addresses haven’t been identified as spam sources.

PG Phriday: High Availability Through Delayed Replication

Fri, 27 Mar 2015 11:53:02 +0000

High availability of PostgreSQL databases is incredibly important to me. You might even say it’s a special interest of mine. It’s one reason I’m both excited and saddened by a feature introduced in 9.4. I’m Excited because it’s a feature I plan to make extensive use of, and saddened because it has flown under the radar thus far. It’s not even listed in the What’s new in PostgreSQL 9.4 Wiki page.

PG Phriday: Date Based Partition Constraints

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 12:02:58 +0000

PostgreSQL has provided table partitions for a long time. In fact, one might say it has always had partitioning. The functionality and performance of table inheritance has increased over the years, and there are innumerable arguments for using it, especially for larger tables consisting of hundreds of millions of rows. So I want to discuss a quirk that often catches developers off guard. In fact, it can render partitioning almost useless or counter-productive.

PG Phriday: Interacting with JSON and JSONB

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 11:33:36 +0000

With the release of PostgreSQL 9.4, comes the ability to use binary JSON objects. This internal representation is faster and more capable than the original JSON included in 9.3. But how do we actually interact with JSON and JSONB in a database connection context? The answer is actually a little complicated and somewhat surprising. Casting. Casting Everywhere. Despite its inclusion as an internal type, PostgreSQL maintains its position as encouraging explicit casting to avoid bugs inherent in magic type conversions.

A Short Examination of pg_shard

Thu, 12 Mar 2015 16:28:01 +0000

For part of today, I’ve been experimenting with the new-ish pg_shard extension contributed by CitusData. I had pretty high hopes for this module and was extremely excited to try it out. After screwing around with it for a while, I can say it has a lot of potential. Yet I can’t reasonably recommend it in its current form. The README file suggests quite a few understandable caveats, but it’s the ones they don’t mention that hurt a lot more.

PG Phriday: Materialized Views, Revisited

Fri, 06 Mar 2015 11:32:08 +0000

Materialized views are a great improvement to performance in many cases. Introduced in PostgreSQL 9.3, they finally added an easy method for turning a view into a transient table that could be indexed, mined for statistics for better planner performance, and easily rebuilt. Unfortunately, refreshing a materialized view in PostgreSQL 9.3 caused a full exclusive lock, blocking any use until the process was complete. In 9.4, this can finally be done concurrently, though there are still a couple caveats.

Recipe: Amazeballs Chili

Wed, 04 Mar 2015 10:34:47 +0000

Every once in a while, I get the itch to cook something. This time around, chili was my poison of choice because this winter won’t end and I’m silently protesting. This is probably the best chili I’ve ever made, so I’m required by law to share it. Seriously, this stuff is amazeballs. Ingredients 1 lb ground pork 1 lb ground beef 1 28oz can crushed tomatoes 1 28oz can stewed tomatoes 2 15.

PG Phriday: PostgreSQL Select Filters

Fri, 27 Feb 2015 11:54:29 +0000

Long have CASE statements been a double-edged sword in the database world. They’re functional, diverse, adaptive, and simple. Unfortunately they’re also somewhat bulky, and when it comes to using them to categorize aggregates, something of a hack. This is why I wanted to cry with joy when I found out that PostgreSQL 9.4 introduced a feature I’ve always wanted, but found difficult to express as a need. I mean, CASE statements are fine, right?

About People and Poverty

Mon, 22 Dec 2014 11:40:03 +0000

I want to tell a story, and I’m sure most people won’t like it for one reason or another. If you stop reading after the first paragraph or two, I won’t blame you. It’s hard to read, and says a lot of bad things about humanity. But I like to think that it also provides necessary perspective that helps society see where it needs to improve. It’s about my family.

On PostgreSQL View Dependencies

Wed, 05 Nov 2014 17:20:41 +0000

As many seasoned DBAs might know, there’s one area that PostgreSQL still manages to be highly aggravating. By this, I mean the role views have in mucking up PostgreSQL dependencies. The part that annoys me personally, is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Take, for example, what happens if you try to modify a VARCHAR column so that the column length is higher. We’re not changing the type, or dropping the column, or anything overly complicated.

Why I'm Somewhat Worried About Ebola

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 15:56:20 +0000

Before I really get going with this post, I want to say I’m not panicked, and I suggest you stay the same. Meanwhile, it’s pretty clear the currently cavalier attitude toward Ebola needs to change. And of course, it all boils down to humans being the fallible creatures they are. How Ebola Works There’s good information on How Ebola Works, and how it kills you, but I’ll summarize. Ebola is a Biosafety Level 4 contagion, meaning proper attire when interacting with infected is a fully sealed safety suit with respirator, which should be decontaminated before and after exposure.

On PostgreSQL Logging Verbosity

Tue, 05 Aug 2014 14:35:05 +0000

Recently I stumbled across a question on Reddit regarding the performance impact of using pgBadger on an active database server. The only real answer to this question is: do not use pgBadger. Before anyone asks—no, you shouldn’t use pgFouine either. This is not an indictment on the quality of either project, but a statement of their obsolescence in the face of recent PostgreSQL features. One of the recommended postgresql.conf changes for both of these tools is to set log_min_duration_statement to 0.

Finally Done With High Availability

Tue, 29 Jul 2014 15:23:42 +0000

Well, my publisher recently informed me that the book I’ve long been slaving over for almost a year, is finally finished. I must admit that PostgreSQL 9 High Availability Cookbook is somewhat awkward as a title, but that doesn’t detract from the contents. I’d like to discuss primarily why I wrote it. When Packt first approached me in October of 2013, I was skeptical. I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of the “cookbook” style they’ve been pushing lately.

Friends Don't Let Friends Use Loops

Fri, 25 Jul 2014 12:12:06 +0000

Programming is fun. I love programming! Ever since I changed my career from programming to database work, I’ve still occasionally dabbled in my former craft. As such, I believe I can say this with a fair amount of accuracy: programmers don’t understand databases. This isn’t something small, either; there’s a fundamental misunderstanding at play. Unless the coder happens to work primarily with graphics, bulk set-based transformations are not something they’ll generally work with.

Foreign Tables are not as Useful as I Hoped

Wed, 11 Jun 2014 16:14:01 +0000

When I heard about foreign tables using the new postgres_fdw foreign data wrapper in PostgreSQL 9.3, I was pretty excited. We hadn’t upgraded to 9.3 so I waited until we did before I did any serious testing. Having done more experimentation with it, I have to say I’m somewhat disappointed. Why? Because of how authentication was implemented. I’m going to get this out of the way now: The postgres_fdw foreign data wrapper only works with hard-coded plain-text passwords, forever the bane of security-conscious IT teams everywhere.

PGCon 2014 Unconference: A Community

Tue, 27 May 2014 09:02:42 +0000

This May, I attended my first international conference: PGCon 2014. Though the schedule spanned from May 20th to May 23rd, I came primarily for the talks. Then there was the Unconference on the 24th. I’d never heard of such a thing, but it was billed as a good way to network and find out what community members want from PostgreSQL. After attending the Unconference, I must admit I’m exceptionally glad it exists; it’s something I believe every strong Open Source project needs.

Foreign Keys are Not Free

Wed, 14 May 2014 16:40:23 +0000

PostgreSQL is a pretty good database, and I enjoy working with it. However, there is an implementation detail that not everyone knows about, which can drastically affect table performance. What is this mysterious feature? I am, of course, referring to foreign keys. Foreign keys are normally a part of good database design, and for good reason. They inform about entity relationships, and they verify, enforce, and maintain those relationships. Yet all of this comes at a cost that might surprise you.

Trumping the PostgreSQL Query Planner

Thu, 08 May 2014 12:24:45 +0000

With the release of PostgreSQL 8.4, the community gained the ability to use CTE syntax. As such, this is a fairly old feature, yet it’s still misunderstood in a lot of ways. At the same time, the query planner has been advancing incrementally since that time. Most recently, PostgreSQL has gained the ability to perform index-only scans, making it possible to fetch results straight from the index, without confirming rows with the table data.

Announcing walctl for PostgreSQL Transaction Log Management

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 10:23:31 +0000

I’ve managed to convince my employer to open source one of the tools I recently wrote. That tool goes by the name of walctl, and I believe the importance of this kind of tool can not be overstated. The PostgreSQL Write Ahead Log (WAL) files are key to crash recovery, point in time recovery, and all standby use not derived from streaming replication. WAL files are extremely critical to proper database operation.

Review: PostgreSQL Server Programing

Thu, 12 Dec 2013 16:08:32 +0000

There comes a time in every DBA’s life, that he needs to add functionality to his database software. To most DBAs, and indeed for most databases, this amounts to writing a few stored procedures or triggers. In extremely advanced cases, the database may provide an API for direct C-language calls. PostgreSQL however, has gone above and beyond this for several years, and have continuously made the process easier with each iteration.

Lamentations of a Budding Chilihead

Tue, 13 Aug 2013 13:48:51 +0000

Recently, I’ve come to the conclusion my tastebuds are changing somewhat drastically. How so? As it turns out, where once I couldn’t even tolerate medium heat, and Taco Bell Medium sauce packets were the equivalent of agony, now all commonly available hot sauces only impart a mild zip. Tabasco? Watery vinegar. Frank’s Red Hot? Tomato sauce. Cholula? Ketchup. Sriracha? Garlic ketchup. Insanity, to put it bluntly, and it was becoming a problem.

I Love Nintendo, and That's why it Needs to Die

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 11:35:02 +0000

I’ve been a fan of Nintendo and its content since I first played Super Mario Brothers in a 7-11 back in the 80’s. I slaved over my Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988 to master Super Mario to such a degree that I could play through the entire game without warps, all on one life. I was awed by The Legend of Zelda, subscribed to Nintendo Power for the free copy of Dragon Warrior, and made Contra my bitch after months of practicing with the aid of the infamous Konami Code.

Free Copy of Instant PostgreSQL Starter

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 15:18:16 +0000

Another free book giveaway? What, am I running a library here? Well, it turns out Packt liked my review of Instant PostgreSQL Starter so much, they want me host a short period where you can obtain your very own copy for the low, low price of $0. To those ends, I have a few brand new digital copies comprised of shiny premium electrons ready to dispense to three lucky commenters. Does that sound good?

Server of the Beast

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 18:40:38 +0000

Hmmm… maybe I should reconsider rebooting my server until tomorrow. Stupid maintenance…

Review: Instant PostgreSQL Starter

Mon, 27 May 2013 19:00:37 +0000

As a newly minted Packt author, it makes sense that I might get a request to review one of their books from time to time. On this particular occasion, I have the opportunity to give a look at Instant PostgreSQL Starter by fellow PostgreSQL user and author Daniel K. Lyons. I’ll be straight-forward with a giant caveat that I’m not the target audience for this booklet. I tried to read with the perspective of a new user since we’ve all been there once, but please bear with me if I break character.

Winning (Free eBooks) is Everything

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:43:40 +0000

It occurs to me I forgot to congratulate the winners of the free ebooks. So without further ado: SAB, who seems to host a nice blog geared toward server administration. Stephan, who’s looking to improve existing strategies. Jeff and his growing PostgreSQL cluster. Pierre, who apparently has an experimental PostgreSQL backend for MySQL. Interesting. Congrats to the winners. But more, I call upon them to pay it forward by contributing to the community, either by corresponding with the excellent PostgreSQL mailing lists, or maybe submitting a patch or two to the code.

Make pg_hba.conf Redundant by Using pg_hba.conf

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:02:07 +0000

Let’s face it, the pg_hba.conf file is a pain in the ass to use regularly. Sure, reloading the database will cause it to re-read this file, but with a lot of active users and frequent changes, this isn’t really tenable. Luckily lurking deep within its bowels, PostgreSQL has a little-known feature that can easily be overlooked because it’s so humbly stated. Here’s the manual entry for pg_hba.conf for the user section:

Free PostgreSQL Backup Book? Yes Please!

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:53:04 +0000

A little while ago, I wrote to the PostgreSQL general mailing list that I’d been approached by Packt Publishing to contribute a quick manual on doing PostgreSQL backups: Instant PostgreSQL Backup and Restore How-to. They’re the same guys who published Greg Smith’s PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance book which everyone seems to swear by. The goal of the backup book was to distill the PostgreSQL documentation, tools, and Wiki down to a collection of short step-by-step guides much like the O’Reilly nutshell series.

Phone, Phone on the Range

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 20:21:34 +0000

Mid March is an interesting time of year in 2013. Now that the Galaxy S4 has been announced, there are really three major contenders for my itchy spending finger. Well, technically there are four, but one of them doesn’t really count, for reasons I’ll expound upon shortly. Google Nexus IV This is the phone that doesn’t count. One major benefit it has over all of the others, is that it gets updates directly from Google.

A Little Bit of Wondering

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 19:35:00 +0000

About a week ago, I was prescribed Lexapro. While this may not be the stuff I’m on long-term, it’s still long overdue for reasons obvious to anyone who knows me. What I currently find most interesting about it however, is actually related to a dream I had last night. My dreams tend to be very vivid and numerous, though sometimes they follow a theme or storyline. Last night, there was one particular scene I recall with such clarity, it’s almost difficult to accept I wasn’t awake.

A Letter to Technology Companies Utilizing Patents to Stifle Competitors

Sat, 19 May 2012 14:04:40 +0000

Stop it. Seriously, just stop. All of you are acting like children. Not merely children, but spoiled little selfish brats, and it’s embarrassing to everyone. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Why? I’ll tell you, and it’s not what you might expect to hear. It isn’t about fanboys or fangirls, theft of intellectual property, laughably vague patents on generic concepts which could feasibly apply to practically anything, jealousy, innovation, or even the almighty dollar.

Review: End of Days

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:01:13 +0000

As far as post-apocalyptic dystopian novels are concerned, Robert Gleason’s End of Days is unique mostly because it’s mid-apocalyptic. Some of the blurbs on the jacket proclaim Gleason as the “Dante of our age,” so it must have been worth reading. I’m not sure what kind of hyperbole inspired a comment like that, but I really hope it’s sarcasm. That isn’t to say End of Days is bad! Far from it.

Long Time, no Me. Android, Weeee?

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:31:23 +0000

Yes, I’m still alive. Just in case you were wondering. With that out of the way, I’ve been enjoying my Sprint Galaxy S2 variant immensely. It feels orders of magnitude faster and more powerful than my old Android Eris. And really, the stats reflect about a 4x multiplier over every attribute of the Eris. It took some getting time to mentally transition from a 3.2" screen to a 4.5" screen, but I did it.

2011 PGOpen is now Closed

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 22:25:09 +0000

Well, that was an interesting couple of days. Unfortunately my birthday came right after and I didn’t feel like writing anything for the duration. Now though? Why not! In the end, I think my presentation, NVRam for Fun and Profit went over okay. Not a ton of people showed up, but I did get ambushed afterwards with questions after I got off the stage. Why those people didn’t ask while I was in Presentation Mode, I can’t quite understand.

Veriz-On or Off?

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 20:25:20 +0000

The Samsung Galaxy S II is currently the top selling phone in the world. And it’s not a popularity thing, the device is genuinely exceptional. Reviews across the web have effectively hailed it as, “… the best smartphone, period.” What’s notable about this, is that various US carrier shenanigans have guaranteed we get it dead last, right after India and Mexico. And Verizon? Won’t be carrying it at all. Of course, rumors suggest Verizon may be getting the semi-upgraded version of the GSII, dubbed the Droid Prime, with a faster processor, higher density screen, and a few other tweaks.

The Yellow House

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 19:23:04 +0000

I’ve been reading Reddit’s nosleep section for kicks, and wanted to contribute. So I threw together a quick story based loosely on some childhood memories. The scariest stories are the ones partially based on truth, right? Can someone be haunted by a house? I’m a little freaked out, here… When I was six or seven, we moved into a house near the railroad tracks. My brother and I shared a room on the second floor, and it was our parents’ plan to renovate the second, larger room to be a big game room for us.

The Invisible Line

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:10:32 +0000

Technology has come a long way, hasn’t it? Fortunately (or unfortunately) for me, we could never afford braces while I was growing up. As a consequence, my mouth contains unspeakable horrors, a jumbled mess of crooked trolls, crowding haphazardly around a fresh carcass. I’m not kidding. While my smile won’t crack any mirrors, I have the overbite of a horse and the canines of a timber wolf. And like an unbalanced chair, my wobbly bite has ushered in periods of intense jaw cramps over the last few years.

Dragged into the (Postgres) Open

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:38:51 +0000

A few months ago, Greg Smith of PostgreSQL fame suggested I submit a proposal to the new Postgres Open conference here in Chicago. Some of us residents of the Midwest have long waited for a PostgreSQL-related conference of our very own, and now the glorious day has finally arrived. I was asked to submit proposals to other conferences, but the travel involved quickly put me off; now I can be lazy and still help spread The Word.

Review: House of Suns

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:27:07 +0000

Alastair Reynolds has been both one of my favorite, and most hated authors. I tend to enjoy his one-shots more than his series, maybe because he doesn’t have time to write himself into a corner. So too with House of Suns, a book I neglected reading for over a year because I was so put off by Absolution Gap’s meandering nonsense. Gladly, House of Suns returns to what I love about Reynolds’ writing.

Review: Consider Phlebas

Thu, 19 May 2011 19:19:58 +0000

I don’t believe I’ve read anything by Iain M. Banks before, and after Consider Phlebas, I’m not sure I want to. Now, this isn’t a matter of a terrible novel that made my eyes bleed, or some horrible techniques that drove me insane. I’m not even sure Mr. Banks writes books like this as a matter of course, or simply in a study on methods to cripplingly depress his readers. The worst part of this is that it’s very well written and highly engaging.

Leviathan Revisited

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 10:27:04 +0000

I’d first like to begin by saying I’ve written about this topic several times already. But while those were basically artistic impressions, this is an outright essay on the mild disquiet I feel every day while embedded in this society, and what probably causes it. I’m warning you right now that it’s exceedingly long… about twelve pages going by word-count alone. You’ve been warned. As a rather boring proponent of various documentaries, I recently ran across The Trap directed by Adam Curtis.

Phoning in the Market

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:51:28 +0000

I just installed Android Gingerbread (2.3) on my HTC Droid Eris. To understand the significance of this little achievement, we need to examine the wonderful world of smartphones, and why the market insists on doing a half-assed job. The Eris was released November 6th, 2009. In the phone world, especially now that the smartphone market is heating up, this is somewhat ancient. It’s second-generation in a fifth and sixth generation world.

When Query Hints Attack

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 21:22:08 +0000

Ah, query hints. For all those times when the database isn’t doing what you want, they’re a useful tool for forcing the query optimizer to perform your bidding. But in this case, not only is the road to Hell paved with good intentions, it’s paved with a frictionless slide directly into a wood chipper that empties handily into an active volcano. With query hints, be careful what you wish for, because—to the detriment of all you hold dear—you just might get it.

MySQL isn't YourSQL

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:12:45 +0000

Ok, so I’ve already corrected gaudy and horrible behavior part and parcel with default PostgreSQL installs, but what about that… other open-source SQL database? Is it wrong too? Sure is! Fixing Your Damn Server Again My fake system still has 8GB of RAM, but we’ll be using more of it for a MySQL install. Why? Because MySQL’s planner makes different assumptions about memory allocation than PostgreSQL. Remember sysctl.conf? Put this in there:

Review: Freedom (TM)

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 22:42:44 +0000

I just finished reading Daniel Suarez’s Freedom (TM) in about three days. This is much more a statement of the novel’s quality than my own somewhat glacial reading pace. There’s a lot in here I really love. Mr. Suarez has clearly done his research, even listing many of his sources, along with the universities and labs inventing the technology he brought to life. Back again are the AutoM8’s, the Razorbacks, and the rest of Loki’s arsenal.

Forgotten

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 02:57:55 +0000

In the world that we despise, are there times of loss or wonder? Toiling ever, full of lies, sick of writhing, going under. In that bleakness waiting never, 'till no senseless drone became. Wrath or sunder, thrash or sever, breaking through with none to claim. And that weakness sups upon us, gibbers for our souls do slake. With a thirst so vile and vicious, we but shiver in its wake. Thus all reason burns with malice, shackled minds do shriek and wail.

PostgreSQL for Newbs

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 21:57:49 +0000

So you’ve decided to use PostgreSQL as the database for your sparkly new website running some variant of a LAMP stack. Or maybe you just got a new job and must now administer a PostgreSQL install so you excitedly did your research. You’ve read the install docs, tinkered on a VM, and you think you’ve got everything ready. You’re wrong. You’re going to run out of disk space, your website will be slow, and you’ll go running to the PostgreSQL mailing lists in abject terror because you have no clue what is wrong.

Review: In Fury Born

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 18:34:55 +0000

Having recently finished the excellent Honor Harrington series, I decided it was high time to peruse David Weber’s backlog of other titles. The war-related books didn’t really interest me, but In Fury Born snared my attention. Alicia DeVries a girl who excels at many things, and being the granddaughter of an infamous marine, one of those things is combat. Her sense of Honor and duty are, unsurprisingly for a Weber character, pristine and incorruptible.

Review: The Final Empire

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 18:14:05 +0000

Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series is an interesting beast, but The Final Empire is a great introduction. I normally stay away from fantasy sans notable exceptions, yet a friend of mine recommended it and I trust his judgment, even if he’s a fan of Robert Jordan. But what do we really have, here? We have a magic system where a person can “burn” ingested metals to achieve certain effects. Everything is paired, and specific alloys can produce opposite reactions as their base metal.

Make a Run from the Borders

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:00:31 +0000

It’s about time I write about something that is near and dear to our hearts. Something that affects the whole of our society and is probably one of the most pressing issues in the world today. Yes, the quality of the Borders website threatens the very internet itself. Let’s see what this bastion of quality provides the public. The URL isn’t nearly convoluted enough. Some sites practically luddites about this, insisting on sharp, clean urls capable of being typed by humans.

Into the Droid

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 17:23:15 +0000

For the past couple of months, I’ve tapped a universe very much unlike the one I’m accustomed to experiencing. I did this by purchasing my first Android phone, in this case, a Droid Eris. My Samsung Rogue suffered a mishap in the washing machine back in June, and I wasn’t eligible for a new phone until March 2011. It just so happened Verizon was veritably shelling out previously owned Eris handsets, so I grabbed one to tinker.

Portrait of a Heart Surgery

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 22:44:34 +0000

DATE OF OPERATION : 07-17-84 PREOPERATIVE DIAGNOSIS : L transposition of the great vessels, dextrocardia, double outlet right ventricle, pulmonary stenosis, atrial septal defect, ventricular septal defect, single coronary artery. POSTOPERATIVE DIAGNOSIS : Same. SURGEONS : Peter Mansfield, M.D.; 1st assistant Edward Rittenhouse, M.D.; 2nd assistant Kathryn Batts, Physicians Assistant. OPERATION : Median sternotomy, cardiopulmonary bypass 2 hours and 45 minutes, body temperature 26°, heart temperature 8°, potassium cardioplegia. Noncoronary perfusion time 2 hours, 19 minutes.

Review: Accelerando

Sun, 26 Dec 2010 20:29:04 +0000

Charles Stross wrote Accelerando while high on meth, I think. Not only is it densely packed with author-coined terminology loosely based on the underlying technological innovations, but it’s a meandering plotless testament to its own existence. It follows the trials and tribulations of Manfred Macx and his descendants before, during, and after what we can call a technological singularity, when the pace of progress reaches such a pronounced crescendo, it becomes self-sustaining.

Review: Daemon

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 23:01:37 +0000

I’ve never really been a fan of crime thrillers. Sometimes the mystery is enticing, but by and large, it always boils down to the motivation. Why did the killer do it? Most authors answer this as an afterthought. Whether it be an insane, megalomaniacal contrivance, or just plain avarice or one of the other seven deadly sins, they hardly explain or justify the events in the book. There are notable exceptions to this, such as John Connolly’s notable Black Angel.

Li-Don't-Node

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:11:28 +0000

About a week ago, my website and email vanished off the face of the internet. I think this deserves a certain amount of explanation, lest someone think I’m incompetent in my own field. Not too long ago, I switched off my colocated server because I don’t need my own personal machine for two websites, a couple very small databases, and a low-volume email server. I didn’t downgrade fully to a shared host because I run a Django app, Wordpress, PostgreSQL, MySQL for the afore mentioned Wordpress content, Postfix to better control my blacklists, with Postgrey because greylisting kills an assload of spam blacklists would miss, etc.

Rambling for Science

Sun, 03 Oct 2010 23:46:46 +0000

As I sit here drinking the fifth Pumpkin Ale of the night, I’ve come to a realization I’ve entertained several times through the last few years: I’m too uptight. Unfortunately it’s not just a matter of being a bundle of nerves. I’ve always self-medicated to one degree or another, but it’s readily apparent I’m only relaxed enough to be “normal” when my usual vigilance is chemically retarded. But why would that be?

Local Man Angry Daughter isn’t Dating Vampire

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:25:32 +0000

Many fathers only want the best for their daughters: the most competitive colleges, the fanciest cars, a man that’s truly worthy of her attention. Jim Seymore, a local butcher, bemoans his daughter’s choice of a successful brain surgeon instead of a vampire in her search for love. When interviewed about his unorthodox stance, Mr. Seymore explained. “It’s ridiculous!” he stated, nodding toward a small pile of Twilight books and True Blood DVDs on his coffee table.

Socially Retarded for Science!

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 02:00:37 +0000

I’ve been feeing irritated again with my inability to interact naturally with people, and of course I wanted metrics quantifying the phenomenon. So I headed over to Wrong Planet and stocked up on tests. The Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire gives me 123 aloof, 92 rigid and 97 pragmatic. You scored above the cutoff on all three scales. Clearly, you are either autistic or on the broader autistic phenotype. You probably are not very social, and when you do interact with others, you come off as strange or rude without meaning to.

Falling

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:48:10 +0000

And she who danced upon the darkness, breaks and thrashes on the floor. Throwing fits of rage and fury, torn and sundered to the core. Blistered through and through with wonder, blasted from the roles of fate. Ripped and wretched for a moment, crushed with woe upon the gate. No paraiah is more vanquished, than who buck the will of time. Seeking but to make a difference, though ’tis an eternal crime.

Maui Confidential - Part 1

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 21:25:31 +0000

After three years of having our summers trumped by Jen pursuing her Masters degree, we decided to take a crazily overboard vacation to make up for it. As it happened, Hawaii won the coin toss, and Maui seemed a good start. We ended up tweaking our travel times just right and got a deal, so from June 14th to the 20th, the continental United States could no longer taint us with its relative banality.

Spacetacular

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:30:05 +0000

And so, I’ve fallen off the planet once again. It’s not exactly like nothing has been going on, It’s just that my unparalleled boringness was eclipsed by my aggressive laziness. My vacation in Hawaii—which I returned from a month ago—still remains woefully unchronicled. Instead, my precious hours have been consumed by gambling and collecting bellybutton lint. Except for a few minor items . . . For one, my eternal tenure at Leapfrog Online has been trumped by an apprehensive incumbency with Peak6 OptionsHouse.

Review: The Windup Girl

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:58:12 +0000

I’ve finally gotten The Windup Girl off my to-read list, and having finished it, I’ll have to watch Paolo Bacigalupi for future novels. The Windup Girl is something different than I’ve ever encountered. It’s part wild cataclysm, part dystopia, part social commentary, and all action. I’m not kidding on the last, either. Whether it’s Hock Seng shrewdly planning the rebirth of his financial empire, Anderson Lake pursuing an elusive new fruit on the behalf of shady agricultural megacorporations, Jaidee’s crusade against the corrupt Trade cartel that aims to hijack Thailand’s sovereignty for financial gain, or Emiko’s constant struggle against her lot as a Windup, something is always moving.

Review: The Temporal Void

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:51:21 +0000

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Peter F. Hamilton, even after the gigantic deus ex machina he used to conclude his Night’s Dawn trilogy. His writing is so compelling—to me, at least—that I can forgive that kind of transgression because the story itself is so interesting. And now with the second entry in his Void trilogy, The Temporal Void, I find another great novel that feels too short, despite its ponderous length.

Review: War of Honor

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:43:52 +0000

(I actually finished this book a few weeks ago, but have been too lazy to review it.) War of Honor isn’t David Weber’s latest by any means, but it is to me, who just started the series earlier this year. This, the tenth book in the ongoing thread, isn’t quite the perfect storm we got in Ashes of Victory, but is nevertheless chock full of everything short of Haven’s total subjugation, and a much stronger novel.

Review: Ashes of Victory

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:56:26 +0000

I think I’ve just given up and decided to attempt and catch up with David Weber’s Honor Harrington series. All the way up. That means I’m currently working on Ashes of Victory, and it’s impossible not to notice the books are getting longer as the series rolls on. And in this case, it’s not just longer in page-length, but in exposition, political maneuvering, and copious droning. Compared to [Echoes of Honor(http://www.

Why I Married pg_migrator

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:42:08 +0000

With the introduction of PostgreSQL 8.4, Bruce Momjian, a significant core developer, contributed a tool that can actually upgrade an entire database cluster in place. The time required is essentially only that necessary to copy the data files from the old installation to the new one. On a quick RAID system, this can be an order of magnitude faster than a dump/restore. The main drawback is similar to Slony: disk space must effectively be doubled for this upgrade method.

RPMing Python

Thu, 27 May 2010 15:23:29 +0000

I was fighting with packaging some software at work, trying to produce a workable RPM package to replace the manually installed kludge currently polluting one of our servers, and discovered the --spec-only option to the bdist_rpm action. Now, this particular option only makes sense since a spec file must be generated for bdist_rpm to work anyway, but I never thought about it. What it provides is an awesome shortcut to doing packaging slightly more complicated than merely relying on what bdist_rpm produces.

Review: Echoes of Honor

Sun, 23 May 2010 22:26:14 +0000

And David Weber’s Honor Harrington universe marches on with Echoes of Honor, like an army of undead, unstoppable and thirsting for brains. This time, we get to follow several distinct story segments as Honor and her team struggle to take over Hades and ultimately escape. The action this time around is almost unrelenting, and probably more importantly, relevant to the current story and future engagements. Weber has a thing for political intrigue, and of course it’s no stranger here.

Review: Absolution Gap

Wed, 12 May 2010 19:43:09 +0000

When I’m reading multiple books simultaneously, it’s usually because I’ve relegated one to my “before bed” pile. Absolution Gap, the conclusion of Alastair Reynolds’s Revelation Space series, was one of those. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the longer books I’ve attacked in a couple months, and half an hour per night hardly pays quick dividends. Even worse, Reynolds’ writing style is copious and unrelenting; I felt every single one of those pages.

Review: When the Devil Dances

Fri, 07 May 2010 16:49:30 +0000

I took a break from the Honorverse for a while and dove into John Ringo again with the third book in his Posleen War series, When the Devil Dances. All in all, it was much different from the previous entry, and an enjoyable one, at that. Part of the issue I had with Gust Front came primarily from the author’s propensity for excessively detailed military maneuvers. Given a map of the United States and an Axes and Allies game centered on US territory, one could easily plot out each action and counteraction for hours.

Night-Meh on Elm Street

Tue, 04 May 2010 10:35:22 +0000

Lord, what have they done to poor Freddy Krueger? A reboot of this particular franchise had roughly unlimited potential. No more would they need to rely on self-referential humor and sight gags. It could finally be a gritty and disturbing jaunt into the human psyche, or at least a slasher leagues more engaging than Saw and its ilk. The choice of Jackie Earle Haley couldn’t have been more perfect for the role.

McCreedy's War -- Finale

Mon, 03 May 2010 21:09:34 +0000

Read: part 1, and part 2. " ‘Fight the good fight,’ he said," mumbled Ben, almost incoherently, to nobody in particular. The silence became a living thing. Everyone knew about the Chicago explosion. By then, everyone in the bar stared at Ben in complete shock, not even breathing to disrupt his narrative. “I dunno if the man knew his plan or not, but those wasn’t water pumps we blew. That bullshit about the river flowin’ backwards is fer the tourists,” Ben said unevenly, “an’ gullible bastards like me.

Review: Old Man's War

Sun, 02 May 2010 22:18:54 +0000

I read a lot, but even good authors get caught in the deluge of published novels, and nobody can really keep up, so I depend on recommendations. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi was one of those books I’ve never heard of, yet nonetheless maintained critical acclaim in the SciFi community. Much like The Forever War, which concentrates almost primarily on how war would be shaped by relativistic effects, we’re given an intriguing and rarely explored theme to ponder.

Review: In Enemy Hands

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:42:28 +0000

Am I done with David Weber’s Honor Harrington series yet? Sadly, no. After finishing In Enemy Hands, I still have many more to go, but it’s not a struggle I dread. Fittingly, this particular installment is more about Haven than Honor or Manticore. The first half of the book is almost purely setup, and considering the title, it’s not exactly a surprise that our heroine is eventually captured. But that’s fine in this context, because Haven has historically received the short end of the stick.

McCreedy's War -- Part 2

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:35:02 +0000

Erin lasted longer than he expected. Two weeks he’d traveled through towns picking up supplies and killin’ every damn zombie he saw. But Erin knew he’d never make any genuine progress that way, so he left the back-roads for good. He followed the tributary streets into highways and finally the interstates, heading to the biggest mall he could find, knowing the zombies would congregate there to feed. He went in with guns blazing, hurling Molotov cocktails in every direction, and somehow emerged unscathed, like an immortal action hero.

Short Story: Crash

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:00:38 +0000

Sam pressed the accelerator into the floorboards, trying not to stand in his panic. He risked a glance at Kristen and suppressed a sob. “She’s fine, man. Just drive!” Ben barked, holding her head and pressing the towel into her throat. Maybe a towel wasn’t the best choice, but they had to use something, didn’t they? “God damn it!” yelled Sam. “Just God damn everything.” Angry tears rolled down his cheeks even as he concentrated on the road, almost never looking at the speedometer that blared 90mph like an accusation.

Review: Honor Among Enemies

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 09:45:25 +0000

I promised myself that Honor Among Enemies would be my last David Weber for a while, but I’ve already started In Enemy Hands. Ah well. This particular entry is pretty tame so far as the Honor Harrington Mythos is concerned. In order to get back into the good graces of the Manticoran military and political complex, Honor is given the task of ridding the Silesian Confederacy area of the pirates menacing their merchant and freight liners.

LIMITed Performance

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:50:18 +0000

PostgreSQL can be both a beautiful thing, and an infuriating mess. Occasionally I look through the logs on one of our database servers to see if I can’t optimize some queries. It’s good practice, and is an excellent way to monitor basic system performance by watching for queries that take longer than might otherwise be possible. Sometimes performance can be fixed by tweaking an index, or manually rewriting the query and convincing a developer to integrate the changes.

Review: Flag in Exile

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:12:09 +0000

At this rate, I may actually finish the Honor Harrington series before the heat death of the universe. Having just finished Flag in Exile by David Weber only fifteen years late, I think I’m getting the hang of this series. Though a friend at work recommended the series, and due to the length, I was suspicious it would be throw-away pulp; I’m willing to admit now that that my fears were mostly unwarranted.

McCreedy's War - Part 1

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 23:31:48 +0000

“Son, let me tell you somethin’. Anyone says truth is stranger than fiction, really means he just saw somethin’ impossible happen, an’ can’t believe it ain’t. Nothin’s stranger than fiction, an’ whoever denies it only wants to run away from the truth. The truth is mean, Son, an’ cold. It ain’t no fairy tale; that you can believe.” A figure in the background sniggered. “You crazy, man!” shouted another. A low rumble of agreement met their skepticism.

Review: Field of Dishonor

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:47:11 +0000

Once again, I’ve spent another few days with David Weber reading Field of Dishonor and regardless of how the series continues, I think he’s finally come up with something truly great. I fully understand the series is supposed to be a space opera–the painstaking descriptions of galactic fleets, impeller drives, and relativistic weapons reinforces that point admirably–but there was precious little of that here. This time, it’s all an exclusive font of character building, and the Harrington universe is much stronger than if Honor had simply defeated another immanent naval threat.

Whistle while you Loot

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 10:44:48 +0000

I kinda have a thing for Matt Tiabbi. I never would have expected a Rolling Stone columnist to constantly harangue and brutally deconstruct the players of the economic fiasco. Without remorse, restraint, or mercy, he absolutely eviscerates everything from Goldman Sachs and AIG to the current administration and everything in-between. It really is a thing of beauty, and one of the best reasons investigative journalism had better survive the media reorganization caused by the internet.

Review: Redemption Ark

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:18:36 +0000

Once again, Alastair Reynolds cranks out a weighty tome in Redemption Ark (Part of the Revelation Space universe) that proves, at least to me, hard SciFi can be surprisingly entertaining. Part of the problem with sticking directly to physics, as Alastair with his Ph.D. in Astronomy is likely to do, is that space travel is necessarily limited to current breakthroughs in physics, even when targeted hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

Review: The Short Victorious War

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 11:42:06 +0000

I just finished The Short Victorious War by David Weber and I’m starting to notice a pattern here: Honor Harrington thrust into difficult situation complicated by politics. Honor thwarts an invasion while overcoming said politics. Profit. Now, I understand these have to be somewhat formulaic, and this book was in fact, enjoyable, so I can’t complain excessively here. The real weakness of this book is that it’s so short, and Honor plays such a minimal part in the action.

Review: Gust Front

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:10:12 +0000

I just finished Gust Front by John Ringo, and Ringo is a hard man to understand. He clearly loves the SciFi genre, and with the continuation of the Posleen War, proves he can delve into the stickier details many gloss over. The problem is he goes way too far on occasion, detailing for pages on very intricate and specific troop movements and justification. I felt like I was reading a historical account of each battle.

Revision of Vision

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 12:16:43 +0000

Well, maybe I spoke too soon about Drupal. Why? Well… it’s 2010 guys, stop with the ID links. I know there’s a plugin that overcomes this shortcoming, but all the internal links, including edits, redirects, and so on, won’t use the aliases you define. No, foo.bar.com/node/123423 is not a valid url. It requires approximately ten minutes to add a table column for a ‘slug’ to look up the appropriate entry, but Drupal refuses to compromise.

About

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:43:44 +0000

I’ve fostered a love for technology for nearly my whole life, despite being born in the late 70s. It’s partially the result of being a kind of dreamer that is always asking “what if”. It made me read science journals and magazines when most kids were glued to comics, decidedly making me the “odd man out”. Once computers became mainstreme, I’d found my new calling. I’m always tinkering with something either in my basement or on a command terminal these days.

Middle School Musical Mania

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:02:23 +0000

Jen suckered me into volunteering to help her music boosters with their choir contest this weekend. This entailed waking up at 4:45AM so we could leave at 5:30AM to finish setup and get ready for the festivities to begin at 8:00AM. Woo? My job description was Sound Technician for the day, where I handled four Sony voice recorders; three for the judges and one to record the choir. Each choir used between eight and twelve minutes for two or three songs, but each time block was twenty to act as a buffer between groups.

On Upgrading and Databases

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:53:25 +0000

Postgresql hates itself. I’m convinced of this, and have considered the idea frequently over the years. I roll it around in my mouth just to savor the taste, only to hope the flavor changes eventually. A couple things have advanced, though not quite what one might hope. Parallel Restore With the introduction of PostgreSQL 8.4, the core developers have finally succumbed to the availability of multiple-CPU systems, and added parallel restores.

Ulcerior Motives

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:01:31 +0000

Wednesday would have been a normal day, and for the most part it was, until I noticed my chest getting more and more uncomfortable through the day. Well, to the doctor I went, and after some stuff was ruled out, it turns out I have both costochondritis and an ulcer. Now, I’ve had inflamed cartilage in my chest before, and normally it’s very easy to control with Advil or Aleve, and time.

Repeated Viewings Mandatory

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:04:08 +0000

I originally wanted to take it easy this Saturday and failed miserably. I started the day off by seeing Shutter Island at the theater two miles from my apartment; it’s an awfully convenient jaunt down the road, and I actually woke up early enough to catch the first matinee. One thing I can say about this film, was that it actually had me second-guessing myself for its entirety. Another thing I can claim, is that I actually enjoyed the process.

Now in Paperback Form

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:36:04 +0000

I have had a lot of comments from my friends that they would read Rabbit Rue if they could buy a paperback. Well, now they can! I read a lot about this stuff online and eventually settled on Createspace for two simple reasons: it was both embarrassingly easy, and free. I finally approved the proof they sent me, and though it’ll take a while to show up on Amazon’s main site, they kindly provide Rabbit Rue and other books a free eStore.

Chronologically Flawed

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:45:39 +0000

I’ve lived in a few rough areas. But oddly enough, I’ve only been threatened once or twice while wandering around the neighborhood. Summer in Tacoma is a wild experience. Everyone who’s never lived there claims it rains every day, and that we never see the sky, but they couldn’t be more wrong. Really, I’ve never experienced a more temperate and enjoyable climate since, and it’s easy to wish for the broken clouds and crisp breeze off the Puget Sound now that I’m sequestered here in the harsh extremes of Illinois.

A Serious Inquiry

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:22:17 +0000

Dear Freddy Krueger, I have long enjoyed your work. Eviscerating children is also one of my favorite hobbies! I was wondering about the specifications you used for the glove blades, and the honing/stropping methods you used. All of the limb-gouging tools I create never quite seem sharp enough… I know you have a busy schedule of invading dreams and terrifying occupants of Elm Street with a dizzying barrage of convoluted and psychologically unraveling horrors, but I’d greatly appreciate your input.

Never Enough Time

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:35:00 +0000

What are hobbies, exactly? They’re things that take time. Sometimes, too much time. Copious, extravagant amounts fully enabled by circumstance to derail anything improperly prioritized. (For me, that’s basically everything.) I have a desk job, folks. It’s not the worst thing for a writer, but I’ve also decided to learn to play the piano after something like two decades of indecision on the matter. And of course, I must maintain a relatively strenuous aerobics regimen to keep my malformed heart in working order.

The Thunderdome of Reading

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:35:59 +0000

It would seem that I read a lot more than I thought. My book pile was dwindling and I wondered how that was possible, since I had at least six or seven in the pile before the holidays. Well, as it would turn out, between the train rides and reading before bed, I consume more than my fair share of books. So, what did I read during January? In order:

Morons on the Internet: Hilarity Ensues

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:52:25 +0000

Well it turns out I found a couple forums discussing the same thing as my rant from yesterday with one major difference: the forum is apparently frequented by morons. Granted, these particular unabashed cretins are capable of utilizing a computer, but its clear these computers were manufactured by Fisher Price, and are likely caked in drool and feces. It’s time to put the internet to its actual purpose! Do you know what that is?

Don't need no edumacatin'

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:37:08 +0000

Note: Names have been changed to protect the retarded, but they know who they are. People are nothing, if not hilarious. A local school had a referendum on the ballot yesterday, the second of February, which was soundly defeated. Why was the district begging for cash? It might have something to do with the state cutting half their funding. Not ten, twenty, or even thirty percent, allowing for some measure of reorganization to preserve programs, half.

Song: Cry of the Liger

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:35:30 +0000

Sung to “Eye of the Tiger”. I also apologize profusely for this. Glancin’ up, back on its feet. First it stares, then it pounces. Through the distance, you can never retreat. Just a man who’ll be eaten alive! So many times, it happens too fast. Its claws and teeth are both gory. Don’t try to run or it will save you for last. You must fight, or he’ll eat you alive.

Variations on a Theme

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:13:55 +0000

What exactly do you do, when you realize there’s nothing seems interesting? That you don’t want to meet anyone, because there’s a limit to the elements that influence the human condition, and people are nothing if not predictable, instinctually driven automatons ultimately devoid of novelty. We’re creatures of habit, of our environment, of parenting, of any multitude within a cavalcade of influences both imagined and concrete. Yet our psychology is exquisitely unencumbered with the confusion this might imply.

Grasping at Air

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:32:09 +0000

It’s funny, how we grip so tenaciously to the labels that bind us. Those essentially meaningless syllables that rattle with vowels and consonants but are lost to history and tradition. Do we really identify with these words? Or are they surreal and disjointed to the majority, only accepted as society demands? Your name is probably not known to me, though your presence be acknowledged, enjoyed, or anticipated. Regardless of your familiarity, sometimes I will forget your label, and may accidentally even use the wrong one.

2012: Blowing Shit up for Humanity

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:05:02 +0000

You should see this movie. But before you do, I want to explain a few things. 2012 is by no means High Cinema, and anyone expecting such has no sense of humor and likely entertains themselves by jealously hoarding a stamp collection because of a particular misprint of the liberty bell that somewhat resembles a labia. This type of person should remove the stick from his rectum and realize that this movie is basically a cartoon, and a ridiculously exaggerated one.

Thwarting Friends and Foes with Colemak

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:08:19 +0000

My apparently undiagnosed masochism has inspired me to switch keyboard layouts. Aiming for pure obscurity, I’ve been typing using Colemak for the past several months. It’s no Dvorak in the popularity arena, having only an estimated userbase of 3000 as of January 2009. According to a computer aided layout optimizer, it’s also more efficient than the venerable Dvorak, ranking highly across all alternatives. Note that all statistics for Qwerty are hideous by comparison.

What is it Good For?

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:43:29 +0000

“It is a war, you know. The worst kind,” said the old man. The youth stared at him and shook his head. “There you go again. What is it this time?” He paused in thought for a moment. “I seen pictures of World War II, man. But now you gonna tell me somethin’ out there is worse than a whole mess ‘o dudes in a church with no arms and legs.

Review: Samsung SCH-U960 (Samsung Rogue)

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:29:06 +0000

Introduction In the decade I’ve experimented with cell phones, I have never owned a Samsung. One way or another, every time it was time to upgrade, it was Kyocera, LG, or Motorola which had better reception, a better interface, or some other functionality Samsung didn’t. Indeed, my last two phones were the Motorola RAZR v3c, and the Motorola RIZR Z6tv. Back then, my primary focus was reception and battery life. I still want these things, but my level of texting has risen to a point where I needed a keyboard, and virtual keyboards are, by and large, infuriating.

Spending all of Value

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:13:21 +0000

What is this darkness? Can I see it, in this blackness full of light? A dawn of wonder crying softly all the while. For in those dreams of succor, there stands an empty hollow, a haunting, callow dread upon his smile. And in that thunder of the sky which has ripped apart our souls, we lay broken on the shores of destined fate. And there’s no rest, and no release, from the torment looming here, madly thrumming in the aether like a shiver through our spines.

I Once had a Whit of Wonder

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:51:28 +0000

Fly in the darkness, fry in the light, sup upon the simple while it dances in the night. In dips and wander, tell and fall, let the cries echo through the gallows in the hall. So right, so raw, but thick undone, those fresh and callow, so calm begun. But while and willow, these fawns of one, they trip and tremble, through webs once spun. In times far broken, and worse for wear, it once was spoken, no time to spare.

4Chan Has its Moments, Apparently

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:41:52 +0000

Now… I don’t normally do this, but while wasting time on Fark, I ran across this comment by a user, who himself copied it from an anonymous posting on the notorious 4Chan. While it glosses over many aspects of our government and how it affects our lives, it presents a good snapshot of just how ignorant people are to reality, and how willing they are to push any agenda that matches their own personal biases.

KDEwwwwwww!

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:51:11 +0000

Well, I’ve officially decided to abandon KDE. Why after all this time, you ask, when they’ve done so much work already to alienate and annoy former fans with the rather abrupt 4.x tree? Well, there’s Ubuntu bug #289264, but every large application has the chance of producing some kind of leaky program. No, I can forgive a rather hilarious and long-standing memory leak because I know how to circumvent and disable programs.

Decorating with Pylons

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:10:30 +0000

A while ago, I decided to use Pylons to rebuild my site. I even went so far as to name the engine “BonePyl”, which just narrowly edged out “BonesAW” for “Bones’ Awesome Weblog”. While doing this, I’ve obviously had to orient myself with the API, which meant buying The Definitive Guide to Pylons and copious scouring of the web for secondary documentation on SQL Alchemy and FormEncode. It’s a lot to bite off, and I’m having trouble chewing, but considering my current site is a bunch of PHP I threw together back in 1999, I’m obviously in no hurry.

My Foot has a Lot of Nerve!

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:30:47 +0000

At great risk to myself and the poor SOB who offered to transport my disease-riddled carcass along Illinois highways, I’ve seen the nerve specialist, and am now the proud owner of something called a Type 1 RSD. According to the doctor–a wizened Chinese man, likely a sage of unknowable renown–this effectively means that my ankle injury confused a nerve in my leg. My brain, like a sugar-infused five-year-old overreacted and went on a killing-spree.

The State of Linux in 2009

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:41:54 +0000

Over the fourth of long Fourth of July weekend, I decided to experiment with some of the other Linux distributions floating around out there. I made only stipulation: I use a netbook, therefore the distribution must install from a USB flash drive. I have an old 1GB Sony, and a newer 2GB Sandisk, so there’s no reason this should be a difficult task. I told myself, “Self, 2009 is halfway over.

Cast Away

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:05:23 +0000

I believe it’s time to return my body for a refund. I got my cast off yesterday, and my ankle still hurts. In fact, I think it’s worse than before the cast. So, what exactly is going on? Well, the orthopedist hypothesizes that I have nerve involvement. This means either my nerve is caught in a pain feedback loop, or is entrapped, possibly by my continuing aggravated ankle sprain. So, not only have I done something horrible to my ankle, but I’ve involved a nerve.

Nirvana is Ninja Cheerleaders

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:18:34 +0000

There comes a time when a movie comes along, that a man simply knows, deep within his soul, that nothing could ever eclipse its genius. Ninja Cheerleaders, my friends, is that very movie. I knew I’d hit a goldmine when I saw George Takei listed in the credits, sure his unerring integrity was the only real endorsement David Presley’s script needed. Not only was I proven correct, but his portrayal of Hiroshi, sensei to the trio of cheerleaders, literally had me weeping, caught in the tremendous perfection this low-budget comedy deserves!

Recipe: Gravy Stew

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:29:49 +0000

Being as I’m pretty much stuck at home in my wonderful cast, I’ve decided to try and go through all the staples we’ve acquired in our freezer and pantry that may or may not be in danger of expiring or acquiring capacious amounts of freezer burn. Since cooking the crap out of something is always the best way to ensure tenderness, I whipped out the crock-pot. Ingredients: * 2 lbs stew beef, cubed * 4 cups water * 1/2 cup white vinegar * 1 cup rice * 2 tbsp butter * 2/3 cup flour * 1 tsp sea salt, ground * 1/2 tsp bay leaves, chopped * 1/4 tsp black pepper, ground * 1/4 tsp sage, dry * 1/4 tsp rosemary, dry

Always Known

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:17:24 +0000

Logic is a conundrum. That which sups upon the wretched singularity of the soul and gibbers unsated, slathering beyond redemption among voracious gullets of woe, seeking to consume every vestige of complacent acceptance until only oblivion remains. And as that creeping, insidious ivy grasps and claws, rending thought and will asunder, naught but confusion reigns where once supreme and permanent wisdom wrought transcendent equilibrium before the sack of time forgotten and unsung.

Take a Foot to Ubuntu

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:27:24 +0000

It has come to my attention that I haven’t shared the fact I’m now wearing a cast over my ankle. It would appear that my foot problems weren’t fully explained by the tendon rupture. According to my newly acquired orthopedic specialist, the fact my peroneal tendon hurts without any visible damage, but my ankle is relatively mild even with the rupture means she wants to isolate further. The cast is meant to totally immobilize my ankle and see if something hurts less in a month.

On Being Agnostic

Sun, 24 May 2009 01:21:05 +0000

“We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know.” – Robert G. Ingersoll To some, the commonest interpretation of Agnosticism places it somewhere between Atheism and various types of Theism, of which Judaeo-Christian sects, again, comprise the primary cognitive focus. But it is this very misinterpretation within the traditional lexicon which corrupts the original and intended meaning to merely represent a weaker branch of Atheism.

Maniacal Monopod

Thu, 14 May 2009 23:07:27 +0000

Well, after my MRI on Monday, I resigned myself to a waiting game while the radiologist perused the incomprehensible slices of my foot before distilling them into a written report for my esteemed podiatrist. Today, I ventured once more to my Podiatrist’s office to receive, hopefully, good news. Sadly I, like a horny teenager trapped in an nudist colony composed entirely of ponderously obese men, was destined for frustration and disappointment.

One Foot of Fun

Sun, 03 May 2009 00:15:28 +0000

My right foot is a piece of garbage. No, really. Since my teens, every once in a while, through some mysterious transformation enacted, doubtlessly, by clamoring minions of the underworld, becomes an agony generator equaled only by the presence of my Ex. But even I admit that, after years of DDR stomping, years more of wearing Nike Frees to strengthen various muscles, evidence might indicate healing or time or even luck had rendered that particular foot “normal.

I've got The Itis

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:34:52 +0000

Jen, a more avid Facebook advocate than I, posted my malaise yesterday, so I figured it only fair I provide a more thorough explanation as to what actually happened Saturday and Sunday. What am I alluding to, you ask? This weekend, I spent Saturday and most of Sunday at Naperville’s illustrious Edward hospital, and this time, it wasn’t because of my heart! I woke up around 4:00am on the 18th feeling as if an army of ferrets were fighting over my colon like it was composed of especially delicious Pixie Stix.

Adventures in Netbookery

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:03:03 +0000

I haven’t spoken much about the Samsung NC10 I bought to accompany me on the train. Out of all the netbooks, I chose this one because it was one of the thinner, lighter models, I adore the keyboard, and with the Amazon exclusive, came with a bigger battery and slightly enlarged trackpad. Of course, Samsung immediately announced two or three new netbooks, one of which replaces the NC10 and has basically the same enhancements as mine, plus a redesign.

Not Another Word

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:50:00 +0000

Dawn awakes, but nods until draped upon silvery dregs of fortune and will. So new and calm, too tired or careless to examine the tumult or try repentance or rest, acquiescing ultimately to wroth and disdain. And it shivers; tied upon a backplane, shunned by not solitude or enmity, but of contemplation and ease. These things that think and consider, aware of nothing but alacrity and fate, or driven destiny, fail to learn or lose earned wisdom by crashing upon reality; wailing into the rift of oblivious ease and treacherous banality, corrupting innocence in favor of some measure of nebulous, untrustworthy success.

Everybody Broken

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 03:37:33 +0000

Once upon a time, Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears was my favorite song. Mostly because of a few specific phrases it contains: Welcome to your life Theres no turning back Even while we sleep We will find you Acting on your best behaviour It’s no great secret I spent a large fraction of my childhood in the 1980s, but much of that I only remember in a kind of broken haze.

Quadrillion Magillian Zillion

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:07:30 +0000

Read this. Read this Crap your pants.

Riddled Sky

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:16 +0000

In the sky… in the Sky: it’s so drastic, only one, time and time. Fuddled, meandering among wandering trails, and peaks, and valleys strewn of fate and whistles. Drinking of the soft rattle leaking from the moon and fountains whispering rightly, always rightly, to heedless sands. To mire, so brittle, of foundations won and filtered by calm melodies in tune, or sung by ripples in soiled but honest water. Water, by God, wished and real, upon the parched and the famished, and the tame.

Watchmen's Anathem

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:17:23 +0000

“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs,” I said. “We have a protractor.” – Erasmas, Anathem So, I’ve done a little light reading lately, and finished up Neal Stephenson’s Anathem–in my opinion, his best book thus far. It’s not nearly as slow as the [Baroque Cycle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle_(novel)), nor as “conventional” as Cryptonomicon, yet remains as cripplingly cerebral. It’s just so engrossing, I couldn’t help but voraciously consume the adventures of Erasmas and the very concept of a “Math” in general.

Pilgrim's Progress

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 01:19:57 +0000

So, I’ve started reading a highly amusing pseudo-manga titled Scott Pilgrim, and damn… how could I not like this? Seriously, this comic is some of the most innocent fun I’ve experienced excepting Excel Saga. But where Excel Saga was crack-induced insanity, the Scott Pilgrim series apparently derives its entertainment value from light-hearted hijinks gone awry–what Megatokyo started before it was fully engulfed by over-ambitious zeal. Read it, you won’t be disappointed!

If There are Stories

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:27:11 +0000

To a six-year-old boy, hospitals are more confusing than frightening. But Shaun liked this place, even knowing on some level he may never leave. There were the play-closets, for one: child-size doors scattered around the waiting-room where kids who never met could hide and seek each other while parents completed paperwork. Further into the labyrinth was a sprawling wooden house sized just for little ones, always echoing with the giggles of all but the few confined to wheelchairs, too weak to stand but smiling at the sight nonetheless.

Comic Strep

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 11:08:23 +0000

Some time during Friday, I noticed I wasn’t feeling very well. By 9pm Friday night, I had a fever of 99.8 and an intensely sore throat and slowly aching muscles. By 5am Saturday morning, I had a temperature over 102 and felt like I’d just been accosted by angry bat-wielding thugs. What I thought was the flue–but went to the doctor for confirmation–turned out to be strep. The nurse told Jen I “smelled like strep” and after a test confirmation, I was sent home with a regimen that would have me feeling better “within 48 hours.

Question of Enlightenment: Part 2

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:52:01 +0000

It’s interesting what happens when perspective is adjusted. I see conflict now as pointless, anger as a loss of self, a weakness of infinite depth. But Why? A push was all I really needed, maybe even for years. Scientifically, I know the brain is nearly endlessly malleable, and barring significant cases of genuine chemical or physiological distress, it can be guided to fit a specific end. In this case, I’ve long considered myself helpless to disrupt the cycles of anger that have plagued me since some of my earliest memories.

Question of Enlightenment: Part 1

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:08:41 +0000

It’s a beautiful Sunday night in Illinois, and Jen and I have just enjoyed a wonderful pot roast, complete with some gravy I whipped up from the resulting stock. A nice night to relax with some hot chocolate under a warm fleece blanket with a fluffy kitty curled up my lap.. It’s a good time to reflect, recuperating after two and a half hours of exercising yesterday. A time to finally write up part of the outline I wrote while riding home from work one evening.

Question of Enlightenment: Introduction

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:24:00 +0000

What is it like to feel satisfaction and know true contentment? To let the world and its ills flow past, through, and beyond. To smile in the face of adversity, of pain, of loss. To have that strength, to embrace absolute insignificance, to reduce any problem to a shadow of nothing. To eschew derision, find compassion for the hateful, and love the enemy that inspires progression beyond simple reaction. For years, I’ve felt on the verge of understanding the world–beyond the components that comprise the shapes and senses, past anthropomorphic callings of mental stimuli and instinctual urges.

Moon for my Honey

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:13:03 +0000

A lot of you are probably wondering how the honeymoon on Hilton Head Island went. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say anything, but I can bring up a few highlights. We had the hotel practically to ourselves for the 22nd and 23rd of December. I’m unsure quite how that happened, but it was highly enjoyable to wander the halls with impunity and have the hot tub to ourselves. I quite enjoyed Hudson on the Docks, though there was certainly a bevy of exquisite sources of victuals dotting the island and surrounding area.

A Wedding to Remember

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 20:17:51 +0000

I have necessarily been incommunicado for the first two weeks post wedding–not because of our honeymoon, which remains a week away, but to recharge. Too much socializing, an unceasing onslaught of novelty, and a hospital visit consumed every vestige of current powering my scarcely animate carcass. This of course, requires copious explanation. So far as memory serves, the revelry began on the 28th. Aside from checking into the hotels, setting up the dining hall, trucking to and from Bloomington to snatch my mother from the wretched clutches of Amtrak, relaying sketchy directions to visitors, and generally contributing to increasing turmoil all before 5pm to attend the rehearsal and accompanying dinner, I maintained most of my composure.

Rapidity of Splot

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:32:43 +0000

Always scheming, scarcely dreaming–is it bits, or bats, or both? Wind around a wrinkled walrus, best amend your tale of woe. ‘Cause it’s simple, as a pimple, for anyone to see, that the crazy isn’t lazy to the dreaming and the me. But don’t listen (there’s a siren) to the babbling I make. Every time I cough or chortle, I’ve most likely made a mistake. Or have I wandered oddly off the road into the trees?

Overtuned

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:50:25 +0000

A tawny force a’canting, in a melancholy spire, does cry and waver, ranting among blackened souls afire. The split and crackle churning, always wrought by leavened hale, attempts to quench the burning in a mixed-up, sundry tale. By sultry fates asunder, those calamities do gaze into most guarded plunder, only whets desire to raze. Waking chaos few survived, glimmered through the murky none, wetly splashed and yet deprived of kismet forever done.

Election in America Town

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:39:24 +0000

Well, there we have it. Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States. For the most part, everyone I know views this as a preferable outcome. One, for whatever reason, perceives Obama as a “dangerous charlatan.” Now, I’m not going to appeal to authority here, but the man is a former professor of constitutional law, wrote two books clearly outlining his core beliefs, and only recently paid off his student loans.

Again and Again

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:14:01 +0000

Espouse that fantastic land, that porous slate through terrible glade. Wisps swim to curl night among ether and silver shale–pale vortexes swept and sullied, inking silken scrawls for rend and rape of dreg and coughing man. Entail, so wroth be the wanderer, of platitude and tale spoken beyond listless temper. Echos or whispers or tide-battered bones slipped to steal unwary souls and filth and empty blood borne of order and contempt.

No Results Ever!

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:59:38 +0000

The EP looked through all the event monitor charts I’ve transmitted so far, and didn’t see anything particularly unusual. But he was looking for fast palpitations–basically tachycardia–where I flag anything that “feels weird.” If he’s not alarmed, I can only assume everything is “normal for me,” and move on, right? He wants me to come back a week after I return the event monitor. I don’t expect he’ll find anything odd, since I haven’t had any episodes since the 27th of September aside from lots of PACs and PVCs which are apparently insignificant.

Hearticulture

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:51:03 +0000

So today at 8:30am, I had an MRI. It wasn’t as bad as last time, but it sure seemed louder somehow. The machine was much more recent–sporting a fancy LCD embedded into its doughnut badness–yet in the advancements it contained, apparently none of the engineers considered integrating sound dampening to avoid permanently deafening patents enclosed entirely within its grasping confines after repeated exposure to proximal squeals resembling a drunken hobo occasionally plucking the same frayed string on a “sweet” electric guitar he found jacked into a defective amp incapable of any setting below 100 decibels.

Bailout Bonanza!

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:33:06 +0000

Hey Congress? Fuck every last one of you worthless shit-eating cock-mongers and the crippled, tumor-riddled horse you raped to the tune of Let the Good Times Roll while simultaneously flipping off a bus of nuns with a composite hand constructed entirely from freshly butchered kitten heads. What, the $25-billion you gave to the failing auto giants wasn’t good enough? Somehow the $700-billion bloated with an additional $110-billion in tax breaks, racetracks, wooden arrows, rum, and other miscellaneous detritus is more palatable than one lacking these accouterments?

Governed by Chaotically Harmonic Patterns

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 23:44:21 +0000

A conundrum espies an infinite wake, bereft of solace, robbed of succor. Instead, splendor and convoluted mirages ripple and entreaty fealty or some semblance of instrumentality beyond obvious and unrepentant madness. It sings of listless fate and they listen The pariah raves for reprieve but damned perfectly Tortured ceaselessly by forever Still, a blink pierces the vale and cruelly illuminates every sordid fleck and sardonic splinter of corrupted tapestry. Driven unreality crafts this mockery of fantastic oblivion, voracious and intent to rend sanity through tantalizing simulacrum inspired by grievous shadows cast beneath vile imitations of predictable automatons.

Finish Him! Hospitality! Gameality!

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:16:48 +0000

Ugh! Fine, I’ll write something! Geez. So the post-hurricane monsoon eventually hit Illinois and dumped copious amounts of fluid upon our hapless suburbs, and a friend of ours has an aunt and uncle living in dangerous proximity to a lake. Most of Saturday afternoon on the 12th was spent moving their furniture to the second floor and sandbagging his house, and we didn’t get home again until around 1am. Nothing really notable happened, but I was highly amused by the garter snake seeking high ground on a recently arranged sandbag; thankfully I didn’t step on any wildlife while wading through the knee-deep miasma back to Jen’s car.

DBA Angry!

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:24:38 +0000

There’s a lot of debate in application development circles over various sundries such as column naming schemes and framework implementation details. Well, I’d like to clear all that up. See, there are more application frameworks than grains of sand on the entire planet Earth, and each one of them has a different philosophy and API for creating database objects. Rails, Django, Turbogears, Zope, Zoop, Drupal, Catalyst, Nitro, Nuke… holy fucking Christ, stop it already!

Lee's Razors FTW!

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:27:38 +0000

On the 8th of August, I ordered a Merkur 39C Barberpole Slant from Lee’s Razors, one of the recommended retailers at a forum I frequent. I waited and waited, and didn’t get any kind of shipment verification. Eventually I saw that Lee experienced some kind of website snafu and lost several orders into the internet aether. I waited a little longer, hoping mine wasn’t one of these, but this was in vain.

Scrollkeep This!

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:33:17 +0000

What the fuck is Scrollkeeper? No, wait… I don’t care. I’m not even going to look it up. You know what, scrollkeeper? Fuck you! I shouldn’t have to nice down a background utility that suddenly decides it’s the most important program executing on my laptop the millisecond it boots. 90% or more of my CPU to do… what exactly? I don’t even know what this fucking program does, and it can’t idle in the background until it’s done?

Shaving: Back to the Future

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:03 +0000

So, I’ve been absent for a long time, and the two or three people reading this probably wonder to where I vanished. Not that I have a lot of wacky hijinks to outline, but I have started a new hobby of sorts. I’ve recently acquired a safety razor. Yeah, the kind that accepts double-edged razor blades, the ones nobody uses anymore. But… why? Why on Earth would I, or anyone for that matter, devolve from wondrous advancements such as electric razors.

Review: The Dark Knight

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:00:11 +0000

It’s not often I believe a movie deserves the praise it receives, and Hollywood suffers a fair deluge of not entirely undeserved criticism concerning its dearth of ideas lately. But The Dark Knight, oddly enough a “sequel” to 2005’s Batman Begins–the most recent in a long line of Batman based cinema stretching back to Tim Burton’s Batman from 1989 (I don’t count previous attempts)–proves the industry isn’t entirely staffed by unimaginative, self-gratifying hacks.

Moving: Wacky Hijinks Ensue!

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:11:41 +0000

So, I have finished moving. Understandably, I’ve been keeping a low profile while packing, and the day of the move itself was rather long and arduous, involving three trips along various highways to and from the old apartment for disinfection and other sundries. I was done with everything around nine on Saturday. Sunday, I unpacked a goodly amount of boxes, but I’ve got quite a few to go. And Monday…

I'm Not Dead Yet: I Feel Happy

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:29:48 +0000

Yeah, really I’m fine. Cardiologist gave me a quick look-over and pronounced the episode I had a couple weeks ago a fluke, but that I should keep an eye on it and report back to her if it happens again. In other news, she says my performance in the stress echo is “fantastic,” so there’s that. I’m giving away three boxes of my books, but the people at work get first dibs.

Titillating Tachycardia

Mon, 26 May 2008 22:38:02 +0000

Reports of my demise are highly exaggerated. For those who haven’t heard, I paid a prolonged and unexpected visit to an emergency room on Wednesday. There I was, sitting at my desk doing some last-minute queries sipping a decaf iced coffee I’d acquired from Dunkin’ Donuts, when I’d started feeling somewhat odd. Not to be a worry-wart, I shrugged it off and continued banally pounding-out horrifying SQL resplendent with awe-inspiring and highly convoluted JOIN statements when my heart began pounding like I’d just finished a brisk 20-minutes playing DDR.

Bill's Glorious Economy Shanty

Tue, 13 May 2008 13:40:33 +0000

I think it’s time I reveal my little secret to where I’ve been acquiring financial news and commodity trends. While none of these can be considered a penultimate resource, their combined effervescence should explain at least a fragment of my pessimism concerning our economy. As I elucidated back in December, the over-leveraging of our fractional reserve banking system in the housing market to the tune of several trillion dollars has, like your hopes of being the first to impregnate Jessica Alba, tragically ended.

Wicked - the Spoofical

Tue, 13 May 2008 10:13:21 +0000

I’m about 1/3 through Wicked, and having seen the musical adaptation, I’m somewhat confused. I know movies and musicals based on novels commonly encounter issues compressing the material into two hours of nonstop entertainment, but this example is such a ridiculous extreme, I wonder if they didn’t purposefully throw out 95% of the book to avoid confusion. I should note that I loved the musical, and I’m guiltily enjoying the novel, but suggesting they describe the same events would likely disrupt the space-time continuum and destroy us all.

Soon Has Smut Shame

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:57:49 +0000

Curious, I wanted to know what my name anagrammed into. For reference, I used “Shaun Moses Thomas” with a minimum word length of two. Nauseas Moths Mosh Aha! Hostess Summon Manta Shushes Moos Smashes Humans Too! Aha! He Summons Sots Soon Has Smut Shame Amusing. Until Tomorrow

Running for Fun and Profit

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:22:45 +0000

It’s too bad I don’t have a previous stress echo to compare this to, since I’ve never had one before. Anyway, my appointment was scheduled for Wednesday 9am at Northwestern in Chicago. I got back to work around 1:30pm, and I was right, they spent a billionty years digging into my ribs and various other spots. They say my anatomy doesn’t seem to match my diagnosis, which is somewhat amusing. He knows how CC-TGA, JAA, and dextrocardia can go together, but it seems counter-intuitive.

Quotes: Why not?

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:53:24 +0000

I’m a writer, these pop into my head. That’s life. “It is not enough to be a just leader of men. For how can one rest knowing men need leaders at all? Gently cast down those that idolize or they shall eternally subjugate themselves.” “What is melancholy but the purest conviction there’s been some terrible mistake?” Until Tomorrow

Call for Contact Info!

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:40:43 +0000

Hey folks, As many of you know, I’m getting married, and much to my chagrin, I’ve not maintained very good address/phone records for you, my friends. If you could please assault me with a barrage of name, address, and phone information so I can inflict my wedding upon you, I’d greatly appreciate it. If you don’t know how to get ahold of me already, pick your favorite. Take care all!

Driving Toward Insanity

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:27:59 +0000

Last weekend, Jen and I went back to Washington IL to handle a bundle of wedding-related minutia. We met with Monty of Chef’s Catering, consulted with our mistress of confection to outline cake blueprints, and endured an engagement photo session. We also had a wonderful Easter brunch care of Jen’s family, which I always enjoy. We drove back into town on Tuesday and I hopped on the train home, arriving around 6:15.

Holter Skelter

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:56:56 +0000

Appointment at the cardiologist was pretty uneventful. Dr. Mendelson seemed surprised I’m doing so well with such a diverse and staggering quantity of heart defects. She asked me a couple times who referred me, and why I was there, but my answer never wavered: I want a Cardiologist familiar with, and who has seen many other adult congenital heart patients. And here’s the funny part: she more than proved my point.

Total Lunar Eclipse

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:36:10 +0000

Luna is back from the vet, and she’s been diagnosed with severe hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Her left ventricle is enlarged and there was a clot forming in her left atrium. She’s been prescribed Lasix, Enalapril (what I take, ironically enough), Plavix, and Aspirin. Basically, they’re throwing everything they have at her in an effort to keep her from forming clots, ease her heart’s workload, and clear any fluid that backs up into her lungs.

Lunar Eclipse

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:17:30 +0000

Luna is spending the night at an animal hospital tonight. When I got home from work on Monday, Luna didn’t greet me with her usual persistent demand to sit on my lap. In fact, she looked rather miserable sprawled on a plastic shopping bag. A couple hours later, she relocated to the corner behind the toilet. Since then, she has wandered about the apartment as though addled, refraining from eating or drinking.

Bloody Study

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:22:02 +0000

Well, I found out why I’m hitting a wall with my DDR skills, and why I simply can’t do hard 10-footers or the nasty level 11s, 12s, and 13s of ITG. I long believed this to be the case, but I ran into a study by the American Heart Association that specifically covers patients with a corrected transposition by the Mustard procedure, congenitally corrected transposition, and a similar group having undergone a revised Fontan.

Et tu, somes?

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:23:54 +0000

Not sure how I forgot to post this, but last Friday, I went to local TLC Laser Eye Center and practically got laughed out of the office. Their multi-million dollar machinery couldn’t even diagnose my prescription because it was too high. You’d think if a company manufactured something worth several million dollars, they’d go for broke and design the thing to recognize some patently absurd level seen only in Mr. Magoo or possibly a blind mole rat.

Winter++

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:17:13 +0000

Warning, this rant is brutal and not safe for 5-year-old girls. I recently saw this video on temperature, and I have to agree: temperature can suck a bowl of maggots swimming in herpes-infested pus scabs. Especially winter. Fuck you, winter. So far, this particular winter is about as endearing as a festering rat carcass cellphone-cozy. February has been a blistering barrage of snowstorm warnings, wind-chill advisories, and apparently deadly fucking tornadoes.

Dynastic Bombastic

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:43:13 +0000

C:\POSTARTICLE.EXE Article Posting Engine 2.97.827 build 132875423 alpha 47 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Enter article type. Enter ? for list. > rant Loading rant module... done. Enter rant type. Enter ? for list. > sarcastic Initializing sarcasm plugin... done. Select sarcasm level. Enter ? for list. > billionty WARNING! Setting 'billionty' is highly unstable! Continue? > yes Enter subject matter, 'FUCK' terminates: > Clinton > Bush > dynasty > hades > handbasket > FUCK Generating tokenizer.

Opaque

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:53:52 +0000

And there are those that vanish, beneath the sundered skies. Who prey upon the witless, with malice in their eyes. Sit smoking in the landscape, a rolling wake of rage. Tumultuous with a sickness. beyond mere turn of age. This rhyming lilt of marching, doth shake the pebbled earth. Resplendent in the darkness, erasing his own birth. And through that eye of nothing, a glass burned through with none.

Secret Squirrel

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 01:43:19 +0000

Bob: Wow, I was beginning to think you’d fallen off teh intarwebs. Shaun: Droll. Bob: Well, I certainly thought so. What, nothing to say for the last over a month? Shaun: … Bob: I’ll take that as a no. Shaun: Do you think this is healthy? Bob: What? Talking to yourself, or being so apathetic you can’t even bring yourself to write about anything? Shaun: There’s nothing to write! I played some video games, watched all of House… nothing exciting.

Your Money is Now Our Money

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:34:08 +0000

And now the shit hits the fucking fan. The crazy thing, is that there are still investors, real-estate agents, and brokers out there with their heads firmly embedded in their own rectal stew. (warning, do not, ever click the previous link.) And then we have inflation. The consumer price index went up by nearly a percent in November alone! What’s that little Timmy, a recession? Don’t you worry little guy, food is overrated anyway.

Update Shmupdate

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:15:39 +0000

Apparently I’ve fallen off Teh Intarwebs. Well, that’s all the fault of Final Fantasy XII, really. Played it once for 100 hours myself, then 50 hours following a guide. Sadly, the second set of characters are far more powerful with much better equipment. :( I guess that just proves they did a damn good job of hiding everything usable. Bad Squaresoft! I also proposed to Jen this Friday. Just let that sink in for a minute… Jen’s birthday, unfortunately is two weeks before Christmas.

My Perspective

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:52:15 +0000

There are things of dark, and things within the sky. There are folds of woe, and wroth of shallow eye. There are prophets that sit upon words haughty or stripped of fear. And sit they must, digesting solemn mixes of faithless harrow. They tire of life, promised full of meaning and limitless wonder. They are broken, the wanderers, lit like frozen candles flickering in the infinite chaos, striving weakly to scale and scrabble brittle scaffolds of reason.

Let's Do the Aspie Again!

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:33:38 +0000

So, I ran into a long-ass test for Aspergers, and my curiosity got the best of me, so I took a few minutes to fill it out. Your Aspie Score: 137 of 200 Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 65 of 200 You are very likely an Aspie Doh! Until Tomorrow

Once Atop the Mountain

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:27:24 +0000

“Fidalius,” began Kartaena, sadly, “the Human Condition has an infinite capacity for suffering. A man’s ability to torture himself pales the gamut of physical or emotional pain another could mete. History is written on the backs of men and women who ignore this at their peril, societies lost to antiquity, flush with philosophers or kings suffused with their own righteous insights. Even great empires that once spanned the world and ushered a new era of inspired debate and progress lay as dust, forgotten by all.

All but the Fat Lady

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 23:26:34 +0000

And then there was none. The tale of Rue’s haunt of Tammond Dale is no more. It’s over, damn you, and done. The tale describing an undead lagomorph intent on rending Kyle’s soul has been concluded, and I can only hope I avoided being obvious. Now I must combine the hundreds of separate entries into one giant thing and format it as expected by publishers. I need to print, edit, and refine.

Only One Left

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:38:31 +0000

First, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who managed to come to the party on the 22nd. Richard and Bettina, you didn’t drink nearly enough, but you provided me with reading material, so all is forgiven. Ryan J, I still can’t believe you only broke two of my ITG records; it’s surreal. I’ll try to enjoy your shot glasses, since they’re the first ones I’ve ever owned (at 30, go figure).

Infinite Reflection

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:01:17 +0000

At precisely 11:16PM tonight, I’ll have persisted upon this world for a grand-total of three decades. To understand the true significance of this, I believe I should clarify. I was born on September 18th, 1977 in Washington State, and since that day, life hasn’t taken kindly to my presence. Two months passed, and I went into congestive heart failure; not a heart-attack exactly, but hint enough I wasn’t meant to live.

Parties, Parties Everywhere!

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 22:27:29 +0000

I never would have imagined, after meeting the man, that Patrick O’Lone would allow marriage to sully his reputation. But it’s true, and I’m happy for both him and Sarah. More Surprising, of course, is that Chris Murley is following his example a mere three weeks later. On September 29th, Hillary officially joins the disfunctional family I grudgingly left behind when I moved to Chicago. They’re all growing up so fast, it brings a tear to my eye.

Of Literary Endeavors

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:04:58 +0000

And so Chapter 19 of my first book is starting. Another three, maybe four chapters remain until everything is finished, for good or ill. I’ve entered the endgame, and done terrible, unconscionable things to my characters at this stage, and it’s only going to get worse. It’s necessary, and for the trilogy to continue, absolutely essential I do these things now. I hate foreshadowing for events that won’t happen for two books yet, but I’m not writing this, so much as I’m experiencing each confusing morsel.

Rue: A Missing Prologue

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 21:16:01 +0000

“Hit it again!” they jeered. Crowded around an ancient willow, the godlings pointed and sneered. “Eww! Gross. Look at it!” When the man approached, he wondered what they stood over; why they slapped a dusty old plank against the tree. Bored maybe, or curious; children always were. “What is that?” one asked him, pointing. He couldn’t tell: it was mostly crushed, bulbous and oozing–all but destroyed. “I don’t know…” said the man, squinting, humoring them.

Ratios are The Devil

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 23:11:19 +0000

I’ve always wondered just how many “words” makes an average printed page, so I looked it up. Apparently that number is roughly 250, with about thirty lines per page. Assuming the average six-by-nine inch book format and a one inch margin, that seems about right. Unfortunately it also means my page count estimates have been the product of pure fantasy. I took chapter one and formatted it according to what’s normally expected by publishers.

Sinks, Blinks, and Finks

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:01:14 +0000

Well, half of my kitchen sink is missing, stolen by the maintenance man for my building. Why? Because half the pipes were filthy, rusted amalgamations of leaky steel. My sink leaked, badly. Running any water through it, via dishwasher, or just through the main drains, would result in water dumping all over the storage area underneath. Judging by the pipes he showed me, this has been happening for months, and the previous occupant never noticed.

To the Uncaring, Go the Spoils

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 01:46:57 +0000

It’s been a long week, and my vacation is finally over. Late Saturday night, early Sunday morning–either tell me it’s a weekend just like any other. I relaxed, I finally got the chance to enjoy Wicked, and I tooled around downtown gulping food I don’t deserve with a woman equally beyond my reach. I got drunk, I got sick, I had fun, and I’ve got little to show for it but some new rattles in my empty head.

Beat 'em Up With Furniture!

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:26:48 +0000

Well, I’ve had one of the busiest weekends on record. The TV is absolutely gorgeous. I tested out a few movies, anime, and hooked it to the media PC and so far, even from ridiculous angles where it washes out ever so slightly, it’s better than my 32" tube ever was. And what about the media PC? I installed Ubuntu on it, installed all the Ubuntu Mythtv stuff, drivers, codecs, and tweaks, and now I have to say I should have done this years ago.

From the Ends of the Earth

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 22:21:34 +0000

Yikes! Move from one apartment to another, and suddenly things just go to hell. I’ve managed (barely) to keep up with Rabbit Rue, but all my other activities have seemed to suffer. And then of course, they had to release the end of Harry Potter, and my weekend was pretty much shot. So, onward and forward, I’ve got some catching-up to do. But there are worse things. Like buying bookcases so I can unpack my books, waiting to receive my New 40" LCD and its accompanying entertainment center, so those’ll be fun to haul into my apartment.

Time to Consider

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 01:18:50 +0000

Stop writing… you’re drunk. “Fuck you, brain. God damn, you have to ruin everything, like a pool full of kindergarteners, gotta piss all over my parade. I’ve somehow scribbled over 180 pages so far, easily half a book. What you got to say about that, asshole? Yeah, I thought so.” You do realize you’re being ridiculous. “No, I’m not. You’ve plagued me my entire life. Mugging me, beating me with a lead pipe whenever I try to sleep, making me hide in a corner while everyone else enjoys life.

Gone a Gander

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 22:40:13 +0000

There comes a time in a person’s life when they just wonder… why? Today I plucked two grey hairs. This by itself is not notable. What struck me, was that they were both in my eyebrows. Considering the relative distribution of hair follicles across various parts of my scalp, two in such a small area bodes badly. Then I noticed I have quite a few coming in on the sides… sides I normally have shaved down to 1/4 inch, but it’s been a while since I’ve been in for a haircut.

Sick of Being a Sicko

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 23:19:55 +0000

I just watched Michael Moore’s Sicko over at Google Video, and I have to say… I already knew most of this. But having it summarized, without Moore’s usual political grandstanding or creative edits, draws a stark and rigid line—maybe through our assumptions—to why I’ve lost faith America can draw itself away from terminable selfishness. This maybe strikes home to me, more than most, because my very life depends on insurance. I need insurance, because I have several congenital heart conditions, any of which raise my risk of instant cardiac death.

Disturbing Trains, With a Dash of Paprika

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 00:51:48 +0000

Let there be… disturbing art! I’ve finally managed to work my artist’s wonderful rendition of Rabbit Rue’s true horror into the site design. It’s a work in progress, but it still looks better than without, in my opinion. Hopefully I can tweak the design a little and leave it alone for a while. I’m moving to Evanston. I’m pretty sure of this. Nothing against Chicago, but threatening to shut down the Purple Line express, which ferries my worthless carcass to and from work, and/or raise the rates from $1.

Whatta Ya Know, I'm Duality

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 23:52:16 +0000

Your Score: The High Priestess You scored 43 change, 69 wellbeing, 73 wisdom, and 63 truth ![](http://www.crystalinks.com/highpriestess.gif) This card represents the subconscious mind. It is the balancing force between pairs. The pillars to her sides represent the opposites, light and dark, and she sits in the middle of them, impartial to one or the other. The curtain behind her connects the pairs. The letters on the pillars are B and J.

Recipe: Midnight Elk Chili

Wed, 30 May 2007 21:33:00 +0000

2 lbs Ground Elk Meat 1.5 cups dry Red Kidney Beans 1.5 cups dry Black Beans 1 29oz can Tomato Sauce 1 28oz can Crushed Tomatoes 1.5 cups chopped Vidalia Onion 3 tbsp white Distilled Vinegar 3 tbsp Chili Powder 2 tsp ground Sea Salt 2 tsp ground Black Pepper 1/2 tsp Garlic Powder 1/4 tsp Dave’s Insanity Sauce Soak beans overnight. Drain beans and add crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, onions, vinegar, 2 tbsps of the chili powder, half of the salt, and half of the pepper.

Darkness Without Light

Fri, 25 May 2007 00:17:25 +0000

I have begun chapter nine of my ongoing tale of Rabbit Rue, which has just recently crossed the threshold of 130 pages. After I’ve written a few more of these books, I’ll consider this a mere trifle, but for now, that sheer amount of information is daunting. That I’ve created something that would require hours of reading dismays and bewilders my sensibilities, like a budding architect who has accidentally designed the Sistine Chapel.

I Blinded Me, With Science

Tue, 15 May 2007 15:08:21 +0000

I’m getting fat. Yes, me. I understand you are gawking at the screen, cursing at my already low weight and considering a phone call to an anorexic hotline, but stay with me, here. Since moving to Chicago, I fell off my wagon, and instead of being 138 pounds at 8% bodyfat, I’m somewhere around 150 with likely fifteen percent. This proves whatever I’m eating is overwhelming my metabolism, and while I will never tip the scales at 200, it’s obvious my current diet is unhealthy.

Anime Central 2007: It's a Fire Hazard - Part 1

Mon, 14 May 2007 22:03:28 +0000

ACEN 2007 is now over, and, like a filthy abandoned hovel teetering menacingly over an orphanage, dripping loose planks bearing tetanus-encrusted nails, its parched flammable timber threatens the dreams and lives of innocent whelps by merely existing. Were ACEN only that terrible, a punished but breathing sliver of hope–of walking again, or regaining vision from sundered and scorched eyes–would ripple through the legions of anime fans which attended. But, alas…

Reflection on Deflection

Sun, 13 May 2007 22:51:16 +0000

I am legion. I am the one that is forgot, the one in the road that you know not. The man that will affect your life, though the impact is hidden through time and tithe. You’ll move on, just as you must, and the veils will fall again to dust. That is the mythology, that is the timing; that is the truth. The faces fade, the voices mesh into the cacophony, and in that wild din, inseparable from legion, I am.

Joining the 21st Century

Thu, 03 May 2007 15:41:33 +0000

Well, I’ve finally gone and joined Technorati, only about three years too late. Of course, we’ll see if it does anything other than prove just how unpopular I really am. ;) Until Tomorrow

I Care, But Hell Damns Without Regard

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 01:14:55 +0000

And so, the die is cast. For Chapter seven of Rabbit Rue has begun. Don’t bother clicking the previous link, that chapter doesn’t exist until May 11th, while today is April still. I just pounded out five pages while drinking Whisky and watching episodes of Firefly I acquired from Target. I couldn’t help it, and I somehow wish I could stop, stop observing, eliminate my endlessly infinite capacity for over-analysis, and simply describe my story.

Life, Universe, Everything

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:44:06 +0000

Rabbit Rue is coming along nicely. I just finished chapter 6, which should conclude around May 9th according to the release schedule. It’s a sad and lonely thing I do here, writing of folly and disdain, loss and grief. I walk the fine line of melodrama, trying not to plunge my characters into laughably trite situations past or present, to keep them believable and alive. Even if I succeed, I fail, for no fiction truly transcends the humanity of real existence, though some say truth is stranger than fiction.

Of Bodies and Bawdies

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 22:29:30 +0000

As to where I’ve been, well, my mother was in town starting Saturday the 14th; if only she’d come a day earlier. Stumbling from bed obscenely early, wailing the strained moan of a heavily decomposed zombie, Jen and I readied ourselves for a long weekend of sightseeing and debauchery. Well, not debauchery. Justin graced us with his presence, and we forged ahead to the Museum of Science and Industry to wander aimlessly through its ridiculously vast expanses before finally subjecting ourselves to the macabre display of Body Worlds.

America the Mislead

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:53:15 +0000

Before I begin this long-winded tirade, please take a few minutes to read this article by Mike Whitney. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Done? First of all, I’d like to mention I believe the article I’ve linked is mostly derivative and alarmist pap, possibly written to scrounge up readership for the Information Clearing House. But the author’s facts are not wrong, if spun wildly for illustrative purposes. After watching housing prices increase at four or five multiples of inflation and salary adjustments for five solid years, it’s readily apparent the trillions of dollars sunk into the morass are essentially forfeit.

Go Eat Worms

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 23:11:36 +0000

And so I’ve written, and scribbled, and scratched, until after nearly a month of this, I’ve produced sixty pages (estimate based on 2kb average per typewritten page) of content spread over four chapters. I say this, having five more outlined and ready, and all the while, the tale weaves itself in my mind, twisting and warping beyond my original conception. Now if only I could get people to read it. I understand the genre of serial fiction is an antiquated and possibly anachronistic partaking, but It’s my chosen medium because it encourages me to keep writing, even when convenience would dictate otherwise.

Workin' on the Train

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:02:52 +0000

“Spare some change?” he bleated, “I’m a crackhead.” There he sat, reclining against an abandoned storefront, eyes half open, disinterested. A king’s ransom of steel hoops, iron bars, and truncated clips studded his face, each issuing an individual challenge: call this guy a liar. I laughed heartily, shaking my head at the absurdity. That kid was less than earnest, almost bored, even as he weakly shook a styrofoam cup half-full of change.

Lofty Goals in Philosophical Holes

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:09:28 +0000

Well, I have finally begun chapter 3 of Rabbit Rue, which I’m beginning to suspect, is coming along much better than I had anticipated. Would you believe I had a dream about this whole thing, or at least a tiny fraction of how it all would end, roughly four years ago? Admittedly I started a book I’ve dubbed The Phase way back in 1999 for a girl I met on the internet, and that got all the way to 50 pages before we broke the whole thing off, since she lived in Alpha, a harrowing 90-mile drive from my residence near Cedar Rapids at the time.

Writing with Both Eyes

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 17:14:56 +0000

Though I was starting to get ahead of schedule with Rabbit Rue, there was a minor setback as I was unable to write over the weekend. Not to say hanging out with Jen is some terrible inconvenience, but while trying to build between myself and my schedule, an appreciable buffer, I nevertheless lost ground. To compensate, I’ve redoubled my efforts to fill the hopper with at least a week’s worth of content.

A Writer's Work is Never Done

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:00:52 +0000

Many apologies! I tried tweaking my http config file and ended up sending my new writing site to the old non-functional mockup. Doh! Anyway, the second part of chapter one should automatically publish itself around midnight tonight, so you’ll be able to read it tomorrow. I added a disclaimer so people who first hit the site will know to read from the beginning. It’s weird how quickly the words flow when I’m in my groove.

Current of Consciousness

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 22:08:42 +0000

Some or even most of you are probably wondering where I’ve been for the past two weeks. My posting frequency has been eclipsed by the ever silent Justin, and for that I apologize. Normally this would mean I have been lazy playing videogames or otherwise frittering away my time. On this particular occasion, nothing could be further from the truth. For the past week, I’ve been busily hacking away at a Django app which will serve as the launchpad for my Webfic based on the Kildosphere mythos I’ve been slowly accumulating in my addled brain.

Eye've Been Had

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 15:51:14 +0000

After three weeks of wearing glasses, I’ve been getting somewhat impatient to resume contact wear. To that end, my followup appointment came up yesterday. As expected, a topographical scan of my corneas revealed they have indeed reverted to some ideal state unencumbered by daily plastic assaults. The doctor described my eyes as a textbook example of healthy corneas, astigmatism and myopia notwithstanding. Apparently the contacts had been slightly flattening the surface, slightly suppressing my astigmatism by about one point.

Fuck You, Mario Kart DS

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:52:11 +0000

I’m actually pretty good at Mario Kart DS. Unfortunately I also get incredibly angry when the CPU controlled characters do cheap bullshit to win. I guess it finally got to me. One particular round, in a single lap, I was hit with no less than three blue shells. And that came after I was hit by two blue shells and two red shells almost consecutively. I reset the game. Almost immediately into my next attempt, I was hit by a red shell, and then whoever was behind me knocked me off a ledge.

Masochistic Resonance Imaging

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:37:22 +0000

Today I had my first MRI. As I type this, I still have the heart-monitor leads attached to my chest. I went to the [Cardiac Center* at The University of Chicago Hospitals expecting to be crammed unceremoniously into a tube for an indeterminate amount of time, but that would have been too easy. I got there early: around 10:15, not knowing how the pseudo-blizzard would affect The El. They decided to take me early, so through the magical portal of doom did I travel.

SQL (Doesn't) Server

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:34:54 +0000

SQL Server: pasty wad of absolute Shit, or revolting stream of projectile vomit? The world may never know. If you ever get a chance to play with SQL Server, for an amusing day of knee-slapping hilarity, do this: 1. Dance and frolic as you dump a remote table consisting of 10 million rows. 2. Skip and jump while copying the 90MB compressed dump to a remote server. 3. Raise a jocular toast as a BULK INSERT command does its work.

MyMyBox Eats Anus

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 17:14:21 +0000

I’ve tried being nice. I’ve sent multiple messages to their support email address. I’ve ignored the faults in the BlueShark pad I purchased and asked merely for a replacement connector cable. I even offered to purchase the replacement since it was probably damaged during shipping, regardless of how sloppily the pad was boxed. But now, after two months of essentially being ignored, I’ve resolved that MyMyBox must be destroyed! Why then, did it have to come to this?

Crustaceans are Dangerous

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 19:17:48 +0000

I’ve got a big bag of crabs here, and I am going to put them in my mouth. Oh yes! Incidentally, what the hell else would you do with tasty crabs? Someone on Rob’s Livejournal noted that he liked this better than Badger Badger Badger, so of course I had to see it for myself. Now personally I could subsist without a churning throng live crabs shredding the supple tissues of my mouth, but I suppose it could substitute as a unique method of toughening gums of nancy-boy wussies who cringe away from such manly activities such as chewing glass or gargling thumbtacks.

I've Got a New Lappy 486!

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 00:22:27 +0000

Note: for those of you who don’t get the title, please see Strongbad! Well, my new laptop finally arrived. Well, though I say finally, I only ordered it on Wednesday, and the company in New York shipped it that day. I certainly didn’t expect less than 48-hours without paying some kind of exorbitant fee, but here I sit configuring this mythical beast. I suppose I should review it at least a little.

Let's Fry Some Spam!

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:04:59 +0000

For a long time, I’ve been using Postfix as my mail server, and it has a pretty good reputation for reducing spam simply using various header and RFC checks. After throwing blacklists into the mix, and without any other tool such as SpamAssassin, I had reduced spam by roughly 80-90%. But that still meant about a dozen succeeded in reaching my inbox, and the ratio was slowly increasing thanks to the recent vast deluge of pump-and-dump scams, so I decided I needed a solution.

Innate Rights are Not Granted

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:35:06 +0000

Note that this meandering diatribe is in response to CipherPunk’s equally irrelevant non-sequitur. While an amusing anecdotal diversion, the situation only illustrates an irrelevant contrived conjecture disjointed from the reality of freedom. From a simplistic biological perspective, “fatherhood” is an artifice purportedly entwined within the evolution of human society. The machinations of beneficial circumstance notwithstanding, the circumspect sanctity of human existence is itself questionable. One could stipulate a blood donor’s “rights” concerning the recipient of his or her life-sustaining red fluid, for all the effort involved in sperm donation.

Body, Slightly Used, $5/OBO.

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 22:11:54 +0000

Frames: $100 Lenses: $380 The knowledge that 1.71 refractive-index plastic lenses cost more than a contact exam and frames: priceless. January marks the necessity to update my contacts for the yearly metamorphosis my eyes undergo. Apparently I’ve slipped two diopters since last year, confusing my eye doctor; people my age don’t have fluctuating vision and increasing myopia as a rule. So why did I mention my glasses, when everyone knows I clearly prefer contacts?

Gaming is Voracious

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 20:24:41 +0000

Rumors of my untimely demise have been greatly exaggerated. After the craziness of the holidays and the unending barrage of activities in and around the holidays, I merely needed a couple weeks to recuperate. Part of the blame rests with the fact I finally obtained the mother of all penis jokes, a Wii. As can be expected, I’ve been playing Twilight Princess. All in all, a very good game with an unusual dark undertone for a Zelda game.

Lost in Simplicity

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 02:30:35 +0000

Sometimes I catch a sliver of a phrase that contains within it a shard of true insight both innocent and intentional. It could be from a book, A song, an animated film, a graphic novel, someone on the street, or an unexpected observation from my rapidly unraveling mind. Regardless of the source, with each fragment a tiny piece of an infinitely overwhelming puzzle becomes imperceptibly clearer. It is melancholy of the purest sort, consuming and unapologetic in demanding my remaining attention.

Can't Play With My Wii

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 15:20:51 +0000

Well, my quest to obtain a Wii has failed utterly and spectacularly. How could this happen? With hundreds of thousands of these things circulating the country, why are they so unobtainable? Aside from the worthless cocks tying up systems in the pursuit of profit, I’m certain there are some supply-chain issues plaguing the undulating horror of Chicago. I got up early this morning thanks to my ever present alarm clock: the L train, took a shower, and killed some time to waltz down to the local Best Buy roughly twenty minutes before it opened.

Just Call Me Dr. Party Pants

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 01:49:07 +0000

Amanda, I won’t tell you not to worry over your mother, nor to break your vigil, though these past few weeks have been an unjust burden. Like the rest of your friends and family, I can hope for the best, and pray that is enough. Neither can I speak for her, though while I remained incoherent and delirious after my heart surgery, I was glad for the company. You’re doing everything right kid, just don’t go overboard.

Remember 'ol 1996

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 13:28:55 +0000

Side note: all I have to say about the recent elections is: thank $deity for the new era of sweet, sweet gridlock. We’ve finally turned the master valve for the broken water main of our Democracy. I’m not saying the Democrats are the harbingers of change, but I’m expecting the next two years to be blissfully silent, which is almost as good. Susan, if you could do me a huge favor and bring this to the Foss reunion, I’d greatly appreciate it and gladly repay with anything you ask.

Ben and Sam Play Tag

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 03:46:09 +0000

“See those things over there?” Sam asked, pointing down a surprisingly pristine sewer tunnel. Shadows lurched and shifted in a rolling mass, not quite yet exposed to the flashlight Sam sliced through the darkness. “Kinda.” Ben squinted where Sam was pointing. “What are they?” “Hell if I know. There’s a lot of ’em, they’re coming this way, and we’re in the God Damned sewers. You stay here and get autographs, I’m getting the hell out of here,” he quipped, already moving toward another open tunnel.

From My Apartment, I Stab At Me!

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:06:24 +0000

Well, I’m now all moved into my new apartment and all that remains is the laborious unpacking phase. I’ve got an RCN tech coming down tomorrow so I have internet access, and I’ve already managed to get my bedroom, bathroom, and the kitchen situated. I still have no couch, but I’m working on that, and I even have a small idea of how to arrange the front room so I can keep my preposterous collection of books.

Steel Shark!

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 21:23:34 +0000

Isn’t this a beautiful piece of equipment? I did a few songs to ensure full functionality, and it surpassed my every expectation. It’s so sensitive, I could breath on it. The arrows are indented just enough so it seems like an arcade pad. I removed an arrow to see how they were made, and found half an inch of plexyglass backed by felt. Not exactly the arcade design, but very impressive!

Sony Bologna

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 22:37:06 +0000

I’ve spent most of my time after work packing, but I did read an article about Sony today that raised my ire. Apparently global workforces are a great boon to industry, but if those same workforces import hardware at lowered costs, laws are mysteriously broken. Fancy that. Due to a series of lawsuits filed against Lik Sang, one of the biggest game and hardware importers has been forced out of business by none other than Sony.

Marathon Moments

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 23:39:53 +0000

Well, Ryan came down for the Chicago Marathon and all he wanted more than anything else was to qualify for the Boston Marathon. In order to do that, he had to run 26 miles in three hours and ten minutes. According to the electronic chip they assigned him, he ran it in three hours and twelve minutes. Even accounting for the extra minute Boston allows, Ryan’s time was still thirteen seconds too long.

Oops, They did it Again

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 00:53:22 +0000

It’s not as if I am a bastion of intellectual discourse devoid of base language, so I’ll start off with a hearty stream of rancid and inspired expletives. Fuck you, Dennis Hastert, and every piece of human filth in your general vicinity. This endless partisan bickering and self-righteous indignation is doing more harm to America than any terrorist in the history of mankind could imagine. Where was your fucking vitriol as gang violence, car accidents, and deadly stairwells all conspire against hapless American citizens?

Eaten by a Shark

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 23:26:59 +0000

I’ve been a bad boy… I heard of BlueShark GXG pads from MyMyBox last year and been keeping an eye on them for a while. Well, the version 2.0 pads came out recently and I read a few reviews that claim they’re much better than Cobalt Flux pads. I personally can’t wait until it gets here, though the fact it weighs 85 pounds is somewhat frightening. That’s freaking heavy, and it’s made of pure metal: no more wood!

The Packrat Game

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:17:34 +0000

I spent all Saturday packing, and have come to the realization that I have way too many books. So far, I have over 16 file-boxes just to wrangle my excessive book, video-game, and DVD collection. It’s definitely a good thing I’m divesting myself of possessions, because this is getting out of hand. I still have to pack the pantry, the kitchen, and my bedroom, but progress is steady. Sunday has been a laundry extravaganza, as I hauled four loads worth to the laundry-mat five blocks away.

Moving to Another Infinite

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 01:56:15 +0000

The moving has somehow already begun. I’ve managed to locate a new abode in the Lakeview area, and deposit gripped firmly in hand, I’ve procured movers and started the lengthy and arduous task of packaging my meager belongings. The management company appears excessively paranoid, perhaps even fanatically rabid when performing background and other sundry checks on prospective renters. What began as a simple rental application quickly escalated into a veritable gauntlet of eerily invasive and laughably obtuse hoops I leapt through in hopes of obtaining shelter.

Demo-Crazy!

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 16:16:43 +0000

Holy Shit! Keith Olbermann seems to be a Democratic version of Rush Limbaugh, but that video is scary. It also doesn’t help that the Republicans are now questioning the freaking Democrats about their silence on the Foley scandal not days after reports Republicans knew about Foley for years, possibly even a decade! I understand a party may want to retain power, but Jesus Tapdancing Christ this is absolutely inexcusable. Is nothing sacred?

What Dreams are Made

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 00:26:58 +0000

And you are faded, and I am gone. To this, answers flutter from within dark recesses unbound and belittled. I’d seek no relevance through the unkind sights or withering sighs, but for all masks hidden in our eyes. So in the glimmer, a stark contrast filtered through and through, is flown beyond oblivion. There were once wishes in the unbidden, sake for sale, and writ bold by sole and solitude. So the wavering visages of the ides walk, undaunted by rage or irony, slackened not by tidings of two and seven.

Old Goat at the Podium

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 00:41:13 +0000

I will never present a prepared speech. Should the opportunity ever present itself, I could not in good conscience immediately rush to a pad of paper to start weeks of planning and a proper outline. Memorized or read from a worn and curled deck of 3x5 index cards, my inteded sentiment, whether melancholy, uplifting, somber, nostalgic, or zany, would lack every iota of my spirit. I’ve been called many things: old soul, arrogant, intelligent, asshole, creative; each moniker I’m given seeks to define a sliver of my personality, while none are even remotely accurate.

I Once Was Found, But Now I'm Lost

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 02:00:09 +0000

I thought I could be stoic about all of this, but I can’t. This is all really severely depressing. It’s not the “you need surgery,” that I feared, but it’s not really much better. Suddenly the fact I have a man-made ventricular septum, and outer vessels confusing enough to baffle an entire cardiology department has gotten to me. I’ve grown accustomed to having an abnormal heart, but drugs reintroduce a visceral reality of mortality I don’t want to remember.

Hearts are Too Much Work

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 19:26:16 +0000

Well, I finally attended the follow-up for my initial heart evaluation at University of Chicago. According to Dr. McNally and the Echocardiogram reviewing physician Dr. DeCara, my left ventricle is slightly weakened, and both my tricuspid and mitral valves show minor regurgitation. To remedy the left ventricle, I’ve been placed on Enalapril which relaxes arterial walls and eases blood-flow to reduce cardiac workload. I already have low blood pressure, so I’m a little trepidatious; I already get lightheaded when I stand up too fast, hopefully I won’t have any fainting spells.

A Book Approaches: Action?

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 01:59:51 +0000

So long without an update, and with so much to cover, I don’t quite where to start. Well, I might as well begin with the first of August. Having gone so long without a vacation, and having just endured weeks of sweltering heat, the only possible involved immersing myself in water for an indefinite length of time: let there be water parks. Leading up to the first, Jen and I had researched dozens of possible scenarios in the Wisconsin Dells, finally deciding on Chula Vista thanks to a last-minute price special.

Homeless am I

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 22:30:09 +0000

Well, my real estate agent called me earlier today, and it’s official: random people now reside in my former domicile. What’s better, the state of Illinois and my bank both agree I have been swindled out of a deeded property merely by signing a few papers dictating “sale terms” or some such nonsense. I have been released to the winds, no longer obligated to maintain a small swath of dilapidated Americana.

Who Needs a Normal Heart Anyway?

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 12:16:19 +0000

Ah research. Research like this, I just don’t need. After looking into my surgical summary a bit more and joining the ACHA message boards, I have a better idea of what’s going inside under my sternum. So here’s what seems to be the full list, in alphabetical order: ASD: Atrial Septal Defect. Dextrocardia: My particular form is Isolated Dextrocardia. Situs Inversus Totalis (total inversion of all internal organs) is not present.

Owner of a Broken Heart

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 15:39:12 +0000

It’s about this time I must thank Jen for goading me into scheduling an appointment with an Adult Congenital Heart Defect specialist. To get ready for my appointment, I’ve been reading through all of the old medical records I hard forwarded from the hospital which performed my corrective surgery. After looking up nearly every other word, acronym, and abbreviation, I sincerely wish I’d done this sooner. The Boston Globe published a story on childhood heart defects in adults in 2005, and I can’t say I enjoyed what I read.

Comment Spam is Tasty

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 22:16:43 +0000

A couple months ago, I noticed my site getting spam posted as replies to news posts. On a whim, I checked this out and discovered over 200 spams posted in past comments so they didn’t show up on the front page. Nice to know my little site that gets barely any hits, using custom software mostly incompatible with other blog projects, is worth targeting. So I took the Brain Age route: anyone wishing to post comments in my site must be able to multiply or add two digits from one to nine.

Intended DS-aster

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 20:26:53 +0000

As of yesterday, I am the proud owner of a Nintendo DS Lite. Forever the victim of relentless advertising, I also acquired New Super Mario Brothers and Brain Age. I started this new foray into portable gaming by attempting to ascertain the chronological state of my dusty old gray-matter. I’m invariably certain initial playthroughs are not intended for evaluation purposes, as it placed me roughly between ancient and decrepit. I’m not yet 60, nor was I 48.

Go to Printers Row

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 18:35:40 +0000

Chicago’s annual book fair started yesterday. Jen and I had a great time trawling through stacks of books, and enjoying the wonderful weather that happened to grace the event. Jen especially was enamored with the presence of the infamous Ella Jenkins. Unfortunately Jen’s new camera was still a thing of wonder and unfamiliarity, so of course Murphy’s Law loomed ominously. Jen missed a rare opportunity to get her picture taken with Ella, simply because she forgot the Lithium battery for her new camera, at my apartment.

Diet Mojo

Tue, 30 May 2006 22:34:16 +0000

Please watch Sweet Misery - A Poisoned World. Yes, I know it’s old. Yes, I know it’s an hour and a half long. Watch it anyway. Oddly enough, Donald Rumsfeld was instrumental in pushing aspartame through the FDA. Makes me wonder what else is out there due to these kinds of shenanigans. The pivotal question on my mind: why not just research a new sweetener compound instead of covering-up research and forging ahead with a badly flawed compound?

The Meaning of Life

Sun, 21 May 2006 03:17:25 +0000

There are seven. Though my lucky number is nine, I know that there are seven. I know that you don’t care. I’m aware that the universe doesn’t care. There’s a level of animosity beyond eternity I’ve heard and seen in my dreams. But even those are obtuse and unintelligible, sequenced in not terrifying sights disfigured by unshackled rifts in the unsettling darkness. Those twisted visages masqued by vibrating blurs, twisting in jerks and immediate explosive movements turned lucid and split.

Car Bomb

Sun, 14 May 2006 17:57:47 +0000

Finally! My car is gone! Sure, I had to basically pay someone to take it, but I wasn’t having much luck otherwise, and simply getting rid of it saves me major cash. How much? I pay $415 monthly for the privilege of simply possessing the car. Then there’s the $160 per month just in case fee. I won’t count gas, because I haven’t filled the tank for three months; further proof a car is unnecessary in Chicago.

ACen 2006: Aftermath

Mon, 08 May 2006 20:08:27 +0000

Acen was fun this year, and aside from being extraordinarily tired, I’m none too worse for the wear. I have about two and a half hours of film to go through and encode, as well as a couple interviews with some interesting folks from Artist Alley. Unfortunately there were some issues this year I didn’t enjoy. I’ll begin by first noting the planning folks had to contend with the amazing Acen 2005 experience, which was very hard to top.

Tops and Tundras

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 02:39:14 +0000

There is no man on the mountain, no guru wise or otherwise experienced in the tumultuous rigors of life. Scouring the world through countless eons would reveal no monk or hermit overflowing with enough inner peace to admit True Knowledge. Here, there is only silence from beginning to end, Alpha to Omega, creation to oblivion. So speak the words on the Night’s Watch, that sense fretful questioning. Be those blessed with infinite abundance, so are they cursed equally complacent and unfulfilled.

They've Got Me!

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 22:02:38 +0000

There are currently a few fire trucks, police cars, and a helicopter outside my apartment right now. Not sure what’s going on, but it can’t be good… I’ll post more if/when I find out what the hubub is about. Update: It appears that the abandoned hospital next to my building is on fire. There’s some smoke coming out of some upper floor windows, and at least a couple firefighters are crawling around, as evidenced by the blue lights hovering inside.

It's Penguins All the Way Down

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 20:46:49 +0000

My 3-year-old laptop, until yesterday, was still running the pre-installed version of Windows XP. After years of upgrades, driver changes, codec updates, and so on, it was getting somewhat crufty. I decided: enough is enough, time to reinstall! Since I was formatting everything anyway, I figured it might be time to attempt installing Ubuntu on a laptop. It didn’t go so well. While Ubuntu itself installed with little effort, things started going badly when I tried getting my wireless card to work.

Embarrassing videos: Inquire Within!

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 15:09:40 +0000

I’ve finally posted some videos I took of myself playing DDR, and a bonus of Ryan totally pwning the machine at Miller Time Bowling. For those who haven’t seen me play in a while, yes I’m a lot better than you remember, and no I’m still not at my desired skill level. Until Tomorrow

Vehicular Homicide, Intarwebs, and Games

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:56:08 +0000

Ryan C., why oh why must you explain how sucky my car really is? Through the “Ditch My Car” adventure, I’ve done some research and found that the 3G Mitsubishi Eclipse GT has some design flaws, regardless of the build-quality. Here are a few Ryan found: 1. Warped front rotors. Sadly, warped roters with low miles are common, if not expected. Many owners claim they must be replaced roughly every 10k miles.

Domain Migration Complete!

Sun, 26 Mar 2006 17:54:45 +0000

You may have noticed that kildosphere has become… something else. I’ve retained a link that will forward visitors to this site, and after I develop a rudimentary management and display system, I’ll start working on content. I’ve already come up with a few pseudo-quotes to set the mood for a few chapters, so only time will tell how this goes. I’m not one for backwards compatibility, so while all the old content is here, anyone who had bookmarks will likely need to update them.

The Return of Chef!

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 22:02:55 +0000

Holy. Fucking. Shit. If you have ever liked South Park, or hated Scientology, tonight’s episode is a must see! Why? Because it’s so very, very wrong. Until Tomorrow

Every Little Thing

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 03:10:51 +0000

There is a time for poetry: words that wail of lost futures, pasts of fortune, pity and plight. There is even time for wonder, in the dawn, and in the night. But here, unbeknownst among those who falter and soar, is the answer. Sadly, even fortitude cannot avail perfection here. There is no soul in the hurry, or the serious, to lambaste the pace of wonder. It is a sad thing, that we rail against commonality of purpose.

Back to my Roots

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 23:37:01 +0000

After many years of presence on the web, I believe it’s time to return to my roots. For a few years, there was a kind old couple that used to babysit me who donated a nickname I haven’t used in a while: bones. It probably doesn’t take a lot of imagination to determine the source of that alias, but I admit it lends a certain aspect of nostalgia to my otherwise futuristic persona.

I have returned!

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 11:30:00 +0000

Not much to say here as of yet. I will be importing my LJ archives back into this system over the next week or so. New entries will of course, go here.

DDR Arcade Come To Me!

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 10:10:00 +0000

There seems to be a new DDR Pad on the market.Looks like it has some shiney metal corners, actual arcade sensors, and a welded steel frame.Ogg want!

Shadow of the Self

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 01:46:00 +0000

“Who is it?““You. For that is all it can be.““Surely not! Were I to speak so candidly to myself, I would be judged insane, and rightly so!““But I am indeed you. No malicious little troglodyte, I. Else I had a body of my own, I would dash it on the rocks.““What rocks? I see no splashing shore, no mountain ranges or precarious cliffs leading to the demise you wish to inflict upon ourselves.

Chicago: Killing Me Softly

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 21:35:00 +0000

I haven’t been keeping up with my journal very well, so few people know I’ve been “sick” for the past two weeks. Sick? About two weeks ago, I woke up with a really bad sore throat, strong enough that swallowing, yawning, and even hard breathing were painful. This continued for three days, until eventually I also started coughing. Oddly enough, I was coughing for no reason. Nothing was coming up, and no cough medicine seemed to work.

Google Video Is God

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 00:23:00 +0000

After messing around a little with Google Video for a while, just searching around, I found this.Now, what else can I really say? This is just pure awesome.

I Almost Forgot I Hate Chicago

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 15:57:00 +0000

So what do you do if you can’t easily escape a snowed-in parking spot, and you drive a truck? Well, drive right into the car behind you, of course! Just back waaaaay up, about three feet farther than necessary, and just let the bed of your truck scrape right along the hood of whoever is behind you. Then when you’re done, just drive away! All the cool kids are doing it.

Phone, Phone on the Range

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 22:08:00 +0000

Thanks to Verizon’s “New Every Two” plan and a $100 promotion, I just scored $200 off on my new RAZR bitches! Now maybe I’ll have a phone that doesn’t forget about daylight saving time whenever it’s off the network for 5 seconds. Don’t get me wrong, the LG-VX4400 is a pretty good phone, but it’s twice as thick as a RAZR, and weighs less.Other than that, I don’t have much to report.

Rubik's Revenge!

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:39:00 +0000

Well, I am now able to solve a Rubik’s cube in less than five minutes. I think with a little more practice, I can get faster; I just need to get more accustomed to how a cube moves, and the methods I use to solve it. About when this becomes second nature, I may learn the really fast ways of solving it, and see if I can get under a minute.

Asleep in the Hallway

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 01:10:00 +0000

There’s a channel in the road, of lies and deceit, and it is always there, in our eyes, in our minds. And so we cross the boundary, and so we walk along, For all that we have stolen, for all that we have won.See the world for nothing shaken, and the fires we always cry, and the shining dream of conciousness, sees the skies of witless sails.Fortune shining always encumbered, tales told of none and two, so I wonder always simply, silly styles gone out of tune.

Awaken

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 22:33:00 +0000

Through the dawn of night, In the dark of day, Do you stumble through the light, And mumble all the way?For all this, I don’t fear little voices echoing in cascading whispers through the shaded sunset. But the cackling oppressive insight threatening to forge insanity and uncertainty, wringing its hands gleefully, envisions a future swarming with plodding wretches, tainted and undone. The writhing Leviathan, composed of our blackest collaborations, is a charred and roasted thing fueled by souls bathed in unseelie creatures scampering through unsettling shadows of beasts far more disturbing.

Unreality Bites

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 22:53:00 +0000

I’ve skimmed reality for ages, hovering above solid shapes and substance. Senses are a shade of rift, cracked and disjointed in an ever-growing hallway of warped uneasiness. I am a creature of fear, immersed forever in writhing horrors given strength by my vivid and terrible imagination. So sounds cascade, the world perpetually filtered through distorting lenses, and everything so obviously improper, so wrong. My mind has rebelled against this mockery, tearing constantly at my resolve and steadily eroding away sanity already shrunken and lame.

Chicago, City in a Garden (of Maggot Infested Ruptured Badger Colons)

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 08:39:00 +0000

Through this whole move to Chicago, I’ve done my best to keep a positive outlook, even through a minor car accident and tickets every time I looked at a parking spot the wrong way. But you know what? FUCK CHICAGO First impressions count for a lot, and so far, this is what Chicago means to me, deep in my heart: Chicago, you are a bloated tick simmering in the steamy sphincter juices of a thousand syphilis-infected crack-whores.

Aggressive Assholes Always Advocate Automotive Annihilation

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 19:20:00 +0000

Well, I was driving to work this morning, and there was a white car behind me driving a little too close. This happens often in this area, so I didn’t really care much. The lane I was in started to slow down, so I flipped on my turn signal, looked to my left, saw nothing immediately in the way, and merged over. Unfortunately the white car behind me saw the same spot, and must have sped up really quickly and tried to get there before me.

Home is Where Your Something Something

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 19:29:00 +0000

This whole moving thing sure eats a lot of my time. I have signed a lease, and the best part about my new abode, is that it sits two blocks from a Metra stop, and one block from an El stop, so I can basically get anywhere in Chicago or its suburbs without my car. Better yet, I’ll be able to get to work in about twenty minutes. Turns out I will pay $875 per month for this apartment, which includes heat and water.

Chicago a Go-Go

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 20:05:00 +0000

Well, it’s been a little over a week living up in the Chicago area, and while I’m enjoying the new job, the commute is killing me. I’ve given up trying to buy a house up here, as values are ridiculously inflated, and my house hasn’t sold yet. I’m going to sell my car, and by the looks of things, I’ll be living in one of the better neighborhoods in Chicago: Andersonville, Lakeview, Lincoln Park, Wrigleyville, or maybe Gold Coast.

And Lo, There Was Stuff

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 19:22:00 +0000

First of all, I’m posting this entry in LiveJournal only temporarily. I don’t quite have a place to live yet, I don’t want to bother with the task of porting my rather crufty hack of a website to yet another hosting provider, and the DSL hosting my server is about to expire.It was an interesting day. The drive from Bartlett to Evanston is almost exactly an hour and a half, but I expected that.

Comet, We Hardly Knew Ye

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 14:43:04 +0000

I don’t really think I’ve ever felt this guilty for something I’ve felt forced into doing. Comet is now at the Scott County Humane Society awaiting adoption, and I wish there was some kind of alternative. Why is he there? A number of reasons, really. Since the day he started using the litter-box, he never quite got the hang of actually burying the evidence. And just a short month ago, I’ve found that he’s been pooping behind the water-heater and furnace, a very hard place to clean.

Enjoyable Annual Celebration of my Escape from the Wretched Womb

Sun, 18 Sep 2005 18:32:48 +0000

Today, I am a year older. Today, I enjoyed meatloaf and cheese-cake with some oatmeal peanut-butter no-bake cookies. Today, I watched a few eposides from the first season of Fraggle Rock I haven’t seen since I was five. Today, I pay no heed to the voices in my head begging me to fear the passage of time. Today, my age is equivalent to 28 cyclical revolutions of The Earth around The Sun.

Homeward Bound

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 09:56:26 +0000

No updates from me lately, that’s for sure! Why? Well, I’ve been busy trying to look for a place to live up North. Getting a new job was great, but now I have to sell my poor domicile… unfortunately there seems to be little interest in a weird looking raised ranch in late summer/early fall. And I really can’t even look for a place effectively until I know when I can move in!

Seriously, What the Hell is Wrong with People?

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 09:51:07 +0000

So far, I’ve been basically silent about the chaos going on in New Orleans. This however, sickens me. Seriously, what the fuck? What kind of worthless piece of human filth murders and rapes refugees? I fully support the response to this madness. Shoot at helicopters and boats delivering supplies and searching for survivors? Shoot at hospitals? I hope they find every single waste of oxygen perpetrating this heinous bullshit, and kills them with extreme prejudice.

My House + Me Asplode!

Sat, 27 Aug 2005 22:15:12 +0000

Today, My Real Estate agent came by and we discussed putting my house on the market on Monday. It was only on sale for a week before I bought it, so hopefully I’ll have the same luck selling it. To help facilitate this process, I spent three hours ripping up a strip of grass that’s up on a weird slant between my driveway and my neighbor so I can replace it with mulch and a few shrubs.

Take THAT Subspace!

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 18:06:29 +0000

After two weeks of anxious waiting, the kind folks Leapfrog Online have offered me a position as a DBA. They’ll be sending the paperwork via FedEx, and every bit of this seems ultimately surreal. Now all I have to do is sell my house, get a new place to live, transfer my insurance, and party until my head falls off! Woo freaking hoo!

Short Story: The Cliff

Sat, 20 Aug 2005 22:51:13 +0000

Note: I found this while searching through some of my old writing. I think I wrote it two and a half years ago, but I’m not quite sure. A slow wind caressed the night air, wisping through trees in a deliberate and focused delicacy. To those out that evening, it was a perfect setting for a long overdue escape into the wonderful breeze. The silence only broken by the snapping of dry twigs under the feet of two figures as they made their way through the old trail.

Gas = WTF

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:55:38 +0000

After watching gas prices here go up $0.40 in less than a week, all I have to say is this: And here I am with a car that runs on WTF.

Update Schmudate

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 21:11:47 +0000

Whoops! And I was doing so well for a while, too. Well, the DDR tournament last weekend went well. Ten people actually entered, though we had about five more people who showed up to give their support, and people were wandering in and out during the entire process. I have many pictures and a video of the last three matches and an exhibition game between Ryan and Darren that ended with Ryan getting a full combo on Paranoia Survivor Heavy.

Resu-may Take A While

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 22:36:51 +0000

Well, I’ve just started the long process of updating my resume site. It’s not perfect, but I like the new layout much better. As an added bonus, it’s also XHTML 1.1 valid! Take that, subspace! I still have a lot of work to do in the portfolio section, and I also plan on adding descriptive links to each of the major job duties I outlined–launching a historical account of everything my job entails.

ITG: Ouchy in the Bouffie

Mon, 25 Jul 2005 22:43:13 +0000

I’ve not discussed In The Groove as often as DDR, but to be fair, the game hasn’t been out long. Now that I’ve played every song and passed almost all of them on Hard, and a hand-full on Expert, I can say I’m pretty well acquainted with its offerings in terms of difficulty. Recently I’ve been replaying any song with a score of less than 90%, and finding that I’m almost always increasing the percentage by at least three percent.

Air Not Conditioning

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 16:41:59 +0000

So, my furnace started refusing to blow air into the house yesterday. I tried the usual: throw some breakers, try different settings on the thermostat, all to no avail. So I called a repair company to come fix it this evening. Sleeping last night in an 88-degree house was not fun. Apparently the blower motor had shorted out and took the furnace fuse along for the ride. So I got to pay for a service call, an hour and a half of labor, a new furnace fuse and mount, and a new blower motor, at the low, low cost of only $426.

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Sun, 17 Jul 2005 18:57:20 +0000

Before I begin, I’d like to set your mind at ease: this review contains no spoilers. It’s hardly even a review, in the strictest sense. For those who have read the book, and would like to discuss particulars, I’d be happy to do so through email. Otherwise, enjoy! You will hate this book. Though I only acquired it at Best Buy just yesterday and started reading around 10pm, I turned the last page just before 6pm this afternoon.

Losing My Mind: The Shift

Sat, 02 Jul 2005 20:51:21 +0000

When I was in sixth grade and living on Tanglewood Drive in Tacoma, I woke up one day and felt different. Puberty? No, that happened a while ago; my family has a long history of reaching that state of development very early. Truly, I only know it felt like a permanent activation of my fight-or-flight response system. How does one react when detached from reality by a impenetrable wall of chemical fortitude?

Go Go Power Bastards!

Thu, 23 Jun 2005 21:42:18 +0000

For those of you who tried visiting my website earlier, we had a 2-hour long power-outage here. As soon as the power came on, I rebooted everything and got it all running again. Unfortunately, regardless of the assurances Reiserfs gives for file integrity on an unexpected filesystem unmount, my Apache server mysteriously segfaults on all page requests. I just finished recompiling everything involved, and remain highly irritated that Midamerican Energy seems unable to keep the power working in the complete absence of inclement weather.

Recipe: Rice Pokridge

Wed, 22 Jun 2005 20:13:45 +0000

2c water 2c milk 1c Japanese calrose rice 4 strips bacon 2 large eggs 2 tsp vinegar 1 tsp sugar 1/4 tsp salt Wash rice in strainer until water runs clear. In 1-quart pot, bring water to a boil. Add rice. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 20 minutes. Cook bacon crispy, drain. Stir together vinegar and sugar, combine with cooked rice with wooden spoon. Add eggs, stir and allow to set for five minutes.

ITG: DDR On Crack

Mon, 20 Jun 2005 21:47:08 +0000

Last Tuesday, my preorder for In The Groove reached my humble abode. Having heard good things about this game, despite being tired, I shambled my decaying ancient carcass to a fan-driven version of DDR for a couple hours. Now, being a rather accomplished player with millennia of experience, I’d assumed the difficulty espoused by fans was as overblown as Bill Clinton’s penis. Not only was I horribly wrong, but my highly developed abilities were rendered irrelevant, outdated, and similar to a monkey executing spasm-laden flailing due to constant jabs from a cattle-prod.

Cordova, Deer, and DDR Craziness

Sat, 28 May 2005 19:07:18 +0000

Sometimes, I must wonder how things happen. Dustin, a guy from work with a Mustang Cobra, invited me down to the local dragstrip for an event called Midnight Mayhem to watch him race. After getting lost attempting to follow them, I managed to get directions and arrive around 12:15. Hundreds of people were there, and easily a hundred cars were all lined up to pair off at the drag strip. I didn’t have any idea this would be such a huge event.

Pictures of Polishing Aftermath

Sun, 08 May 2005 15:02:53 +0000

I didn’t promise images, but here they are anyway. I really wasn’t making up the reflective nature of my car: Let’s start with a simple picture of everything in profile. Looks pretty normal from here, right? Looks like a cloudy day, and there are some trees behind my house, so sayeth the hood of my car. Here’s the mirror housing. Black things should not reflect color… this is just wrong.

Kids, Don't Try This At Home

Sat, 07 May 2005 23:54:15 +0000

So, I washed my car. Well, saying I washed my car doesn’t nearly illustrate the grueling procedure both I and my vehicle have undergone in the last two days. Here’s what transpired: The Wash The whole process started with scrubbing my car with Dawn. Yes, that Dawn, the stuff normally used for washing dishes, and could probably be used as an engine degreaser. Why? Because that’s what the instructions told me to do.

Dimensional Travel Successful!

Thu, 05 May 2005 19:35:58 +0000

I believe I’ve been living in a strange bizarro world for the past few days. In the last week or so, five people from work have been in a car accident of some kind. The first involved stopping to avoid an accident on I74, which of course caused them to be rear-ended by a lady on a cellphone, and sideswiped by a truck avoiding the person who stopped in front of him.

Recipe: Chili Goooolash

Mon, 02 May 2005 20:16:58 +0000

2lb Lean Ground Beef 30oz Chili Beans in sauce 15oz Black Beans 2 boxes Kraft Macaroni & Cheese 15oz Tomato Sauce 6oz Tomato Paste 1/4c Milk 2tbsp Worcestershire Sauce 1tsp Rosemary Leaves 1tsp Ground Pepper 1/2tsp Garlic Powder In 6-quart pot, add ground beef, Worcestershire sauce, rosemary, garlic and pepper. Brown and simmer five minutes; drain. Cook macaroni noodles, set aside cheese mix. Combine cooked beef, cooked macaroni, cheese mix, milk, beans, tomato sauce, tomato paste.

Me DBA, Me Smart!

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 22:29:37 +0000

Well, I took part in a phone screening today. I was called by a company that needs a guy with Oracle experience. I figured I knew the basics: stored procedures, tablespaces, rollback segments, etc., so there shouldn’t be much to worry about. I certainly didn’t expect questions such as, “What does a ORA-3113 error mean?” This was followed quickly by “What are some specific Oracle supplied PL/SQL packages you may have used in stored procedures?

Nostalgia Extravaganza!

Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:43:07 +0000

Now face North Think about direction Wonder why you haven’t Now stand in the place where you work Now face West Think about the place where you live Wonder why you haven’t before * Last night, I reminisced of days long past, the vivid clarity of which highly disturbed me. Whether it was the day I manually dug moss out of our grass while we lived in Fircrest in 1995, or Christmas morning in 1984, I’m overwhelmed by both a sense of loss and elation.

Clean Cars Cause Crashes

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 14:59:10 +0000

After recently washing my car, I noticed quite an abundant population of bug carcasses stubbornly littering my supposedly scrubbed vehicle. There really is only one permanent way to rectify this. I’ll freely admit I haven’t clayed my poor car since right before winter. I’d hoped waxing would contribute in preventing random garbage from adhering to the paint. The situation really calls for something a little more drastic. Zaino is widely regarded as the best polish ever.

Rice Cookers

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:04:19 +0000

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of studying. It seems like my head is constantly embedded in various database manuals, and my ears ring with incessant babbling of Japanese audio lessons. Motto yukkuri hanashite, kudasai. Within all of this, I’ve finally located a really good rice cooker to better facilitate healthy eating: Zojirushi ns-zcc10. This thing is widely regarded as the Cadillac of rice cookers, the only thing better is the ns-zbc18, but they only sell a 10-cup version of it, and I don’t foresee a need for that much rice.

Chicago, Databases, More

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 23:13:55 +0000

Well, I spent yet another good weekend with Jen up in Chicago. While there, Jen decided to introduce me to the wonders of Fry’s Electronics. We must have wandered around that cornucopia of whimsical gadgetry for four hours, witnessing all things from Zener diodes to anime. While meandering aimlessly between towering racks stuffed with empty computer cases and vacuum sealed astronaut food, I acquired a 1GB Sony flash drive for $70 without any rebates.

Be Safe, Citizen!

Thu, 14 Apr 2005 11:08:42 +0000

Here we see our government doing everything it can to stop terrorism. Boy, I bet those filthy vermin threatening our planes with Zippos are quaking in their boots. Personally, I believe this doesn’t go far enough. For maximum safety, clothing should be banned, and body-cavity searches mandatory, for all mass-transit. Passengers should also be incapacitated to prevent possible physical violence, stuffed into sterilized Safety-Bags(tm) equipped with breathing apparatus, and inserted into Safety-Compartments(tm) in lieu of seats.

Teaching In Japan

Wed, 06 Apr 2005 12:28:41 +0000

Bettina, one of the people in the Anime Club in these here parts, gave me a link today that I just have to share. I am a Japanese Schoolteacher This is of course, the continuing story of an American in Japan, relating his Gaijin experience. All I can say after reading it, is that it’s a shame his Gaijin Perimeter didn’t protect him from all of those Kancho attacks. On that note, I looked into doing the JET Program about a year ago, but dismissed it due to having a girl here in the states.

April Fool's Day!

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 14:18:22 +0000

For everyone that didn’t figure it out, I’m not really going to seminary. Could you really imagine me in such an environment? While I imagine the experience would be enlightening, and I’d probably learn volumes about the past, insanity would undoubtedly follow. To make up for scarring your psyche for the duration of your lives, I offer this flash game as a means of atonement. My top score is 1708, tell me if you get something higher.

Quitting For A Higher Purpose!

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 09:08:03 +0000

Well… Becky’s endless wheedling has ultimately convinced me to go back to school. Though my thoughts to this end have thus-far been minimal, the seemingly endless cascade of C&G; alumni turning a blind eye to the working world has piqued my curiosity. Obviously there is some ubiquitous and intangible force directing us to the obsidian oblivion that is academia. In an effort to embrace this trend head-on, I plan on taking it a step further.

In The Paper: Again

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 08:18:32 +0000

Take that subspace! I’m fameous! Seriously, this is good exposure for DDR, the QCDDR group, and Augustana’s club. Yay!

See The Shiny!

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 20:18:15 +0000

Need I say more?

Lance's Last Goodbye

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 22:37:52 +0000

Well, Lance has finally gotten another Job, where he’ll likely get a lot more respect, and hopefully a little more happiness. To celebrate, TownNews had a little party at Miller Time Bowling. While I was there, I decided to play a few rounds of DDR. Most of those games were pretty average, but two things were finally different. First, I finally got a Full Combo on V Heavy, and second was a long awaited A on Sakura Heavy.

Evolution Schmevolution!

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 09:22:16 +0000

Capitol bill aims to control â€˜leftistâ€™ profs I really am at a loss of words on this one… Apparently Darwin was filthy leftist communist scum. Now Florida has established that believing in science is â€œone biased view by the professor, who as a dictator controls the classroom.â€ Thanks guys! While you’re at it, why not question the validity of gravity, and finally put down that rumor that the Earth revolves around the Sun?

Cobalt Flu... HOLY CRAP!

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 20:40:05 +0000

On a whim, I just decided to check my order status over at Cobalt Flux. Do my eyes deceive me? Does the status say Awaiting Shipment? I ordered on the 12th, so now I’m curious to see if they can manage to get the pads to me before the 26th, to make it an even two weeks from start to finish. Maybe by the time they get here, I’ll actually be healthy… Not one week after getting over a cold, I have another one.

Gentoo Authors, Sometimes You Suck

Fri, 18 Mar 2005 16:07:34 +0000

So, today my website bit the big one. My fault? I wish. Seems that the Gentoo Apache2 maintainers decided to redo the entire configuration directory structure without really telling anyone. I followed through with what I thought was a normal upgrade, and magically Apache wouldn’t start anymore. Not only did they change where the config files were, they combined two of the files themselves, and modified how modules and virtual hosts were loaded.

Zombie Master, I

Thu, 17 Mar 2005 10:42:52 +0000

Estimated Survival Time: Indefinite

Mom's Da Bomb

Thu, 17 Mar 2005 10:24:31 +0000

So, mom has started looking for a job more in the Midwest area, so she’s been sending out inquiries to various Bed and Breakfasts, because that’s apparently what she does now. Her letters were a little too informal, so I suggested this (names have been changed to protect the guilty: I found your beautiful inn while doing an internet search on classic Midwest bed and breakfasts. I absolutely love the spiral staircases, and the decorations you have made to transform a lodge into a wonderful respite.

Oh Yeah, I Went There

Wed, 09 Mar 2005 05:51:29 +0000

Seeing this, would you want to be 125 years old? And probably the funniest Zero Wing spoof I’ve seen in a while: http://newgrounds.com/portal/view/222458 And now we bring you back to your regularly scheduled website. Until tomorrow.

Dizzy A Go Go

Wed, 02 Mar 2005 04:52:11 +0000

Wondering where I’ve been? I’ve been sick for the past few days. Actually I’m still sick, but I’m well enough to leave bed for long periods of time. Friday, I drove to the Chicago area to spend some time with Jen, since I haven’t been there for a while, and apparently Ryan missed me. We had dinner at Heaven On Seven, a restaurant known for having spicy Cajun food. I tried my luck with their Cajun Stir Fry, which was on their specials menu, and didn’t have a hot pepper next to the item description, so I assumed it was safe to eat.

For It Takes Me

Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:33:44 +0000

As I leap fom the bounds of wake, and wanton lies. In the sea of desperation awaiting forever dreams. There is a fountain of shallow seas, drifting ever through the arc of time and life asunder. Though I walk not in time forsaken, I drink of the wonders in my eyes. Speak, and hear spiraling fortitude, or naught but sentient rambling. In as wonders, carelessly strewn from a heart of terror; maybe I seek another.

Question This Theocracy!

Wed, 23 Feb 2005 15:54:29 +0000

Having recently finished reading The Da Vinci Code, I was wondering about some of the research Dan Brown alluded to, which provided the bulk of his material. After reading around for a while, the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail was mentioned frequently, as was Foucault’s Pendulum. A few quick moments on Amazon.com brought me a hardcover copy of each. To get my order above $25 for free shipping, I also picked up a copy of Quicksilver, to start my journey along The Baroque Cycle.

A Day Apart

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 13:55:07 +0000

This Valentine’s Day, Jen and I enjoyed many aspects of the overly commercialized holiday, and I for one feel no guilt for this. This last Christmas, Jen had been pointing out Taiko Drum Master for various reasons. I took this opportunity to diverge from pedestrian gifts of flowers and candy, and bought her an amusing Japanese drum simulator. The next part was more difficult. I had been racking my brain for a good restaurant we haven’t yet sampled.

Miller Time Is Teh Ghey

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 15:38:48 +0000

Well, with Ryan in town on the 5th, it made sense to have some DDR craziness at Miller Time. The Augustana people showed up, and it was going to be a grand old time. Cue annoying little kids. Now, we’re used to annoying little kids, it’s just a fact of life in an arcade. Sure, they run around on the pads, sometimes while people are actually playing. Sure, they often hit or climb machines, sometimes breaking them.

DDR and Anime Is All I Ever Do

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 15:31:57 +0000

Wow! DDR night was awsome! Six new people showed up, and three are fairly new players. If anything, the Machine seems to be selling itself. If only I had remembered to bring the DDR shirts, I could have unloaded sold a couple more. Another good anime night as well! Drew actually managed to show up for the first time in a billion years. We finished off Excel Saga, which is probably the second most wacky anime I’ve ever seen.

Insulation Station

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 22:05:39 +0000

Well, the garage is done. I don’t know how long it took them, just that I got home around 5:20, and my garage smelled slightly of pine-sol, and the door looked different. The rails look much better, and having the front-mounted spring removes a lot of the bulk from the old system. Heck, they even swept the floor. I couldn’t find the bill they said they’d leave for me, so I’ll have to call tomorrow and ask about that.

Ga-RAGE

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:19:06 +0000

Well, finally fed up with my garage having a 1" gap at the bottom of the door when it closed, I tried loosening the tension wires that were being overtightened by the cold weather. Bad idea. Now my garage won’t open at all, thanks to the lack of a counterweight. My car is now stuck in the garage. Fun! I’ve been meaning to get a new door (an insulated one that closes all the way, damn it!

Geek Be Me

Thu, 13 Jan 2005 11:41:51 +0000

Well… don’t that just ruin my day. ^_^

Lazy Holidayzie

Tue, 11 Jan 2005 14:50:52 +0000

Now that the holidays are over, and I’m finally sober enough to update my website, this is going to be a long post. Please feel free to go get a cup of coffee, bring world peace, and cure cancer while you take breaks from reading. Christmas As usual, I spent Christmas with Jen’s family. One thing I really like about this time of year is the sheer amount of food I was forced to ingest on a regular basis.

Over The River And Through The Woods...

Tue, 07 Dec 2004 17:40:05 +0000

… To The Hospital, We Go. What I thought was mere indegestion turned out to keep me awake all of Monday night, so I assumed it was something worse. The answer was both yes and no, apparently. I’d gone to work, intending to make a stop later in the day to Illini Convenient Care to get a prognosis. Unfortunately shortly after getting to work, I became dizzy, nauseous, turned sheet-white, and went into cold sweats.

DDR A GoGo

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 12:04:30 +0000

Lots of stuff on the DDR front, today. First of all, my artist has sent me the final logo a day after Thanksgiving! With this logo, I created fliers I am going to try and post around the area, at Colleges, High Schools, and so on. I’ve also ordered 25 T-shirts with the logo as a 8"x10" print on the front. By the looks of things I may have a couple left, but it’s always better to order more than necessary.

Shopping List

Sun, 21 Nov 2004 16:43:31 +0000

Wow… I woke up at 2:30pm today. I must have been way behind on my sleep. Anyway, some people keep hounding me over what I’d been looking for, for Christmas. Well, in an effort to make this possible, I stopped buying things for myself this month, and instead added it to a list I will now share with you. I’m almost done with Christmas shopping for other people, so this post should result in all Christmas-related details being finished.

Finances and Fun Pantses

Wed, 17 Nov 2004 22:28:30 +0000

Well, I’m almost done with my Christmas shopping. I’m not falling for that “Right Before Christmas Sale!” crap this time. I also re-financed my car; finally realizing that I’m not likely to sell my beautiful baby, and that $550 a month is far too much to pay. One of my student loans will be paid off next month, and the fridge and stove are now also paid off. Combined with the $140/month I’m saving on the car, I now have $350 extra every month so I can actually start saving money again.

Servers In The Sky

Thu, 11 Nov 2004 15:15:01 +0000

If you are reading this, welcome to the Dual PIII-850 in my basement. My setup was successful, and I can now fire my old hosting provider csoft.net. The new server is based on Gentoo, running among other things: djbdns Name server software which offers a $100 bounty on any submitted security exploits that has yet to be claimed. The author apparently emulates a gyrating penis, but being an asshole hardly affects code quality.

2004 Elections - It's Over

Thu, 04 Nov 2004 00:48:43 +0000

Well, the 2004 presidential elections are over. The dust has settled, the towel has been thrown, and aside from a few provisional and absentee ballots, George Bush remains the President of the United States. Though I voted for Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party, I had secretly hoped John Kerry would win the election itself. Though voting for one candidate and desiring the success of another appears contradictory, my reasons will be made clear in the next few days.

This is Halloween!

Sat, 30 Oct 2004 23:17:48 +0000

All Hallows Eve sweeps upon the world, dread and horror, chaos and fear. Perhaps to many, a commercialized source of confectionaries, a call for costumes and door to door begging. Such banality has no place on Halloween, where costumes transform imagination into manifestations of horrible, strange, macabre, exotic, weird and wonderful. As the celebrations commence, a weekend of enjoyment, parties large and small flourish on the glammer that comes alive with the intangible and unexplained.

Anime Reactor 2004 - The Short Version

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 18:34:08 +0000

Well, I’m back from Anime Reactor, and I have to say that this convention has a much higher ratio of cosplayers to regular atendees than any other con I’ve been to. Counting Friday and Saturday, I easily took over 100 pictures, of which at least 80 are of cosplayers. I know I didn’t get all of them, and some were photographed multiple times, but that’s still a huge number for a con this new and relatively small.

Anime Iowa: It's Over!

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 13:26:41 +0000

Well, I went to Anime Iowa again this year, held almost an entire month after the usual date. It was three days of craziness, lack of sleep, and anime overload, but I enjoyed it anyway. Be sure to read my writeup of the whole shebang. I took more pictures this year, thanks to my ability to forsee the future and bring two extra sets of batteries I never had to use.

The Pad Be Done!

Mon, 06 Sep 2004 19:56:14 +0000

Well, it took all of sunday, but the pad is finally done. For months, I had the frame just sitting in my basement, because I figured it would take forever to put the arrows together and get it all tested and soldered together. I was right, but the final product is worth my prodigious effort. I took pictures of the whole process, each piece in a step-by-step manner, so I can do a writeup and share the design with everyone who wants to make use of it.

Down With The Deluge!

Sat, 28 Aug 2004 21:33:44 +0000

Pick your eyes off of the floor, my site has been slightly revamped. Likely, this isn’t the final version, but it’s a start in the right direction. Thanks to CSS1 and some CSS2, I’ve highly simplified the underlying HTML code for everything you see here. The design still seems a bit simplistic to me, so expect more changes in the future. Well, my venerable old microwave I’ve relied on since ‘99 has finally kicked the bucket.

Days Long Past

Mon, 23 Aug 2004 22:10:42 +0000

I can’t really say why, but sometimes memories confront me. I was once a creature of nostalgia, frittering away many hours thinking about decisions I’ve made, sometimes life itself. Lately though, that once defining characteristic of inner exploration has been absent. Why? Who knows. Truthfully it doesn’t matter. It’s not hours of pointless contemplation I really want - just the truth. This time, I thought back to my time in Elementary School: fourth grade to be exact.

It's all too much!

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 17:39:14 +0000

Ah, but what a wonderful weekend it was. Fresh from the elation that my story had made it to the papers, I’d driven off to see Jen in the wonderful Chicago suburbs. I didn’t realize just how wonderful these suburbs were until Saturday afternoon, when we drove up to Schaumburg for some overdue shenanigans. There, I experienced my first taste of Chipotle, and many grueling hours of zombie killing, and DDR at Gameworks.

DDR In The News!

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 10:32:27 +0000

Well, now I’m famous. Looks like the article I’ve been waiting for, for the past three weeks, has finally been churned out of the Quad City Times. Props to the author of the article, Kelly Steuck, whom I work with at TownNews.com. Never thought I’d be in the paper for anything but my obituary in 287 years, but this certainly works! Better yet, it’s great exposure for the QC DDR group I started about a year ago.

Leviathan - Story Time

Fri, 30 Jul 2004 22:27:16 +0000

Before I get to the “story”, I’d like to say that it was inspired by a post on Kuro5hin.org a kind of moderated internet commune where this story was posted about the history of the American school system as written by a former New York Teacher Of The Year. You can find the text of the book on John Taylor Gatto’s site. Whoever submitted the story to Kuro5hin couldn’t fully relate the idea of Leviathan, so I helped him out.

Aftermath Of The Burnination

Thu, 01 Jul 2004 22:58:59 +0000

What, you mean my housewarming was over on Monday and I’m just now doing the writeup? Quiet you! If I needed that kind of criticism, I’d raise Sam Kinison from the dead and ask him to insult me for an hour. Yes, I’m a lazy, dirty, and evil man - but be that as it may, the party was great! It all started on Friday. I remember it all now. I was sitting in my comfy chair, resting from a long day of eating babies, when I realized I’d foolishly invited people to burn things at my house.

AAA? No way!

Tue, 15 Jun 2004 08:38:05 +0000

I figured I’d spend some time to get a AAA rating on some light songs, since my feet hurt too much to play standard or heavy for a few days. I managed to get five AAA’s yesterday. The last one took over an hour and drove me nuts, forcing me to play it over and over again after continuously scoring 1 great. It doesn’t help that my pad’s right arrow is flickering, but oddly enough, the single great I kept getting was never in the same place, nor caused by the flickering arrow.

Becky: Wanton Slut

Wed, 09 Jun 2004 17:47:12 +0000

For this latest rant, I’d like to quote a letter forwarded to me by my former friend Becky, who apparently believes it’s fine to entice men into sinful thoughts. Please note that I have enhanced the letter somewhat to provide appropriate descriptions for certain key words. Dear Becky: I don’t really feel right about sending you this message but I felt it still needed to be aired. I have a boyfriend who attends one of your classes at Eden and I have learned that he has repeatedly been distracted by your appearance.

Quick Updatedness

Tue, 08 Jun 2004 21:54:03 +0000

Becky forwarded me an amusing letter from someone dating a seminary student at Eden. I had a little fun with it. No harm, no foul, right Becky? ^_^ Jen applied for a job at a school in Mokena, IL. They called her this morning and she accepted with much excitement. I was the first person she called! Yay! I’ve accumulated something like 600 songs for Stepmania, a computer version of DDR so I have a slightly more portable setup with many more songs than the PS2 version has.

I'm The 4th!

Wed, 02 Jun 2004 22:34:08 +0000

Who would have thought I would get good enough at DDR to place in a DDR tournament? I certainly didn’t. Regardless of my own thoughts on the matter, my haphazard ambling was coordinated enough to garner 4th place. I watched the couple dozen other players, and from what I could tell, I should have placed 5th. One of the better players just had the misfortune to be pit against the 1st and 2nd place winners early in the tourney.

A/C Go Boom

Wed, 12 May 2004 23:44:34 +0000

Fuck. My central air bit the big one a couple days ago, and I figured it would be a simple matter of calling the home warranty people and asking them to come out and fix it. I couldn’t have been more wrong if I’d spent five hours getting a Girl Scout high on crack, only to sell her into a seedy prostitution ring for a single delicious triscuit. I only wish I had access to a tasty cracker in turbulent times like these.

I'm A Lumberjack and I'm OK!

Wed, 28 Apr 2004 22:33:22 +0000

Yes, this update is two weeks late, but what can I say? The important thing is that I played the part of a lumberjack a couple weeks ago. Why is this? Last November, a big storm swooped down and knocked a tree down in my yard and it rained almost every day until the snow started. Not exactly ideal for chopping up a tree. So I figured I would wait until spring, and it looks like my plan worked!

Malnutrition Is Fun!

Wed, 07 Apr 2004 10:58:29 +0000

Recently a friend from work submitted a dietary plan to a former Mr. Universe who happened to be visiting his health club. If I were to do the same with my old plan, Mr. Universe’s first question would most likely be, “Are you on a diet?” After my invariable answer of “no”, Mr. Universe’s head would surely explode into tiny little bits. My tendancy to adhere to the traditional 3-meals a day, avoiding empty calories like pop, placed my average daily caloric intake at around 1500 calories.

Success!

Tue, 30 Mar 2004 01:08:02 +0000

It’s not So Deep, but Tsugaru has fallen! It took a few tries, and it’s not consistant quite yet, but I got an A on that damn thing. Tsugaru is one of the harder 9-footers, otherwise known as Catastrophic difficulty. I’ve gotten A’s on other 9-footers, but this one is an utter bitch. So Deep is harder yet, if only due to the sheer level of stamina required to finish it at full speed.

DDR Till Ya Puke

Thu, 25 Mar 2004 22:04:47 +0000

Well, my trip down to the Coral Ridge Mall went splendidly. I arrived around 12:30, others showed up between 1:30 and 2:30, many of which were great crowd pleasers, especially the girl who managed to AA and FC So Deep. I should also mention that she did this while wearing heavy Hot Topic black pants, and a black shirt, all while not breaking a sweat. Scary. The guy I came to play with started off with doubles and almost pulled off a 10-footer as his final doubles song.

Pounds Of Printers

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 00:06:28 +0000

On a bit of a whim, quite possibly brought about by lack of sleep, heavy drinking, and a sharp blow to the head, I purchased a printer from eBay. Normally this would be cause for concern! Such a risky lapse of judgement usually results in waking up next to an ugly transvestite who promises to be a good wife. Luckily for me, instead of an exotic VD, this time I only got a really good deal.

On Writing

Wed, 28 Jan 2004 23:53:29 +0000

Sometimes, a book comes along that seems to redefine the very concepts of fiction. As an author, Dan Simmons was a veritable unknown to me until fairly recently. In the past few months, I’ve read four books that attempt to outline humanity and the nature of the universe itself. Up until now, I would have said my favorite author was Frank Herbert of Dune fame, or possibly George R. R. Martin with his yet unfinished Song of Ice and Fire series.

Final Fantasy X-2: A Review

Fri, 16 Jan 2004 06:42:24 +0000

Final Fantasy X-2, the latest offering from Square-Enix (formerly Squaresoft) could make a seventy eight year old strung-out five dollar whore jealous of the pure level of suck it has managed to accomplish. Considering I actually enjoyed Final Fantasy X, playing the sequel is like feeding my massive wang into a meat grinder and slowly turning the handle for hours while pouring a mixture of salt and battery acid on the festering wound, then lighting the resulting chum on fire and serving the flambe to my mother for her birthday.

So Deep Makes Baby Jesus Cry

Wed, 14 Jan 2004 16:25:21 +0000

Please, take a look at: this crazy crap. This song has what the DDR community commonly refers to as gallops. Not just any gallops, but 1/16th note gallops through the entirety of the song. For a minute and a half, a player has to somehow pound out nearly 500 steps - that’s over five steps per second. I’ve been playing for a while, as my overly large calves will attest, but I can barely keep up with this song in training mode at a speed setting of 1 out of 5.

Holidays and Holidonts

Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:01:46 +0000

The holidays have finally spent themselves in a turgid eruption of parties, family gatherings, and prodigious amounts of ruptured corpses littering the streets, hemorrhaging a chunky sludge of turkey, potatoes, stuffing, and gravy. Though I did succumb temporarily to the sweet beckoning of various confectionery and caloric temptations, my unbreakable DDR addiction has kept everything under control. Jen has once again fed my video gaming addiction with Final Fantasy X-2. Though it was off to a rocky start due to the complete lack of an introduction to the story.

Spamus Interruptus

Fri, 28 Nov 2003 11:38:44 +0000

A few years ago, an eccentric post graduate was mindlessly tossing four or five credit card applications, an entire newspaper worth of local fliers, and seven announcements that he’d already won a million dollars, into a precarious heap looming menacingly over the couch. The history of the internet was written that day, as he unwittingly sat down under the comfortable shade offered by the seemingly innocuous pile of otherwise useless envelopes and inky print stock, prompting a torrential cascade to wash over him.

All moved!

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 17:17:28 +0000

Ah yes, I’m finally there. Great thanks to all those who helped me move! Now that I’ve found them, I’ll be writing thank-you cards ASAP. Now all I have to do is remodel the kitchen and bathroom, fix the heating vent in the master bedroom, and find some curtains that don’t look like ass. I think to help me in this endeavor, I’ll buy some home design software and spend some time tweaking this house to what it should be.

Closing On The Move

Mon, 13 Oct 2003 22:38:47 +0000

Aha! Closing day has come and gone. I was still sick on the 7th, so it was pretty irritating coughing while trying to sign all that crazy paperwork. They kept asking if they could get me something to drink. Grr. I still have a cough, but it’s going away slowly. I want to know what the hell I got, because it’s two weeks later and I’m just now getting over it.

Hectic Times Arrive

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 21:06:52 +0000

First off, I had a great birthday. I have aquired from a wonderful individual, GTA: Vice City, and season three of Family Guy. Who would have thought an elementary school teacher could be so subversive? The party I threw for myself on the 20th of September was also a nice relaxing bit of fun. Justin made an appearance, as well as Patrick and his girlfriend Sara – and of course, Jen.

Anime Iowa and House News!

Thu, 11 Sep 2003 23:11:07 +0000

Man am I lazy. Anime Iowa was back in August and I just wrote the writeup for it yesterday. But I did it. I found a house and made an offer. It’s a two story with no basement and a garage in the first floor, has a huge double and a half lot with trees around the whole back yard. The second story has a balcony and deck that overlooks the nice forested back yard, and it looks great.

Back On Fire

Sat, 16 Aug 2003 18:10:42 +0000

No, literally… That huge lump-thing on my back that I noticed two years ago is apparently Dermatofibroma which is completely benign. But I had it removed anyway just out of spite. ^_^ So of course, now I have a inch long set of stitches down part of my back while it heals. Ouch. I haven’t gotten much sleep lately since it’s on the side I usually sleep on. I guess I never think these things through very well.

Home on the mange.

Wed, 16 Jul 2003 15:07:28 +0000

Well, I think I’ve finally lost it. In the interests of saving a whole chunk of change in taxes, and to ride out the economy, I’m going to be buying a house in the QC area. Yeah, I hate the Quad Cities, but this is about saving money, my friend. Since Becky is moving out to go to seminary soon, I realized my rent would shoot up to $575 a month.

Why do I keep hurting myself?

Mon, 30 Jun 2003 21:49:57 +0000

Well, three torrid days of reading later, and I can say that the latest Harry Potter book has been quickly consumed. Now I just have to wait three years until the next one comes out. Hahaha. On the DDR front, I’m going to have to stop for a couple weeks. It appears I’ve irritated a tendon in my right foot, and it hurts to walk now. I think what I’ll have to do when it heals, is build a metal DDR pad so I can wear shoes and play - so my feet don’t take so much direct impact.

No DDR, Quad Cities? Fuck you!

Sun, 22 Jun 2003 09:22:36 +0000

After a recent and invigorating game of paintball, I had decided to further punish my poor body by finding an arcade in the area that had a Dance Dance Revolution machine. Before I really get into this, let me say that I live in The Quad Cities. An otherwise average part of the Midwest, it’s also the home of more road construction than any city I’ve ever seen, even those with populations ranging in the millions.

Paintball woes.

Sun, 22 Jun 2003 03:30:07 +0000

He crouched silently behind the tree, scanning the open spaces between scattered derelict barrels, dirty tractor tires jutting weirdly from the ground, and haphazard logs. The steady patpatpat of pressurized guns came from all directions. Suddenly the slim cover, peppered by a hail of incoming fire, became a liability; it was time to move. Where to go? A rough wall of logs on the right looked inviting, but could he make it there safely?

The weekend approacheth!

Thu, 19 Jun 2003 23:39:29 +0000

So, somehow I got roped into a paintball game on Saturday. Never done it before, but it should be fun anyway. There’s going to be over a dozen of us on a few acres at a reserved paintball area, but I don’t really know much else. Hah. Last weekend, I got a basic API written for the World Domination site. I was thinking of writing it in C or Ada, but I settled on PHP for now for a rapid development cycle.

OUCH

Mon, 09 Jun 2003 00:52:31 +0000

Well, I went to an airshow with my girlfriend this weekend. While the airshow itself was somewhat boring compared to the one I saw when I lived near Fairchild, it was at least interesting. Not every day you see jets flying around. Though I could do with something to drink other than $2 lemonade. After that, I got to entertain her cousin and a few of his 11-year-old friends. That’s where some of my pain comes from.

You Will Be Offended

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 04:16:02 +0000

Yeah, that’s right; I’m talking about you. Yes you right there, sitting on your lazy ass reading this. You know what? This country was founded on some pretty amazing fundamentals that are hard to ignore. What am I babbling about? Put the damn remote down and pay attention for a couple minutes and stop acting like a media zombie while I expound on something you obviously don’t have the intelligence to comprehend anyway.

Hahahah, fun times...

Tue, 22 Apr 2003 23:23:01 +0000

So, I’ve put up a new rant inspired by poor Becky’s Live Journal escapades. I’ve been meaning to write this for a year, so if any of you take this personally, you’ve got more issues than I do. Doctor says my tennis elbow is basically gone. But in its place, I’ve developed a touch of radial tunnel due to the exercises and things I’ve been doing to get rid of the tennis elbow.

Bad Elbow!

Tue, 08 Apr 2003 20:25:53 +0000

So… I now have freaking Tennis Elbow of all things. Odd, considering I don’t play tennis. I think I know what caused it, but what annoys me most is that almost everything I do aggravates it in some way. Typing, driving, DDR, name it. Thankfully it’s my left elbow… otherwise I’d probably go even more insane than usual. Seems like Becky’s getting everyone she knows involved in some kind of online blogging site.

Whoops, no updates!

Mon, 03 Feb 2003 17:39:47 +0000

Ok, so I finally bought a laptop. It’s a Dell 4150; very nice design and I’m not even too angry with XP just yet. Yeah, yeah… it’s windows. So sue me. I’m about this close to ditching Linux on the desktop anyway. Sure virtual desktops are nice, and having native term windows are great, but by God I hate X, Gnome and KDE. Do people even realize that the Linux GUI uses more memory than Windows!

Ah, it's a good day.

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 18:01:51 +0000

This morning, I woke up around 7:30 and just stayed in bed until about a quarter after 8. After I got up, for whatever reason, I felt like I was on top of the world. Maybe it was a dream I had, maybe I just got enough sleep for once. Whatever it is, I like it. Yeah, I haven’t updated my rants in a while. I complain about shit all day, and I guess once I get it off of my chest, there’s no reason to bitch about it to the world.

Now that was a wedding!

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 12:09:42 +0000

Congrats, Doug and Emily, you must have had the most enjoyable wedding I’ve ever attended. Lots of friends from all over, showed up to be there for your big day and I must say I’m glad we were all there. The lucky couple went to Oregon for their honeymoon to sample wines from all of the vineyards that they say are down there. I don’t know a damn thing about wine because I hate it, but I still hope they have a great time and come back with whole crate-loads of their favorites.

New Car!

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 12:38:08 +0000

Well, I finally jumped off the deep end of good sense and bought a new car. The one I have is a Titanium Perl (medium metallic grey) 5-speed manual 3.0L V6. This car is a dream to drive: smooth, fast, and responsive. I wanted one two years ago, and thanks to an improved credit score, I now have one. I’m going to baby this car so much, it’s not even funny.

The party, and weddings.

Tue, 24 Sep 2002 17:21:56 +0000

Well, the big birthday bash on the 18th went well. Quite a few people from college showed up. List of attendees: Doug, Emily, Rob B., Alica, Rob H., Leaf, Justin Jennifer, Richard, and at one point, Jon. Twelve people stuffed into my front room watching bad horror movies. Weeeee! But that’s all over for now. What’s not over is the upcoming wedding of of Doug and Emily. That will be an interesting October activity.

The quest begins!

Tue, 10 Sep 2002 00:37:39 +0000

Well, since Sara and I broke up over Labor Day weekend recently, I’m off on my quest to find a new girlfriend. I think to further my efforts, I’ll make a new sub-domain: girlfriend.kildosphere.com to chart my progress. I mean, it’s an adventure, and I like to write adventures, so why not make it a full-fledged foray into the dating world. It’ll be like a little RPG. On the way, I’ll gain experience, skills, and possibly even win the game by attaining a girlfriend.

Anime Iowa!

Sun, 25 Aug 2002 23:49:53 +0000

Wow, Anime Iowa. Almost didn’t make it this year, and this time I went on Friday. I should have just gone on Saturday like I did last time. Ah well. Spent way too much money and way too much time goofing off. At least last time I saw way more anime. Then again, it seemed like I didn’t like any of the anime they were showing this time. Lesse, let’s take this on a day by day basis.

Lose the fat!

Tue, 23 Jul 2002 00:38:43 +0000

Well, I guess it was inevitable. I’m trying that new low carb thing. I’ve been reading up on it, and have found that there are a lot of various interesting systems out there that everyone and their dog has probably heard about. I know… for those of you who know me, you say, “But.. he could blow away in a stiff breeze!” I agree with you. But my BFI is at 18%, and that’s just too damn high.

More to come...

Fri, 01 Mar 2002 23:53:45 +0000

Whew… Boy have I been a busy mo-fo. After a year of procrastination, work on World Domination Society is actually getting under way. I have built a dual PIII-800 to handle the site until load justifies beefier hardware. I’ve also got a second draft of the ERD ready. Once I get that all knocked-out, it’ll be smooth sailing to create the actual site. I’ll work on a design later. ^_^

Lazy Mo'fo'

Fri, 09 Nov 2001 11:32:43 +0000

Yeah… I’ve been busy. First of all, I’m a lazy fuck, and I haven’t written a rant to go with my bitching about the tragedy on September 11th. Yeah, I suck, a lazy bastard, so sue me. New shit keeps happening that I want to add to it, and I don’t quite know how to mesh it all together just yet. Maybe I’m just a dumb-ass. On a more (re: much more) positive note, I met a girl at Anime Iowa with whom I figured would be nice to keep a correspondence.

The Pain...

Fri, 05 Oct 2001 17:06:19 +0000

Ow. Now, far be it for me to complain needlessly, but we moved to a new place a week ago. The apartment complex in which we used to live, Kimberly Club, I must label as the very spawn of the devil himself. Why? Because the building in which we lived had two flights of stairs up to our apartment, yet the stairway was narrow and the landings practically nonexistent. Why does this matter?

Cowardly Bastards

Fri, 14 Sep 2001 10:11:05 +0000

God Dammit I’ll have a rant later about this, but for now, go to the Washington Post for updates and breaking news on this story. Now that NATO is involved, I fully expect whoever did this to be reduced to a smoking hole in short order. I think terrorists around the world should be shaking in their boots. I don’t know why we never helped to eradicate them before, but now we have a purpose, and a as the Japanese Prime Minister said after Pearl Harbor:

It's All About the Benjamins, Baby.

Fri, 07 Sep 2001 22:13:36 +0000

Ok, that tears it. The American economy appears to be controlled primarily by investors with the collective intelligence of a fermented rutabaga. Let’s think about this for a micro-second, and see just how this situation arose. Oh wait, there’s no thinking necessary; it’s pure, unadulterated greed. Greed that makes the more shady investors give money to businesses with questionable business plans, little marketability, and a tendency to over spend and overestimate growth potential in their sectors.

Japanese, Ho!

Wed, 29 Aug 2001 16:28:29 +0000

Mmmmm… tasty Japanese class. I’ve finally gotten off of my sorry butt and registered for Nihongo with Shimizu-sensi at Blackhawk College. Blackhawk doesn’t call itself a community college, but that’s what it is. ^_^ Poor saps think they can convince the rest of the world that they’re a real-life college. I also went to Anime Iowa for the weekend. Boy, that was fun. I should have some cosplay pictures up any day now.

The World Shakes

Tue, 17 Jul 2001 19:48:49 +0000

Whelp, I’m not sure if it was inevitable or not, but Becky and I are no longer an item. But hey, you never know what the future holds. On a less depressing note, go to The Romp! Sign up and go play Booty Call or watch enjoy the crazy antics at *Cooties_ and its rather dangerous proprietor Gypsy Pedro. This has to be the funniest flash-animation site I’ve run into!

Lawsuits, Litigation, Lamers

Fri, 22 Jun 2001 06:41:17 +0000

Well… doesn’t it just make your heart swell with pride, knowing that our pathetic, litigious society has come up with yet another wonderful way to burn its collective free time. Never mind that if a video is late, nobody else can rent it until the memory-impaired nimrod who originally borrowed it, finds it under a pile of old playboy magazines two weeks later. What? You think that two weeks is free, buddy?

New Rant

Thu, 21 Jun 2001 22:47:29 +0000

Yeah, I’ve been a lazy-ass. Not updating my site for nearly a month. But, hey. It’s a lot of work sitting around on my keester thinking about things to bitch about. Beyond that, enjoy. ^_^

Writing Section Added

Mon, 11 Jun 2001 13:31:32 +0000

Yup. I’ve added a new writing section. As per usual, all of the content is stolen directly from my old site. No new content for those of you who were here before my redesign. Aside from that, I’ve gotten my very first unsolicited and unsupported guestbook hate-mail already! Why, I’m so honored I could cry. But instead, I’ll merely publicly humiliate the cretin who sadly believes he/she/it can hope to insult me.

Profile Update

Wed, 06 Jun 2001 15:44:51 +0000

I’ve done a little housekeeping on the site recently. Mostly, I’ve added a friends section from something I found on my old website. It isn’t complete, so if you see mistakes in it, tell me!

Damn The Internet, Anyway!

Thu, 31 May 2001 14:58:39 +0000

Sorry everyone. My site was down due to a horrid slew of coincidences that rendered Csoft useless. Apparently they host on some servers in a coloc which doesn’t know linux. Thus, when they wanted to fix some broken libraries on their machine, they had to walk the techs through the fixes via a long-distance phone call. See, this is why you don’t colocate your servers farther away than you’re willing to drive.

The Shrub

Thu, 17 May 2001 17:38:25 +0000

Wow… George bush. Ya know, I figured the guy would be mostly harmless. Little did I realize that he is in all actuality, a raving lunatic. Sometimes ignorance is not bliss, his is suicide. Don’t believe me? In his short time in office, he’s: * Given funding to religious based organizations. * Cut funding to overseas clinics that offer Abortion. * Taken money from alternate sources of energy, while at the same time, recommending a new energy plan to drill in a natural wildlife preserve, and build more nuclear and coal-based power plants.

The War On Drugs

Mon, 23 Apr 2001 22:23:24 +0000

Is it just me, or is the United States run by a bunch of self serving overzealous retards? What am I thinking… of course it’s me! I mean… the Government obviously has a reason for spending billions on keeping idiots from harming themselves and others, right? The supposed leader of the free world isn’t racist or anything; that would be ridiculous! I mean, how else could our representatives forget the pathetic debacle that was prohibition, prohibition, and prohibition?

What's Wrong With Unnatural Hair Colors?

Thu, 19 Apr 2001 16:24:37 +0000

Ok. Look over to your right, and you’ll see a picture of me. You’ll notice that the picture of me has blue hair. I have recieved many compliments on the color, and a lot of people seem to like it. So why then, don’t more people do it? I’ll tell you why, faceless corporations that believe they can control every aspect of their employees’ lives. I have blue hair, so suddenly that makes me a rebel?

I live!

Wed, 18 Apr 2001 12:58:41 +0000

Yes, my wonderful minions, this site has been gasp updated! It may strike fear into your very heart, but what we have here is a news system that will update my main pages based on what I have in a a database. I’ve also implimented a forum system that will give me a guestbook with far too many options. It’s somewhat like swatting a fly with an ICBM. Oh well. Remember kids… I will rule the world!