Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Small talk about the weather


Yeah, it's true, I'm posting about the weather. This is our weather forecast for the next few days. Doesn't that just throw all your usual perceptions about living in the desert out the window? Yeah, I thought so.

This is the part of the summer that is genuinely unpleasant, just like the East Coast summer. It's hot, it's humid, everything sticks to you, and it sucks. The difference is now I have central air conditioning. And an umbrella, thankfully.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Zach Braff

I have an unreasonable hatred of Zach Braff in general and Garden State in particular. I like the soundtrack (more on this later), but the script is just SO BAD I don't have words to describe it. James says I hate the movie because I had some petty complaint about the portrayal of psychiatric medications in it, and he's at least partially right, but Natalie Portman and her cute little helmet? Come on people!

Anyway, in checking links on my blog, I discovered that Zach Braff has a new website. How nice for him. And apparently a new movie. But the truly disturbing discovery was this: Zach Braff, who I consider to be the paradigm for lameness, and I listen to the same music. Seriously, The Last Kiss soundtrack looks like my work playlist (although I have officially washed my hands of Coldplay unless I need a quick auditory benzo to bring me out of a panic attack) and he has a "listening to" plug in on the side and we seriously are listening TO THE SAME SONG. Sia, Breathe Me. I realize me listening to that song might be lame, but the fact that Zach Braff's image staff who put up what are probably fake playlists chose that song too makes me sad.

I've been ranting about innane things an above average amount. I'm in one of those moods where I want to just punch someone - anyone - in the face. I mean, if I really had to choose, I might punch Don Zimmer, just because it would be funny, but I'd probably settle for an innocent small child in a pinch. I need a kickboxing class or smething.

When Wikis are actually Wiki

I had never actually sat down and thought about why wikis are called wikis, so I consulted Wikipedia on the matter. I love the idea of the WikiWikiWeb. Any of you faithful readers (hah, readers) who are familiar with the wiki wiki machine know why. Apparently wiki wiki means "hurry quick" in Hawaiian, at least according to Wikipedia.

Anyway, in the course of wasting some time today, I came across the Extreme Programming Wiki. Now this wiki is a serious wiki. It has been edited by a million people, everyone keeps making up their own terms and articles and pages and adding to the "concept" or whatever. And you know what? It's a really bad idea. With the exception of a partially well written page on Test Driven Development, there is practically no useful information on it. Just a bunch of opinions and stuff people just made up. I mean, if ever there were a medium I would shine in, it would be something where you can just make everything up as you go along. My life is pretty wiki-like. But that doesn't mean I would want the general public to think that everything I make up is actual fact. Just like I wouldn't want anyone to think the way I use the word ninja (as an adjective, as in "my ninja writing abilities") is "actual English", despite it having caught on a bit in Monson back in the day.

So I'm going to state this for the record: if you just make something up, it is not a fact. If something is your opinion, it is also not a fact. I get quite persnickety about facts, so just don't confuse what is a fact, people. It will make me much happier.

Friday, July 14, 2006

¡Vamos a México!

Dave came to visit me this past weekend, which rocked. We went to Mexico, it was hot as hell, we ate lots of meat and I discovered the new love of my life, Mexican popsicles, or paletas. I got made fun of for my Spanish, got a little drunk, made a friend, and ate bacon wrapped hot dogs. Thank god Dave pointed out to me that the most obvious way of getting rid of my "friend" was to say "adios amigo". It was like he taught me a new Spanish word. It had never even occurred to me. Hermosillo is a pretty and clean city, with not a ton to do, but it was fun anyway. Dave and I both experienced the hottest weather we've ever been in - 109 with 40% humidity that weather.com said felt like 135. How Dave didn't die of dehydration I don't know, because I drank about 4 times as much water as he did.

Oh, I also forgot within three seconds of entering Mexico that I wasn't supposed to drink the water, and got an agua fresca made with Mexican water. Other things that rocked about Mexico: our hotel was $20, there was a store devoted solely to selling backpacks, we didn't get stung by scorpions, Dave coined the phrase "contemporary ruins" to describe crumbling modern buildings, tacos, how nice people were to us, watching a movie in Russian subtitled in Spanish on the bus TWICE, buying two spanish language cookbooks, the bus driver who was joking with us about marijuana as we went through US customs, and the fact that people kept bringing us bowls of key limes with EVERYTHING we ate.

Overall, the Spanish speaking went better than expected, everyone understood me, and we got everything we needed taken care of. The only thing I couldn't quite handle was getting a straight answer on what to do with our tourist permits, but as it turns out, it seems no one actually cares about the tourist permits. The trip did make me realize just how limited my Spanish language skills are though, and I really want to make an effort to get better.

There's a paleteria down on South 6th Ave. here in Tucson, and they make some rocking popsicles. I'm going to see if I can buy the supplies (plastic bags that are used as molds and sticks) from them to try some at home. They're $1.50 each from the paleteria, so being able to make passable ones at home would be awesome.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Nightmare on error-handling street

I woke up this morning trying to somehow work out in my sleep how I had handled an error on the website involving a person's courses if they don't have an entry in our people section. How weird is it to wake up with an SQL query in your head? Pretty weird. Even weirder, the fact that relief washed over me when I remembered "WHERE course.PID = Main.PID".

As it turns out, I had handled the error semi-correctly by my sheer incompetence, and will be spending today rewriting a whole bunch of website code to actually handle errors gracefully.

Just to make things entertaining, my work computer appears to have some sort of failure going on. It keeps throwing memory-related errors, but each individual stick of memory tests good. It only throws errors with both sticks in a dual channel configuration, but even with both sticks in single channel, the actual problem (programs quitting because memory couldn't be read) continues even if memtest can't pick up an error. ARGH!

Monday, July 03, 2006

Keep it like a secret

I read an article in yesterday's New York Times about how Americans are increasingly socially isolated and have fewer people who they can talk to about the most important things in their lives. More than the "Bowling Alone" phenomenon - or the weakening of community ties - written about by Robert D. Putnam, this new research asked people who they could talk to about things like serious health issues or who should take care of their children if they die. The study, conducted by sociologists at Duke and here at University of Arizona, found that on average adults had two close confidantes.

Reading this made me feel exceptionally blessed with a strong social circle, even if that circle is scattered all over the country. I have four or five people who I literally talk to about anything, and even my social group beyond that consists mainly of friends who I am extremely close to and could turn to in times of trouble.

I've been wanting to post for a long time about PostSecret, a "community art project" where people write and illustrate in some way a secret on a postcard. What strikes me is that this is the very phenomenon the researchers were investigating. People send their deepest darkest secrets here. Often these secrets are secrets of despair - suicidality, sexual or physical abuse, or paralyzing fear. Sometimes they're the opposite - a desire to live life more fully, or deep love for someone estranged. Usually when I read PostSecret, what strikes me is that most of the secrets there don't need to be secrets. These are things that many people go through, that many people think, that many people survive. They are things that no one wants to talk about, but it is the act of talking about them that will free you.

I'll admit that I'm not perfect in this regard. I have plenty of things I'm afraid to talk about sometimes, and things that I don't express as often as I would like. But I feel like as time passes, I aspire to keep fewer secrets. I want the people I love to know how much I love them. I want them to be able to share their deepest, darkest secrets with me. And I want to be able to do the same with them. A secret only has as much power as you give it. Once it's out in the open, I've found it isn't nearly as dark and scary as you thought it would be.