Playing Catch-up
First off, I am sorry for taking so long with the San Antonio pictures. They have been ready for ages, but I just didn't get around to making a page for them until today. Here they are.
May will probably be a more sedate month than normal, considering all I have to do, regarding work, is a hand-holder next Sunday. I have no trips planned, and just a bunch of projects for work to do in my spare time. I'll hit the ground running in June, though. I have a huge exercise for work, and then a wedding to attend in the Chicago area. It looks like this summer won't be quite as busy as in previous years, as I have no major trips planned, even for work, unless Oklahoma is major.
I am keeping myself occupied lately, working on a golf course website, a couple of projects for work, and learning perl with the hit book, Learning Perl. Days after receiving the book, for which I paid $35, I found this website. It lists the second edition of Learning Perl, so I like to tell myself that I have a superiour product with the book's third edition.
Anyway, the plan is to get enough of a grasp of perl to start using it as my primary scripting language, and rewrite this website with it. You will probably never notice anything, unless I break something, but I have heard that perl speeds many things dramatically, so maybe it could fix the slower parts of the page. The book is excellent, so far.
In other news, I'm on a kickball team! We play every Wednesday evening over at Mulkey Square Park, with a sensational view of both downtown and the female kickballers, who are almost all gorgeous.
First off, I am sorry for taking so long with the San Antonio pictures. They have been ready for ages, but I just didn't get around to making a page for them until today. Here they are.
May will probably be a more sedate month than normal, considering all I have to do, regarding work, is a hand-holder next Sunday. I have no trips planned, and just a bunch of projects for work to do in my spare time. I'll hit the ground running in June, though. I have a huge exercise for work, and then a wedding to attend in the Chicago area. It looks like this summer won't be quite as busy as in previous years, as I have no major trips planned, even for work, unless Oklahoma is major.
I am keeping myself occupied lately, working on a golf course website, a couple of projects for work, and learning perl with the hit book, Learning Perl. Days after receiving the book, for which I paid $35, I found this website. It lists the second edition of Learning Perl, so I like to tell myself that I have a superiour product with the book's third edition.
Anyway, the plan is to get enough of a grasp of perl to start using it as my primary scripting language, and rewrite this website with it. You will probably never notice anything, unless I break something, but I have heard that perl speeds many things dramatically, so maybe it could fix the slower parts of the page. The book is excellent, so far.
In other news, I'm on a kickball team! We play every Wednesday evening over at Mulkey Square Park, with a sensational view of both downtown and the female kickballers, who are almost all gorgeous.
Cinnamon Beer
It has been a relatively active week at work, with the senior team(translation: everyone's bosses) coming to take some training, have some meetings, and pay us a visit. I introduced some folks to Fiorella's Jackstack, down in the Freighthouse District, on Tuesday night. Glenn and Wayne both swooned over the burnt ends and the baked beans. When dinner was over, Glenn celebrated by picking up the check, which I greatly appreciated. The rest of our exposure to the senior folks happened over various lunchdates throughout the rest of the week, and one brief consulting session between Glenn and me. They were just too busy to spend a lot of time away from what they had come to KC specifically to do: train and meet. That's fine, we'll have a lot more time with them soon enough, when we run this gigantic exercise in a couple of weeks.
For a couple wonderful hours, I thought work was going to send me to California in August, when an exercise we were going to lead got relocated there. But, alas, the reponsibility was handed to the Arkansas team. Ironically, there is a California team within an hour's drive of the exercise location, and they aren't taking part at all.
On the homefront, I have been continuing to play kickball on Wednesdays, free golf during the week, and softball is coming up. All of these activities are usually suffixed with a trip to a nearby tavern for cocktails and hijinks, and in these sessions I am meeting a lot of nice people. I have been taking homebrewed beer over to the kickball games, to which I ride my bicycle, and people have been very approving of the cinnamon beer. I think I'll make another batch of it. It feels really good to know that something that I made up and produced is as well-liked as it is. Of all the beers I have brewed, it has been my favorite.
I really need to bottle that Grand Cru.
It has been a relatively active week at work, with the senior team(translation: everyone's bosses) coming to take some training, have some meetings, and pay us a visit. I introduced some folks to Fiorella's Jackstack, down in the Freighthouse District, on Tuesday night. Glenn and Wayne both swooned over the burnt ends and the baked beans. When dinner was over, Glenn celebrated by picking up the check, which I greatly appreciated. The rest of our exposure to the senior folks happened over various lunchdates throughout the rest of the week, and one brief consulting session between Glenn and me. They were just too busy to spend a lot of time away from what they had come to KC specifically to do: train and meet. That's fine, we'll have a lot more time with them soon enough, when we run this gigantic exercise in a couple of weeks.
For a couple wonderful hours, I thought work was going to send me to California in August, when an exercise we were going to lead got relocated there. But, alas, the reponsibility was handed to the Arkansas team. Ironically, there is a California team within an hour's drive of the exercise location, and they aren't taking part at all.
On the homefront, I have been continuing to play kickball on Wednesdays, free golf during the week, and softball is coming up. All of these activities are usually suffixed with a trip to a nearby tavern for cocktails and hijinks, and in these sessions I am meeting a lot of nice people. I have been taking homebrewed beer over to the kickball games, to which I ride my bicycle, and people have been very approving of the cinnamon beer. I think I'll make another batch of it. It feels really good to know that something that I made up and produced is as well-liked as it is. Of all the beers I have brewed, it has been my favorite.
I really need to bottle that Grand Cru.
8:51 AM, May 21, 2005 
Self-Inflicted Wounds
I made breakfast this morning, and painfully stabbed myself in the hand while trying to use a steak knife to open a package of bacon. You would think that suffering to produce a meal like that would cause the food to taste better, but no. The food was definitely tasty, but mostly I just felt the throbbing pain in my left hand, between my thumb and index finger. Be careful when using steak knives for household chores.
3:59 PM, May 23, 2005
Perl and Printing
I have been learning perl lately, and in doing so, I feel like I need to tell people about how wonderful it is. So here goes. It's wonderful. It makes perfect sense, it's organized perfectly, it's faster than anything I've ever used(though admittedly, I haven't used many programming languages), and it's fun! I am enjoying learning its use immensely, though it certainly does take some pretty serious concentration, for me, at least. The reward will be a much faster website for you, and much faster and more uniform scripts for me, in all that I do.
I decided to run a speed test of perl, using a very simple script that counts to ten, that can be found in the second chapter of Learning Perl. I duplicated its functionality with an equally unimpressive shell script. The perl script ran twenty two times faster. I was blown away. It's just a completely different approach to scripting than what I'm used to, and it all seems to be entirely designed to be easy to use.
I set learning perl as a developmental goal for work, in April, with the first step being the purchase of this book. An unofficial "deadline," for achieving this goal was set for December of this year. By that time, I expect to have been writing in perl exclusively for at least five months.
In other news, we just got access at work to the office printers. Talk about slow.
Molvania
I know this is pretty old, but it still makes me laugh.
We went to trivia last night, and finished second. We each walked away with just over twenty six dollars in prize money. Afterward, we went down to the Flea Market, and enjoyed one of the only taps of Sierra Nevada in town. They close pretty early, so we watched the Royals blow a ten-inning game to LA, and took our leave.
We went down to Jilly's for $2 beers, some excellent house-style music, and some fun dancing. Even with all this, I still made it home by 2AM and managed a comfortable full-night's sleep.
I have a full weekend ahead, with barbecues and pool parties to attend today and tomorrow. I assume both will lead to raucous nights on the town, so I envision some nasty hangover time. In any case it should be fun.
I know this is pretty old, but it still makes me laugh.
We went to trivia last night, and finished second. We each walked away with just over twenty six dollars in prize money. Afterward, we went down to the Flea Market, and enjoyed one of the only taps of Sierra Nevada in town. They close pretty early, so we watched the Royals blow a ten-inning game to LA, and took our leave.
We went down to Jilly's for $2 beers, some excellent house-style music, and some fun dancing. Even with all this, I still made it home by 2AM and managed a comfortable full-night's sleep.
I have a full weekend ahead, with barbecues and pool parties to attend today and tomorrow. I assume both will lead to raucous nights on the town, so I envision some nasty hangover time. In any case it should be fun.
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