Brewers are scheduled to open the season at Wrigley against the scuzzball Cubs today at 1:30. However, there are some pretty strong storms headed this way and I have a feeling it's going to get washed out.
On the hockey front, we won again Friday night 9-5 to win the regular season. I had 2 more goals, ending up with 23 goals and 14 assists in 18 games. We start the playoffs this Friday.
On Saturday we went out looking for a 2nd club chair for the pub room and somehow ended up buying a new sofa sectional for the living room. I'm never sure how these things happen but I always wanted more seating for the living room and we found a really good deal on one that we both liked. It will be delivered Wednesday.
And of course, as I was looking at the current configuration of the living room I realized it really would give us more space if I flipped where the tv was. Sounds simple, right? Yeah... sure.
I ended up having to run 2 new coax lines (50'), splice a new phone line, rewire my surround speakers and put in a new outlet box on the wall. And of course, since I finished the basement, I had to pull ceiling tiles out and work around the insulation in the ceiling. Hardest part was getting the cable lines run through the ceiling about 25'. Ended up being able to push them about half way and then had to pull another ceiling tile so I could reach up and feed them the rest of the way.
Then I drilled holes in the ceiling up into the wall cavity where the other cable outlet was and feeding the new lines up there. I used a remodel box to put a new outlet in the wall near the original one. Once I got it all set I had to move the giant table with the tv on it over to the other side of the room. I ended up putting pieces of cardboard under the legs and sliding it across the floor so I wouldn't scratch the flooring. I was shocked when I fired everything back up and it all worked on the first try! That only took about 6 hours to do...
It looks pretty good but I still have several things to finish. The wall behind the tv had a big picture on it which now has to go somewhere else. Also, that wall is really dirty and needs repainting. I also need to lower a painting that was above the tv, it's too high now.
I'll take some pictures once the new sectional is here. We're giving our current sofa and big chair to my brother (he gets most of my old stuff).
Monday, March 31, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Yeah, my bracket sucks too
Well, I'm tied for 55th place out of 128 in the ncaa pool I'm in. Needless to say I'm toast. I guess that simplifies my life as I can just focus all my rooting energy on the Badgers instead (6:10pm CDT tonight). I'll also be rooting for Michigan State over Memphis. Would be great to get 2 Big 10 schools in the final 4 to prove all those nay-sayers wrong.
Badger hockey team also managed to snag themselves one of the 16 ncaa tourney spots and will be playing Saturday at 5:30 (locally on channel 14, MyMadison). If they win they'll play Sunday at 6.
That's all I got for now, but I'll leave you with this joke that almost made diet coke shoot out of my nose yesterday.
Badger hockey team also managed to snag themselves one of the 16 ncaa tourney spots and will be playing Saturday at 5:30 (locally on channel 14, MyMadison). If they win they'll play Sunday at 6.
That's all I got for now, but I'll leave you with this joke that almost made diet coke shoot out of my nose yesterday.
Monday, March 24, 2008
100 inches? That's what she said...
Yep, we finally passed the 100" mark in snow fall this year yesterday. We needed 0.3" and got about an inch I guess. That coupled with the 7" from Friday put us over the top. Remember, the all time record was about 76.5" so this is likely to stand for ever or at least until next winter.
40's this week so hopefully it will all melt soon.
And on to the Sweet 16 for the Badgers as they completely dominated Fullerton on Thursday and Kansas State on Saturday. I hope they just keep on kicking ass to prove the freakin' idiot national media and all those bloggers who last saw the Badgers play in 2000 under Dick Bennett wrong.
This is not Bennett's team and while yes, they do play incredible defense leading to holding teams to the lowest average point total in the nation, they also have a well balanced offense and have scored in the 70's both games.
How come when UCLA scores in the 50's it's because they played a tough game but the Badgers score 72 and it's still boring? Honestly, it's a total joke. And for as much bashing as the big 10 has taken this year, how does a 5-2 record for the tourney look now? Only team that lost in the first round was an Indiana team that gave up when their coach got shit canned. I really hope Michigan State keeps winning and the Badgers meet them again in the final 4.
Oh, and for those of you who think Stephen Curry and Davidson will be able to hang with Bucky, I have 2 words for you... Michael Flowers. Have Curry ask Drew Neitzel and Eric Gordon how they liked trying to get shots off with Flowers up in their grill or how Kansas State did shooting 3 pointers (uh, can you say 0fer?).
Wow, that went on a little longer than I meant. I'm not really that angry, just frustrated at the lack of respect for one of the premier college hoops programs in the country.
On the hockey front, we won 10-3 in possibly the most boring game of the season. We had to shut it down half way through the 2nd period as it became apparent we were on our way to 20 goals. I don't think I even broke a sweat. I had one goal and just stopped shooting in the 2nd period.
We have 1 regular season game left and have a 2 point lead over the 2nd place team, plus we hold the tie breaker with them as we're 2-0-2 against them this year so we have first place sewn up. All that means is we get first choice of goalies for the playoffs.
40's this week so hopefully it will all melt soon.
And on to the Sweet 16 for the Badgers as they completely dominated Fullerton on Thursday and Kansas State on Saturday. I hope they just keep on kicking ass to prove the freakin' idiot national media and all those bloggers who last saw the Badgers play in 2000 under Dick Bennett wrong.
This is not Bennett's team and while yes, they do play incredible defense leading to holding teams to the lowest average point total in the nation, they also have a well balanced offense and have scored in the 70's both games.
How come when UCLA scores in the 50's it's because they played a tough game but the Badgers score 72 and it's still boring? Honestly, it's a total joke. And for as much bashing as the big 10 has taken this year, how does a 5-2 record for the tourney look now? Only team that lost in the first round was an Indiana team that gave up when their coach got shit canned. I really hope Michigan State keeps winning and the Badgers meet them again in the final 4.
Oh, and for those of you who think Stephen Curry and Davidson will be able to hang with Bucky, I have 2 words for you... Michael Flowers. Have Curry ask Drew Neitzel and Eric Gordon how they liked trying to get shots off with Flowers up in their grill or how Kansas State did shooting 3 pointers (uh, can you say 0fer?).
Wow, that went on a little longer than I meant. I'm not really that angry, just frustrated at the lack of respect for one of the premier college hoops programs in the country.
On the hockey front, we won 10-3 in possibly the most boring game of the season. We had to shut it down half way through the 2nd period as it became apparent we were on our way to 20 goals. I don't think I even broke a sweat. I had one goal and just stopped shooting in the 2nd period.
We have 1 regular season game left and have a 2 point lead over the 2nd place team, plus we hold the tie breaker with them as we're 2-0-2 against them this year so we have first place sewn up. All that means is we get first choice of goalies for the playoffs.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Yay, Spring! Wait, WTF?
First off, sorry for the lack of posts! It's actually been 9 days. I don't think I've ever gone that long without at least 1 post before. As I explained in my last post, I'm quite happy in my work which means I'm actually working more and blogging less. I know, I sound like a broken record and you probably all hate me by now. All I can say to that is "don't be a hater."
Anyway, what's new? Great question. First off, yesterday was the first official day of Spring and it was glorious. Upper 40's, brilliant sunshine, a perfect spring day. I let the dogs out in the backyard for over an hour and I sat in my office with the window open!
Ok, that was fun while it lasted. Guess what... yeah, for those that aren't around Wisconsin, that's right, huge fucking snow storm, that's what. They're predicting 6-8" in most areas with some approaching 10-12" (that's what she said).
What a nightmare. Just when you thought it was safe to go outside, wham, a land shark chomps down on your head and it's all over. *knock knock knock* "Unicef, ma'am."
Did I just date myself there? For those of you who don't know what the hell I just said, go rent the first couple seasons of Saturday Night Live.
Ok, so we've established that it's snowing (couple inches by now and it's not quite 10am yet) and that I'm not exactly excited about it. Let's move on...
Bowling. Ok, we're on fire now. 2 straight weeks of 7-0 and we might be back in the hunt, though I haven't seen the standings for a couple weeks so who knows. I'm not sure what happened but I'm starting to bowl better again. Guess I got through the February blah's and got my second wind. After a 680 and 644 the last week I had a 694 Wednesday (236, 232, 226). Should have had a 700. Needed 2 strikes in the 10th and after getting the first buried a 10 pin on the 2nd which cost me the 700 and also a house hanger which also means I got hung. Bummer....
Hockey. We're still in first place and continuing to roll towards the playoffs. We have 2 more regular season games. I'm not sure what's come over me but I keep scoring goals and I don't know why. Some of it is right place at the right time. Some of it is getting great passes from teammates and finding the spot. Whatever it is I now have 20 goals in 16 games and 18 in the last 10 after scoring only 2 in our first 6.
Golf. Yeah, I went to the driving range one time so far. Pat and I are playing in the Kohler cup on April 19th and 20th this year. Mike can't make it this year. I sure hope the snow has melted by then. Things were looking pretty good right up until this morning... :(
I hope you've all been reading Grinder's blog on the movie Public Enemies which is filming in nearby Columbus, WI. He was on site all week long for filming.
That's it for now, lots of work to do.
Oh crap, NCAA tourney, totally spaced that one. Badgers won, I went 13-3 the first day. Missed Kansas State (Wisconsin's next opponent), Texas A&M, and UNLV>
Later, gotta run!
Anyway, what's new? Great question. First off, yesterday was the first official day of Spring and it was glorious. Upper 40's, brilliant sunshine, a perfect spring day. I let the dogs out in the backyard for over an hour and I sat in my office with the window open!
Ok, that was fun while it lasted. Guess what... yeah, for those that aren't around Wisconsin, that's right, huge fucking snow storm, that's what. They're predicting 6-8" in most areas with some approaching 10-12" (that's what she said).
What a nightmare. Just when you thought it was safe to go outside, wham, a land shark chomps down on your head and it's all over. *knock knock knock* "Unicef, ma'am."
Did I just date myself there? For those of you who don't know what the hell I just said, go rent the first couple seasons of Saturday Night Live.
Ok, so we've established that it's snowing (couple inches by now and it's not quite 10am yet) and that I'm not exactly excited about it. Let's move on...
Bowling. Ok, we're on fire now. 2 straight weeks of 7-0 and we might be back in the hunt, though I haven't seen the standings for a couple weeks so who knows. I'm not sure what happened but I'm starting to bowl better again. Guess I got through the February blah's and got my second wind. After a 680 and 644 the last week I had a 694 Wednesday (236, 232, 226). Should have had a 700. Needed 2 strikes in the 10th and after getting the first buried a 10 pin on the 2nd which cost me the 700 and also a house hanger which also means I got hung. Bummer....
Hockey. We're still in first place and continuing to roll towards the playoffs. We have 2 more regular season games. I'm not sure what's come over me but I keep scoring goals and I don't know why. Some of it is right place at the right time. Some of it is getting great passes from teammates and finding the spot. Whatever it is I now have 20 goals in 16 games and 18 in the last 10 after scoring only 2 in our first 6.
Golf. Yeah, I went to the driving range one time so far. Pat and I are playing in the Kohler cup on April 19th and 20th this year. Mike can't make it this year. I sure hope the snow has melted by then. Things were looking pretty good right up until this morning... :(
I hope you've all been reading Grinder's blog on the movie Public Enemies which is filming in nearby Columbus, WI. He was on site all week long for filming.
That's it for now, lots of work to do.
Oh crap, NCAA tourney, totally spaced that one. Badgers won, I went 13-3 the first day. Missed Kansas State (Wisconsin's next opponent), Texas A&M, and UNLV>
Later, gotta run!
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
A busy programmer is a happy programmer
For programmers, there's nothing worse than not having much to do. We tend to start surfing the web, reading other blogs, going over your fantasy baseball draft strategy, etc. We can't stay focused on the minor trivial tasks we do have so we tend to drift away not doing much of anything.
On the other hand, when we have a ton to do we are at our best. Cranking out code in long stretches, forgetting to eat, drink, pee, etc. We don't talk to our loved ones, we don't talk to our friends and of course, we forget about our blog.
I've definitely fallen into the latter category. As the only Java developer at Comic Wonder I certainly have my hands full, but instead of complaining, I relish the challenge. I have more work than I can possibly do but I never have to be worried about being bored. I have freedom to code in my own style, I don't have to worry about reviewing someone else's work, I can deploy on my schedule, I can make database changes as I see fit, when I see fit.
So, this blog has suffered obviously. My work days are now running from about 7:30am to 6:00pm with a very short break to get some lunch to take back to my desk. And I love every minute of it.
And what's new at Comic Wonder you ask?
For starters, we're gearing up to be able to provide radio stations around the country with their own joke of the day player to put on their site, which will link in to custom station sites within Comic Wonder where they can hold their own contests, etc. Sort of a community within a community. Much of my work over the last 3 weeks has been focused on getting that part up and running.
In addition to that, we're also talking to a fairly famous company (run by a man in pajamas) about providing joke content on their website, customized to fit their theme. This gives me an excuse to peruse a web site I would normally not visit (at least during work hours). :)
Another thing I put into test yesterday was a preference setting for users that wish to filter out our spicier jokes. You will be able to set your account to only show mild, mild and medium or mild, medium and spicy jokes. That will go into production Sunday night.
And today I'll be working on what we call Joke Limbo. It's a place to look for text jokes to save from limbo, since we believe a joke isn't a joke until it's told. This should help in those times when you really want to tell a joke but can't come up with a good one. This should also go in Sunday night (assuming I finish it today or tomorrow).
Our traffic has picked up nicely. One of our jokes got put out on stumble upon (another digg like site) and we got a lot of traffic from that and it's been progressing from there. All our performance problems seem to be a thing of the past now. We've added more hardware and memory and this weekend we'll also be putting in a second web server with a load balancer, coupled with the use of a separate file server.
Speaking of performance issues, I'd like to think Retro and Dale for their suggestions (almost simultaneously) to implement memcached on the site to handle caching of frequently run queries. I believe that's helped out our performance issues greatly. When I took over you could say things were less than efficient. Kind of like an 8 cylinder car running on 3 cylinders. We're humming along smoothly now.
And now, you're joke of the day...
On the other hand, when we have a ton to do we are at our best. Cranking out code in long stretches, forgetting to eat, drink, pee, etc. We don't talk to our loved ones, we don't talk to our friends and of course, we forget about our blog.
I've definitely fallen into the latter category. As the only Java developer at Comic Wonder I certainly have my hands full, but instead of complaining, I relish the challenge. I have more work than I can possibly do but I never have to be worried about being bored. I have freedom to code in my own style, I don't have to worry about reviewing someone else's work, I can deploy on my schedule, I can make database changes as I see fit, when I see fit.
So, this blog has suffered obviously. My work days are now running from about 7:30am to 6:00pm with a very short break to get some lunch to take back to my desk. And I love every minute of it.
And what's new at Comic Wonder you ask?
For starters, we're gearing up to be able to provide radio stations around the country with their own joke of the day player to put on their site, which will link in to custom station sites within Comic Wonder where they can hold their own contests, etc. Sort of a community within a community. Much of my work over the last 3 weeks has been focused on getting that part up and running.
In addition to that, we're also talking to a fairly famous company (run by a man in pajamas) about providing joke content on their website, customized to fit their theme. This gives me an excuse to peruse a web site I would normally not visit (at least during work hours). :)
Another thing I put into test yesterday was a preference setting for users that wish to filter out our spicier jokes. You will be able to set your account to only show mild, mild and medium or mild, medium and spicy jokes. That will go into production Sunday night.
And today I'll be working on what we call Joke Limbo. It's a place to look for text jokes to save from limbo, since we believe a joke isn't a joke until it's told. This should help in those times when you really want to tell a joke but can't come up with a good one. This should also go in Sunday night (assuming I finish it today or tomorrow).
Our traffic has picked up nicely. One of our jokes got put out on stumble upon (another digg like site) and we got a lot of traffic from that and it's been progressing from there. All our performance problems seem to be a thing of the past now. We've added more hardware and memory and this weekend we'll also be putting in a second web server with a load balancer, coupled with the use of a separate file server.
Speaking of performance issues, I'd like to think Retro and Dale for their suggestions (almost simultaneously) to implement memcached on the site to handle caching of frequently run queries. I believe that's helped out our performance issues greatly. When I took over you could say things were less than efficient. Kind of like an 8 cylinder car running on 3 cylinders. We're humming along smoothly now.
And now, you're joke of the day...
Thursday, March 06, 2008
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