Monthly Archives: December 2005

Personal Blog

Palate Change

Every now and then, I experience a sudden and drastic change in palate. It’s actually probably not so sudden, just that I went so long between “I don’t like this” and trying it to discover otherwise that I missed the inbetween where it changed. Tomatos, salt and vinegar chips, onions, all things I previously was like “UGH GROSS YUCK” then one day suddenly liked them.

I don’t know what compelled me to pick up a piece of bacon this morning and have a nibble, but there it was. Suddenly, I like bacon. A lot.

This doesn’t surprise me entirely, as there has been a long strain of ravenous appreciation for bacon in my family for generations. I’ve always been sort of a black sheep in this regard. Mary Beth says that it was probably my body’s desperate want for salt after my fast yesterday (I had a pukey stomach bug all day)

Fortunately, this works out in my favor, because I’d always enjoyed cooking bacon, even though I never liked to eat it.

Wait, what? Oh! Merry Christmas!

Games and Game Development, Personal Blog

Santa

Wertle1: Hi Santa!

SantaClaus: Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas! I’m here on AIM! Everything we talk about here is between you and me! If you want to know more, you can type “privacy”. Now, streeeeetch that window and let’s get started.
So, have you been naughty or nice?

Wertle1: nice, of course

SantaClaus: Outstanding! Everyone on my Good List gets a special free gift, so come back on Decmber 22nd to find out what it is. Type menu to enjoy the fun and games the elves have here on AIM for you.

Wertle1: will it be an Xbox 360?

SantaClaus: Hmm. Why don’t you type, music, maybe that will put you in the Christmas spirit

Wertle1: I…I really would rather have an Xbox

SantaClaus: Mm hm, now we are getting somewhere.

Wertle1: right

SantaClaus: Interesting. Type menu.

Wertle1: So, I guess that’s a no on the video games, then?

SantaClaus: O.K. then. Well, have a merry Christmas in any case.

Wertle1: You know, the merriest Christmases I can recall were the ones in which I got a game console

SantaClaus: I’ve got a billion children to keep track of — so could you ask me something a bit more manageable? I’d very much appreciate it.

Wertle1: fine, what about a football?

SantaClaus: It’s not so much the ‘what’ as it is the ‘why’.

Wertle1: ….that’s too deep for me, santa, I’m outta here

SantaClaus: May I ask you a question?

Wertle1: yes

SantaClaus: Would you like to see some links to other things to help put you in the Christmas spirit?

Wertle1: no

SantaClaus: Mm hm. Such negativity. You are in need of some Christmas spirit!

Wertle1: I’m leaving!

SantaClaus: I’m sorry? I’m new to this whole IM thing.

Personal Blog

Dreamhost

I don’t use Dreamhost, but I know a bunch of people who do use it, and am webmaster for a few of those people and thus work with it extensively.

Their gigantic packages of hosting space and bandwidth seem hard to pass up, but Ursula’s recent post about going over her allotted CPU time makes me a little curious. Dreamhost seems a very good thing and I’ve always been wary because of it, which I hope doesn’t make me cynical. Granted, this could just as well be a glitchy, uncommon sort of problem.

Brendan, have you ever run into anything like this?

I guess I can’t go talkin about hosts with out plugging my own. I use Krellen.com, for which any price discrepency is made up for by outstanding customer service. They are the most helpful people I’ve ever worked with in any field having to do with computers.

Edit: crap, we just got one too for the argproductions site. And several other people chimed in on Ursula’s thread who got the same problem. I wonder if this problem lies more with on Dreamhost’s end?

Edit Edit: The comments indicate that it is more than several

Personal Blog

Bacon Paste??

Last night Scott and I had the most glorious of Christmas dinners for our friends. If there is one thing I truly enjoy, it is nourishing those I love.

I made the same turkey that my mother made for Thanksgiving, and I have been asked to share its SECRET.

Well, it’s not actually a secret, I got the recipe from my mom, and she probably got it off the internet somewhere. But secret it or no, it is a tasty way to prepare a turkey!

Get yourself a blender, and in it put 1/2 pound of raw, chopped bacon, 1/4 cup chopped parsley, 1 1/2 Tablespoons thyme leaves, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper. Blend until you have a nice, disgusting “bacon paste” (ew ew!).

So you’ve got a big ‘ole turkey, right? Separate its skin on the breast and legs. Shove the bacon paste under the skin and press on the outside to distribute it evenly. This is really disgusting. In fact, if anyone planning on eating the turkey later is around, encourage them not to come into the kitchen. They may change their mind.

However! The results after roasting are DELICIOUS. You get a nice, smokey taste to your turkey, that everyone at my dinner agreed was excellent.

Personal Blog

Hoarders

Okay, what is up with the NAI (Name Administration)? Am I misunderstanding this? Is there reason for me not to be enraged by its existence?

Seriously, that was my initial emotional response, and there are few things that do that to me (snoring and miter saws are some others). Is there some greater meaning that I am not understanding in the function of this corporation?

I mean, it’s not like they own a domain that I want, and I understand that popular domain names can be abused, but still. It just seems like such a waste for some things, and I have a feeling that they review legitimate claims like they review spam.

(Just a note, this was all brought up because Will was futzing around and googling for Jaster, and found that they have jaster.com)

Edit: A relevant tale of woe

Personal Blog

MySQL Text Datatype

HEY COMPUTER PEOPLE!

So I’m writing some functions so people can add and eventually search archives of meeting minutes for all the different crazy meetings they have here. This is all web-based.

My initial thought when making the database tables for these (I’m using MySQL) was to make a text field to store the body of the minutes in. However, some of these can get pretty lengthy and wordy. I’m wondering if it would be better just to write the body to a file and store the filename in the table instead?

How big is “big” in regards to the text datatype in MySQL? As in, do I really need to worry about storing huge chunks of data in such a field? Though I’d have to write the files, I would write them as html files, so the user would just go straight to the file to see it, thus I wouldn’t have to read the file back out into a variable.

Space and Time efficiency when it comes to databases is just beyond the grasp of my brain, so I need help determining when something would be more efficient, or whether I’m just going through a lot of trouble for nothing.