greyduck.net

Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Author: Karel Kerezman

  • New Year. New Goal.

    I set myself a modest goal, three hundred sixty five days or so ago, of posting entries on at least 95% of the days of the calendar year and getting the overall site posting rate up into the upper 60 percent range (at the time it was at about 63%). It ended up a matter of posting many short and silly entries, but I accomplished my goal with percentage points to spare.

    This year I’ve set a somewhat different goal. I want to maintain a 75% post rate for the year and I want most of what I write to be more entertaining, more detailed and (hopefully) more interesting. In short: Write less often, but write better.

    If I can pull this off, visiting this site may end up being a form of entertainment even for people who don’t know me personally. Hey, it’s something to shoot for. What’s the point to surviving from year to year if we don’t set ourselves the occasional challenge?

  • Probably best not to get too used to this.

    I should probably be thankful that my workdays aren’t always this quiet. Otherwise the powers that be might decide that they don’t need an on-staff computer geek. That’s not to say my day’s been totally dead, mind you. The morning was moderately entertaining, but this afternoon has been as quiet as it can get around here.

    I’ve taken the opportunity to crank out the third of this week’s Mai Otome recaps on the anime site, though, so it’s not like I haven’t put my time to good use. (Okay, I suppose one could argue that point, but I certainly feel good about accomplishing this little goal. I was way, way behind on recaps.) I also renewed this domain registration (and one other), which is inarguably a good idea!

    A certain special someone arrives tomorrow morning for a three day weekend, so basically I’m just waiting for today to end as quickly as possible. Take care, one and all.

  • Databases are annoying. Flatfiles are worse.

    I’ve spent most of the day dealing with out-and-out frustration. I’m experimenting with some website code for a project I have in mind, and while the bulk of the work turned out not to be too difficult (with some very good help), there’s one part of it that’s driving me bonkers.

    I’m trying to get a few hundred small text files turned into entries in an existing database. Nevermind why, just understand that this has turned out to be non-trivial for a non-programmer type such as myself.

    Ah well. You can’t win ‘em all, can you?

  • Only an idiot on days ending in ‘Y’…

    All discussions about plans for New Year’s Eve have taken place through a bizarre filter in my mind. It took every reference to “Saturday” and turned it into “Sunday,” because obviously it’s Sunday that we’ll all be staying up the whole night to party, watch balls drop and that sort of silliness.

    Right?

    Yeah. I figured it out when I got about two blocks from home tonight. Apparently I need to walk around more, ‘cause I do most of my best thinking on my feet. I’m not kidding, there. To those of you I’ve conversed with on this topic recently: Just take all of my idiotic blather about “Sunday” and translate it to “Saturday” and we’ll all be good, mmkay? Thanks.

  • Winter Cleaning

    This week, our hardy engineering-and-eye-tee staff is concentrating on cleaning up this dump place. I’ve moved a half dozen old rackmount chassis into the “go to Freegeek” pile. I’ve stored a couple boxes’ worth of connector cables (audio, USB, Firewire) into drawers. I even got rid of that broken-down old chair that’s been taking up valuable space in my server room since the first building expansion project. (Wow. Let’s not even think about how long ago that was.)

    Heck, there’s almost even some room in my office to move around a bit. Will wonders never cease?

    I’ll get some more cleaning done on Thursday… after my day off… Heh.

  • A day without shoes on.

    I gave myself a belated Christmas present today. I slept in ‘til about 10:30, I relaxed a lot, I rested, I goofed off, and I made a deliberate point of not leaving the house at any point. I figure if I get another good night’s sleep in, I may even be a tolerable human being tomorrow.

    Anything’s possible, right?

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