Category: Life

Life is not computers. This is a place for the other things.

Powerpuff Tech Talk Blogs

As a former LOVER of the powerpuff girls (I still have two VHS from cartoon network of original airs from season one) I was intrigued by this post. If Bronwen, Elaine and Lorraine are like the powerpuff girls, then sign me up! I’m a rowdy-rough boy!

Which PPG are you?

Get Rich Slowly & Dave Ramsey on this American Life

So I was reading my blog roll, which is basically all that I do all day long because it is 2221 rss feeds. (I love you bloglines.) At the very bottom of my list is a nice blog that I subscribed to recently called “Get Rich Slowly“.  There was a great post where the author references an old This American Life episode with Dave Ramsey, so I just had to look this up!
I usually like This American Life although sometimes the topic will bore me, or it will have some political overtones with which that I disagree.
This episode the introduction lasts about 2min 30sec if you want to skip the congressman stuff. Dave Ramsey stuff starts around four minutes and the first call question is pure Dave. Susan Drury points out that Dave’s callers are often not calling about money. Its a great listen. I highly recommend.

I’m the Daddy

Many Dad’s have told me how special becoming a Dad is, but its kind of like mastering perl. You must experience it yourself to truly understand what those who are telling you are talking about.

On April 17th, 2007 at 3:14pm Lillian Grace Wren completed a journey down a long dark tunnel toward big bright lights. She weighed in a 7lb, 5oz (3317 grams). Mom and Baby are doing very well and are healthy. Janice never even swore at me or got mad at me the whole delivery time. I encouraged her by saying things like “You can do it Doug, err, Janice” and other paraphrases from the most inspirational movie of all time Iron Eagle.

wrenfam.com

More fun with rediculous corporate security awareness training

I wouldn’t have taken it if I hadn’t been told it is mandatory.  What a waste of time for a person who already takes security seriously.  I feel like a child who has been told to sit in the corner and listen even if I already know everything today’s lesson is going to cover.

So when taking the quit at the end of the 190 slide deck which I skipped through, I run across a question regarding “a secure network”  I answered incorrectly.  I felt the need to email the corporate security people this response:

Question 3 from the Final Exam
 
The more secure a network is, the
harder it is to use.
 
The
correct answer is false.  You want me to select true to continue.  I just wanted
to voice my objection to this.  This is not true.  In fact, do we even ever
“use” networks?  We use applications that use networks.  Programmers writing the
application may use the network as means for applications to communicate, but as
end users we don’t directly use the network.  Furthermore, a more secure network
protects me from stupid things like worms and certain viruses.  This in turn
makes my computer easier to use because I don’t get these worms and certain
viruses.  So in many ways a secure network is more easy to use than an insecure
network.

Yes, I know I am a bit of a prick at times 🙂

I made it back alive from CodeMash

CodeMash was sweet.

So many other people are blogging about how awesome it was, I almost feel like I don’t need to mention it at all.

Any mention on the net is good, as long as they spell your name right. Meeting tons of people at CodeMash was a blast. Everyone was very down to earth. Keith was great to talk too. Catching up with Dustin Campbell was a blast as always. Of course talking with people I see more often like Bill Wagner, Josh Holmes, Jason Follas and Dianne Marsh was great too. It was great to talk with Richard Perry who is living in Detroit (well, Ferndale) who loves Detroit. I love Detroit too.

Bruce Eckel’s keynote was awesome. The non-codemash of software direction and burning man inspiration was awesome.

Neal Ford’s keynote was very fun. The Starbucks and Waffle House Domain Specific Languages are not to be forgotten.

Dave Donaldson represented NHibernate and I’ve very glad to see an open source .NET project get some exposure. I talked to a number of people who had never heard of NHibernate or Castle Project. I tried my best to explain to them what they were and of course talk them up as much as possible. I do happen to disagree with Dave when he says that LINQ is an ORM killer. LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Entities are just implementations of LINQ that happen to by ORMs themselves. There is nothing stopping the NHibernate community from creating LINQ to NHibernate. In fact, I’ve been thinking about how it could be done and I don’t think it would be too difficult.

I put some photos up on my flickr.

My camera was in the wrong mode for a number of the head shaving photos and I didn’t realize it until it was too late to capture the action. I love this picture of Josh and Brian just having their heads shaved and Josh just happens to be standing such that the projector is displaying “codemash” on his forehead. It was a very fun coincidence.
CodeMash 020

Did I mention that Richard Perry is a lot of fun?
CodeMash 004

It was also great hanging out with Richard Harding and Mark Ramm. Mark always has the most interesting and outrageous stories.

If you didn’t make it to codemash, I’m sorry to tell you that you REALLY missed out. I look forward to seeing you at the next one.

Code Mash Openning night.

Checked in a little before 8pm. So I agreed to meet my wife at 9pm and I went down and registered and listened to the already started expert panel on languages.

They definitely covered a lot of things.

The only things I’d like to add is on the topic of an enterprise architecture based on Web Services(SOAP). I think WCF is compelling enough that is bears mentioning. Yes, right now it is .NET only, but it is pluggable everywhere. You could (probably without too much effort) talk to java, python or whatever with it. The reason I find WCF so compelling is that it can start off as SOAP and WS-*, but based on its entirely customizable and extensible framework, you can completely change these transports to whatever you want. It could be binary. It could be RESTful XML over HTTP. It could be RESTful JSON over HTTP. Or… and this is one thing that I would love to explore… it could be your own protocol with your own states. I’ve always liked they way SMTP, POP, and IMAP were plain text (mostly) over TCP. It would be fun to try to come up with a generic WCF provider which would look, talk, and act like a plain text protocol over TCP.

The rest of the night is OpenSpaces talks. The only two I saw posted at 10min till 9pm was a 9pm on DotNetNuke and a 10pm on Open Source with .NET. I’ve missed most of the first writing this. I need to get food, so I hope I don’t miss the 10pm.

We are not alone

WE ARE NOT ALONE! How would you feel if aliens landed at your local airport, just sat there for a couple of hours and then flew away? Just a hypothetical(of course), but how would you feel if it was 100% irrefutable proof? What if you witnessed it with your own eyes? How would you feel about our(humankind’s) place in the universe?

Ann Arbor Dot Net Developer group will be having a meeting on January 10th, but currently we are homeless! Our usual meeting location is under construction. We will be finalizing a meeting location very soon. I’ll let you know.

We have an awesome meeting topic. This description was stolen from Darrell Hawley‘s email.

Matt Winkler, Technical Evangelist for Windows
Workflow Foundation (WF), will be speaking at our next meeting on January
10. If you haven’t heard, WF is the programming model, engine and tools for
quickly building workflow enabled applications. WF radically enhances a
developer’s ability to model and support business processes. Sound
interesting? Make sure you don’t miss AADND on January 10th starting at 6:00
pm.

Matt Winkler is the Technical Evangelist for Windows Workflow. He was born
and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, home of Budweiser, the Cardinals and
toasted ravioli. After college at Denison University, he returned to work
for a consulting firm and a software development firm. For the last few
years he has been focused on integration and workflow technologies, so he’s
very excited about Windows Workflow, and looking forward to finding many
different cool uses for it.

State of Michigan Judicial District Advice of Rights

1. You have been brought to court on a misdemeanor charge. You have the following basic rights:

a. To plead guilty or not guilty or to stand mute. If you stand mute, a plea of not guilty will be entered. You may plead no contest with the permission of the court.

b. To have a trial by judge or jury.

c. To have the assistance of an attorney.

2. You have the right to an attorney appointed at public expense if you are indigent (without money to hire an attorney) and if

a. the offense charged requires a minimum jail sentence, or

b. the court determines that it might sentence you to jail.

3. You may have to repay the expense of a court appointed attorney.

4. If you have a trial, you have the following rights:

a. To call witnesses to speak for you at trial. You may get an order signed by the court to require witnesses to come to court.

b. To see, hear, and question all witnesses against you at trial.

c. To be a witness for yourself or to remain silent. If you choose not to be a witness on your own behalf, the prosecuting official may not comment on your refusal to testify.

d. To be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

5. If you plead guilty or no contest and your plea is accepted, you will not have a trial of any kind and will give up the rights listed in items 2 and 4 above.

6. You have the right to be released on bond.

7. If you are now on probation or parole and you enter a plea of guilty (or no contest) or a finding of guilt is made by judge or jury, it may result in a violation of your probation or parole.

8. Except for alcohol or substance abuse/driving offenses or unless otherwise advised by the court, you can be sentenced up to 93 days in jail, fined up to $100.00 plus costs, or both. (The court will advise you if there is a minimum jail sentence.)

9. Fines, costs, and other financial obligations imposed by the court must be paid at the time of assessment.

10. Possible sentences and license actions in alcohol or substance abuse/driving and retail fraud cases are shown on the other side of this form.

11. An appeal to circuit court may be taken within 21 days from date of sentence.

12. If you require special accommodations to use the court because of disabilities, or if you require a foreign language interpreter to help you to fully participate in court proceedings, please contact the court immediately to make arrangements.

from http://www.courts.michigan.gov/scao/courtforms/misdcriminal/dc213.pdf

found by http://www.google.com/search?q=state+of+michigan+advice+of+rights+213