Yeah. I know. I’m one of the worst bloggers around. I go way too long between posts. It’s because of work, mostly. I’m just so burned out by the time I get home. If speech recognition software was better, I could definitely say my thoughts faster than trying to guide them to my fingers.

Anyways.. I’m on vacation this week. I’m working on an IRC bot for a channel that I participate in. I’ve also been trying out different software. I figured I’d share my thoughts with everyone else. So, to keep them from getting buried in my junk pile of a blog, I’ve created another one strictly for “serious” entries regarding software and technology. It’s Babbling Bytes.

If you want to keep up with either of my blogs, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds. Also, you can follow me on Twitter. My blog updates automatically get Twittered out, and ocassionally I Twitter random stuff.

I found this through sulz’s blog and thought I’d give it a go. This is as close as I could get it to being me.

I wear a polo shirt and khakis to work. None of the khaki colors looked right, so I just went with blue. Overall, it’s close enough.

If you want to generate your own character, you can do so here.

God almighty! Some people are completely insane! This guy is a raving lunatic.

From Wikipedia:

El Caminito del Rey (The King’s pathway) is a walkway, now fallen into disrepair, pinned along the steep walls of a narrow gorge in El Chorro, near Álora in Málaga, Spain. The name is often shortened to El Camino del Rey.

In 1901 it was obvious that the workers of the Chorro Falls and Gaitanejo Falls needed a walkway to cross between the falls, to provide transport of materials, vigilance and maintenance of the channel. Construction of the walkway lasted four years. It was finished in 1905.

In 1921 the king Alfonso XIII had to cross the walkway for the inauguration of the dam Conde del Guadalhorce, and it became known by its present name.

The walkway has now gone many years without maintenance, and is in a highly deteriorated and dangerous state. It is one meter in width over a 700-meter fall, and over time it has lost its handrail. Some parts of the walkway have completely collapsed and have been replaced by a beam and a metallic wire on the wall. Many people have lost their lives on the walkway in recent years. After four people died in two accidents in 1999 and 2000, the local government closed the entrances. However, adventurous tourists still find their way into the walkway.

Local government (Junta de Andalucía) has a restoration plan estimated at €7 million.

Found via B3ta.

Some choice comments:

No F*ckin’ way would you get me on this! - Darklord

I’d need a rucksack full of spare trousers though, along with my spare balls. The big, brass ones. - LemonEntryMyDearWatson

that would make a great video game straight out of my nightmares - kenwiise

This is f’ing hilarious! I love it! It’s better than the original. I present to you the death metal version of “Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears.

Want more? death metal covers on YouTube.

Made me laugh!

By telsky on Flickr

Odd subject, isn’t it? When I was in the restroom earlier, I just happened to think about how the magazine stack is getting unruly. For some reason, I decided to blog about it. Go figure.

A couple of years ago, our company President (at the time) decided to change some things around in the kitchen. He moved the microwave to the counter and put the cart into the men’s restroom. A tall cabinet was also added to the kitchen. He put all of his old CRN, Inc. and similar business magazines on the cart in the restroom. Every now and then, he’d put the most recent issues on the cart.

Well, he quit doing it after a while. Since I had a couple of subscriptions going at home, I started bringing those in. I wasn’t getting around to reading them at home because I read books there. Like a lot of guys, I’m a “throne reader”¹. At home, I’ll spend, on average, 30 minutes at a time just reading in there. My left leg always goes to sleep during that time. I usually do at least 3 of those visits a day (in the morning, when I first get home, and before bed). I’ve read dozens and dozens of books that way. I may seem like a freak to some of you, but, as I said, lots of guys do it! Even my dad does. Ok.. back to the topic at hand.

I brought in things like This Old House and Family Handyman. My subscriptions ran out, and I never got around to renewing them. It’s been a few months since we’ve had anything new to read in there. The only things I’ve put in there recently are the free house and car publications that Samantha grabs from the racks at Blockbuster. I have noticed that people are perusing them. Just today the car one was left laying open on the cart.

I redeemed some of my Coke Rewards points for a Popular Mechanics subscription on February 13 (it cost 168 points — that’s 56 caps). The notice from PopMech said it would take 4-6 weeks for delivery of the first issue. Well.. guess what? Today marks exactly 6 weeks from my order. I understand, though. It’s a magazine. They only ship once a month. They would’ve only had 2 weeks if I was to get the March issue. I hope I get my first issue before the week is out. Normally subscription people get the magazine shortly before the month that is on the cover. Tuesday will be April, so they will technically be late on both counts if it comes at that time or later.

At any rate, I haven’t removed the jumbled pile of issues that are currently in the restroom. People keep sifting through to see if they missed any articles (why else would they disassemble a stack?). Once PopMech arrives, I’ll take all those old issues out and put them in my “archives” (magazine holders on shelves in my office) and put the new issue in there.

I want to subscribe to more magazines as it’s too easy to go through one magazine in one month. I’d love to subscribe to Wired and Popular Science, as well as some others, but I haven’t found a good subscription deal for any. Most I’ve seen are “50% off the cover price”, which makes them out of my budget. I look for around 75% off or so. Only This Old House has a good deal so far, but I want to bring in more “technical” publications as we are a software and computer hardware company.

Any of you have any suggestions for low-cost ($15 or less per year) magazines similar to the ones I mentioned?

¹ Obviously, by “throne reader”, I mean reading while sitting on the toilet. The Google results for that are mildly amusing. Some sites don’t know how to separate parts of the title, so it looks like one long title. Take this for example: WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne Reader Review // PC /// Eurogamer. It almost sounds like someone froze on the toilet. Ok.. so it’s not really funny. Go away.

So I haven’t been blogging at all in a while. I can’t understand why I get so tired and don’t have the will to blog about all the things that I have an inner need to discuss. It’s not as if I can’t find anything to talk about. I just can’t bring myself to type out the words. It must be work that has shot holes all in my will and whatnot.

So, I’ve been going around and putting all the blog buddies I’ve ignored into Google Reader. That way, I can at least keep up with what everyone else is doing and possibly leave some comments. While looking around, I came across sulz’s Lowbrow Blog Post that included this quiz (which she found from another blog friend).

I’m quite happy with the results.

I’m following ZDNetBlogs on Twitter and just got a notification for Microsoft preps for hostile takeover of Yahoo!. This is wrong on so many levels. I don’t use any Microsoft services online. Yes, I’m a devoted Microsoft developer ever since GW-BASIC, but I really don’t like their online offerings. They can’t even keep the MSDN straight. Links to articles malfunction after somewhere around 6 months. The design won’t even stay put. I can’t imagine what they’d do to all of Yahoo’s stuff, especially since there’s duplication abound. The only Yahoo service I’m using at the moment is Flickr. I bet Microsoft would turn that into a big, steaming pile of WTF if they got their hands on it.

I might post more about this later, but I figured I’d drop in and say something real quick. Time to get back to work.

I like C# 2.0/2005. My code is pretty… and well-commented… and complex… and.. I’m GOING F’ING CRAZY!

Seriously… remember when I made my Argh post at the beginning of the month? I’m still working on that project! It’s insane. Instead of doing the usual “put the fire out” hack job, I’ve been trying to make the application absolutely perfect, including having reusable classes that can be used in other applications that I know I’ll need to rewrite later.

I can’t even remember how many times I’ve changed my estimated date of completion. Surprisingly, my supervisor doesn’t care, but the “Director of Operations” keeps pestering her with requests for status. He knows the answer, but he keeps doing that. Every now and then, he’ll ask me directly. I stayed some crazy hours the week of the 14th (67 to be precise - not my record) in hopes of getting it done sooner. Nope. I managed to complete more of it, but everytime I think the finish line is in sight, it moves away. I can’t catch it! I’m going to be staying late tonight to try to get it done.. maybe.. hopefully. Man.. people are going to be pissed if I don’t get this done soon.

This place is stressing me out so much that I don’t really accomplish anything before lunch. Then, when I get home, I usually take a nap. Once I get up, I don’t feel like doing anything even though there are so many things I do want to do. I stay up for a few hours, eat dinner and do nothing, then go to bed to start it over again. I’ve got an alternate self trapped in my head banging on the walls and screaming to be let out, but I just have to let him be.

To make matters worse, I got a staph infection 3 weeks ago in the most inconvenient place of all - my right buttock. That’s right.. I have to sit on the thing! Last Monday, the doctor “lanced” it (more like sliced it open), drained it, and packed it with tons of gauze. I went back the following Wednesday and Friday to get the packing replaced. During the first week and a half, that thing hurt. Sitting on it for many hours at a time royally pissed it off, but I had no choice. But, it started hurting less at the week went on, and I basically quit feeling it by the weekend.

Per the doctor’s instructions, I took the packing out on Sunday. So far it looks like it’s quit draining, but it’s quite a large hole. It’s kind of freaky, really. I’ve been taking Bactrim (probably Bactrim DS 800 mg/160 mg) since I first went to the doctor on January 18. Those things are huge, super-chalky horse pills. So chalky, in fact, that they leave powder on my hands when I dump them out of the bottle. They start melting as soon as they hit my mouth. They taste extremely nasty.

I was taking it twice a day - once in the morning and once at night. Last week, the doctor told me to double it. So, now I’m having to choke down two in the morning and two at night. I think I have a day or two left of them. I’ve got an appointment on Friday at 1:30pm for the doctor to see how it’s doing. Hopefully that’ll be the last visit. All of these visits and prescriptions and various OTC things have cost money.

Well.. better get back to coding..

Considering I’m not even warmed up all the way, this is a pretty good result. In fact, it had too much of a delay after I pressed the spacebar on some of the words. I had to wait for a split second for the next word to be highlighted. I didn’t want to start typing until it did because it might count it as wrong.

Also, your results may vary. I did the test 4 times just to get a feel for what it expected. On this final one, it included much bigger words, but also way too many two- and three-letter words (which actually slow me down when in large groups).

You type 361 characters per minute
You have 69 correct words and
you have 0 wrong words

I found the test via carocat’s blog.

EDIT: Here are Samantha’s results for three tries: 111, 103, and 110.

Can you tell she chats on AOL a bit much?