At work this week, I moved to a new group where the development environment is Adobe Flex. It is a breath of fresh air for me. Today it all became fun when I had a bug in my code and could acutally set a breakpoint and debug the code. For the past several years this simple process was torture. Found a bug in JavaScript? Good luck on finding where it is. Bug in JSP code, have fun finding it. Will an interactive debugger help? I am sorry it should be easy but it is not. Even using IE developer toolbar or Firefox Firebug it just seems like too much work to find a little bug. The best thing about Flex is the UI components, but it is the small things in life that make being a developer enjoyable in the daily trenches.
For the last couple of weeks at home on my Mac, I have been learning Flex by completely rewriting my Attentive 2 Design personal web site in Flex. I covered some of the things that I had always wanted to do in DHTML but never was able to get them working in all browsers. A custom dialog with clickable content, drop shadows, show/hiding content on mouse events. I used Flex Builder 3which was a great Adobe decision by making it work within Eclipse, since that is the development IDE of choice for Java for many years. I am looking forward to having fun again after many years.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
perfection vs. addiction
Is it possible to be perfect? How about close enough so you don't cause grief? How good is good enough? Does it matter if we cannot be perfect on this earth? Such big questions don't normally come up very often. For some odd reason I have been thinking about it lately.
At the same time I have been reading another book on drug addiction beautiful boy: a father's journey through his son's addiction by David Sheff. I must say that this book helps more than A Million Little Pieces by James Frey or The Heroin Diares by Nikki Sixx. Having lived a couple of years through our son abusing himself and drugs and the hell it caused, I must say as in everything there is always someone who has it worse than we do. Yesterday I asked my son if he ever did crystal methadone and he said no he did not but every one he knew in San Antonio did. Now that is just another reason we are happy that we left that stage of our lives behind and returned to NC. Maybe a couple of quotes from this book:
There has to be a middle ground somewhere. Either way the mental institution is just a heart beat away if he try to attain perfection in ourselves or our kids.
At the same time I have been reading another book on drug addiction beautiful boy: a father's journey through his son's addiction by David Sheff. I must say that this book helps more than A Million Little Pieces by James Frey or The Heroin Diares by Nikki Sixx. Having lived a couple of years through our son abusing himself and drugs and the hell it caused, I must say as in everything there is always someone who has it worse than we do. Yesterday I asked my son if he ever did crystal methadone and he said no he did not but every one he knew in San Antonio did. Now that is just another reason we are happy that we left that stage of our lives behind and returned to NC. Maybe a couple of quotes from this book:
- We pretend that everything is all right. But we live with a time bomb. It is debilitating to be dependent on another's moods and decisions and actions. pg 228
- A using addict cannot trust his own brain - it lies, says 'You can have one drink, a joint, a single line, just one.' pg 261
- An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie about it. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you find it. Part of me is convinced that he actually believes that he will find it for you. pg 265
- If they don't die or do too much damage, there's a chance, always a chance. pg 272
- I said, I'm a drug addict and alcoholic. He shook his head. No, he said, that's how you've been treating your problem. What is your problem? Why are you here? pg 295
- Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. pg 302
- I want to open up and hear Nic and believe him, but I am unwilling to tear down the fragile dam that I have constructed to protect myself. I am afraid I'll be drowned. pg 303
There has to be a middle ground somewhere. Either way the mental institution is just a heart beat away if he try to attain perfection in ourselves or our kids.
Monday, March 3, 2008
kids and cards
It must have been the perfect weather with a cloudless sky and spring like temperatures that finally got all of the kids outside at the same time. I started washing my filthy car as it had not been bathed since last fall, mostly due to the water shortage in this region. Before I knew it my daughter came out to help me. By the time we moved onto my wife's van, I looked up and was shocked to see the boys watching us. Not that they were there to help but at least they were out of their rooms.
Later in the afternoon, my daughter and I played cards for the first time in a long time. We failed miserably to win any of our two-handed solitaire games, but as usual we enjoyed talking to each other about everything in general and nothing in specific. After several attempts we gave up and moved onto Uno. It is one of my daughter's favorite card games. She just likes to play and is not worried about who wins really.
Both of these events remind me of my childhood. I used to play all kinds of games with my mother but was a really bad loser. I still don't know why she played with me, but it must have been the word "love". I would get physically angry when I lost at any game as I was so competitive about everything I did. I played football, basketball and baseball in leagues, but I guess I brought that with me when playing games at home with family. Looking back that just seems so stupid of me. That was not the height of stupidity as I did many other such things that would rank much higher.
The other thing I remember is that it seemed like endless chores. On every other Saturday morning I dusting all of the furniture in the house - now today, who even knows what in the world that means? At least I had a sister who did it the other Saturdays. I chopped wood for our fireplace and sometimes did the same for a couple of elderly women in town. I mowed several lawns and at least got paid for doing them. I had to weed our nearly one acre garden. I had to wash the dishes every other night after supper. Most of these responsibilities increased when I became the official man of the house at 14 years old, after my parents divorced. That is when I got to paint the whole outside of the house, fix things that broke around the house and wash and wax the cars. Looking back I am glad I grew up on a small farm as I learned the definition of hard manual labor and responsibility, mostly from forced chores. I did not like the divorce as my family life was not pleasant in that regard and this one event single handily changed the course of my whole life for the worse. That is one of the reasons I am so determined to not let that happen my own kids.
So let the kids and car washing followed up by playing cards continue...
Later in the afternoon, my daughter and I played cards for the first time in a long time. We failed miserably to win any of our two-handed solitaire games, but as usual we enjoyed talking to each other about everything in general and nothing in specific. After several attempts we gave up and moved onto Uno. It is one of my daughter's favorite card games. She just likes to play and is not worried about who wins really.
Both of these events remind me of my childhood. I used to play all kinds of games with my mother but was a really bad loser. I still don't know why she played with me, but it must have been the word "love". I would get physically angry when I lost at any game as I was so competitive about everything I did. I played football, basketball and baseball in leagues, but I guess I brought that with me when playing games at home with family. Looking back that just seems so stupid of me. That was not the height of stupidity as I did many other such things that would rank much higher.
The other thing I remember is that it seemed like endless chores. On every other Saturday morning I dusting all of the furniture in the house - now today, who even knows what in the world that means? At least I had a sister who did it the other Saturdays. I chopped wood for our fireplace and sometimes did the same for a couple of elderly women in town. I mowed several lawns and at least got paid for doing them. I had to weed our nearly one acre garden. I had to wash the dishes every other night after supper. Most of these responsibilities increased when I became the official man of the house at 14 years old, after my parents divorced. That is when I got to paint the whole outside of the house, fix things that broke around the house and wash and wax the cars. Looking back I am glad I grew up on a small farm as I learned the definition of hard manual labor and responsibility, mostly from forced chores. I did not like the divorce as my family life was not pleasant in that regard and this one event single handily changed the course of my whole life for the worse. That is one of the reasons I am so determined to not let that happen my own kids.
So let the kids and car washing followed up by playing cards continue...
Sunday, February 24, 2008
pure cuteness
Wow, these are the cutest photos of our kids and make me laugh every time I see them. Why did we not enjoy them more when our kids were this cute?
why do we do it to ourselves?
Somehow lack of sleep changes a person. I am normally pretty nice, or so I think so, but let me get a terrible night sleep or be sick and I somehow morph into someone else. I guess that shows what I am really made of. Sad but true.
Last night my daughter invited five other girls over for a "sleep over" birthday party. Sounds pretty harmless since girls are not as prone to trouble like we have seen boys get into in the past. We have had boy "sleep over" parties in the past, one of which ended with police ringing the doorbell and upon answering the door I found several police cars in my driveway. That event ended the boy "sleep overs". Plus in our previous house in Fuquay Varina, the game room/boy "sleep over" room had an adjacent wall to our master bedroom. Was that ever a bad design for a house! We just could not block out their talking, which frequently carried on into the wee hours of the night. It has been several years since we have had a big "sleep over" party as I think we forgot how little sleep we got in the last ones.
Nothing bad happened at all - just girls coming into the house about every hour from 9pm until 7am this morning. You know, when I was a youngster I pulled an "all nighter" only a hand full of times. I felt so tired the next day that it was not pleasant for me. We took the girls to a movie at 4pm and while they were in the movie theater we went out to eat with our oldest son at Dickey's BBQ Pit, which really reminds us of the Texas style BBQ we love. When we picked them up at 6pm, they were really wound up, so to calm them down we took them to Starbucks Coffee. That was probably a bad idea, but hey you only turn 13 once and we wanted to make the evening special for the last such event in our family. After the ceremonial cake with 13 candles, the present opening and everyone adorned in pirate scarfs, they ran out to play a dance party game in the sound proof shed. The only time we heard them was when the sliding glass door was closed as little girls came in and out all night long. What ever happened to the good old come to my party with birthday presents, eat some cake and then leave?
One more thought for the day...
I remember when our daughter was born 13 years ago, but just barely. In those good old days I would often get to work around 4am and then then leave early to be with the family. One time I got bronchitis from a viral infection and not listening to my body's cry for rest that quickly became pneumonia. The doctor told me it was walking pneumonia, but I could barely walk and for most days hardly get out of bed. The timing was horrible as my wife was pregnant with our daughter. Then came the due date and I was wondering how I would make it to hospital. My wife drove me to the hospital! Now that was sad. The good news was that the birthing room had a very nice recliner in it. I went right to it and put my feet up and promptly fell asleep. The gynecologist woke me up and told me to stand up and come over to see my daughter being born. It turns out with pneumonia that only the first couple of weeks are cause for alarm on being contagious, so that was not my concern. I just did not have the energy to get out of the chair. Somehow I pulled myself up and out of the comfortable chair and made my wife and the doctor happy! Oh the good old days!
Last night my daughter invited five other girls over for a "sleep over" birthday party. Sounds pretty harmless since girls are not as prone to trouble like we have seen boys get into in the past. We have had boy "sleep over" parties in the past, one of which ended with police ringing the doorbell and upon answering the door I found several police cars in my driveway. That event ended the boy "sleep overs". Plus in our previous house in Fuquay Varina, the game room/boy "sleep over" room had an adjacent wall to our master bedroom. Was that ever a bad design for a house! We just could not block out their talking, which frequently carried on into the wee hours of the night. It has been several years since we have had a big "sleep over" party as I think we forgot how little sleep we got in the last ones.
Nothing bad happened at all - just girls coming into the house about every hour from 9pm until 7am this morning. You know, when I was a youngster I pulled an "all nighter" only a hand full of times. I felt so tired the next day that it was not pleasant for me. We took the girls to a movie at 4pm and while they were in the movie theater we went out to eat with our oldest son at Dickey's BBQ Pit, which really reminds us of the Texas style BBQ we love. When we picked them up at 6pm, they were really wound up, so to calm them down we took them to Starbucks Coffee. That was probably a bad idea, but hey you only turn 13 once and we wanted to make the evening special for the last such event in our family. After the ceremonial cake with 13 candles, the present opening and everyone adorned in pirate scarfs, they ran out to play a dance party game in the sound proof shed. The only time we heard them was when the sliding glass door was closed as little girls came in and out all night long. What ever happened to the good old come to my party with birthday presents, eat some cake and then leave?
One more thought for the day...
I remember when our daughter was born 13 years ago, but just barely. In those good old days I would often get to work around 4am and then then leave early to be with the family. One time I got bronchitis from a viral infection and not listening to my body's cry for rest that quickly became pneumonia. The doctor told me it was walking pneumonia, but I could barely walk and for most days hardly get out of bed. The timing was horrible as my wife was pregnant with our daughter. Then came the due date and I was wondering how I would make it to hospital. My wife drove me to the hospital! Now that was sad. The good news was that the birthing room had a very nice recliner in it. I went right to it and put my feet up and promptly fell asleep. The gynecologist woke me up and told me to stand up and come over to see my daughter being born. It turns out with pneumonia that only the first couple of weeks are cause for alarm on being contagious, so that was not my concern. I just did not have the energy to get out of the chair. Somehow I pulled myself up and out of the comfortable chair and made my wife and the doctor happy! Oh the good old days!
good vs. mediocre
So by now you know I have teenagers, and with such an age comes unlimited curiosity. Combine that with the internet which never sleeps and it is just not a good thing. If we would let them, our kids would stay on the internet all night long either surfing the web or playing games with the internet connected XBox 360. Just to help them get to sleep, I had to limit their access to the internet. Plus is helps me get to sleep instead of hearing them all night long! So the big question is now do I limit the time they spend on the web?
I recently upgraded to a new LinkSys router as I saw they advertised a new access restriction feature that I did not have on my previous router. It does indeed let me limit the time, but it has an interesting bug in their traditional approach to user interface design and implementation. What I would really like to do is force the kids to go to get off the internet at 10pm every evening since they have to get up around 6:30am each morning to get to school on time. Easy enough as all I have to do is set the time from 10pm at night until 6am the next morning. I am sorry, you cannot do that since the UI has a check that 10pm is not before 6am. Well it turns out that it is if you are a human, but a non-human programmer decided to start the clock at midnight! My only work around is to start at midnight and go until 6am. Too bad, such an easy concept, but someone got a little too smart for me.
I actually called Time Warner as I thought maybe they would have a way to help me out. No such luck on that one. We had a DVR from Time Warner when we lived in San Antonio and it had all kinds of nice security and access restrictions built in, but the problem with that is it only affected the single connection through the DVR. We had other TVs in the house and the DVR settings had no affect on those TV sets.
When my wonderful Apple PowerBook died I did not have the funds to buy a new Apple model, so I temporarily bought an Acer laptop. It was the cheapest laptop I could find at the time and was on sale and I also had a discount that covered sales tax. I had heard bad things about Microsoft Vista and this was my first experience with using it. For the first several months I would get 2-5 daily patches to Vista updated on the laptop. In the past couple of months that has trailed off considerably. One of the nicest things about Vista is the built-in Parental Controls. It lets me do all kinds of wonderful things like define a web filter to allow/block websites and downloads, define time limits, control games allowed by rating and content, and allow/block programs from being used. I find a completely different UI under the Time Limits page. I just highlight the hours that I want to block and click OK and I am done. That sure is easy as it should be. What is sad about it is that this same interface could easily be done on a web page, which is what LinkSys uses for their control page pages.
Yet another example of how design works when done well and the effort is made up front to understand the intended audience.
I recently upgraded to a new LinkSys router as I saw they advertised a new access restriction feature that I did not have on my previous router. It does indeed let me limit the time, but it has an interesting bug in their traditional approach to user interface design and implementation. What I would really like to do is force the kids to go to get off the internet at 10pm every evening since they have to get up around 6:30am each morning to get to school on time. Easy enough as all I have to do is set the time from 10pm at night until 6am the next morning. I am sorry, you cannot do that since the UI has a check that 10pm is not before 6am. Well it turns out that it is if you are a human, but a non-human programmer decided to start the clock at midnight! My only work around is to start at midnight and go until 6am. Too bad, such an easy concept, but someone got a little too smart for me.
I actually called Time Warner as I thought maybe they would have a way to help me out. No such luck on that one. We had a DVR from Time Warner when we lived in San Antonio and it had all kinds of nice security and access restrictions built in, but the problem with that is it only affected the single connection through the DVR. We had other TVs in the house and the DVR settings had no affect on those TV sets.
When my wonderful Apple PowerBook died I did not have the funds to buy a new Apple model, so I temporarily bought an Acer laptop. It was the cheapest laptop I could find at the time and was on sale and I also had a discount that covered sales tax. I had heard bad things about Microsoft Vista and this was my first experience with using it. For the first several months I would get 2-5 daily patches to Vista updated on the laptop. In the past couple of months that has trailed off considerably. One of the nicest things about Vista is the built-in Parental Controls. It lets me do all kinds of wonderful things like define a web filter to allow/block websites and downloads, define time limits, control games allowed by rating and content, and allow/block programs from being used. I find a completely different UI under the Time Limits page. I just highlight the hours that I want to block and click OK and I am done. That sure is easy as it should be. What is sad about it is that this same interface could easily be done on a web page, which is what LinkSys uses for their control page pages.
Yet another example of how design works when done well and the effort is made up front to understand the intended audience.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Do you want to be a teenager?
Like The Last of the Mohicans or Custard's Last Stand or The Last Samurai, there comes a time for the final big event. Today is just such a day in our family as the youngest child is becoming a teenager. Of course there will be another big day in the not so distance future when we no longer have any teenagers, but we have to wait seven more years for that event. I am trying to remember this same day for each of our children, when they crossed the teenager line, but it is difficult to do so. Not different in a sentimental way, but a huge event like this seems big at the time but then later on it seems insignificant in the grand scheme of things or the current worries of the day. I am sure it was a big deal for me when I turned 13; however, how it seems like the day never existed. What I do remember of being a teenager causes me to never want to be one again!
However, today we will live in the moment and enjoy the time with our daughter and her six young friends. That is why we will quickly shuffle them into the Acoustic Shed to let them go wild and be noisy while we get a good night's sleep. Oh the benefits of the multiple purpose sound proof shed are all becoming clear now.
However, today we will live in the moment and enjoy the time with our daughter and her six young friends. That is why we will quickly shuffle them into the Acoustic Shed to let them go wild and be noisy while we get a good night's sleep. Oh the benefits of the multiple purpose sound proof shed are all becoming clear now.
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