Ben's Journal

Friday, September 09, 2005

Scenes from a run

I ran along the Patomac this morning - got some beautiful views of the city.

I also got a snapshot of a convoy of 3 police cars and 3 large buses. Katrina victims being moved, or maybe being taken from DCA? Just a theory....

--Ben

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Calm before the storm

Waiting for a religious committee meeting to start. Not much todo...except take a snapshot or two of the library where we meet.

So many books, so little time.

--Ben

NerdTV

I, Cringely . NerdTV | PBS

Who needs HBO, when we have Nerd TV? Now all we need is our own computer geek reality show...

You as a Cyborg

Synthetic Hazardous Infiltration and Repair Android

Make yours today...

Thanks to Adverblog for the site.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

In Print

Our business is more official than ever - we have business cards!

They came out pretty nice. Best of all, they were free from http://www.vistaprint.com.

Now I can win another lunch at Noodels & Co.

--Ben

Sitting at the kitchen table, Shira grabbed my sidekick (cell phone) from my case, and almost dropped it on the floor. The floor is ceramic tile, which means that anything close to breakable that falls on it will instantly shatter.

In an amazing save, she grabbed the phone just before it hit the ground.

Her response to the incident:

It would have been your fault if it had broken. You're the one who chose this floor.

This left me speechless.

Object Design

Move along folks, nothing to see here....

Just ignore this design. This is just a tad bit easier than hand copying the whiteboard.

--Ben

Husbandsforsale.com

This is wrong. All I can read is the domain name, and I still know it's wrong.

Any French speakers out there want to translate for the rest of us?

Java Source Code -- Online

sun.rmi.transport.ObjectTable

Lets say you are trying to debug why your servlet container isn't exiting cleanly, even though you think you have done everything right. At first you'll poke around google and run some kill -3's. But at some point, you'll need to poke around the Java source.

I found the above site, which makes it very easy to look around the source code of the usually hidden implementation of SUN's Java objects.

In the end, I figured out my problem: I wasn't unexporting all the references to RMI objects I had exported, which caused the RMI Reaper thread to stay alive -- and we all know what happens when the RMI Reaper thread stays alive. Your application won't die.

Anyway, it's a cool site -- and hopefully you'll never need it.

The Jewish View Of Katrina

Opinion: Katrina through Jewish eyes

Somone's (who I happen to agree with) 2 cents on the Jewish view of Katrina

I especially liked the comment:

A group called Repentance America said it was God's retribution for New Orleans being a "sin city." Repentance America did not issue any explanation of why the hurricane managed to miss Las Vegas.

I guess this falls under the Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People category...

Congestion...

It must be the first day of school because traffic volume is way up.

Summer is officially over, time to get back to work.

--Ben

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Gas data point

Got gas tonight - $3.579/gal.

It'll be interesting to see if in a few weeks this seems like a lot of money or a real steal.

--Ben

Noo-Noos

What's better than dinner at Noodles & Company?

Free dinner at N&Co., of course.

I dropped a business card into their drawing, and won today.

Kinda like winning the lottery, but without all those pesky taxes.

--Ben

Monday, September 05, 2005

Lube'n

Thanks to Justin, I finally found two of my lube points on my car, and took care of them. They weren't glaringly easy to find, so I feel better.

Happy labor day to all!

--Ben

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Fun with Nick and Lauren

We got to spend a fun evening with Nick and Lauren tonight. We hit cafe asia and ended up back at the house playing jenga.

Yeah, for the record I lost.

It was great to see them.

--Ben

Shoes!

With all the possible places to visit in DC (museums, monuments, etc.), where do we go after lunch? Shoe shopping, of course. Where else?

--Ben

Mmmm....yummy...

Had lunch with the family @ Eli's. If you are in DC, and in search of Kosher food, Eli's is your best bet.

Very tasty and very kosher.

--Ben

Disposable Personal Organizer

http://www.pocketmod.com/

Here's a novel ideal - it should go well with my 3x5 notepad and portable whiteboard.

--Ben

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Bed of Nails

Had a fun day in Baltimore, and visited the science museum. Shira couldn't resist grabbing a shot of Elana and Myself trying out the bed-of-nails exhibit.

This exhibit shows that lots of pain points (nails in this case) don't hurt as much as just a few - because the pain is spread around evenly.

Interesting, eh? Personally, I think Shira just wanted to see me on a bed of nails.

--Ben

Friday, September 02, 2005

Curb Rash - repaired

I just learned what curb rash is - when you scrape your rim against the curb (thanks Jenna!). And a few weeks later, ZZ got a myseterios case of it.

Well, about the only place in the area that deals with this is near Baltimore, where we were tonight.

So, we stopped by Keystone Automotive Industries to have it repaired. At first they told us that the wheel hadn't been delivered - shipping's been messed up, and you know the price of gas (I kid you not, they actually used gas prices as an excuse).

We gently explained that we didn't live in these parts and that coming back Tuesday isn't really an option.

So the guy went in the back to figure something out. Shira turns to me: they got the wheel in, they just don't want to put it on at 4:15pm. Nonsense, I say, that would be just plain dishonest.

Sure enough, the manager walks out and says - you guys are all set, just pull round back.

I got to watch them replace and balance my wheel - and I have to say they did a first rate job. In general, the staff was very nice - and I would go back.

Now, lets hope ZZ stays rash free...

--Ben

Wedding II, the sequel

We had so much fun at the wedding last week, we thought we would do another one this weekend.

Step 1, pickup the in-laws at the airport, as they are joining us at the shindig.

--Ben

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Fun with screensavers

Shira found the "My Pictures Slideshow" screensaver tonight. And as a result, I've got a brand new screensaver to stare at.

I'm actually pretty impressed with how they implemented the feature, as it's convenient to add pictures in.

Many thanks to the wife for the gesture.

--Ben

NPR : Bagging One Job for Another

This is a story from a sequence that NPR is running on people making big changes late in their lives. It's really interesting, and full of PMA [1]. I especially like this one: this guy gave up his job as a speech therapist so he could bag groceries instead.

It's not as insane as it sounds -- he's got a job that pays OK, and provides terrific benefits and leaves him plenty of time to do things he's really interested in.

I can just imagine it...

Honey, good news! I've quite my job as a programmer and now work in a toll booth. But don't you worry, I'm going to be much happier now, because I'll get to goof off more on the computer. Aren't you excited???

Yeah, she wouldn't be my wife for very long.

And besides, I happen to like my job a lot.

So, if you could quit your job today, what would you end up doing instead?

[1] -- PMA -- Postive Mental Attitude. Something I have a lot of, and my wife has almost none of.

U.S. Attonery's law enforcement priorities - yikes

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1125318960389

Wow, this article blows me away.

I can just imagine that one part of our country is rejoicing at this list of priorities, while another part is angry.

What's scariest to me is how this issue has a "have you stopped beating your wife?" quality to it. If you come out against this main issue it makes it look like you have no morals, and if you agree with the choice you appear to be ignoring lots of more life threating issues.

As for my view - I have no problem with the goverment watching out for obscenity, but (a) I would prefer it lower on the priority list and (b) it better be pretty dang permissive, allowing citizens to make the call on what they think is appropriate in the end.

--Ben

Information Architecture

You must be wondering - what MIS system do the Simon's use? How do they stay so organized and on top of things?

Easy - Shira crams thousands of random scraps of paper into her now-defunct addressbook and remembers each and every one of them.

Yes, she's that amazing.

--Ben

Latest must have mobile office device

I've got new tool in my mobile office arsenal - the portable whiteboard.

It's lighter, more durable, and easier to manage than a tablet pc. It has yet to BSOD on me and is just a tad bit cheeper. Oh, and its battery life is incredible.

--Ben

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Herndon Restaurants and Reviews

In the Herdon area? Hungry? The above link seems like a pretty complete list of resturants in the area.

We still couldn't decide on one, so I grabbed the text of the file, stripped out the HTML, and ran it through the following command:

cat rest.txt | 
  perl -e 'srand; rand($.) < 1 && ($line = $_) while <>; print $line'

Just ran that command, and it suggested: Lone Star Steakhouse. Hmmm, maybe I need to improve the script.

Thanks to the Perl Cookbook for the above perl code.

Bias - mid point review

I'm half way through Bernard Goldberg's "Bias" book. So far I'm really impressed.

Pros: he clearly demonstrates a left wing bias in the news. He makes it clear that the bias isn't a left-wing plot but more of a result of mis-guided good intentions, or of a desire to get higher ratings. He also makes it clear that if such a high percentage of reporters were leaning to the right then we would probably have a conservative bias in the news.

Cons: he spends a bit too much time lamenting over his own situation (how he stood up against the networks and lost big time).

Bottom line: everyone should read/listen to this book and appreciate the bias around us. And then fix it.

I do like one solution he proposes: affermative action in the news room. But instead of hiring racial or ethnic minorities, hire those with differing views (like, heaven forbid, conservatives).

--Ben

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Inside Katrina

IMG_1091
Originally uploaded by mysterious chicken.

Here's a very cool view from inside of Katrina, from a NOAA plane.

A bit of related family history:
the story goes that my Grandpa used to
fly planes like these into hurricanes in
the South Pacific during WWII.

Way to go gramps!