Heroes Season 1 (loving it)

If you haven't seen through disc 5, and don't want me to spoil the Season 1 of Heroes, then don't read the rest of this post. Rebecca and I have been watching Heroes Season One recently (on DVD). I like the characters in the show (well not Sylar but I think that is the point), the plot lines are crazy. I have to admit that I was really hoping the psycho split personality woman was dead. I seriously was so glad she was taken down and thought, whew at least she's finally gone, this show just got much better. I actually shouted out at the screen when she got up from the carpet, No!!!!!! Stay down! You're dead! and that is a GOOD thing. No no no no no, why didn't she die? why WHY?! The other character who can exit stage left anytime is that Petrelli Senate Candiate, what a loser! Rebecca hates him even more than me. Anyway I think the characters, especially the ones we hate, make the show fun to watch together. Why can't the guy who can penetrate surfaces get a job? geez! what is his malfunction? when he went back to talk to his wife in jail I seriously wanted to nominate him as father of year! He is so concerned about getting back with his kid for 6 months. Then he gets his kid back and can't cut it as a man and provider, so LOGICALLY he turns to the dual-personality psycho that: shot him, tossed his son like a used tissue into a wood pile, and had herself imprisoned for multiple murder homicides FOR HELP?! If you need her to help you raise a child, you and that child have issues suffocation can fix.

I can't wait to see the end of Season 1 because I haven't had this much fun with a show since Stargate SG1 or Firefly. I would also like to get into Babylon 5 sometime. Hannah has recommended Wonderfalls, so I need to check that one out too.

Waiting on IO

I am stuck at work waiting on input/output operations to complete. I might as well explain how I created the, now infamous, graph of failure. And by explain I mean to explain the technical details of creating a graph, not explain the sordid details of how to gain 25 pounds of hideous gellatenous fat in 3 months. If you need to know how to gain fat rapidly, please see some other blog for help, southern cuisine might be a good topic to search on.

1. First get your data in a spread sheet program, title the first column date, second column weight.
2. Now enter your start date 1/1/2007 for example in the cell under date column
3. Now click the little box in the bottom right corner of the 1/1/2007 cell and drag the mouse (move the mouse while holding the button) down the screen to create the days of the calendar. Don't worry you do not need to know your weight on every day to make a graph, you could start with just two weight values months apart and the graph will create a trend line between them for the missing measurements.
4. Now go back to the top and start entering in weight measurements for the dates you have on record. So if you weighed on 1/30/2007 go to that row and put in the weight value next to that date.
5. SAVE IT NOW! You entered a bunch of data, if something goes wrong you can begin from here and not have to redo the tedious data entry American businesses outsource.
6. Once complete with entering in your weight values for the dates you have weighed yourself in the past, click the column headers to highlight the entire two columns with the dates and weights.
7. Now click to insert a chart, the command might be under Insert | Object | Chart or their might be a little pie chart icon to click on the toolbar.
8. Chose XY Plot | Lines only | data in columns | first column label. Every spreadsheet software is different, you want to plot the data as a line graph using the data in columns and the first column as x-axis data, second column y-axis data.
   
9. Usually you can label the y-axis (the vertical axis) of the graph something like weight(lbs), I don't label the x-axis (horizontal axis) since dates are pretty obvious on their own.
   
10. Give the graph a title and you can finish the chart wizard. Use shift+click to drag the chart size larger without changing the aspect ratio (legth/width proportion) of the chart.
11. Begin crying because you are a fat ass then post on blog while listening to something emo or petting a cat. Or I guess rejoice if you lost weight, and then bite me because it was probably just retained water and muscle.
    

Graph of Failure

So this is an awesome graph of me failing to even maintain my weight over the holidays. Nice. And by the "holidays" I mean the time from early November 2007 to basically right now....
I intend to post updates, hopefully by July 2008 I can turn this cliff into a big hill rather than a steady plateau or the slope of Mt Everest!

RE: Plainsong note

The note-writer has a right to free speech, and they should put it in their own book, which no one would publish, buy or read, rather than on top of someone else's speech. It reminds me of the CleanFlicks type garbage in Utah Valley, I think CleanFlicks was essentially the same thing as moving through a book and erasing or blotting out all the "bad" stuff. Those who chose to believe in God and have moral values based on the Bible are censored, attacked and ridiculed and have been for centuries in severe ways including imprisonment, torture and murder. The coliseums in Rome would feed Christians to lions for entertainment. Sometimes it is hard not to want to hit back at those who oppress or criticize Christians, but that is not the moral thing to do. Sometimes it is hard to allow your child to be exposed to something you believe is wrong and amoral. However, it was taught to Christians to turn the other cheek and trust in God.

All that being said, if you dislike a book and think it is amoral or anti-Christian, you should be allowed to criticize it verbally and in your own writing. You should be able to boycott the book, the publisher, the author, the bookstores that sell it and anything associated with the work. You should be allowed to protect your children from exposure to it. But what tends to happen when you do, is the book becomes a bestseller, just look at The DaVinci Code after the Catholic leadership spoke out against it. I think the best policy is ignore it and, if asked, simply recommend something you like rather than tell others to avoid something you dislike. "I've heard of Plainsong, have you heard of _____? I really love _____ because _____ and ______."

Here I go

While I wait for a server to restart, I thought I would blog about my upcoming trip to Atlanta, it is for three days. The flights from SLC to Atlanta all seem to have connections, except for Delta. I guess I can't complain about that since it is faster than driving even with a connection. I just hope my luggage makes it there. Their is a chance I could be living in Austin, TX for 8 weeks this year, whoa that is a lot of time away! Good news is I would be able to take my wife and daughter with me and visit some family in Texas I have neglected to visit for a long time, bad news is Rebecca, Eleanor and I would be gone from family and friends for about 2 months straight. It is crazy the things we do for a buck. I hope the trip does not start before the girl's trip to Seattle to see Heidi, if that is the case then Rebecca would have to take Eleanor with her and catch up with me in Austin, TX later because she already has the non-refundable ticket.

Hyundai Sonata V6 biting the dust

My car would not start last Monday, so I took the excuse to call in sick, since I had been sick that weekend why not just be extra sure I don't spread it? So this Monday rolls around and yet again, my car would not start, so I worked from home and charged up the battery with Rebecca's handy car battery charger, seriously it is like I married Checker Auto, she had an air compressor, this girl even had a FLOOR JACK! So Tuesday, after a full 24 hours of charging, turn the key and rapid clicking, car no start. So I set the charger to start mode and was able to get the old girl going, basically gave myself a jump. I drove to work thinking, should I just take it in to a mechanic or live with the uncertainty each time I turn the key, "Will she start?"

I guess I am cheap and just do not want to spend money on the thing, so I have not taken it in yet. I also have little faith that mechanics will actually fix anything; this is based on past experience getting spark plug wires replaced and then taking it back in for the same issue, minutes later... and the other time I took it in, they could not duplicate the problem. Sounds like computer tech support, almost. When I get the money set aside, I would like to fix the following on my car:

• rear driver-side automatic window mechanism
  
• front passenger-side window mechanism
• odometer (broke at 100,000)
• Middle storage box lid/armrest repair
• airbag light
• squeaking breaks
• cd player
  
• oh and it won't start reliably

Then wash it, sell it to someone else, ???, buy a Honda! Considering how much can go wrong on a car, I guess I have got off easy.

My pic has a beard but I don't

Who knew beards could come in so many variations. Some of these styles so need to become popular again, I really can't pick a favorite.

Much more info than you need can be found here.

Slow Javascript

I have a J2EE AJAX web application with 1000's of DOM elements. As a result, simply running a document.getElementById() in javascript can take IE7 over a minute to return back the object, also since their is so much dojo javascript loaded, even calling a method for an onClick, takes seconds for the browser to find the method and start executing the code. What I have been spending days on is trying to figure out a way to give the user some sort of clue that their click was received and is processing, some kind of instantaneous feedback. The AJAX application has loading objects that are shown for ansynchronous (slow) operations but even the loading window can take several seconds to finally get displayed. After trying several approaches I found something that I think works really well and would like to share.
In the onClick of a link that needs to do some heavy processing the webapplication would call a method like this:

onClick="setCurrentTaskOutcome('name','favwebcomic')"


Problem is, it takes the browser too long to even find the 'setCurrentTaskOutcome' method, the browser appears hung while the click event is slowly processed by IE. So putting more code in the setCurrentTaskOutcome function to alert the user would not help with the user feedback issue because they would still have to wait until the function was located and executed by the browser before any feedback would get presented.
My solution is:

onClick="confirm('Set User Params ?') != 0 ? setCurrentTaskOutcome('name','favwebcomic') : void(0);"


Now the browser will instantaneously prompt the user to confirm the operation, if they cancel the operation is not performed, if they confirm, then they at least now know the browser is processing their request instead of it just appearing hung.

To break it down, the confirm javascript function will return non-zero if they click ok, so the

confirm('Set User Params ?') != 0

Is a confirm window dialog and test to see if they click ok wrapped into one.
I use the tertiary operator '?' to perform the task if they clicked ok, or nothing if they clicked cancel.

This works in both IE and Firefox. However, IE7 was the only browser that seems to suffer from performance and responsiveness issues for this web application. IE7 is the required browser for the employees of the company that will use this, so I can't just tell them to use Firefox. What needs to start happening is if you work for a company that requires you to use IE, or maybe even makes using Firefox, Safari or Opera difficult for you (because they have IE7 specific web apps), find a new job. Life is too short to live with IE7.

Why not do it myself?

Here is your answer. I would not recommend doing taxes yourself with computer software unless you are a 1040EZ teenager with a single W2 from a part time job. Rebecca and I tried the software approach once, then took the whole thing into a pro and got $500 more refunded (that is including the fee we paid them to do it for us).

You can have H&R Block talk to the IRS if their is a question, you can even have H&R block guarantee their work and pay the IRS fine if their was a typing mistake. Try this, get your taxes all ready to file with TurboTax, then take it all in to H&R block and have them do it again. I bet they will find stuff you missed (or were unaware of) and your larger refund will more than pay for their fee. You might want to bring in the previous two years of tax documents as well, so they can make amended filings for the stuff you missed on those filings.

All that being said, their are some things I would rather do myself. Some people would rather crawl under a car and change their oil because they don't trust Jiffy Lube. I am not like that, I love that someone will take $25 to crawl under my car and change my oil. I smile as I pay that person to do it and appreciate that it is not me on the ground under a dirty car. If I was sued, I would not plan on defending myself in court, I would hire a pro who is familiar with the laws and regulations to defend me.

Sometimes you are much better off getting a Dell or Apple than trying to piece a system together yourself. You are better off letting a pro handle the selection of the hardware and software. I built my computer because I was able to do so cheaper and wanted more control over the components put in it than if I just grabbed a Dell. Also, if I make a mistake building the computer, it is unlikely I will go to jail or have to stand trial in Federal court because of that mistake. I am not a tax expert and so I think it is much better to just accept that and allow a pro to do it for me, than try to do it myself and risk making an expensive mistake that could put me in court or prison or cause me to owe hefty fines.

So here's a question, why would you do complex taxes with computer software?

IRS and Taxes

Rebecca and I did our taxes, we have used H&R Block for them for several years. We started at 2:30pm and didn't finish until 5:30pm. H&R Block will not accept appointments before Feb 15th, or something like that, so we had to wait for 20 minutes to sit with a professional tax consultant. These tax experts seem to have pretty big egos. I guess working with people who don't understand US tax laws or even W2 statements and being treated as know-it-alls from February through April every year can go to your head. It is always fun to ask them if they are a CPA; their ego gets a little bruising when they have to answer no. Of course if they were a CPA, it would be doubtful that they would chose to work at H&R block doing my taxes, that would be like charity work for a CPA.



What bugs me is every time I do my taxes at H&R block (at least for the past 6 YEARS of doing my taxes with them) is this scenario. A tax question comes up, and I could get the answer if I had an internet connection and computer, but NO all I have is a stack of papers. This year, for instance, I forgot to print off a document for the taxes, and so Rebecca had to drive home, while I waited with Eleanor in the office. What did she do when she got home you may wonder? What did she spend 20 minutes of fossil fuel on to get from the house? Why she drove for 20 minutes (round trip) to LOG ON TO THE INTERNET! Eleanor will be laughing at this in 20 years, that is right Eleanor back in '08 we used to have to drive to a computer to get on the Internet. For Eleanor that will seem like what riding a horse to mail a letter is to us today! Hugely inconvenient. Especially given that in 20 years their won't be any fossil fuel left, BECAUSE WE ARE DRIVING AROUND TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET. It's Not Stupid... It's Advanced



I could go on about how I took 3 hours to do the taxes, even after Rebecca spent hours at home getting documents organized so it would go "quick". I could go on about how tax documents are still being printed off on paper and mailed out and how wasteful that is in a world of email. I could talk about the complex tax laws in the US, how most middle and lower income earners pay more than they should for the only reason that the laws are too complex and poorly explained to be utilized by the people they were intended to help. I could complain that the only candidates that would overhaul the tax laws in the US will never obtain a nomination or even last through super Tuesday before disappearing into obscurity. I could, but instead I will post another photo of Eleanor.

J2EE App Server startup error in VM

When I am re-starting a proprietary J2EE app server (which requires Java 1.4.x). I periodically get this critical Java VM error:

# HotSpot Virtual Machine Error, Internal Error
# Please report this error at
# http://java.sun.com/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi
#
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (1.4.2_03-b02 mixed mode)
#
# Error ID: 43113F32554E54494D45110E4350500308
#
# Problematic Thread: prio=2 tid=0x00a59768 nid=0x590 runnable
#

Heap at VM Abort:
Heap
 def new generation   total 36480K, used 31516K [0x10010000, 0x127a0000, 0x14ed0000)
  eden space 32448K,  971244656sed [0x10010000, 0x11ed7240, 0x11fc0000)
  from space 4032K,   01244656sed [0x11fc0000, 0x11fc0000, 0x123b0000)
  to   space 4032K,   01244656sed [0x123b0000, 0x123b0000, 0x127a0000)
 tenured generation   total 483968K, used 43490K [0x14ed0000, 0x32770000, 0x50010000)
   the space 483968K,   81244656sed [0x14ed0000, 0x17948a20, 0x17948c00, 0x32770000)
 compacting perm gen  total 35072K, used 34831K [0x50010000, 0x52250000, 0x56010000)
   the space 35072K,  991244656sed [0x50010000, 0x52213e60, 0x52214000, 0x52250000)
Dynamo exited abnormally.  For troubleshooting information go to the URL:
  http://www.atg.com/support
Press any key to continue . . .

I can get it very consistently when I restart the application multiple times rapidly. This is running under Windows 2003 Enterprise Server SP2. Googling for "Error ID: 43113F32554E54494D45110E435050030" gives me nothing. I read something about array initialization being a place to check. Since this is not 100% consistent, I am sure it will be a nightmare to really determine the actual cause and create a fix for it. Thankfully I don't think there is a problem with the 2007.1 release of the ATG Service platform, because they have moved away from the Dynamo Application Server and just use JBOSS, or WEBLOGIC as the app server. Also I think you can use Java 1.5 rather that 1.4. I suspect this is a problem in the DAS code (or the Java 1.4 VM) that only seems to occur when restarting DAS frequently. Some businesses heavily use the legacy 2006.3 version with the DAS app server, so it will continue to be an issue whenever I need to work in this environment and restart the app server.

I get impatient with these app servers, it takes long enough to start without having to wait a little extra time between restarts, just to ensure the app server does not crash.

Sick...

I was sick to my stomach all during the XBOX360 gaming on Saturday. Lots of quality junk food, completely untouched. Linc even had a special Mexican coke, the kind with actual cane sugar not HFCS for me to try. Needless to say I could not bring myself to try it. It is a good thing too because at around 6:00, I tossed him the XBOX360 controller and blamo, puked in the toilet. I would have hated to refund a delicious beverage such as that. I am kind of noisy when I puke, so I am pretty sure that is why the basement was empty once I finished. I felt 100% better after and went home. On the way home my body was shaking fiercely from the cold and it was nice to get home to a nice warm bath and bed. Being sick when you are married is so much better than being sick when single. It was so nice to have Rebecca around to bring me medicine and blankets and to chat with. She is a great nurse. I ate Rumbi Island grill rice bowl for lunch and so that is what came up later; Rebecca was shocked when I ate some of the leftovers today. I don't know why but throwing it up did not turn me off from having it again. If I had thought it was from something I ate it would be a different story. So here is a free tag line advertisement for them:

"Rumbi Island Grill, so good you can vomit and still want more."


Yeah I doubt they will use it, but you never know.