Another quote

It seems my google home page has been churning out a lot of good quotes lately. Here is another:

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of witnesses.

- Margaret Millar

Say what you want, say what you feel!

Here is an interesting quote from the legendary Dr. Seuss. I thought I’d post it up as some food for thought.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

Iran’s response to the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad

According to this artical Iran has put up a display of jewish cartoons in response to the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad by the Danish news paper a while back. The big difference here is that the Jewish community isn’t rioting in the streets killing people. I think this little news story is actually a very important demonstration of the differences between ‘western’ culture and the current poor/ignorant mid-eastern ‘islam/arab/musilim’ culture.

It really points out the bigotry that many people *cough*liberals*cough* want us to accept. Here is a quote from the first few paragraphs from the artical, which I didn’t read through completely yet.

The title of the show is Holocaust International Cartoon Contest, or “Holocust,” as the show’s organizers spelled the word in promotional material. But the content has little to do with the events of World War II and Nazi Germany.

There is instead a drawing of a Jew with a very large nose, a nose so large, in fact, that it obscures his entire head. Across his chest is the word “Holocaust.” Another drawing shows a vampire, wearing a big Star of David, drinking the blood of Palestinians. A third shows Ariel Sharon dressed in a Nazi uniform, emblazoned not with swastikas, but with the Star of David.

The cartoons are among more than 200 on display in the Palestinian Contemporary Art Museum in central Tehran in a show that opened earlier this month and is to run until the middle of September. The exhibition is intended as a response to the cartoons in a Danish newspaper that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad and were condemned by Muslims as blasphemous.

New Head First book delayed

There was suposed to be a new head first book comming out next month. Head First Object Oriented Analysis and Design. I was really looking forward to this book but from what it looks like there was a falling out between the Head First series creators and the author of this particular book. The ex-author posted a reply to a post of mine asking for an update over at www.HeadFirstLabs.com and he also posted another message over at www.JavaRanch.com.
I feel bad for Dave after all the effort he has put into it but from all of my experience with the Head First books I’ve read, each one meets a very high standard of quality. I trust Kathy and Bret’s(Head First series creators) judgment on when a book is ready (or not ready) to be published.

Here is THE XHTML 1.1 reference guide

I’ve seen this before and never book marked it. I’ve stumbled across this and now that I’m much more proficent in XHTML this guide will be very useful. So check it out here.

Javascript with DOM II

Working here at the DMV on their web team I’ve started to realize how powerfull and important it is to know and understand javascript, or what is more formally known as ECMA Script (which stands for European Computer Manufacture Association).

A brief history of javascript

Javascript was simply the name Netscape gave to their proprietary version of ECMA Script. They gave it that name for pure marketing purposes, since Java was the new cool kid on the block netscape wanted in on the action and thus the reference ‘javascript’ was born.

Since javascript was so popular Micrososft adopted its functionality into Internet Explorer, version 3 I think. So then Microsoft started to make some javascript proprietary to IE durring the dark days know as the browser wars. Many technologies were mutilated and twisted to server their evil overlords including not only ECMA Script but also HTML, XHTML, and CSS to name a few. We all know the ending, Microsoft (the bad) beat Netscape (the ugly) into a bloody pulp. The battle not only destroyed netscape but also left a path of twisted, mangled, and inconsistent technologies that only IE could read.

But Microsoft sat and did nothing to ‘clean’ the mess the browser wars left, so along game the W3C (the good). W3C re-established these technologies as standards under one umbrella. However since everyone knew what javascript was it retained its adopted name. ECMA script is now only refered to as such by those few who survived the browser wars and web technology historians.

So what does this mean?

Well, since I am becoming more enlightened to the power of javascript I am now more inclined to learn more about it.

There are a ton of tutorials and walkthroughs out there on javascript but so far I have only found one that does a good job explaining some of the more important aspects of javascript. The relationship between ECMA Script and DOM II (Document Object Model).

So what is DOM? Well, DOM is a standard like CSS, XHTML, and javascript. DOM defines the building blocks of web pages and can only be accessed via a browser scripting language like ECMA Scr… whoops, sorry, I mean javascript.

Javascript is able to manipulate nodes and elements on a page dynamicly through the DOM hierarcy. One such hierarchy could look like this:

• <html>
  • <head>
    • <link>
    • <script>
  • <body>
    • <div id=”maincontent”>

Being able to have access to the page like this gives you great power, and with great power comes greate responsibility! However, the main point of this artical is that there aren’t very many good tutorials out there about this stuff. A lot of the tutorials only give you enough smarts to find and implement premade sinipits of javascript. But there is one that I found that does a good priemer on how to use javascript with DOM, and suprise suprise… its from apple.com!

Dynamic Content with DOM 2 (part I of II)
Dynamic Content with DOM 2 (part II of II)

Artistic or sadistic?

I don’t know what can cause someones mind to be so demented as to call something as grotesque as this art?

Some web tech links

When I get the time I want to go through some of these recordings, looks very interesting.

http://www.webstock.org.nz/recordings.php

And here is a link to how to dynamicly change the style sheet on your page using javascript.

http://www.alistapart.com/stories/alternate/

Update on life

I haven’t been doing a good job with keeping this current on whats going on with me so I’ll try and summarize the past few months since when Christi and I got engaged.

1. Fourth of July

   Christi and I went to her friends Mindy & Missy’s mom’s house for a 4th of July BBQ and then later went to old Sacramento, where we have gone every year since we’ve been together. We Watched the fireworks again this year from atop the parking garage, which has the best view. It seems that each year the parking garage gets more and more crowded. Maybe people shouldn’t mention the secret spot on their blogs….

   Then we came home to an awful horrible site, our dogs were scared $#!t-less, literally, from the constant sound of fireworks outside. However, worse than the site of the massive mess in the kitchen I found something that made me cry… Our dog Tara, in trying to hide from the tormenting sounds, crawled under my desk and laid on top of my computer. She laid right on top of the main vent that cools my computer. End result? broken computer!

   Long story short, I thought both my CPU and mobo were fried. However I found out it was only my CPU, which AMD replaced. But unfortunately I did purchase a new mobo (an ASUS) from NewEgg before realizing I didn’t need to. I ended up keeping my original motherboard since I really didn’t feel like doing a windows reinstall. The restocking fee was about $10.

   My computer was out of commission for about two weeks.

2. Summer school

   I had one last GE course I needed to take to graduate, a life science with a lab (technically two classes).

   I originally tried to get a class at Sac City, which is closer to home, but could only find a qualifying class at American River College. The class I signed up for was Anthropology 300 and Anthropology 301, one is the lecture and the other is the lab.

   This class was far more interesting than I would have imagined. Anthropology is the study of humans and is generally broken into four main subjects.

   • Archaeological
   • Biological
   • Linguistic
   • Sociocultural

   I was signed up for Physical Anthropology which touches on the first two in the list. In the first half of the class we learned about the wonderful world of cells, DNA, and bones. The second half of the class focused on primates, paleoanthropology discoveries of Hominids, and evolution… yes the much politicized topic of evolution! (Since I now have a basic understanding and knowledge of the scientific side of the topic I was planning on doing a post or two regarding my thoughts on the topic).

   The class was a six week course and very intense, we meet Monday through Thursday 8am to 12:30pm, and I had to work everyday ’til 5pm. I still enjoyed the class a lot. The teacher was a relatively young teacher and seemed nervous at times, but he was thoughtful and passionate about the topic which is one of the most important ingredients in making a class enjoyable. His nervousness stuck with him throughout the whole course so I think it was just a part of his personality, which is fine. One of the fun things we learned in the lab was how to differentiate male bones from female bones from ape bones, and various other aspects of important parts of the skeletal structure.

   Fun class, but glad its over! I just checked my grades an I got a B in the lecture (3 units) and an A in the lab (1 unit). Now I just need to get them transferred over to Sac State.

3. My Toyota Pickup

   The weekend before last Christi and I found out that something was stolen from my pickup, probably the strangest thing I’ve ever had stolen from me, a section of my exhaust pipe! Someone walked up onto my property, crawled under my truck, and sawed out about a 2′-3′ section of my exhaust pipe. The part they removed contained my catalytic converter, which according to my dad runs around $300. Yeah, that’s a lot, but I wouldn’t have thought that was enough to actually risk going onto someones property and spending the time to saw it out!

   Regardless of the IQ of the thief, it prompted me, and even more so Christi, to start looking into moving out of wonderful Tahoe Park.

4. Real Estate

   Christi demanded that I see what my early pay-off penalty would be if we sold our house before our 3rd year of living here. I called up my bank and was surprised to find out that the prepayment penalty only applies if I refinance. Someone I talked to prior left me with the strong impression that any change in the loan (refinance or selling of) would incur the penalty. The person I talked with this time sounded quite knowledgeable (something I can determine easily since I worked at Earthlink for three years!) and said that I wouldn’t incur the penalty if I sell the house in an arms length transaction. That is to say I sell the house and keep my own interests first and foremost, no selling to friends or family.

   So this is very good news! We can sell the house tomorrow if we want!

   But we’re not going to do that. We are going to focus on finishing all unfinished projects, install a new front door, and see about installing new carpet and linoleum in the kitchen. Last Sunday I spent the day repairing all our broken sprinklers and I plan on reseeding the lawn since it looks like utter crap right now. It’s my fault. I never set the sprinklers in the dirt and let them stick up high out of the ground. This made them easy targets for kicking and lawn mowers.

   But the biggest problem is money. My job, while good for helping build my resume, pays only peanuts. Home repair and moving are both expensive propositions, and I’m very uncomfortable with how much debt I’ve built up in repairing this house and keeping a main focus on school. I need a new Job!

   Take a deep breath, this post is almost finished. You can make it, I have faith in you! Only one more bullet point!

5. On with the job hunt!

   So now I’m starting to focus on finding a new job, I really want to get a job in some part of the software development spectrum. Preferably as some type of systems analyst, even an entry level developer would be really good too. Unfortunately when it comes right down to it, I need a real job and need to make real money.

   Unfortunately I won’t have my bachelors degree to leverage, but I will have the ability to state that I will have it by the end of December! Hopefully that will be enough to get me a desirable job. The more money I start making the better the loan Christi and I can get to buy a new house! We’re still in the early planning phase of selling and buying but we are looking to move somewhere between Antelope, Citrus Heights, Lincoln, or Roseville. I want a garage so badly!

See, you made it! Sure it was a long post but I knew you had it in you to make it to the finish! Go treat yourself to an alcoholic beverage of your choice!

What to do when project is at max capacity?

I have yet to become a PMP but that doesn’t stop me from being a member of pmi.org and reading their e-newsletter.

Today I got one that had a quick little artical about working a project at max capacity, the main point is that you shouldn’t run a project at more than 80% capacity in case one of several problems arise. Such as the following:

• Loss of a key team member for two weeks
• A key document requiring re-work one time more than planned before approval
• A one month moratorium on overtime
• Failure of a server disk
• Loss of the contents of a filing cabinet
• Theft of your briefcase
• Destruction of your laptop

If you do happen to find yourself above maximum capactiy then first cut back on throughput (promised output) then see if it is possible to add resources to facilitate work at the prior rate.

I believe the project management equation is something akin to this: money^time = features/requirements in finished project.

If you would like to read the short artical you can do so here:

http://www.pmi-svc.org/archives/Aug06.htm#payson