Semi-successful quitting effort

Well I'm not done with 'em yet but making progress. I quit smoking Sunday AM, ending a 19-24 cigarettes-a-day habit. Since making the decision I have held it to just one a day -- a little reward for leaving the pack at home and not getting into it whenever I feel like it.

I do feel better each day, but it's hard... I wanna smoke! OK not really, but yeah I think about it.. A LOT!

So anyway, one of these days soon I'll not have any at all... but not yet, I am not exactly backsliding but can't quite shake the monkey off my back.

Wednesday, Jun 19 at 10:56 AM #

Quitting Smoking!

After some 18 years (Apr 83-Jun 02) I've decided to quit once and for all. It's been on my mind for some time, and as we wind up the work thing I'm about to lose access to the Bupropion (I have insurance paying for Wellbutrin, been on it awhile, just haven't made the leap). I decided Friday AM that I'd start Sunday without a cigarette, and did so.

So yesterday was day #1... I made it all day, wasn't too uncomfortable but of course it wasn't pleasant. Today I feel much the same way, the drug is definitely working as I don't feel a huge physical craving -- but after 18 years the psychological draw is quite strong.

I'm determined to quit, there are so many good reasons, but yeah it is hard. I don't think it will help to list them but why not:

The financial benefits
The health benefits
Society's increasing intolerance of the habit

Well those are some obvious reasons... how about my own special list:

The hassles of keeping cigarettes available... I hate going to the store for them
It seems there are no limits to society's willingness to take advantage of smokers (exorbitant taxes, prohibition in most public areas)
I don't enjoy the "rush" anymore (that feeling you get if you smoke rarely, or have a light day)... I feel sick and no longer label it "peaceful"

There are a few good reasons to quit, and it did distract my mind some as I drafted it, so yeah the listing exercise helped. But not much, I STILL WANNA SMOKE :)

I'm going to stay with this for three weeks... it'd be easy to get discouraged but I will not, at least not until I have really tried. I did have one yesterday (down from 19-25 the day before and every day before that for the last 18 years). I'll likely have another here or there for the next few days. But I do want to quit, and will feel really bad if three weeks from now I decide it's "too hard" or something.

Enough rambling I will post this and go have lunch. And try not to smoke. Heh.

Monday, Jun 17 at 11:42 AM #

Anniversary!

Today Monica and I are headed to Seaside to celebrate our 3rd year anniversary. Yay!

The project is coming along nicely but will just have to wait until Sunday. I have been "applying polish" trying to make the thing look good, and feel more like a production-ready service, and it's starting to pay off. Just a few more tweaks and I'll be ready to freeze the screens, focus on doc and bugfixes and the like.

And my Lego project is also starting to take shape. I have some pictures and will try to get them uploaded... also starting to get exciting, heh.

So, watch this space for more!

Friday, Jun 14 at 6:36 AM #

Moz 1.0 demos

I found myself drafting this message to Kyle, and wondered why I wasn't blogging it... after all, the theme of the RNN blog is: misc!

I wonder how IE handles these demos? They're all (supposedly) standards based... I'll CC myself at work and try stuff out, but thought maybe you'd be interested?

Moz demos

Not too shabby, the blog dialog isn't a whole lot more tedious than writing email... I'm still waking up but this seems a good test of where I'm at -- if I was logged in, it'd be not much work at all! But, this test case does give me a couple ideas, I go add them to the enhancement list :)

Sunday, Jun 9 at 8:57 AM #

much better than "sit down, shut up, get back to work"

"An employer can only show his true appreciation for a job well done, on payday"

Jimmy D. White

Friday, May 31 at 2:53 PM #

What I Did Last Weekend

I've told people this tool can be a nice way to tell your friends and family (and Lego fans) about "what I did last weekend". Here's an example:
I spent a ton of time last weekend (probably too much, but it was fun) working on a subproject in my grand Lego Mindstorms project. The task at hand was to test/prove the idea that a crane can be built, to solve the problem of moving an object across a relatively very large vertical distance.

Here are some pictures from my first crane experiment. As I was building this thing, I was thinking about my web content... often it is too distant/cold/logical, and about computing and not people/feelings/emotions. So I broke out some "people" and wow, I really added a human touch don't you think?

Ha ha. Hope you enjoy!

The test was mostly successful. I was nervous about the bucket spinning and not being directed to the target properly, but it didn't seem a big problem. And the rotation sensor did its job perfectly, I had control down to less than a few millimeters, really tight. The crane arm had only two positions (above the calibrator, and above the target, limited by a peg in the rotation gear and a slip gear on the engine).

Oh, it was way too tall. My standard rotation hack worked fine, but it was a bit wobbly and definitely not suitable for the next phase of the project.

Bottom line, I'm still uncertain about spotting the target accurately with only a rotation sensor on the spool and a known distance to drop the bucket. But the bucket will defintely go in the hole! If I can arrange to allow a bit more slack in the line (without worry about it tangling up in the spool), and maybe resynch the top of the line each time -- perhaps as the ball is delivered to the destination? -- it should work.

And yeah, if I can communicate from the target area back to the crane, it'll be a piece of cake.

Sunday, May 19 at 9:35 PM #

Open source RULEZ

I researched why Mozilla doesn't display anything for a bad src=img reference, and found the answer in Bugzilla.

I disagree with how it was handled, but won't heckle the Moz developers until 1.0 stamps, since the issues list is now fixed anyway.

But, someday I want to return to this issue. Doesn't it seem wrong to not show anything but the alt tag content?

Wednesday, May 8 at 9:57 AM #

Back to the drawing board

I posted some pictures this morning of my first attempt at the "ball dropping robot"^* Lego Mindstorms project I've been playing with.

That version only exists in pictures now, I tore it apart last night.

Thursday, May 2 at 11:35 AM #

nice article on popping windows

I did some cut-and-paste javascript programming this morning. But I also found an article to read later, which might have some importnat tips:

So You Want To Open A New Window, Huh?

Thursday, May 2 at 11:32 AM #

Chunk speaks

From the Wish-I-Said-That department:

"...I like to state whatever I wish to be true within this framework of consensual reality because it affects things."

Thursday, May 2 at 11:32 AM #

Paint ball hopper mouth

...is 13/16ths wide, so nothing wider than that. I don't have the right tool to figure out the diameter of a paintball in inches. What does ".68 caliber" mean to me?

Well I threw together some "calipers" out of scissors and tape, and have determined .68 caliber means .68 inches. Indeed the tubes must be more than .68 inches wide. My calipers said 21/32nds, which would be .66 inches, I'll blame the difference on my caliper hack.

I have choices of tubing, either 5/8ths or 3/4ths, guess it's 3/4ths (24/32nds), should be pretty close to perfect! Also, if I have a 1 foot length of tube, I can stack up about 16 or 17 balls. So maybe I need 16 1' lengths. Since it sells in 3' lengths, I need 6 tubes.

...should be rockin!

Thursday, May 2 at 8:07 AM #

Kyle's tips regarding doctype

Kyle suggests this is a good article about doctypes and their effects on rendering in current browsers ...here are the valid doctypes that force the browsers into standards-compliant mode instead of letting the browser fall back on its proprietary mode...
Indeed, there is a spiffy list of "doctypes that work" there. I should read the article soon.

With luck I am going to start a private alpha/beta test cycle today. I am almost ready, but found a bug that must be stamped out first. And I need to test once myself. Soon!

Monday, Apr 29 at 9:27 AM #

Turbine 2.2

I give up, I need a handy place for notes and THIS IS IT. I hope it's not completely uninteresting to others. But it probably will be.

SO... I've decided I need to get to Turbine 2.2 before I can really take on tweaking the login stuff. As Kyle pointed out to me yesterday, if I spend time working with 2.1 and even get it working, and then later go to 2.2 -- I'll have to do the work over and it might be a lot different. I don't know, but it only makes sense to get up to the more recent release before going live. I think.

Here is a status overview, and the official release announcement is also a good reference note.

Wow. I just re-read the release announcement again and it does explain why the turbine-2.2-b1.tar.gz doesn't appear to be directly useful.

I know one key factor in why I'm struggling is the fact that I just dived into Turbine, morphing the TDK into my application, without really studying which files constitute the application and which constitute the framework. For instance, well, the issue at hand... the application does contain hooks into the authentication system (which is part of the framekwork) but nothing explicit enough for an experienced programmer like myself to modify.

Bleh. I didn't say that well. And I'm just rambling anyway. I'll not delete the stupid paragraph but just go ahead and "click send".

Wednesday, Apr 17 at 10:48 AM #

Progress Report

Given the tone so far, I will go ahead and type a progress report note to myself even having decided "no more notes to myself be interesting".

It's hard to take the new intention seriously knowing that the general public won't be visiting for quite a while. If it's just me and my (coding/hacking?) friends, well... shout out to all 3 of you and thanks for stopping by ha ha.

Anyway... I made some decent progress this weekend, self registration is nearly complete. I need only figure out how to extend the login code to include my confirmation features, and code a "forgotten password" function, and I'm there!

Monday, Apr 15 at 11:59 AM #

First Fun Post on the new site!

This one is making the rounds at work, hilarious. Pity This Guy!

Friday, Apr 12 at 1:22 PM #

Exciting and Scary

I just finished taking a snapshot of the previous implementation of this blog. I could call the ISP anytime and tell them "take the mutha down".

That call will be a significant step forward, as for the first time in a long time I won't have a home page viewable by the general public. Not a huge deal, I don't have many strangers visiting (AFAIK)... but it's "fun" or "nice" to be able to say "check out my homie page", isn't it?

So, I think I'll do other things and call them Monday :)

Friday, Apr 12 at 12:55 PM #

Missing the mark?

I don't know if this page provides compelling content to anyone or not. I did decide recently to stop thinking "oh it's just a test, it doesn't matter if anyone enjoys it but me" and instead try to raise the bar.

Good thing there are still a lot of coding issues -- else I'd have to confront that "jeez is this lame or what?" voice a little more directly. Ha ha.

Thursday, Apr 11 at 10:06 AM #

Another Production Candidate

Try it once more!