Slate has this interesting piece about parishoners holding hands in the Catholic Mass.
Finally an issue with which I agree with the traditionalists. Hand-holding smacks of the Post-Vatican II mistakes like tamborines, and lay teachers with bowl cuts. Don't get me wrong, I think most of Vatican II was a good thing. I just don't like the hippy influences on the church.
Every once in a while I get asked, "How does one determine what node of the cluster the currently running code is on?" One of the easier way to find out is to poll the registry.
Scooter Libby was indicted today, so I owe some people cigars. I believe Dan, Ryan, Mensch and (I think) LilB took me up on it and get a Punch London Club a piece.
I don't think I'll be giving out any Ashton Coronas, but I hold out hope for the Ashton Cabinet #2's.
I forgot about this, Proposition 27, will also be on WHYY this Sunday morning at 5:45 AM.
I can't find it on TiVo. So you all have to stay up and watch it.
Speaking of upcoming TV sightings, Citizen Wumpus' magnum opus, "Eugene Elliot" will be on WHYY this Saturday at 4:20 AM.
Stay up and watch it... or just TiVo it.
I got to hang out with my family while I was out in LA after Max. I ran in to my cousin, Robert Michael Ryan. Turns out he's going to be in an upcoming episode of "How I Met Your Mother." He will play brother to the character Marshall for the Thanksgiving episode.
It's a good show (I've watched a couple episodes now.) So watch it, and hopefully we'll give my cousin more residual checks.
I opted not to go to my first session, a hands on session, because I have given up on hands on sessions. Nothing else appealed to me so I went back to the hotel, downloaded the Flex Builder Alpha, and built something. So no waste there.
I made it back for Understanding Flex Security with Erick Lee. I'm glad I went to this, finally there's some instruction which talks about securing both the server and applications. I highly reccomend the materials to anyone who does Flex Development.
Then, I wandered into Architecting Flex Applications by Matt Chotin. If nothing else this finally convinced me that MVC architechture is worth looking at. I've seen code examples of it before, but Chotin did a great job of explaining why you would do it. The rest of it was okay.
Break for burgers from In and Out, and to get Janice settled.
I ended the day Next Generation Flex: Data Services with Christophe Coenraets. One of co-workers walked out of this with his mind blown, so I had to go to it. Man, was this cool. They really are looking to make collaborative data processing easy to do. It seems like a lot of what you could do with Flash Remoting, they built into Flex Enterprise Server. Except that it takes two or three lines of code to do it.
All in all this was my best day in terms of content quality.
I've finally hit the my left edge. I finished 50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed to Know : Reclaiming American Patriotism last night, and was satisfied in the knowledge that there were people more liberal than myself. However, I think they went somwhere other than left, and drifted into crazy land.
Some of the things celebrated by this book are noble, and for the most part I agree that things like Stonewall, the Bill of Rights and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" are important. But the book goes on to laud, as revolustionary, veganism, Patty Smith's music, and Charles Bukowski's writings. No offense to my vegitarian friends, but veganism doesn't equate to The Bill of Rights. Granted, I'm sure they had to add some filler to reach 50 things, but come on.
Also in some of the blurbs that fall outside of the 50 items they indicate support for Ward Churchill, Huey P. Newton offering men to the other side in Vietnam, and the Weathermen. These are all things, that I cannot support.
All in all, skip this book.
I ordered room service tonight for dinner. I was watching Gilmore Girls when the waiter brought it up.
He made it clear that he doesn't respect me anymore. He didn't say a word, but eyes can speak volumes about the lack of respect you have for someone who watches Gilmore Girls.
The day finished with two events for me.
First I went to Sneaks and Peeks. There were a couple of cool things here. A competitor to Google Earth completely driven by vector-based images, by ESRI. That was impressive. Captivate stuff was interesting, though I have little use for it. I left after the CFEclipse and RDS demonstration.
Second, I went to a reception for Government, Education and Non-Profit customers. It was just a cocktail hour. So it was good for networking, but not really useful. But it was fun.
I started the day with a bout of issues. I assume they have to do with my choice of eatery last night. So I missed my first session.
I did make it into ColdFusion Enterprise Integration taught by Sean Corfield, who looks nothing like the picture on his site. This was fantastic, if for no other reason than it validated a lot of what I do with ColdFusion. Namely backend processes, not viewed by users. It gave me a lot of good ideas about what to do to make these processes more robust. If you do this type of work, check out this class either tomorrow, or in the materials.
The keynote was ok, although I had an aisle seat which helped a bunch. The skit thing was a little silly, and didn't add much to the experience. Both Adobe and Jermey Allaire had incredible presentations that kinda over shadowed Macromedia. I guess this isn't so bad though, as Allaire's new product was based on Flex, and Adobe will be the brand soon so no big deal there.
After lunch, I found out that Leveraging Cold Fusion Components in ColdFusion MX 7 was a little to basic for me. So I walked out, and rescheduled to take Creating BLOGs Using Dreamweaver, which I also thought was a little slow. I figured my ego needed deflating so I took the certification exam for ColdFusion MX 7. I passed.
My ego was in full swing when I strode into RIA Design Best Practices: Implementation with Flex. I left after 20 minutes because it was pretty much the RIA Design Best Practices: Theory for Developers I took yeasterday, but with the occasional code example.
There is still more to do tonight, so I'm off.
Last thing I did for Max today was go to the Birds of A fether session for Cold Fusion. Tim Buntel and Damon Cooper did a really good job of dealing with an audience that went a little feral on them. I can't figure out why. I mean no product is perfect, but people were pretty advisarial with them. Some of the people on the panel got defensive early, but I think that was going to happen. Nothing really that new was divulged, either which disappointed me.
Oh well, as disappointed as I was with it, I don't think this one was the presenter's fault.
After a week solid of rain in Philly I come to sunny LA. It's raining. It will continue to rain for the rest of week according the Weather.com.
Moe.
I started the day with RIA Design Best Practices: Theory for Developers session. This was really well done. I tend to have a soft sport for theory, but I felt they did a great job with it. The had great illustrations of their principles, and showed you exactly how they were conforming to their principles with each example.
The same could not be said for Securitng ColdFusion MX 7. I left after 50 minutes. At the point at which I left they still hadn't gotten to any security for Cold Fusion. It was focused on securing the OS and the webserver. I would avoid this class. There used to be a great white paper from Macromedia about securing CF7, but I can't find it now. I'm sure it address the most common problems with ColdFusion servers, that is that the OS is poorly secured, but I was looking for more than just how to filter packets.
The keynote was good but not really explosive. They did the whole "App of the Future" thing, which was cool, but nonexistant. I was happy that Macromedia acknolwedges their competition, and I hoep their estimation of Redmonds forays into Flash killing are correct. However my view of the keynote might have been negatively influenced by airplane like seating conditions.
Finally there was the monster 3 hour Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Features Exposed. It was good. Some part were old hat, but they really did a good job of explaining why these features that I never used before were worth using. I found myself saying "I could do that here" or "That could help with that project" which is a very good thing to come out of such a session. If nothing else, their section on combining Flex and CF has rekindled my interest in Flex.
All in all a god day. Looking forward to the Cold Fusion Birds of a Feather presentation tonight.
I don't know what's sadder, that there is a Best of David Spade on SNL or that I'm watching it.
Then I remember that Christopher Walken, who has never been a cast member of SNL had a "Best of" already. So I don't know which is sadder; who ever wins, I ultimately lose.
Today was a beautiful day in Philadelphia. So I lured Janice out for a stroll in Center City. I wanted to stock up for my trip to California. I figured cigars will probably be more expensive out there than here. But I couldn't resist picking up an LGC for today.
Construction: Fantasic; it started burning evenly right from the start. The draw was perfect. The wrapper oily and smooth. It never had to be relit. I didn't have to concentrate on smoking faster or slower.
Taste: It started out very tobacco-y with a full bodied taste. At about the one third mark a little explosion of chocolate and coffee came through. I wish that it had started a little earlier, but it was very good.
Stats: This cigar measures 4 and 3/4 inches by a ring gauge of 52. It's constructed of a diverse collection of tobaccos, wraper from Ecuador, binder from Nicaragua, and filler from the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. Holt's sells these for $5 a pop.
Overall: $5 is a bit much for such a short cigar. However, it does have perfect construction and a great taste, so the $5 isn't that much of a stretch. I would say that if you like full bodied cigars, it's definately worth a try.
Edmund Bacon passed away. I just found this out from PoliticsPhilly. What an awful shame that is. He was a very accomplished man who was extraordinarily inspirational.
Edmund Bacon was the City Planner for Philadelphia during the 50's, 60's and 70's. He was responsible for Love Park, the entire strip of buildings between City Hall and 30th Street on Market, and the revitalization of Society Hill. He was born in West Philly and passed away in his home in Center City.
I got a chance to meet him last year when Craig interviewed him for "Craig's Variety Show." One of the things that struck me about him was the fact that he was so focused on the future after such an accomplished life. What I said at the time was:
The thing that struck me most about him was the fact that he was the oldest person I've ever met who still spoke about the promise of the future, as opposed to superiority of the past. And not for nothing, his past is pretty damn cool. He biked across Europe at 22, worked in Shanghai at 23, and was worried about the plight of workers in Flint, Michigan before Michael Moore had even been conceived.
Philadelphia is a better place for many of the improvements he made as City Planner. We have lost a great treasure.
Atrios keeps talking about the Champagne he's going to drink if one of the major jackasses in the administration get's indicted.
I'm going to do one better. I'm going to have cigars if Libby, Cheney or Rove get indicted. Not only am I going to have cigars, but I will share them with anyone who signs up on this entry. This will be up to a limit of 24, or a box of 25 minus one for me.
However, there are qualitative differences between the relative worth of these convictions, and also of their likelyhood. So I'm establishing the following payoff chart:
I figure this deal will be good for one year. As soon as the indictment is confirmed, I will buy the box and distribute within a month. If all three get indicted anyone who signs up gets all three. If more than one gets indicted within a month of another I will stagger the payouts. The only catch is that you have receive them from me. I'm not shipping them anywhere. Come to Philly, or wait until I get to your city.
So if you are a raging a liberal and love cigars, get in on this while the getting is good. Also if you have any other cigar/jackass combo drop me a line.
Continue reading "Rove Watch - Cigars for Indictments"
Every once in a while I get fired up that I need backups of my remotely hosted site. At work this isn't a problem, just copy all the files via a network share. But at numtopia.com I lack that access. (Rightfully - I am not complaning, Dataride.) However, FTP'ing all 700 or so files that comprise the Aarrgghh!! empire gets a little tedious.
This time instead of giving up dejectedly, I decided to use zip.cfc from Webclarity to make my own backup solution. I wrote a cfc (function really) that can take both inclusion and exlusion parameters for files, extensions and directories. In short it allows me to create tailored lightweight backups of my ColdFusion site. Want to find out more. Check it out here:
Once again I go to my trusty Ashtons. This time for a cedar wrapped one. However this was not the typical one.
Construction: This cigar had great draw, even burn, and a great oily wrapper. However the wrapper is where the weirdness began. The wrapper was covered with a thin layer of a sticky substance. At first I thought it was glue, but it was evenly distributed. After a while I could only assume that it was cedar sap. I've never seen this happen before. Anyone out there have this happen?
Taste: This tasted like an Ashton - a mild to medium taste, which some sweet hints in it. However something was off about it. I think it was, what I think was sap. I have another one, so when I have it I will update if the next one tastes differently.
Stats: This cigar measures 60 inches by 50 ring gauge. Like all Ashtons (classic) they are Domincan binder and filler, with a Connecticut wrapper. Holt's sells them for $8.85 a piece.
Overall: If this had tasted as I expected it to, it might be worth it's steep price. However, whether it was the sap, or maybe the large ring gauge it just didn't taste great. So I can't mark it as a good value. Maybe I'll be proved wrong when I have the other one.
I've been a little hard on Arturo Fuente of late. I was not happy with the Anjeo and I downright negged the Opus X. I figured I would give one of there more established labels a chance. One of the Hemingways caught my eye because I love the torpedos.
I decided to smoke it during a walk today. It wasn't raining that hard. Until I got down to Logan Circle, then the sky opened up. I ran back home and the cigar got a little wet, despite that I finished the it in the covered stairwell behind my place.
Construction: The burn started out tough, which is to be expected with a torpedo. It's just physics or fluid dynamics or something. However every good torpedo has that moment where the lit end opens up and this one was no exception. The draw then became perfect. The burn was pretty much the same way, uneven at first, then perfect. This was all in spite of the fact that it had gotten some water on it.
Taste: I loved this cigar. It tasted fantastic. It started out tasting like just mild tobacco; however as the cigar kept going, I got an explosion of flavor. I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden it just hit me. It was really sweet, maybe a little vanilla in there. Whatever it tasted like, it was fantastic.
Stats: The Signature is 6 inches with a 47 ring gauge. They're made up of Dominican binder and filler and finished off with a Cameroon wrapper. Holt's sells them for $6.10 a piece.
Overall: Great construction and incredible taste. So if cost isn't an issue, I would pick these up. If someone gives you them as a gift, put them in your will. However at $6.10 a pop, they are a little pricey. I would still say it's worth it.
I've been a bit light with the posts for awhile, it's because I've been working on my house. Those of you that have been in any of my homes know the incredible leaning entertainment center (pictured top.) Janice, who had been suggesting that it needed to go for quite some time, finally convinced me to get rid of it. It was sad for me, but it's going to live down in Florida with Mensch who is moving there to run the Internet operations for a gubernatorial campaign. We also got rid of the papasan. Mensch got that too.
We replaced it with more Ikea furniture (pictured bottom.) Turns out that everyone has Magiker furniture, or at least Ryan does. I have to say I'm happy with it, despite the hand cramps from wrestling with allen wrenches and odd Swedish material couplers. Now on to the bathrooms.
Alternate happy hour came early this week, and Dan, Ryan and myself hopped down to Holt's and Mahogany on Walnut. These cigars caught my eye because they both looked beautiful but were relatively cheap for the size. These cigars are by Rocky Patel, a label I had never heard of before these past few months, but which seems to be an up and comer.
Construction: They started off rocky. It was hard to light them, all three of us had that problem. It didn't burn that evenly for me but it was even worse for Dan and Ryan. The draw was fine for me, maybe a little tight, but Ryan felt it was more than a little tight. Despite the problems with it, held up pretty well, and I would rate the construction as okay to good. There were problems, but they were all just a little annoying, not major.
Taste: Now this is what I remember maduro as tasting like - sweet, smooth and mellow. It had almost no aftertaste. All in all this is exactly what I want in a thick maduro cigar.
Stats: It's 6 inches by a 52 ring gauge. I couldn't find much on what the county of origin is, but most of Rocky Patel's cigars are from Nicaragua, and I assume these are too. Holt's sells them for $5.50.
Overall: It's a little weak on construction, but tasted pretty good. The tie breaker is the price. At $5.50 per cigar, it's worth a try.
Whyy will be presenting Rolodex Girl on Comcast onDemand from November to January. Make sure to watch it, it's free!. I'm not sure what effect it has on Citizen Wumpus if you do so. But I cannot prove you will not die if you don't watch it. I'm not saying you will. But you can't be too careful.
So watch it.
It seems I confused Ryan with this post about a somethingawful.com Flash tub video. So here's more info on Gary S. Paxton.
What would you get if you combined an unironic song about abortion with an Flash video done in the style of Nintendo graphics?
You would get this Flash Tub from somethingawful.com. Go, check out the dark side of what you can do with Macromedia products.
He's ben indicted on money laundering charges.
My heart runneth over with epicaricacy.
There's been much discussion among the left on the Miers nomination already. There seems to be a few memes running around out there. She's a crony. She is a bland choice. She's not that bad. All seem to point to the fact the the Bush White House is weak. Like a bad, but undefined odor, I couldn't put my finger on why I had a problem with these...
Until I read this by Haplo. He's right, if Pro-Choice, the Miers nomination does ensure that the wingnut war on America will continue unabated.
| Su | Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
adobemax06 adobemax07 adobemax08 air Air Basecamp CFC Cigar Reviews Cigars ColdFusion Entertainment Film Flex Internet Meme Meta Blogging Movable Type Personal Philly Philly Mayor 2007 Places to Smoke Politics Random Religion Running a ColdFusion Shop Squidhead svnAuth.cfc TV unfuddlecfc Web Development Who Needs A Cockpunchin' ? Writing
Squidhead creates scaffolds for MS SQL based applications using stored procedures.
Copyright 2003-2008
Terrence Ryan.
This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here are mine and not those of my employer.