Archive for July, 2009

Some Days, Your Eye Just Pops Out

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

So today my eyes were a little dry because I put my contacts in this morning before I had a shower an hour and a half later  (mental note, shower first, then eyes).  Later, I’m at work, I rub my eye, and out pops my contact lens.  Crap.  I quickly put it back in, but kept bugging me.  Later, it pops out again–turns out I had put it in backwards.  Ouch.  No wonder.  Smooth move there, Chuck.  To top off today’s awesomeness, I get the sore throat, fever, aches thing this afternoon.  Awesome.  So much for hitting the gym tonight.

So, I came home, hit the Dayquil, and popped in the Watchmen DVD.  Good movie, quite true to the book, all-in-all, well done.  I figure if I’m sick, I can afford one night off.  Tomorrow, it’s gym and studying for the next IT certification.  Really.  I mean it this time.

Alert readers will be wondering what I was doing up a full hour and a half before my shower.  Ahem.

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The Case for Working With Your Hands

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

This article by Mathew B. Crawford in the NY Times Magazine stuck a note with me as Dad and I have been discussing the subject of “College For All” lately.

The Case for Working With Your Hands – NYTimes.com.

It’s a great (and long) read, and oh-so-true. Simply put:  Skilled, hands-on-trades should have just as much value in our society as those that require “college learnin’.”

I remember when I first got down to the farm here after leaving the big corporate job.  I enjoyed mowing 30+ acres of grass, a job that took almost two weeks with the equipment we had available.  In some cases, it almost seemed when the job was finished, it was time to start again.

Someone asked me why I liked such a mundane task.

I responded, “At the end of the day, I can look behind me at all the mowed grass and be satisfied at the sight of a job I completed.  I know ‘I did that.’  No manager is going to come along and invalidate the work.  It’s done, and it’s mine.  No one can take it from me.”

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Disclaimer, as Required by…Policy?

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Ah, what a difference a few years makes.  After being away from the then-wild-and-new blogging scene for a few years in order to finish my master’s degree, I return to a world where employers (who used to not even know what the term “blog” meant) now have formal policies regarding personal blogging by their employees.

As a result of my enjoying the benefit of a regular paycheck from one such employer, and given my desire to continue to receive this bi-monthly benefit in the form of direct deposits to my bank account, I present to you, dear reader, the following required verbiage:

“The thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog’s posts are Chuck Milam’s alone and are not representative, unless clearly and unequivocally stated, of those of any past, present, or future client or employer.”

Actually, that’s not half-bad.  I might keep that disclaimer around even after I move on to greener pastures.

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4th of July

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

I’m writing this at the end of yet another too-short weekend (on my iPhone, by the way). The 4th of July (more appropriately called “Independence Day”) weekend is winding down. Despite my intention to be in the old Oshkosh neighborhood this year as I was last, it was not to be. While I did miss being at what is always a great reunion of childhood friends, life kept me home this year–and I mean that in a not-so-bad connotation.Photo of Downtown Nashville Fireworks

Perhaps I’m getting old, or perhaps social networking tools help “take the edge off” needing to see everyone in person, maybe I’m just more determined than ever to keep costs down, but the “need” to get back home to Oshkosh isn’t as strong as it was. Perhaps this is just a melancholy phase that will pass in time. Perhaps having certain people here makes it easier to stay south of Indianapolis now. Or…maybe I really am starting to despise air travel and the Jetta isn’t getting any younger. Alternators aren’t cheap.

Anyway, I had an enjoyable weekend. I got to spend some time at the lake and hang with Mom and Dad. I got to spend some quality time with @janeqpublic, both at home and in Nashville. We watched most of the Nashville fireworks before we finally could not even see them through the blinding rainstorm. I managed to snap a photo from our vantage point before things got really wet and we had to run for the car.

We then proceeded to get stuck in the post-fireworks traffic, which was exacerbated by the Steve McNair crime scene investigation– we ended up going right past it in the bumper-to-bumper crush. Speaking of the Steve McNair murder, chalk that up to yet another news story I learned about on twitter first–something that happens with increasing frequency.

On the professional front, I’m still very much enjoying using open-source tools to solve business problems. You know I’m in deep when I’m stopping to take notes when I get a flash of inspiration at odd hours. I find myself thinking in SQL code snippets, too. It’s exciting when projects hit this kind of critical mass. I’m excited to see where it goes from here.

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“Delete All Duplicate Files” Means Just That

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Over the years, I’ve moved my music collection from computer to computer, and with the ever-larger hard disk sizes I confess I’ve been a bit lazy about checking for duplicate files. After my recent finding I had five copies of some songs, I figured it was time to do something about it. I found a handy little duplicate file finder application for Mac OS and it found a ridiculous amount of duplicate files: Over 16,000. I was tired, it was late, I hit the “Delete All Duplicate Files” button. The next day, I figured out what that meant: If there was one copy of a file, it deleted ALL identical versions of that file, including the original. Ooops. This caused me all kinds of trouble, as it deleted Omnifocus data files, some Firefox cache and config files, and of course, music files. I’ve been slowly crawling through my iTunes library bit-by-bit identifying “missing” files and using Apple’s Time Machine (glad I was using that regularly!) to restore the missing files.

At first, I didn’t see the pattern in what files were missing, as they seemed random. I’d look in a folder where iTunes has my music folder organized (by artist, then album) and wonder why two or four out of twelve files were missing. After a few file restores, I began to realize a lot of the missing songs were some of my favorites–those most likely to be copied in multiple places. Ah, naturally, the favorite songs would be the ones to get deleted. I’ve temporarily disabled my Time Machine backups so my music files don’t roll off the back end of the monthly snapshots. Hopefully I’ll be done here in a few more evenings. It’s good mindless unwinding work if nothing else.

Update (4 July 2009): I finally finished the laborious restore process last night. Many good lessons were learned.

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It’s Been A While

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

It’s been quite some time–maybe two years or more–since this web space has held any more than a simple stub placeholder that I hacked up in about five minutes using vi directly on the web host via an SSH connection (yes, that means something to my technical readers).  After a long hiatus, I’ve decided to bring the blog back for a number of reasons:

  1. Sometimes I want to share stuff with the world at large, and I don’t always want to subject people to signing up for facebook or the social network du jour just to read what I have to say (Hi there, Uncle Bernie!)
  2. I noticed on my web log reports that people were getting referred here from twitter, so I figured I should give them something to look at beyond the “under construction” disappointment page.
  3. I hear that blogging gets you noticed by employers or something.  Sometimes this is not a good thing.  We will see.

The discerning and technical readers out there will notice that I’ve switched content management systems again.  I chose WordPress mostly because it has a iPhone app that lets me post and manage things remotely.  No kidding, that was my main decision point.  Seriously folks, if you’re not developing mobile clients for your systems, you stand to lose out.

I am considering converting my posts from back in the day (2003-2005 time frame), but that’s a project for another day and will require some SQL geekery to make the import from Geeklog to WordPress happen.

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