Fuzzy World

3 years. It’s been 3 gorram years that I’ve been working as a full-timer at Microsoft. Time really flies when you’re… well, not really having fun, but whatever.

So I finally did it, I got a version control system running at home. The configuration is as follows: Subversion is installed on my Windows Home Server computer and stores its data on a duplicated folder. What this means is that I get access to my source code from anywhere in the world and data security of WHS. And it was actually a fairly simple and pain-free process.

It took about two hours to setup SVN, setup clients (TortoiseSVN), integrate it with Visual Studio and upload all of my (C#) code to the server. Consider that it took more than hour for me to sift through and upload my code (750 MB), and the real meat of the exercise took about an hour. Really nothing, when compared to the ultimate pay-off. And I managed to do all of that while re-watching “The American President” for about the 20th time.

Here are some helpful links about setting this mess up:

• Windows Home Server – a great selective-backup system that I’ve been using happily for a while now.
• For the Subversion server I used VisualSVN Server. It’s incredibly easy to setup and use.
• On my home PC and laptop I’m running TortoiseSVN. It’s simple to use, as it integrates directly into Windows Explorer. Just right-click in a directory to see the possible commands.
• Integration with Visual Studio is done through AnkhSVN. I haven’t used it much yet, but it looks pretty solid.
• Setting up SVN on WHS is described by Scott Hanselman here. It’s very straightforward, but I didn’t go the route that Scott picked where a scheduled job runs nightly to backup SVN’s storage. Instead, following comments on the blog, I created a separate (duplicated) folder to hold the SVN content.
• The most helpful resource for this project was Rajib Mahmud’s post on how to actually work with VisualSVN Server and Tortoise SVN. A great resource for noobs who are just getting started with SVN. (We use SourceDepot at work, so SVN is a bit of a change. Though mostly it’s the shift from a console to visual style that really disoriented me.)

That’s all! In the coming days I’ll get to putting other code on SVN, such as Java and C++ from college and whatever VB I still have from high school. And, as a nod to Catherine, the ex-coworker who was the inspiration for me to start using version control at home, I’ll eventually have a repository dedicated solely to science fiction writing. Can’t wait to see the check-in comments for that: “rewrote closing of chapter 7, decided to blow up Jupiter instead of Saturn.”

Wow. Simply wow.

—

We went out on a double date,
Me and Edith, you and Kate.
Before we got past their front gate,
There you were making eyes at Edith
While you were making time with Kate.

You can’t have your Kate and Edith, too.
You, rascal, you. Yodel-ay-hee-hoo.

Then we went to a drive-in show.
You were kissing on Kate. She wouldn’t let you go.
I looked at Edith, started feeling bold.
I found your big, hairy hand holding on
To the hand I was trying to hold.

You can’t have your Kate and Edith, too.
You, rascal, you. Yodel-ay-hee-hoo.

Edith asked me if I would
Get her some popcorn. I said I would.
When I got back, dad-blame if you
Hadn’t crawled into the backseat with
Edith. And Kate was back there, too!

You can’t have your Kate and Edith, too.
You, rascal, you. Yodel-ay-hee-hoo.

Years have passed since that first date.
I married Edith. You married Kate.
Now every night when I come home,
Your car’s in the driveway, Kate’s in the car
And you and Edith are in the house alone!

You can’t have your Kate and Edith, too.
You, rascal, you. Yodel-ay-hee-hoo.

This week at work is a bit hectic: all of my bugs have to be fixed by Friday/Monday. (It’s technically supposed to be Friday, but if I get them in my Monday then all’s good.) So that brings us to a bit of a dilemma. For the past half a year or so I haven’t been working on weekends. At all. Yeah, a huge achievement, considering that before that, for the past two years, I’ve been at work every single weekend.

So, here’s the dilemma: this weekend I’ve got scheduled a writing session, a fair amount of Lego Batman, the new Mass Effect expansion pack, the new Batman game, programming my ray tracer (of course). A packed weekend to be sure. But then, if I don’t get my bugs finished off by Friday, that means that all the plans go right out the window. Sigh.

More on the individual things I’ve got planned for the weekend:

• An ex-coworker is organizing a writing session. For some of us it’s about planning for the next NaNoWriMo, for me it’s about just practicing writing short stories.
• I’ve been playing Lego Batman for the past two weeks and it’s really a lot of fun, even for a silly kid’s game. And for a silly kid’s game, there are some interesting puzzles in the game. It’s taking a while to get everything there.
  
• A new expansion has been released for Mass Effect. It’s only 5$, so I don’t expect to spend a lot of time on it, but it’ll still be something new to experience. Can’t wait!
  
• The new Batman game, Arkham Asylum, is really quite amazing. I tried out the demo just an hour ago and I’m very impressed. From the looks of it, there’s a large amount of stealth – sneaking up on unsuspecting enemies and ambushing them while hanging upside down – as well as pure kick-ass fighting.
  
• I’ve been doing quite a bit of coding on my ray tracer application, and this weekend should be no different: I’m trying to optimize the application so it’s viable to add interesting effects and construct complex scenes. ATM, it takes anywhere between 4 and 35 minutes to render a single pig (3D pig-shaped object consisting of 7,000 polygons). That’s way too damn slow, even considering that the rendering is occurring on a dinky old laptop and in managed code. So I’m implementing some accelerators, like k-d trees, lazy initialization and caching some frequently-accessed data.
  

If only I could squeeze in a few other things, like dim sum, reading (haven’t been reading for a while now), getting mildly drunk, watching a movie, watching a movie while getting mildly drunk, etc. Ah, wishful thinking. Ooh, maybe Labor Day weekend. 🙂

Layered coffee, originally uploaded by FuzzyGamer.

At U Barnes & Noble.

For the past few weeks I’ve been feeling really crappy and today I finally made it to the doctor’s office. Turns out I have a fairly nasty case of a condition called APD. Yeah, no clue what that is, so I asked the doctor. Turns out I’ve got a very serious Pug Deficiency. Apparently, APD stands for Acute Pug Deficiency (these doctors spend more time coming up with ironic names for serious diseases than they spend actually treating these diseases!). APD can be very serious, often leading to depression, altered mental states, liver failure (as a result of self-medication) and, in some cases, multiple system failure. APD can be life threatening.

Though, thankfully, APD is not as bad as CPD – Chronic Pug Deficiency. For these poor souls, there is no cure. According to the doctor, those suffering from CPD often have severe dog allergies or pug phobias, so the standard protocol cannot be used with them. There are substitutes, such as fat, closely-shaved cats doubling as pugs, but the protocol is still in testing and has not been FDA approved. Success rates are also much lower for this alternative.

According to the doctor, there are various possible choices at this point. The usual therapy method involves getting a pug, but this is unfeasible for me at the time: I work long hours and cannot give the pug a proper home. An alternative (as with most alternatives, success rates are obviously lower than with the primary protocol) is to find a pug-substitute. A small, cuddly dog (or cat, though once again, lower rates of success) will work, as long as it is similar in disposition to a pug. A last resort is a more radical approach, a so-called “life transplant”. This procedure involves the acquirement of a “life”. This approach works by masking the symptoms of APD, allowing the patient to temporarily “forget” that they have APD (the medical terms for this are much more complicated than “forget”, but this is essentially what happens). This protocol is both riskier and more expensive, hence its label as a “last resort”.

For the time being, I’m investigating such services as FlexPetz and finding solace in photos on IHasAHotDog.

A Lester Burnham Moment™ is one that is that is epitomized by this quote, spoken by Lester himself:

It’s a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself.

An un-Lester Burnham Moment is similar, in that you do surprise yourself, but it’s not great at all.

For instance: the day is going along splendidly, you’re happy, not a care in the world, take a long lunch, go pick up some kittens in the afternoon, enjoy the sunny weather, etc. Then, on the way home, you have an un-Lester Burnham Moment, and you’re surprised that you’re still blah blah blah. And suddenly the thought of driving your car at 70 MPH into a wall seems like a great idea. And you realize that you’re incredibly pissed about this surprising you. And then you remember that if it wasn’t for buying that damn condo, you could be in Japan now, or California, or somewhere on the East Coast, basically as fucking far away from Washington as possible. And you think that, if nothing else, getting away from Redmond could make you happy. And that’s what ends up coloring a perfectly good Wednesday.

But then you have a few beers, watch an episode of House, vent on the internet and realize that life isn’t too bad. It just has its ups and downs, and the kill-me-now moments, and the wonderfully peaceful lulls, and the indescribable pangs of pain…

…and then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life…

Monday night, originally uploaded by FuzzyGamer.

Same empty bottle, same boring TV

Cheesecake and ketchup. Lobster and caramel. Eminem and Elton John. Cartman and Urkel. Two great things that are amazing on their own, but suck when they are taken together.

Beer and vicodin are like that: first, they’re great and you’re thinking to yourself “wow, this is the highest I’ve ever been legally”. But then, in a few hours and the following morning, when your head is splitting from a killer hang-over, you’ve just got one thing on your mind: “FUCK, that was a mistake. Good thing I didn’t sign her public key.”.

But then you take a number of Excedrin, go back to sleep for a few hours and wake up perfectly refreshed.

Monday night…, originally uploaded by FuzzyGamer.

Empty bottle of beer and nothing on TV

Just came back from watching “District 9”. First off, that was the closest I’ve ever gotten to vomiting without having eaten something bad. The theater was packed, even though we got there twenty minutes before the start of the movie, so the first half hour I had to look up at the screen from the third row. I got incredible motion-sickness going there. So had to move to one of the back rows, which thankfully had an empty seat. After that, the movie actually got enjoyable.

The film itself is quite good, both in terms of visual presentation, the drama, the action (quite a lot of action, actually) and the tiny bits of comedy. The two things I didn’t care for were the over-use of hand-held cameras (duh!) and the very weak scientific backing.

See, the premises of the film is that this alien mothership hangs over Johannesburg and then 1.5 million aliens (after two decades) are living in slums in District 9. There’s unrest and the aliens (called “prawns” in the movie for their appearance) are eventually segregated from the humans. The movie picks up at the point when the entire prawn population of the slums is being evicted to a different area.

Now, that whole scenario that I described may sound perfectly attractive to an English major looking for analogies and Apartheid references, but to someone more scientifically minded (or simply raised on sci-fi) this whole idea sounds like bullshit. Aliens land on earth and all we can do is round them up in a shanty-town? The place is run by corporate security forces and exploited by Nigerian scammers (seriously). Not a single scientist or researcher in sight. As if that’s not enough, there are entirely too many scientific mistakes in the movie. For one thing, what’s up with the aliens being human-sized, human-shaped, capable of breathing our air and eating our food? We learn their language, but no one tries to communicate with them, figure out why the aliens are here and how we can help them? The idea of weapons that work for aliens but not for us is glossed over completely. And they seemed to almost forget the fact that a ship-load of aliens seems entirely too willing to forget about their space-ship and settle in the life of luxury here on earth.

But hey, if you overlook some of these fallacies, the movie is great. Just don’t sit too close to the screen.

It’s so beautiful. Just 2 hours and I’ll have a legit copy of Windows 7 Ultimate (x64), all ready to install on my home computer.

I’m running an older version of Windows 7 on my work laptop and so far it’s been absolutely wonderful.

Of course, I would simply say “Tradition: incredibly stupid”, but that’s just me.

If you’ve still got free time on your hands, don’t visit FMyLife. It’s a website that allows people to anonymously complain about their life. So it’s like a meta-filter of the internet. It’s got the usual “I did X in public and everybody laughed”, a smattering of “I caught my boy/girl-friend cheating on me with a close friend/relative” and some really original FML’s.

It’s also addictive. It’s so addictive, I check the site multiple times a day for new posts. It’s so addictive, I wrote an application for my phone so I can read posts anywhere. It’s so addictive, I had to update my application to have time limits: can’t use the program more often than once every four hours, and then for no more than 5 minutes at a time. Yeah, I’ve got a problem.

In fact, I’ve got a huge problem: I’ve read so many posts, that I’m now bored of the site. See, that’s what happens when you do too much of something, discover the pattern and lose interest in it. The pattern of FML’s is quite simple:

• Angst – pretty standard LiveJournal bullshit by teens who know that being rejected by a crush is the end of the world.
• Embarrassment – these can be pretty hilarious. The problem is that just as often the person is too uptight and the “embarrassment” is something trivial or inconsequential. Certainly not “Fuck My Life” material.
• The pain of being let down by someone close – this is the all too-common crap where the poster’s family/spouse/whatever says or does something that is interpreted as “I don’t like you” or does something to “hurt” the poster. Pretty standard and way too common.
• Betrayal – wow, this one just doesn’t get old, does it?

This is of course similar to my problem of having read too many jokes, becoming bored of “normal” jokes and switching gears toward meta-humor.

And just to wrap up this little post about yet-another a horribly addictive internet phenomenon, here’s one of my “favorite” posts:

Today, my 15-year-old daughter asked for a ride to her boyfriend’s house. It’s the same house I’ve been driving her to for sleepovers with her friend “Kate” for two years. FML

There are a lot of theories about this post, but my personal interpretation of this particular FML is as follows: there is no Kate and the poster’s kid has been sleeping with some boy for two years (since she was 13) and now (a) decided to stop lying about it or (b) it momentarily slipped her mind. This post is funny on multiple levels (assuming, of course, that the scenario is what described). For one thing, the poster is a bad parent for never having met Kate yet allowing the daughter to sleep over for two years. Second (and this one really hinges on my assumptions about this post), the hypocrisy of the parent never caring about meeting Kate or her parents and all of a sudden giving two shits about the daughter’s sex life. Ah, the hilarious plight of good ol’ hypocrites.

—

Currently listening to: 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection The Best Of Lynyrd Syknyrd and The Best of The Guess Who