That's right.  One year ago, my wife and I were married in the fabulous downtown court house.  The ceremony was short but SWEET.  We had more people there than either of us thought would.  I love her now just as I did then... perhaps even more.

Honey, I love you... Happy Anniversary.

Well, yesterday I thought I'd try posting an article on digg.com to see how it would do.  I was ecstatic when I reached almost 20 diggs by day end.  The article wasn't great by any means, I was simply testing the waters.  Well over night, it jumped to over 250 diggs and actually made it to the front page.  Wow!  My sites traffic as of 11am was over 10,000 hits.  My normal is around 200 to 300.  Unfortunately, my ad revenue still won't buy me a cup of coffee this morning.

As for the actual article, I think most people missed the point but at least the question is in their head.  Hopefully when they run into a similar problem they'll remember it and come up with a much better solution.

Anyway, I just digg digg.com now.

UPDATE: Well it's day 2 and I've leveled off at 268 diggs, not too shabby.  Todays traffic is no where near 10k but it is much higher and I'm expecting to break 1000 by days end.

You have got to be kidding me!

Tsunami was God's revenge for your wicked ways, women told

This is what is so wrong with this world.  I'm fucking ashamed that this sort of thing actually happens in this the “Modern World”.  What are we, fucking cavemen?  

I'm not a big fan of religion but the Muslim and Islamic religions really rub me the wrong way when it comes to how they treat women.  After reading this article, my dislike has grown even more.  Nobody is second best to anybody.  We all live and die, that's it!  Telling women that "they are the cause" of something this disastrous is just the sign of idiocy, pure and simple.

Scare tactics are the sign of the weak.

President Bush, Republicans... read that last line again, and again, then again, until it sinks in!

I truly believe that there is intelligent life outside of our galaxy and I think the reason we have not been visited by aliens is due to the fact that we are no smarter than pond scum.  We must be the laughing stock of the universe; the infant still shitting their pants.  

Today, I can truly say that I'm ashamed to be a human being!

Like a boxer after a knockout I’m dazed and confused and can’t help but ask; what happened?  Is everyone alright?  Who was that jolly fat man?  Man does he pack a mean right hook.

That’s right, it’s over.  My wife and I have survived another holiday.  Albeit, we’re both a bit bruised and are in dire need of rest.  Funny how it seems to happen, we need a vacation from the vacation.  

Somebody please, wake me up when it’s February.

... and a happy winter solstice everyone.

After an idea my wife had less than a week ago, today is the official unveiling of... the countdown to the End of Bush. 

Days Bush Has Left
http://endofbush.xerratus.com/

Enjoy.

UPDATE: Wow!  I put the finishing touches on this site yesterday and already it's been linked to by the Impeach Bush Coalition's website.  Very nice... and fast.

Sitting here on the 9th floor overlooking Washington Square Mall next to highway 217, me and my co-workers just watched about 6 fire trucks come from 3 different directions.  They all seemed to converge at or near the mall.  Unfortunately we can only see part of the mall so we don't know what is up.  As far as we can see, there is no smoke.  What is going on?

Damn, here comes another one.

Recently, with an aging application created by an employee who no longer works here, I ran into a problem with SSN’s being stored in the database as integers.  Now the person who designed this, from what I gathered from another employee that worked with him, was very adamant about doing it this way.  To store it as a string or varchar in the database was a no-no due to size and allocation issues.  Honestly, this isn’t a problem, storing it as an integer.  It does however become a problem when you don’t solve for zeros.  

Yes, zeros, they exist in social security numbers and they can even show up at the beginning of one.  Take mine for instance; the first 3 digits are 093 (I was born in N.Y.).  So the problem we had recently was just that.  The number went in minus the leading zero but when the number was taken out of the database, it wouldn’t validate correctly.  Duh, I wonder why?  At no time should you add to the number (i.e., prefix zeros if the number is smaller) because it takes away from the integrity of the number.  Perhaps somebody keyed the number in leaving out a digit, prefixing a zero will do more harm than good.

So what is the harm storing it in the database as a varchar?  I truly believe, with the size of hard-drives and RAM becoming ever larger, that size is not nearly the issue it was for data storage 5 years ago.  Personally, I believe in encrypting before storing it in a database but as a string not an integer.  Again, size should no longer be an issue.  Now a number that is 093-XX-XXXX will be encrypted as “093-XX-XXXX” instead of 93-XX-XXXX and stored as either a varchar or varbinary in the database (personally, I do varchar).  The number’s integrity is intact and decrypting it will keep the leading zero, as it should.

Is this really a problem worth mentioning?  Do developers really do this?  Apparently so.  For a while now, I would try to log in to one of my online banks (which will remain nameless) and on top of asking for a pin they ask rotating questions for extra security.  A nice touch if you ask me.  The problem is that every 3rd or 4th time I try and log in, it throws an error stating that the input does not match.  You want to guess what question it asks me each and every time that error gets thrown?  If you guessed “enter the first 3 digits of your social security number”, you are correct.  My speculation is that it is trying to compare my “093” with 93 from the database.  But in order for this to happen, they need to be converting the database value to a string, not the other way around.  You see, if they converted “093” to an int and compared, 93 would equal 93.  But, if you converted the database value to a string, “93” would not equal “093”.  That’s my guess at least.

In short, you should always encrypt SSN’s as strings in the database to be sure that the integrity of the number is never compromised for decrypting and comparing later.

UPDATE:
This comment, left by whatever43 from digg, hits the nail on the head. 

Most of the commentators, while perhaps excellent programmers, DBAs and the like, obviously don't understand the data about which they're commenting, which is most likely the source of all of the derision.
An SSN is not a number. It's a string made up of three distinct numbers, and only the third one (comprised of the last four digits) is serial. It can be treated like a number, but in most if not all cases it shouldn't be.
It's not a question of mathematical operations, storage space or anything else that's been mentioned here; it's a matter data integrity.
Thought not perfect by a long shot, SSNs are much more sophisticated than most people think. If you do any type of database programming and deal with SSNs, please go to www.ssa.gov and learn a little about them.
(No, I don't work for the Social Security Administration, but I have a lot of experience in data storage, validation and integrity, and I've encountered almost every question one can think of about SSNs.)

About time!

This story, Court rejects 'intelligent design' in class, on cnn.com says it all.

A couple choice quotes from U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III decision:

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy,"

"It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

Thank you Judge Jones.  Thank you for making sure our constitutional rights are not trampled upon by those few who seem forget that there is a seperation of church and state here in America for a reason.

While expecting freezing rain yesterday, as predicted by the weather man, snow fell in P-Town.  Catching a lot of people off guard, the snow came quickly and fell fast.  For my wife and I, it came as we were decorating the outside of our house.  I was on the ladder putting lights on the outside while my wife worked on the front porch.  Within 15 minutes of the snow starting, we could see a light blanket covering our yard.  Within an hour, we had finished up decorating (I almost finished hanging the lights, one strand to go), got the dogs, and played in the snow.  

For our 2 little guys, Pucci and Nikko (Chihuahua & Miniature Pincher), this was their first snow experience.  Surprising to both my wife and I, they loved it.  They ran and jumped and slid... they couldn't get enough of it.  Brian, our Brittany, is very used to snow and remembered exactly how much he loved it.  I'll post pictures tomorrow.

After the dogs got their fix, it was me and my wife’s turn.  We had purchased 2 sleds last year in hopes of seeing snow then and as you may have guessed, they came in very handy.  Due to our location, we have a very big hill just out front.  My wife, being a tad bit braver than I, went first.  She actually walked about half way up, turned around and just went for it.  Almost right away, she turned completely around and started going down backwards but was able to turn it half way around before stopping at the bottom.  Then it was my turn.  After seeing my wife's bravery, I just plopped down and went for it.  Picking up speed and turning halfway around, I made it down and almost hit the curb with my ass but I was able to put my arm out and drag it to slow me down a bit.  We continued to sled for about half an hour.  You have to remember, we're both in our early 30's... our neighbors must think we're nuts.

So what do you do after a flash snow?  That’s right, go drive down to Starbucks and gets some coffee.  Luckily, I have a 4x4 pickup truck and about 7 years experience driving in Denver during the winters -so I'm comfortable driving in conditions like this.  We get up and down our hill just fine and see a line of cars at the bottom going north but we weren't going in that direction.  After driving down another big hill with ease, we got to Starbucks and had some coffee and watched it snow.

After that we hit G.I. Joes, Fred Meyer then Copelands before heading back home.  Driving back was a different story because we were now going up hill.  The first hill was a bit daunting but I just kept the speed consistent despite a few people, whose cars hadn't been so lucky, tried to wave us off.  I was not about to stop and lose momentum on this hill.  We made it up just fine to see a line of cars going, you guessed it, north.  This time, this was the direction we had to go.  So I turned left and joined them.  

The cars weren't going anywhere though due to a very small hill between our truck and our house, about 200 yards distance, where a group of cars managed to block the entire road.  Thinking that going up our hill would be tricky now, my wife and I opted to put on our chains while we waited.  Being the first time for me at least, putting on chains took a bit longer than it should have.  My wife had put on chains before and managed to help out tremendously.  By the time we got them on, the cars had been pushed to the side and we were on our way.  Going up and down our street was a breeze but a bit unnerving.  You see, this was the same hill which took the life of our neighbor during the last ice storm, so we don't take it lightly.

After our little adventure we got home and continued decorating and cleaning the house for Ed's (my father-in-law) arrival Monday.  That'll be another story as his flight has been delayed until 2am already due to cancelled flights and backed up air travel.  We just hope he makes it safely.

Here in Portland, 101.1 (KUFO) has been airing Howard Sterns morning show for a few years now and it's had a good run.  But alas, today is Stern's last public radio show broadcast.  Don't get me wrong, back in the day, when it was fashionable, I couldn't get enough of Howard and the gang (except for Jackie the Jokeman -he was just a dumb shit) but now, in my opinion, he's just no longer "shocking".  Honestly, I'm glad he's leaving the public air waves.  Why?  He's hit a wall and the only way to get around it is to go uncensored on satellite radio.  One of 2 things will happen:  Either he'll continue to grow and get even more shocking or he won't be shocking enough to justify being on a pay service.  This move will make or break him, in my opinion.  

Now, for the news that I'm just elated about:  To replace Stern here in Portland, rather than experiment with a local DJ, KUFO is buying Adam Carollas syndicated feed from Los Angeles.  SHIT YEAH!  Finally, there will be something to start listening to in the mornings on my way to work that'll "crack my shit up" as my wife likes to say.

Lately, I've been listening to 94.7 (KNRK) which plays such an array of music in the morning that I either hate it or love it.  As of late, I've hated it.  Mostly due to an insurgence of 80's music being played during my commute.  Come on, enough with that crap, I want to hear newer songs like they play in the afternoon.  The one thing I truly loved about their morning show was the John Stewart Minute, a minute highlight of his show on Comedy Central aptly titled, the Daily Show, which they played at 6:45am every morning.  The problem is that I now leave the house at 6:50am and I end up missing it every morning.  Now, I'm not going to leave any earlier so I'm not going to hear it any longer, it's a fact.  So with the advent of Adam "coming" to town, my fill of humor in the morning will be complete.  Why is this important?  I believe that it's better to get in a few laughs before getting to work, where ever you work, it just makes the rest of the day go smoother.

Speaking of which, I guess I should get back to it... they've changed the cover of the TPS reports 

UPDATE: Today, January 3rd, was Adams first show.  Finally.  Wasn't able to catch much but I liked what I heard.

I'm reminded of a conversation I overheard back when I lived in Boulder CO and was going to the University of Colorado.  A group of friends I hung out with were all roommates and all into Kung Fu.  One of them in particular, Ethan, loved Chinese food and ate it almost all the time.  One morning, waking up on their floor (long story) I over heard Ethan and Diana (one of the roommates) talking and their conversation went sort of like this:

Diana: Ugh, you're eating Chinese food again?
Ethan: Yup.
Diana: Its breakfast.
Ethan: Yup.
Diana: Who eats Chinese food for breakfast?
Ethan: Duh, the CHINESE!
Diana: [silence]
Ethan: A billion Chinese people can't be wrong.

The conversation basically ended there but I just couldn't help but laugh.  

Which begs the question; What the fuck do Chinese people eat for breakfast?  Has anyone gone to a Chinese restaurant for breakfast?  Perhaps they have a breakfast menu that we just haven't seen or maybe they just eat off of the lunch menu.  It's not that far fetched, the only difference between the lunch and dinner menu is price and portion size.

It just makes you wonder.

UPDATE: My wife points out the following: http://www.china.org.cn/english/Life/35510.htm

It's colder than a muthafucker!

Seriously, I just checked weather.com for the local weather conditions and it is saying that it's 23 degrees outside right now.  With the windchill it feels like it's 16 degrees.

That's just wrong!  We're in Portland, Oregon NOT Portland, Maine.

I stumbled across this site yesterday, digg.com, which allows you, the user, to rate articles submitted by other users.  The more ratings or the more people "dig" an article, the higher in rank it goes.  At some point, if enough people dig it, it'll get promoted to their front page.  I love the idea and I want to start using it.  

So yesterday, I signed up for an account.  After entering my email, choosing a screen name and password I was promised that they'd send me an email so I could confirm and start using my account.  Now, almost 24 hours later I have yet to see the email and I'm beginning to think that it's never going to come.  To be honest, I had it go to my hotmail account and I'm sure that it's their fault; in fact I'm almost certain.  

Now for my problem:  How do I get them to send me another confirmation?  To that end, will it fail with Hotmails spam filters?  I tried to go back and re-sign up but my screen name has been taken and the same goes for my email address.  Damn!  I'm basically fucked.  I'll go ahead and send the obligatory email to digg.com first to see if they can resolve this for me, I'm sure they will, but it has me wondering about something else.

My personal side project, pytheus.com - a personal web assistant, is being built with security in mind and one of the main points is email confirmation for new accounts.  Now, since the domain is fairly new and I run my own email server the chances of one or many spam filters will block my mail is great.  In fact I know this because xerratus.com and me-nikk.com email, which I also administer, get bounced a lot; mostly AOL, Hotmail and Earthlink.  

So what am I to do with my new site?  One option I'm investigating is to let the user opt to use an alternate email address, one I've set up thru Gmail.  By doing this, I'm now concerned that people won't take my site seriously.  My thinking is that Gmail is so widely known and used, spam filters wont block it.  In fact, my testing of this has proved true; none of my emails get bounced when I select to use the alternative method when signing up for an account thru pytheus.  When I don't select it, almost half of the emails bounce back.

In this day in age, with all the spam filtering that is going on, thanks to asshat spammers, is there other options out there for confirming accounts other than email?  Also, if that email ever gets blocked, should there be a way to re-send the email or have an option to confirm by other means?

Any ideas?

UPDATE: After contacting digg.com about my problem, someone from digg support activated my account.  Thanks digg.  Fuckin hotmail filters!

The damn battery is dead.  Nuff said.

UPDATE: Ahhhhh, got a new battery after work yesterday and the truck is running great again.

For those of you that don't know, I love real fireplaces.  I love the smell, the sound, the heat, the popping and even the burn spots on my carpet when those pops go a little too far.  Unfortunately, when I lived in the Denver/Boulder area a few year back smog and pollution caused the city to issue "no burn" days to keep pollutants down.  These only happened when it was cold and snowy.  Apparently you could only enjoy a nice roaring fire during the summer.  But gas fireplaces were allowed, so they were getting more and more popular but I hated them. 

Fast forward to today, minus 2 years.  When my wife and I found our "dream home" it was perfect, except for one thing; it had a gas fireplace.  Fortunately, there were a lot more reasons to take the house than not, so we took it.  Now, our house is on a hill so our first floor is actually our top floor.  There's the kitchen, dining room, the living room and the the fireplace.  Go downstairs and you have the bedrooms and access to the back yard.

So, winter is upon us and it's FUCKING COLD outside.  Now, if we had a real fireplace, I'd be outside in the back yard chopping wood on an almost daily basis to keep up with old man winter.  To add insult to injury (remeber I'd be weilding an axe -injuries are implied), I'd have to walk the wood all the way up stairs thru the master bedroom up to the fireplace.  Remember, it's on the second story, which is actually the first floor... I can't explain it any better, deal with it.

Now with our LOVELY gas fireplace all we have to do is flick a switch and viola, a bright, warm fire.  I fuckin' love it!  Now, if they could just build in a sound card so that every time I turned it on it popped I'd be in heaven.  For now though, it's perfect. 

As I look over now, there are 2 dogs and 3 cats camped out near the fireplace.  They love it too.  And if I had to chop wood to keep them warm, I'd never get to enjoy the fire with them.

It may be a first, but man, am I glad it's Monday.  My wife, who attends PNCA, is in finals and I've been her assistant all weekend helping with her projects.  Out of 4 finals, 3 are complete -the fourth is a debate set for Wednesday. 

She kicked butt and my butt got kicked. 

Congrats honey... and good luck!  A's across the board

YES!  Gas in my area (South East Portland) has finally dropped below $2 a gallon.  This calls for a celebration, bring out the tequilla, the donkey and the midget!

This morning when I went to get gas it was $1.99 per gallon and I was able to fill up my tank, for the first time in months, for unde $30.  About fucking time if you ask me.  I won't be happy until it gets down to around the $1.50 to $1.75 range (I'm referring to the cheap stuff by the say not premium).  What will I do with the whopping $1.25 that I saved?  Start my child(ren)-to-be college fund?  Put a down payment on a new Beamer?  No, I'll buy myself a Starbucks cup of coffee (it's more than google has given me). 

Mmmmmm coffee.

Well the holiday season is upon us and with it come the Christmas tree.  In our case though, it’s more like Christmas trees –plural.  Our first Christmas as a couple, 3 years ago, my wife and I discovered that we decorate our trees VERY differently.  She likes her tree to be very elegant, sticking to no more than 2 colors (the first year it was silver and white, the next it was red and white) while mine has to be gaudy with as many colors, shapes and blinking lights as I can.  I shit you not, you stare at one of my decorated trees long enough you run the risk of going into a seizure.

So that first Christmas (we weren’t living together at the time) we vowed to always get 2 trees; my big gaudy one and her petite classy one.  Low and behold, our first Christmas in our first house together last year we fulfilled that promise.  She got a cute, petite noble fir and I got the Griswold family tree big enough to bend at the ceiling when fully erect.  I loved my tree, although I didn’t have it blink as much as I wanted to (her father was here for the holidays and I didn’t want him go insane from all the flashing) but it did have a lot of color and garland.  Her tree was very lovely and elegant.  She has the red and white look going on with a bit of silver.

This year I opted out of getting the XXXL tree for something that was a mere 7-8 feet; that’s small for me.  But before we even went to the tree farm, Newmans Nobles, we were at New Seasons Market downtown for a quick snack after perusing Powells for a bit.  There they had LIVE trees… hehehehe.  You must know, I love pine trees (noble firs, blue spruces, you name it) and I want one for our yard which is lacking in that department.  About a year and a half ago I did get a red wood but that’s another story.  So, being the marketing suckers that we are, we bought a little 4 foot live noble fir.  We’ll put it on our porch for now and hopefully find a home for it in our yard… at the very least we’ll keep it in the pot and put it on one of our balconies.  So, that was our first tree of the season.  

Today, without really planning to do it this weekend, we decided to go to the tree farm we went to last year and pick out 2 trees.  We take the dogs of course because they’re part of our family and you pick out trees with your family, right?  So they run around marking their territory (Brian alone pee’d on well over a dozen trees –my apologies to the family(ies) who will be smelling noble fir scented with urine this year in their homes).  After they ran around, we put them back in the truck and finally started looking for our trees.  Fairly quickly we had cornered and marked our trees, albeit without urine.  Rather we tied little blue doggie poop bags (minus any poop) to our respective trees and called for somebody with a chainsaw.  

In the end, my tree came out to about 7 and a half feet while Nikki’s came it at a little over 6 feet.  They’re in the garage and we’ll move them in sometime this week, both in the living room together, for the decorating.  Hers elegant, mine gaudy both lovely… an opposite attraction that makes the holidays grand for us.  

Well its official; Dan has put in his notice -voted off the island.  Although, getting off of this island is the point of this reality show.

All kidding aside, congratulations Dan!

My wife is getting in the habit of waking up when I do (which is damn near the butt crack of dawn).  A couple days this week, she's been up when I get out of the shower.  For those of you who don't know my wife... this is a rare treat indeed.  Now, if I could just some how get her to dress up like me and pose as me at work.  Seriously, it's not like I do that much anyway -a frickin monkey could do my job.  Actually, a monkey could probably communicate with management a LOT better than I could.

This little cartoon is too close to reality that I just had to post it.

http://bink.nu/photos/news_article_images/images/11322/original.aspx