Darth Vader Panhandler

By cormander

So today I’m driving home from my daughter’s appointment at her pediatrician’s office. On the corner of a busy intersection is a guy in a Darth Vader suit holding a cardboard sign. It reads:

The Rebel Alliance has
destroyed the Death Star.
Please Help!

There are a lot of panhandlers around here. This one was, by far, the most creative. I really wish I had a camera to take his picture.

If I had any cash on me at the time I might have actually given him some just for the sheer comic relief.

It’s about time for a new phone

By cormander

I’m sorry phone, but it looks like you are about to be replaced. Your screen on the outside has been broken for quite some time, and I have to open my phone to see who is calling me. In order to do that without actually answering it, I have to open you slowly to peek inside, much like I’m opening a paper bag with something disgusting inside. Your battery life has really gone down lately, and over the past few weeks you’ve decided to just turn yourself off at random. That has most definitely been the last straw. I can’t have a phone that is electronically unavailable on a whim.

So, I await payday to replace you. Don’t worry, I won’t replace you with a smart phone. I already use a computer about half of each day of my life; I don’t need to be carrying one around with me at all times. So take comfort in the fact that you’re still good enough for me, despite your flaws caused by a long time of use. I wish I could fix you, but it is probably just easier to replace you. Maybe I’ll get a phone exactly like you if that will make you feel better, make both of us feel better. So farewell.

Home with the baby

By cormander

My wife and baby were discharged from the hospital this evening, everyone is healthy. We can’t help but keep calling the baby Phoebe, as she looks EXACTLY like she did as a newborn. So I keep telling myself; “The baby’s name is Hazel, the baby’s name is Hazel.” Hopefully I’ll get used to it!

Then again, I was called by all of my brother’s names by my mother on accident while I was growing up. So I guess no parent is immune to mixing up their children on occasion.

It’s a girl!!!

By cormander

This morning at about 5:29 AM my daughter was born, weighing in at 6 lbs 9 oz, and 19 inches long. This is my 4th child.

We’re naming her Hazel. Here are some pictures:

99 Things I Ought to Have Done

By cormander

My wife did this so I thought I might as well do it as well.

Instructions:
Copy the list, bold the ones you’ve done (with explanations if needed), share with friends.

1. Started your own blog (well, duh…)
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland (I’ve been to Disney World)
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a thunder and lightning storm
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch (programming is an art)
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language (programming! haha)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance (my wife being the patient)
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain (my wife marked this one. I don’t remember it, but I assume I have to mark it too)
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business (epic fail)
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching (does it count if you didn’t actually find any to see?)
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma (I want to but I don’t qualify.)
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been a passenger on a motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Kissed a stranger at midnight on New Year’s Eve
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Got a tattoo
94. Had a baby (I’m assuming being a father counts)
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

Sundays in Utah

By cormander

I have a love-hate relationship with Sundays in Utah. On one hand, the roads are completely empty because a large percentage of the population are Mormon and they are either at home or at church.

On the other hand, hardly anything is open, so there isn’t much to do.

Lucky for me, it’s starting to warm up, and the local Zoo only closes two days out of the year (Christmas and Christmas Eve). Since I have children who love animals, and we have a membership which lets us in free, we went there today. It was fun, and there weren’t a lot of people there.

Perhaps taking the family to the Zoo will become a common Sunday activity this spring and summer.

Do Hummers Hibernate?

By cormander

Last summer there were a LOT of Hummers on the road, it seemed like the dealerships were selling them off like hot cakes. Then winter hit, and there for a long time I didn’t see any at all.

Now that winter is coming to an end, I’ve started seeing them again. Today is a warm and sunny day, and today alone I spotted quite a few.

So I wonder, do Hummers hibernate for the winter? They sure are the size of a bear relative to other vehicles.

Okay so I’m back to blogging…

By cormander

It’s been a wild ride with 3 small children, a pregnant wife, a challenging job, and attending online college. It’s no wonder I haven’t written very many posts in the past year…

I realized today that I don’t post because I have no goals about posting, and have been somewhat apathetic towards it. So here I am setting a goal; post at least once a day. Doesn’t matter if it’s a one line rant, just post something.

So here is the first one.

Anno Domini vs. Common Era and the significance of 2012

By cormander

I grew up with the year being annotated with AD (short for Anno Domini), which is Latin for In the year of our Lord. Growing up a Christian, this made perfect sense to me – start the next era of time with the birth of Christ.

Today, however, I’ve started seeing dates annotated with CE (short for Common Era). This strikes me as odd; what’s so “common” about the year Christ was born? If they’re going to change the way we state the year (which is really just political correctness in disguise), why not change the year itself? After all, the movie Titan A.E. reset the year with a new annotation of AE – short for After Earth – since, according to the movie, Earth was destroyed by the Drej in 3028 AD (0 AE).

If I got to choose when we reset the year, I’d do it on December 21st, 2012. Why? Because it’s the end of the Mayan calendar, which is all about time cycles. Why not celebrate this end of an era with resetting the year? Besides, if the doomsday prophecy specific to this date actually comes true and Earth is destroyed on that day… we can just re-use the AE annotation from Titan A.E. and not have to come up with a new one. Assuming, of course, that any of us survive it.

Now I’ll enter the issue of the 2038 computer problem. For those of you not familiar with it – it’s like the Y2k problem, but much worse. 32bit machines time will overflow to a negative number on that day, causing all sorts of time problems. If we reset the year, we can solve this problem by making a new epoch, and having it start at the 0 of the new year count. While we’re at it, make this new epoch an unsigned integer, so we don’t run into this same problem again in 2106 (assuming we still have 32bit machines at that point).

It would be debatable, though, on whether or not to start this new epoch on Dec 21st, or just wait until the end of the year to reset it. If you ask me, the winter solstice really should be the end of each year, not December 31st. But people are so resistant to change that none of this is ever going to happen anyway.

The check writer program redone

By cormander

Today for my lunch break I decided to attempt to write a program we had to do as our final assignment for CS/201 at BYU-Hawaii back in 2003. It was called “check writer”, written in perl, and had to take any number and convert it into how it would be written on a check.

I recall this program taking me days to write, and was quirky as hell. Well, this afternoon I did it in about 20 minutes:


[corman@localhost ~]$ perl checkwriter.pl 1135700214.99
one billion one hundred thirty five million seven hundred thousand two hundred fourteen dollars and ninety nine cents


Back in college it took me over 400 lines of code and it gave me massive headaches to work on. But today, without even breaking a sweat, 123 lines of perl using no external modules; about a third of the line count is from the word definitions.

So here I am, over 6 years later, still no degree, and I blazed right through the task. Experience is certainly better than academia.