Kiad wrote this life program poem that really impressed me. I remember doing something similar with my curiosity about love, only using C instead of F77. Who needs haikus, sonnets or other traditional poetry forms when we have computer language syntax and grammar that begs to be filled with thoughts from the creatives among us? Perl Poetry has always had a strong following.

I don't think I'll be changing clothes in the car any more. I was changing clothes at the drive-thru for McDonalds and I hit the woman's car in front of me. Nothing was damaged. Just moments before that I was changing clothes in the parking lot at Target and almost had an awkward incident.

Car Clothing Changing Tips

• If in a parking lot, park far away from the buildings.
• When changing pants unload everything from your current pants pockets and preload them into the new pants before putting them on.
• Changing shoes might seem really easy in your head but be careful there are many hidden pitfalls. Cruise control is not your friend.
• There are two distinct approaches to car clothes changing, one is in a moving vehicle, one is in a parked vehicle. You should thoroughly explore the parked vehicle clothes changing techniques before moving on.
• You might want to consider a bigger car if this will become a lifestyle change for you.

Quickies

Fixed the commenting thing. I'm a dumbass. One day soon it will be threaded and use cookies to store your id information. Cookie stuff is written, threading is almost done.

Working at SBC I've learned how to change my pants, shirt and shoes in the car heading south on Central Expressway after work. I hate the dress code they have there.

I hate the fact that I sacrificed some small part of myself to a corporate dress code.

Spent a lot of the day reading through corporate knowledgebases and boy oh boy is it cool to read the screens that the Cingular operators are reading when they talk to you.

Living the e-lifestyle

Get on the Dallas Tollway at Spring Valley. The green light comes on telling me I'm good to go and that they've dinged my tolltag for more money. The amber light comes on reminding me that they need a new credit card number so they can debit more money from me.

Heading south on the tollway.I look at the tolltag and call the phone number and explain to the operator that I need to give them a new credit card number. She asks for my Texas driver's license number. Oh crap, I don't have one since I had to surrender it in Alabama this summer. I tell her I'll figure something out and call her back.

Heading past the exit for Royal Lane and closing in on my exit, Mockingbird. I dig into my blue bag for a copy of the Mississippi speeding ticket I have with my old Texas driver's license number on it. I call them back and I get a new lady this time. I give her the Texas driver's license number on the ticket and she knows. She knows that I have had an out-of-state driver's license in the past. I neglect to inform her that I still have that out-of-state driver's license and let her assume I switched back to Texas when I moved. She says she'll "fix" the problem and update my information. I give her the new credit card number and it's in the system.

Mockingbird exit. No amber light, only green. Transaction completed without ever leaving my car while heading south at 75 mph.

After Mark's story about Austin cops I thought I'd make a contribution to the lighter side of police work.

It all starts on an early January night during my senior year of high school. It's during the holiday break and my friend Roy has a surplus of bottle rockets needing disposal. We do what any red-blooded American teenager does in that situation we drive to the top deck of a parking garage in downtown Huntsville and square off against each other from either side of the deck. A furious, pitched battle is waged as we launch rockets at each other. We both have a few close calls as an errant rocket hits our rocket stashes threatening to send them all off at once.

One of the cool things about this parking garage is that it's right next to a tall glass Amsouth bank building. At night it is so well lit, and all the office lights are off, that you can see all sorts of things reflected in the glass. At this particular moment in time I noticed a car sliding in the bottom of the parking garage. As fireworks are illegal in the city limits of Huntsville I told Roy and we decided that we should relocate. We threw everything in the back of his car and proceeded to snake our way down the parking garage ramps. As I glanced back at the glass building I saw the blurry image of the car making its way up the ramps toward us. I also thought I saw someone running up the stairwell but I wasn't sure.

As we came round the next ramp a policeman came running out of the stairwell with his gun drawn. Moments later a police cruiser was zig-zagging towards us to make sure we didn't punch it past them. Roy stopped his car quickly and threw his hands up in the air. "Matt, put your hands up" he said.

At this point I was trying to reason out all the things I needed to do to make sure I did not present a threat to them. Move slowly. Keep hands in sight. Don't piss them off. I brought my hands up. At this point another cruiser had arrived and the cop in the first car was behind his door with his gun out. The policeman had walked towards us out of the stairwell and then began the most elaborate process for exiting a car I have ever been through.

My friend Roy was being put through various Yoga positions as they slowly worked him out of the car. The detail and elaboration behind each motion required a great deal of patience. Once he was out of the car they had him lay down on the cold concrete spread eagle. After they frisked him it was my turn to go through the fun. The key to evacuating the vehicle is that you have to be slow, your hands have to always be visible and no motion can be obscured from the view of the police. As I exited the car they sternly advised me to "Keep my hands and feet in the air." It was important to that step of the exit process but clearly I wasn't levitating when it was over. The procedure worked out and I found myself laying on my stomach on the cold concrete floor. I glanced back underneath the car and I saw that Roy had taken the "hands and feet" command to heart, not realizing it was for me, and his chest was the only thing touching the ground.

After Roy and I had been searched we were allowed to get up. It turns out that they were responding to reports of gun shots. They thought some massive gang land shooting was going on on top of the parking garage. We showed the remainder of the fireworks and they laughed it off. They told us to "Git outta here, and don't shoot those off in city limits."

We found another parking lot in the city and finished off the rest.

Seeking creative XML locking solutions

Nascent content management system seeks ideas for ways to lock whole parts or fragments of XML document.

Here's the problem I've got. I have XML files holding everything on my site. This is great because I can do anything I want as far as rendering them. The problem I'm running into is that updating those XML files is very tricky. An example of that trickiness is in something as simple as blogchecker. I have a list of URLs that get checked by blogchecker. This check takes about 3-5 minutes to run and at the end of it blogchecker updates the XML file with new information. I'd like to be able to modify the file in the middle of blogchecking, or at the very least have a clean way of locking individual pieces of it. If I modify the file while blogchecker is running my changes will be lost when blogchecker finishes and rebuilds the XML file as it last understood it.

The first person that says use a SQL database with transactions and generate XML files out of it has to sit in the corner for an hour. In my opinion, that is missing some of the fundamental advantages of working with XML, namely working with data using a document centric metaphor instead of the old relational table model. I don't have anything against databases, in fact I think that things like dbXML might just be the answer I'm looking for.

Alright I made a small fix to the order the comments are displayed in. It is now numerical instead of alphabetical. So no more playing hunt the wumpus to figure out who wrote what when.

I've also started building development and live versions of the blog (I just spelled that blug what a different world we'd live in if blugs existed) because tada I have new simulpublishing capabilities to both. This blog is going out to all my homies in ljland and gnumatt.org land. Also I'm wrapping up work on a freelance web project which will free up time for me to do important things.

BTW, anyone into journaling/small-scale CMS software should check out Moveable Type. Jason is running it on jplay.com and it has some cool features.

[imaginary conversation]

"So do you want the job?"

"Yhea I want cheezy poofs."

I was sitting at the Whataburger contemplating the signage. (Apparently the government of the state of Texas has seen fit to declare Whataburger a Texas Treasure.) I was listening to some postal workers lament their jobs, and another guy talking about how hard architecture is and how much school he has to go to to keep on top of it. I had been cutting and pasting the conversations together in my head hoping for an amusing anecdote about mail delivery and architecture. Then my phone rang and I answered it.

It was Chris from SBC. He was calling to talk to me about the job I had interviewed for back in August. The position had been frozen a long time ago and I had pretty much forgotten about it. It's a web app developer position using Vignette. As I always get when I'm excited on the phone I started pacing. What made it more amusing is that I was pacing around the Whataburger talking on my cell phone. I refilled my Dr. Pepper and got more napkins as Chris went over what SBC was offering me and what I had to do to accept the job.

I start 10/22 if I can find a printer to print the applications and fill them out.

I get back from Austin and I am impressed to see that cool new stuff has come out for OS X and Bloggger. tim@webentourage.com has written an AppleScript based blog publishing tool for all us OS X 10.1 users. It's a very clean implementation. Basically BlogScript will post, or post and publish, whatever you have sitting in your clipboard. Just throw something into the clipboard and then select BlogScript from the AppleScript menu that you can put in the top menu bar.

How many times have you had to listen to the obnoxious people scream "Free Bird" when you go to see a band? Chances are it's every time you've seen a band. How many times does the band ever play the song? NEVER, unless it's Lynyrd Skynyrd or Built to Spill. Yes, they closed out the night and their tour with a cover of "Free Bird." They've done this before apparently. This was after they played a cover of Cheap Trick's Dream Police and a few other covers in their set. I enjoyed their performance but I would have chosen a different set.

One of the bands that opened for them is a local Dallas band called Polyphonic Spree which consists of no less then 25 members. They were all on stage, more or less. They were all dressed in white robes and many of them rocked out on a stage. One has to wonder if all of them had gotten as into it if the stage would have collapsed. If you listen to the samples off their web page imagine those played with more ferociousness, energy, and speed. About 12 of them are in a choral section and the rest play a variety of intruments (Klaus where are you they had a French Horn?) including my personal favorite, a theremin.

I saw Amanda, and Josh tonight. Those two have heard a lot of music. I'm such a babe in the woods compared to them.

Tonight also wins for the longest night of music I've had in awhile. The first band went on around 9:30 or 10pm and BtS finished at about 2:10am. I feel like I need a t-shirt that says "I survived the music." Damn, I smell like an ashtray.