I put the following on our door yesterday after our candy bowel [SIC and SICK] was emptied by greedy children:
All the children
Took all of our candy
& made us cry all of our tears.
Sorry.
Author Archives: Randy Peterman
Politics
So I did a survey and was asked about politics. What surprised me was less the discussion & more the after-discussion. Politics is personal. If you end up going into a room and are asked questions as individuals in a group then you’ve got to be vulnerable. After the session and the sharing that took place every man in the room exited without saying a word to one another; no shaking hands; no good-byes; no exchange of emails, phone numbers or very many glances. It’s the weirdest thing to experience that level of sharing end with nothing socially impactful.
Teeth
Evelyn – tomorrow being the 6th birthday of her life – has pulled out her own top right tooth. And now, ready to face her 6th birthday without a few teeth [her two bottom front teeth are finally growing in a bit] she’s going to grow faster than I’m ready.
She sure is precious.
[I realize this is not a picture of her smiling with missing teeth – tomorrow I’ll post one]
Doors
I replaced the door between my garage and back yard today. It was much easier replacing that door compared to the door I had replaced between the house and the garage. Probably because I had the experience of the first to make the second one more direct. I don’t love door replacements as a whole, but I learned a few things. The one thing I wanted to point out which may save some time and money: Many new doors have adjustable/replaceable weather stripping so that if you need to pull the weather stripping out of the crack they’re tucked into just about 1/16th of an inch – you can. If you pull it out that much to create a better seal you’ll have better energy efficiency AND not have spent $15.00 or more on new weather stripping. Pretty cool [or warm, depending on the season].
Man Up
I haven’t listened to Dave Ramsey in a while. Usually I find his dealing with certain issues legalistically to be a bit rough for me. However, my personal preference for grace aside, he’s got a message that I think is important for humans of the world: grow up. Be an adult. When people call him for financial advice he almost always tells them the same thing after hearing their situation: face it. Face the situation and be an adult. Don’t ignore it any more.
I hate this advice because it usually points out my own maturity problems, but it is what we need to be encouraged to do as humanz. If you’re having a problem in life it is possible it was thrust on you by someone else or out of your control. Doesn’t matter. Face it like an adult. You may be facing a financial or other hole where you’ve got to dig yourself out. Face it. Man up. Woman up. Don’t just ignore it until you’ve really, really screwed things up.
I listened to him a bit this last week via his podcast and I can say that if you’re going to talk about politics, religion, money, sex or any other taboo: don’t be afraid to face the root problem, and don’t be afraid to accept responsibility. You can’t deal with a problem until you’ve owned up to it and understand it. This counts for money, but pretty much the rest of life as well. Trying to do anything else but be an adult about it is just plain stupid. Dave says that, too. I don’t prefer it, but it’s probably true.
I Ate Some of This
Livarot Cheese that is. It tasted like barnyard, all right.
It made the Tawny Porto taste like honey, which was interesting given the manure taste that the cheese left in my mouth by itself. I can’t recommend it, but it was an experience.
Huckleberry
Tonight at dinner I referenced Val Kilmer’s role as Doc Holiday and said, “I’ll be your huckleberry.” My friend’s son, davis, misheard me. He said in return, “But I don’t want you to be my uncle Mary.” Hilarious.
PEMDAS
Sometimes you have to remember that there is an order of operations. You go into the doctor’s office and you have to order the operation ahead of time, otherwise they don’t give you one.
Windows 8, Internet Explorer 10 and Web Developers
I just got done reading the specs on Internet Explorer 10’s tablet ‘features’ in Windows 8. This new set of features is incredible on the surface, but as a developer I’m flabbergasted that Microsoft has decided to ignore the de facto standards and now has created yet another touch/tablet interaction model. I’m not flabbergasted a company would do that, because Apple did it with the iPhone and iPad to create the de facto standard that RIM (disclosure: I work for a subsidiary of RIM) and others have followed. What this means for developers who are trying to reach the widest possible audience is that their web applications are going to have to choose between:
- Lots of branches in their code to handle every possible variation of event detection
- Send users away
- Attempt to use some open source or home rolled equalization library that tries to mask the differences (this way could lie madness)
- Give the users a lesser experience
- Create multiple versions of the same thing, each with their own special ‘per device’ sauce (this way also lies madness).
Maybe there’s another option, but I just don’t get why Microsoft has done this to devs.
Today BDConf wrapped up. It’s targeted primarily towards mobile development and I had a chance to go to their first event in Grapevine, TX in March. One of the things that they talked about was writing for an ever changing web audience that accesses your site/web application through any number of devices. However, this sort of added complexity from a major player in the OS department means that one of two or three things is going to happen, and one of them isn’t going to be developer buy in. I’m convinced that Microsoft is going to have to either adopt some method for giving developers a smaller amount of effort to reach their audience on a Windows 8 tablet, or they’re going to really hurt their end user experience.
I want to create interactive, 3D-space enabled applications with rich interactions that happen to live in a browser, but Microsoft is definitely not reaching out to developers to create a “bold”* new experience in IE10. They’re not making it easy for end users to have a great, familiar experience. If you’re switching from an iPad 1 or 2 to a Windows 8 tablet you’re going to get fed up, and move back to the iPad. If you were to switch from the iPad to the PlayBook you’d be comfortable. Microsoft has created a barrier to entry, and this is not a good move. They’re distancing themselves from developers, and they’re distancing their users from rich content.
(update:) Don’t misunderstand me to think that all of what they’ve added to IE10 is a move in the wrong direction, but it’s just not cool that they added a bunch of new HTML5 standards support, and ripped the mobile/tablet market a new hole to support.
* Microsoft employees used the term “bold” numerous times during their announcement presentations today and many people in the media and on twitter noted this.
Don’t Bat an Eye at 40 Lashes
So in the Old Testament Law of Moses, given to the Jews while they were in the “Promised Land” God says in Deuteronomy 25:3 that you may give a man up to 40 stripes [lashes]. Just to be safe the Jews made it a tradition to only lash someone 39 times in case someone counted wrong. This sort of thing amuses me greatly. Let’s obey the Law for righteousness, unless we can make a new, and improved Law.
I prefer the New Testament doctrine of grace, but often this gets screwed up to create new and improved grace, too. If you’re adding or subtracting from the Bible to help it where God needed some clarification that you happen to have the perfection to offer, you’re probably a bit over-confident.
Grace, it’s what’s for breakfast, lunch & dinner.