March 2007 - Posts
One of my college buddies had a pair of
sandals like these last summer when we all got together at a cottage for a weekend. I think it is probably one of the more fun combinations of things you need. I'm not sure I think the sandals look that great, but the church-key bottle opener is pretty cool. They also have a model that is more like a flip-flop.
I am sitting outside tonight installing a clean machine image on a laptop HDD for a demo I have to give this Friday (enjoying the record warm temperature we suddenly have today) and I keep hearing a sound that makes me want to jump up and get on a camo suit and sit in a cornfield with my shotgun.
Geese.
I've never paid them much attention before, but after spending a few days on a couple seperate occasions hunting them with Dave and Julian this winter, I suddenly am acutely aware of them flying over and tonight, honking like mad over on the dam pond (aka Ford Lake -- about 200 meters from my house). No big deal, but I keep catching myself stopping what I am doing to try to gauge their direction -- not that it would help! 
Larry 'Bud' Melman actor dies
I haven't been a Letterman follower for quite some time, but back in late 80's and early 90's I watched it quite a bit, and Larry 'Bud' Melman was always a funny part of the show. RIP Larry Bud.
If you already are familiar with the concept of an AppDomain, perhaps this is uninteresting to you. I had never used them, and they are a powerful construct that I think should be highlighted, so I am posting this, even though people who use Reflection probably already know this stuff and will scoff at my 'old news.'
In part of our web-server side .NET code, we needed the ability to generate an assembly on the fly to return to some hosted components in IE. Using the Reflection.Emit namespace, we were able to do this. A side-effect of doing this, however, is that the memory for the emitted assembly cannot be freed once the assembly is created. This memory appears to be 'leaked' within the webserver process. We needed a way to prevent that over time memory growth from affecting the system. We could force the health-check settings on IIS to clean up that Application Pool when it got close to the memory limit, since it can be isolated, but that is sloppy. There has to be a better way.
I set off to investigating what we could do to force the memory to get released in some other way. That's when I learned of AppDomains in .NET. In .NET, there is a concept of an execution sandbox called an AppDomain that can be given specific security and access settings. By default, all of your code runs in the base AppDomain. Once an assembly is loaded into an AppDomain, it cannot be unloaded. However, you can create a subordinate AppDomain, give it Evidence to describe its security context, then execute the code in it that is going to load (or in our case) create the assembly, then at some point you can unload the entire AppDomain to free the resources the loaded asseblies are using. Unfortunately, in a mixed memory (Native code and Managed Code) situation, the delay on the GC of the released memory can make it difficult to tell that the memory is in fact being freed, but in my tests it does.
Rather than post the code I generated, since it is technically part of our product, I will instead point to the blog post where I found some code that I learned from -- you can use that as your starting point.
I somehow doubt this is what the kids think we talk about, but then, they usually repeat the stuff we say as proof that they actually hear it. This is still pretty funny...
(this is excerpted from the New Yorker -- original article here)
The Wisdom of Children
I. A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table
MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.
MOM: Let’s talk about which kid I like the best.
DAD: (laughing) You know, but you won’t tell.
MOM: If they ask me again, I might tell.
FRIEND FROM WORK: Hey, guess what! My voice is pretty loud!
DAD: (laughing) There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren’t.
MOM: I’m angry! I’m angry all of a sudden!
DAD: I’m angry, too! We’re angry at each other!
MOM: Now everything is fine.
DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.
MOM: There was a big sex.
FRIEND FROM WORK: I am the loudest! I am the loudest!
(Everybody laughs.)
MOM: I had a lot of wine, and now I’m crazy!
GRANDFATHER: Hey, do you guys know what God looks like?
ALL: Yes.
GRANDFATHER: Don’t tell the kids.
I decided the blog needed a new look, so I looked through the skins that come with CS and decided on this one. The green isn't quite the color I would have used, but it is somewhat pleasant (maybe?). If you think it sucks, well, I guess you could share that... I might change it if all 3 of my readers complain...
I participated in a shooting event this weekend that was unlike any other I have tried -- a pheasant tower shoot.
What is it? Before I decided if I wanted to do it, I did a little searching, and it sounds like there are different varieties, but they all have a few basic features. You have a tall tower in the center of an area, with shooting stations positioned all around the tower forming a big circle. You position a gun (and shooter, obviously) at each station, and the operators release pheasants from the tower and you try to take them as they fly to cover. The shooters rotate around the stations so everyone gets a chance at each station, to give equal opportunity. The farm charges for each bird released, and the shooters divide up whatever birds are down at the end of the event. Sometimes, the host will allow the shooters to "clean up" any missed birds by hunting the grounds after the event.
That was basically how our shoot went. We had 10 guys, and there were ten stations, and we had 110 birds to get released. Initially, I found the whole thing to be a little frightening and a little disturbing, but then when I saw that some birds were wily enough to increase (or at least maintain) their height and get out past the shooters, I calmed down a little bit. One other aspect that took some getting used to was that from some stations, you could see the other guys across the way, but you had to shoot in that direction -- going against some of what you're taught about handling and firing guns. There were quite a few times when shot rained down from the sky after someone across the field fired in my direction -- unnerving, but harmless. In the end, I think I only completely missed one bird that I shot at, although several others did escape my initial shots, and I had to fire multiple shells to get them down (fairly shameful for a bird hunter, I know). We took about 90 out of the 110 birds, if you include the walk-around hunt we did after the tower shoot, so we were fairly effective. I blew through more shells than I'd like to admit, but I did have a couple of really good shots.
So now I have a sore shoulder (I've got to learn to position my gun correctly when quickly shouldering for a shot) and 8 frozen pheasants in my freezer. I did have a pretty big smile on my face when we finished also, though. Much fun. If you're interested in organizing an event like this for your group and can get to mid-Michigan (near Big Rapids), give Jim Crosby at Ring Neck Haven a call at 231-867-1123. As of Sunday, they still had a LOT more birds they wanted to get rid of before the end of season (April 30th, I believe).
Since I bought my shotgun, I have been toying with the idea of reloading shells. Nice target loads aren't too expensive ($6-7 / box) but most anything with a steel or non-toxic shot is crazy expensive (minimum of $12-15 / box of 25, up to $25 / box of 10). If I am going to be spending the time and money to do more hunting and clay shooting, I am going to want to find a way to at least minimize the overspending on ammunition, and supposedly reloading isn't that hard and can be kind of fun. So I decided to try it out.
The first thing to know about reloading is that although it is relatively straightforward, you really should do some research and reading before going at it. I spent quite a bit of time reading online and also read a reloading manual to make sure I had it all down. For shotshells, there isn't quite as much to worry about, but you still should have a thorough understanding of the process and equipment before you try it out. It goes without saying that playing with matches and smoking and stuff like that is probably a bad idea around smokeless powder -- it likes to go 'bang.'
So once I felt I had a comfort level with what was going to happen, I popped down to Cabela's for some supplies. A friend from work had given me an unused Lee Precision Load-All II that he had bought for his kids, but they went out and got the nicer MEC 600jr. Since I was reloading once-fired Remington Nitro27 shells, I picked up Remington TGT12s wads, and Remington 209P primers -- I figured it is hard to go wrong with original brand stuff, and the prices were basically the same. I got some Hodgdon Clays powder, as I had a recipe for that. Finally, I grabbed the only size of #8 lead shot they had -- a 25lb bag of hardened magnum #8 lead shot. I mounted the loader on some wood and clamped it to the table and gave it a couple of dry pulls to make sure it was stable. I looked up the bushings I needed (the 1oz bushing for shot and the .188 bushing for charge) to get ~20 grains of powder and 1 ounce of shot. I used an inexpensive powder scale to measure the first couple of powder charges dispensed and they seemed to be relatively consistent at 19.9 grains to 20.1 grains.
The first shell was a bit rough, as I was afraid to really seat the wad, after having read that you can pack it in there too tight, and I didn't get it seated down in the hull far enough, so the crimp had an opening. I tried another one, applying enough gentle pressure to get the wad all the way in, and the crimp turned out perfectly. I carefully opened up the crimp on the first shell, dumped the shot back into the hopper, and gently pushed the wad in the rest of the way (with the wad inserter) and re-added the shot, and it crimped fine. I ended up loading 50 shells in about 2 hours (with the first 1/2 hour being spent fiddling, so really it was more like 50 in 90 minutes). I was surprised at how easy it was once I got comfortable with the motion, and honestly the tool was pretty reasonable. I can see that the plastic base and the handle mechanism are not really designed to stand up to high-volume reloading, but it certainly worked well enough for my purposes. Now I just have to find some time to get out and try out the shells to see if they actualy fire...
If you aren't already familiar with http://www.homestarrunner.com/, do yourself a favor and spend the next 8-10 hours watching all of the Strongbad emails one by one, laughing your tail off.
Then, when you are finished, be sure to buy the Strongbad sings CD just to have Trogdor on CD. As a bonus you will have "The Cheat is Not Dead" -- a song that I think is probably one of the funnier things I have ever heard. I've had it for several years, and I still laugh every time I hear it. I too, Strongbad, am so glad the Cheat is not dead.
NOTE: Everybody to the Limit (Live from West Reykjavik) is also rather humorous and good for repeated chuckles.
I was just digging through my mp3 pile -- things I've collected from CD's I've ripped to my computer, music from games and online places like homestarruner.com, and even a few vinyl albums we put into digital format to preserve (and make it easier to enjoy without damaging some seriously ancient vinyl). One of the directories I have is all of the music I could cull from Grand Theft Auto. I bought and played GTA III and Vice City (both great games for fun and gameplay, but certainly a little family-unfriendly, to say the least) and the music is fun. GTA III is a little goofy, but still entertaining. Vice City has some absolute gems, though, and that is what I am currently going through and cracking up. Most of it hits pretty much right in my wheelhouse -- early 80's when I was an impressionable youth and my little brain was stashing everything away in the dark recesses just in case I would need it later (I haven't needed most of what I remember, but it does make me laugh, and that seems like a good thing). Here's a sampling of the stuff making me crack up:
On the Wild Style station:
- Grandmaster Flash -- The Message: absolutely classic old school hip hop/rap
- Whodini -- Magic's Wand: Dave and I were Whodini fans in the 80's (well, at least *I'll* admit I was). Jalil's voice brings back frightening memories of parachute pants, cuffed jeans, tank tops, and docksiders. shudder.
- 2 Live Crew -- Get it Girl: even though they were ridiculously crude, you have to admit this song sticks in your head... for ever.
- Herbie Hancock -- Rockit: I remember riding on the bus with my 'boom box' and listening to this. I was so cool. Er, not.
- If they had a couple tracks from Breakin' or Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, it would be perfect. (Okay, now I sound like a retard, don't I?)
Emotion 98.3:
- Cutting Crew -- Died in Your Arms: yeah. I'm thinking slow dances with girls taller than me. That should give you an idea of my age at the time.
- Mr. Mister -- Broken Wings: one of the most overplayed songs ever. It was forever ruined even worse for me when it was used during a scene in MacGuyver when he was fleeing across a field. Crap, I just admitted that I watched MacGuyver, didn't I?
- Night Ranger -- Sister Christian: Sweet. I dig it.
- Toto -- Africa: whatever happened to Toto, anyway? With such a masculine band name, and all those white-man afros and molester mustaches, I am shocked they weren't able to stay on the scene longer...
- Jan Hammer -- Crockett's Theme: Miami Vice kicks so much ass, it just isn't even funny. I think they should re-release the whole series in HD so I can watch them all. Again. And rock out to that kick-ass opening theme song. The Ferraris and bikinis are just a bonus...
- Brian Ferry & Roxy Music -- More Than This: Well, that killed the whole vibe. I have to change the station...
On the Fever 105 station:
- Kool and the Gang -- Summer Madness: does it get any better? Fresh Prince/Will Smith did a decent remake with Summertime, but this is the real deal, boys and girls.
- Michael Jackson -- Wanna Be Starting Somethin': before the plastic surgery and the child molesting, the boy could sing and dance, and he was cool. Sure, in hindsight, he wasn't right even then, but come on -- you know you rocked out to him along with the rest of us. He didn't fake selling a gazillion records, now did he?
- The Pointer Sisters -- Automatic: wow, listening to this is a serious time warp -- I see big hair, poofy untucked dress shirts with belts as a fashion statement, and lots of eye makeup and glitter on all the ladies. Midde school dances kicked ass in the 80's. If Jet's 'Head to Toe' were on here, I think I would regress... (it's not). [while I am retro-ing here, that proper use of the subjunctive mood was for you, Mr Hoffman. I did learn something in 4 years of Latin...]
Flash FM Features (if you listened to popular radio, you better know these):
- Wang Chung -- Dance Hall Days : not Wang Chungs best effort, but notable, I guess
- Yes -- Owner of a Lonely Heart : probably one of their more popular songs, but not my favorite
- INXS -- Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain): if you didn't own Listen Like Thieves, you don't know this song, but you'd recognize Michael Hutchence's voice
- Hall & Oates -- Out of Touch : probably the last song by Hall & Oates I thought was 'cool'. Their earlier stuff was really 'cool' but they fell out of my favor around 1983. I was so not into them after that.
- The Fixx -- One Thing Leads to Another: Yup. It was the 80's Sweet.
- Joe Jackson -- Steppin Out: doesn't fit, yet it so does. Another wierd 80's song.
Wave 103
- Animotion -- Obsession: For some reason this conjures visions of the WWF back in the day. We're talking Seargant Slaughter, Nikolai Volkoff, Iron Sheik, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka. You know the guys...
- Kim Wilde -- Kids in America: another song that I only remember because of the wierd MTV video...
- A Flock of Seagulls -- I Ran: heee hee. I remember Mom getting this album from the library for us. Cool.
- Nena -- 99 Luftballons: I still don't get this song.
- Corey Hart -- Sunglasses at Night: I still get the urge to sing this song any time I put my sunglasses on (well, at night, I mean).
- Gary Numan - Cars: Yes. This song IS the 80's.
V-Rock:
- Loverboy -- Workin' for the Weekend : I remember singing this song on the playground. Yeah, I was a tool...
- Ozzy Osbourne -- Bark at the Moon : the last time I saw Matt's band play, this song got covered. (Okay, it was an 80's Halloween party, but, still...
- Quiet Riot -- Come on Feel the Noise : Little known fact about me: I had this on the B side of the tape I had my practice music for a recital on (I won't directly mention what kind of recital it was, but it wasn't related in any way to heavy metal).
- Motley Crue -- Too Young To Fall In Love : I loved Motley Crue. I think my Mom must have really regretted allowing me to own the album "Shout at the Devil." I'll never forget arguing with Dave about which song was more 'bad' -- Shout at the Devil or Runnin' with the Devil (Van Halen). Good times... Fun times... I still have to say Shout at the Devil was a pretty kick-ass album.
- Twisted Sister -- I Wanna Rock : not timeless. Dee Snyder was a freak. (okay, okay, yeah, I still like this song, too).
- Judas Priest -- You've Got Another Thing Comin': The thing I remember most about this song was that it upset my mother because the video had a dude's head exploding at one point. She didn't like those early MTV years much. Dave and I watched Headbanger's Ball a lot. [EDIT: I'm not sure what possessed me to do it, but I decided to search Google for "You've Got Another Thing Comin' video" just to see what I could find. This blog post was the first hit, and it made me laugh even harder. Seriously. Dave and I were definitely in the "those guys who rebuilt Chevy Novas" part of the universe in the mid to late 80's. We didn't have Novas, true, but I did want one. Dave had a Monza -- that was a Chevy, at least. And we did work on it. We also helped my Dad work on his El Caminos (yes, plural, he had two different ones, the second of which became my second car -- I regain some coolness). Also, I hung around with a computer geek who drove a giant Monte Carlo with some crazy big engine (probably a 396?) we called the Blue Dragon.]
- Autograph -- Turn up the Radio : The 80's cannot contain hair-band perfection -- it spans all time. May the righteousness of the rocking of this song be shared with all of the world, for it is good.
Phew. Now I want to dig up more 80's music. It is crazy, that music...
Alright, so after my discourse on the subject of John Daly hurting himself stopping his golf swing (which although I was making fun of, I am sure didn't feel good) I of course am now suffering from what can only be described as a bowling 'injury.' Yes, I know it is pathetic. My release is pretty inconsistent, and well, probably just plain wrong most of the time. I've tried to adjust it and get away from my bad habits, but after a few years of repeating the wrong motions, it is hard to just change. So, even before we started bowling today, I noticed my right thumb is a bit inflamed from bowling league on Tuesday. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot you can do, other than take an NSAID and try to play with it like that until the swelling goes down.
Luckily, today was only teams (so only 1 series) for the Arbor Valley Open Tournament. We didn't bowl badly as a team but I doubt we'll be in the cash with our rather unimpressive performance (I think we were like 20 some-odd pins over average). I personally bowled pretty poorly, ending some 26 pins under average for the series, with a LOT of poor strike balls and a lot of ugly opens (missed 10 pins, missed 3-6-9-10, missed 1-2-4-10), and several splits (at least I actually covered a couple splits -- baby 3-10 and 2-4-10). The thumb took pretty much the first 5 or 6 frames to get the swelling down. I took some naproxen sodium (generic aleve) and it didn't bug me too much, but we were on wood lanes and I wasn't hitting my mark, making adjustments very difficult. Eventually, I moved over and tried a more direct shot with a little more speed, and that worked for about 6 or 7 frames until the pattern broke down and I started getting all over the head (leaving a pocket 7-10 with a slightly high hit -- ouch). In the end, I spent more time trying to decide how to adjust (and then making a poor shot, cancelling out the benefit of the adjustment) and really never got into a groove. I was trying too hard to power through the breaking-down oil instead of just letting the ball rev through it and break a little early (which would have left me more 10-pins, but then I could have made small parallel moves to take care of that). Instead, I ended up with 7 splits on the day, and a lot of really forced strike balls, which of course seldom results in strikes.
Now that the anti-inflammatory is wearing off, my thumb is swelling back up and starting to look ridiculous -- the wrinkles on the knuckle swelling are up like a fat lip. Hopefully when I wake up tomorrow it will not be totally puffed out, as we have 6 more games (singles and doubles) tomorrow, and I'd like to end my tournament bowling slump.
Enough bowling babble for now. Please go back to wondering how someone can hurt themselves doing a sport most people consider an excuse to sit around and drink and smoke...
I noticed this article on ESPN.com and the comments that followed made me snicker. Generally speaking, I'll be the first to admit that it seems like athletes/sports personalities are blown out of proportion. However, the commenter that stated that professional golf is for the fans, and that if golfers can't take the clicking of cameras they should find a new profession is clueless. Let me address the comment in two parts...
1. Professional Golf is for the fans. He further tries to make a claim that the fans pay the golfers' paychecks. Since when? I am guessing here, but if I had to bet, I'd say of any professional (moneymaking) sport, only perhaps sports involving gambling (horse racing?) make more money for their players that isn't based on fans buying tickets and team merchandise. Golfers make money by winning tournaments (most of the purse put up by sponsors in exchange for advertising) and by endorsements. They could probably clear the course of fans, and show golf on TV and the competitors would make just as much money (and for tournaments like the Battle at Bighorn and some of the Skins tournaments, it looks like just that). Fans are important, but let's get real here, professional golf is NOT all about the fans. It's all about Tiger, of course.
2. If they can't take the noise, find a new job. Come on, have you ever actually tried to *play* golf? It is at best a form of self-torture for those of us who didn't get named Eldrick or Jack. I've stopped my swing because the wind kicked up. (Heck, I've stopped my bowling delivery because of a misstep or a distraction). In golf, although people who don't play wouldn't believe it, you really do need to focus an incredible amount of attention on whacking that damn little ball just right. Would a camera click throw me off? It depends -- if it is deathly quiet, my own breathing can throw me off (as can the voices in my head screaming "would you make ONE GODDAMN SHOT today PLEASE!!!!"), however, I am probably not the measuring stick for pro golfer concentration levels. So, I'd like to approach this from a different angle.
- Ticket to get in to tournament: $100 (??? I have no idea, seems like a nice round number)
- Cocktail/Beer/Wine: $10 (for 1, of course)
- Parking: $65
- Nifty 'Ping' Hat: $35
- Scotty Cameron Logo Golf Shirt: $120
- Too stupid to buy a digital camera: I won't even say it...
And there is some moron on ESPN.com defending this guy to boot. Sheesh.
With all this said, is there any excuse for an injury while golfing? Well, that one is harder. I'll give you that to golf at a high level requires physical acumen and does deserve the title 'sport', but other than calluses and maybe the occasional blister, I'm not sure there are many excusable situations where you might injure yourself on the course (rolling the golf cart because you were trying to rockclimb the landscaping is NOT a reasonable excuse for a golfing injury -- but it is funny). That's not to say your tougher golfers can't play through the pain (of injuries suffered elsewhere, of course) -- ask my longtime golf partner. He's seen me play on a broken leg (had a great 9) and with a broken rib (did not have a great 9).
With that, I'm off to look at the snow melt...