Harry's Ruminations

Let me sum this up: It's just like the book. The book makes no sense; neither does the movie. It's unwatchable nonsense most of the time. The whole point of the book is to catch Douglas Adams's quotes and sideline commentary. Only redeeming part: My favorite Elf (Zoe Deschanel) is trillian:

McClaren Racing Oh, you know...writing software for F1 racers!

I was so exhausted yesterday, I don't remember much...I think I may have proposed marriage to several people (all hopefully women). To any of those, my apologies, I'm already taken, and I'm semi-conscious today. But, the morning is still young.

Other titles consider: - Oh Haiiiiiil, no! - What the Hail? - Hail for certain. * * * At 3 o'clock this morning, I awoke from a dream where I was apologizing to my dead Uncle Chester for ragging on him my entire life, only to hear what sounded like large pigeons (possibly pelicans...I'm not sure) pounding against my roof. Looking outside, we quickly determined a few things. - No pigeons. - There was lightning - Our windows were all open. - My Beamer was sitting outside. Couldn't do much about the beamer, but we did have time to slam all the windows shut before the worst of the storm rolled-in. Didn't take any pics, but the hail was about nickel-size, and it rolled-off my roof like a Dippin' Dots truck exploded.

"[Because I talk so much] I need to put in 12 to 15 hours per day just to get in 8 hours of work" Yikes.

Okay, at this point in my life, there's only one show I watch religiously: Grey's Anatomy. The last two episodes have caused me physical pain. You see, the main characters, the swooping eagles of the show--Merideth, Derek, Christina, and Burke--mean nothing to me. They're interesting in a surreal sort of way. There are two characters I DO care about--Izzie and George. They seem very real to me...they're best friends and confidants, and they're flawed. They don't soar quite as high as the rest, but they do have a depth of emotion that is the anchor of this show -- when George's dad died, I had to consider what my own response will be to my father's passing. When Izzie lost Denny, the man for whom she threw away her career, I had to examine just what I would do if my own beloved were dying and there was precious little I could do about it. So, they affect me. And, secretly, I've always wished they got together. For one thing, I married my best...

"Assuming I can get this to work"

Two powerpoint presentations for my Managers to present. Kill me now.

[Scene. Interior. A Conference room with a conference table shaped like a badly-imagined Star Trek insignia contains folks awaiting an early morning call. A dark-skinned Indian fellow, running the meeting sits across from a dark-skinned Brazilian man with curly hair. The Brazilian man's humor is less infectious than he'd like to believe.] Brazilian guy: I love languages. I know how to say 'good morning' 25 languages. Indian guy: That's nice BG: No, really, teach me. I love to learn. How do you say 'Good morning'. Indian guy [dryly, with a smile]: 'Good morning'. * * * For those of you scoring at home, folks from West Bengal (Kolkata's region) can speak English, Hindi, and Bengali from the time they're 2 years old. nice

That I understood this post or that I understood within 3 seconds that it could be better written as: BOOL IsIpAddressZero( LONG lIpAddress ) { return !lIpAddress; }

300 Tagline for the movie posters: This has to be the best movie involving half-naked [gay] men I've seen all year. Okay, I'm a history buff, and I've reviewed Other works about Thermopylae before . In many ways the Pressfield book (and, I'm assuming, Frank Miller's graphic novels) were better interpretations of Thermopylae , but the movie was interesting. Some advisories: - Yes, it's that gory. It's about a battle waged hand-to-hand over three days, and it gives you precious little time to forget that. It doesn't exactly glorify battle, but it does remind us that modern warfare is much more antiseptic than its ancient forebear. - For the Homophobes: No there is no frontal male nudity. Thankfully. Yes, there are naked male behinds (lit for a night scnene). There are no openly gay references, but it is hinted at in a couple of exchanges on the battlefield. - Equal opportunity: Yes, lots of breasts on display. - Irony alert: Yes, the Spartans foug...

"The one from two years ago, or the empty shell I see before me currently?"

Duke's OUT of the tournament George finally hit that I had a snappy comeback. For once. Felt good.

Car rumps, that is :-) Nissan is famous for screwing-up the back-end of every car they make, producing bulbous, unattractive forms that destroy the tidy lines of the car. Seems to me they're always trying to add 'visual excitement' (a Pontiac term!) to the cars. Well, I LOVE the new Altima. The back end had a muscular look, very reminiscent of a G35, skyline, or a 350z. Pictures really don't do it justice: The curve from the C pillar is organic, down through the tail lights. It reminds me of the way Ferrari finishes-off its great GT cars like the 456GT. Sigh...yes, it's spring. It's time for me to look at cars. I really have an itch to test drive a Civic Si sedan after reading this review

Snow Crash Consumed this book this weekend, and it was a great mind-F***, similar to the first time you watch "The Matrix". Where to begin? The central character, Hiro Protagonist (You have to admire a man with the stones to call his protagonist Mr. Protagonist!), lives in a dystopian future overrun by corporations, in which the world is split in two--Reality is, well, the real world, and the Metaverse is the hipper virtual world where everyone has avatars and can interact via being 'Goggled-in'. Hiro is a pizza delivery boy / katana-wielding swordsman in the real world, and a Hacker God in the Metaverse. He works for the CostaNostra (yes, the Mafia) as a pizza delivery boy, whose motto is 'Delivery in 30 minutes or ELSE!' The novel opens as Hiro tries to get a pizza pie door-to-door in less than 10 minute, along the way attracting a 15 year old jailbait skateboard Kourier named 'Y.T.' (Stands for 'Yours Truly'). The plot centers around a ...

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Article Understand, I don't like Spring all that much. For a 'lightweight' framework, it's awfully heavy on the stuff you need to ship to have an 'app' (or at least, it seems that way to me). Still, this guy's critiques are just...weak! Thoughts: On Configuration "Setter injection is bad". Yeah, it's bad. It allows you to create objects in an invalid state, and causes all sorts of runtime state checking of what (often) is an immutable or stateless Object. Still, all recent versions of Spring have allowed us to use constructor injection. "Don't combine application wiring and configuration". Yeah. Use a property configurator and a regular java .properties file. On Dependency graphs Every class implements an interface, just to make it easy for Spring. I wholeheartedly agree with this one, but it's a nit. You can just as easily NOT do this. On Aspect oriented programming "This isn't healthy in the general case...

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Only two 10 pound objects can hold a room of adults hostage: Plastic explosives or a crying baby.