It seems like just a few weeks ago we were celebrating New Years, screaming like idiots down the street at 12:something in the AM, lighting off sparklers and generally feeling sad that we wasted another year.
Now I sit at home thinking to myself that I am dead in the middle of wasting another year while I wait around what to do with it. I know this is not really the case, but I feel like this year has quickly slipped past me and that I would almost be better off preparing for next year now.
Speaking of preparing for next year, my wife and I are going to be spending time tomorrow planning our kids’ school year. This is another thing that has seemed to sneak up on me without any notice. Don’t get me wrong… I am well aware that school starts around this time every year. But I swear if it isn’t really May 27 or some other early in the year date. Not the end of August. No way.
Anyhow, I am just plain ranting because I feel like I lost something that was totally within my ability to control. So I suppose I need to start working on redeeming the time as best I can so my kids can actually get educated throughout the rest of this year.
/ looks around the room
If only I could find where I put my time…
I have been noticing lately quite literally every day there is an accident on some major traffic artery in my area. Usually the accident is on highway 880 near Oakland, or Southbound highway 880 near Dixon Landing Road. There is almost always something happening on 580 West near Livermore and there is almost a certainty that there will be an accident near Main St in Walnut Creek on Southbound 680. Really now, is all this necessary?
I don’t have the longest commute or the hairiest commute in the Bay Area. In reality my commute is rather smooth. One of the main reasons I didn’t walk away from the offer for the job that I am currenty doing is that my commute is completely against the typical Silicon Valley commute. In fact I get to watch, daily, the people sitting in the opposite side of the freeway traffic as I hear on the radio that there is yet another accident on their commute.
Today for example… if it wasn’t bad enough that there had already been a bus fire on Southbound 680, it seemed like a good time for four cars, completely unrelated to one another, to smash into each other at the peak of my homeward commute. It normally would take me 35 minutes to get home under normal circumstances. Today it took an hour and fifteen minutes. WTC?
Yesterday there was a major accident on Southbound highway 101 and Westbound highway 92. That happens to be a major traffic artery for folks that work on the Peninsula. Thanks for getting in these accidents. Everyone that drives the freeways is much appreciative.
And if it sounds like I have no sympathy for these folks that are wrecking their cars… it is mostly because I don’t. Well, let me rephrase that. I have contempt for those people that are eating a bowl of cereal while they talk on their cell phone and shave at 80 MPH. Or for those that have to put face cream on while smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. God gave you two hands. At least one should be used for driving. Neither of them should be used for double duty while you are not paying attention to the roadway in rush hour traffic. Please, you don’t have to drive this way.
/ Steps off soap box
I say tomorrow, since it is Labor Day weekend and all, that everyone drives a little slower and a little nicer and tries hard to make the drive something we can all tolerate. If not, get out of my way so I can get to work since I will probably be late and eating breakfast while talking to my boss on my cell phone explaining how my cat ate my dog and my dog ate my homework.
Holy carp it’s been hot the last few days. Tonight when I got in my car to come home, at 5:45 PM, my thermometer read 105 degrees. WTC?
Sidebar: Much like the traditional WTF, WTC is meant to portray the same general emotion, only using Carp instead of F***. Carry on.
Man, that is some hot weather. After I got home we went to church which was nice, because it is air conditioned at the what not. But still, coming our of church at a little after 9:30 at night and seeing the temperature at a measly 81 degrees still leaves a little cool to be desired.
Not worry though, I have a lot of fans at home, and I am not afraid to use them.
She: “Daddy.”
Me: “Yes baby.”
She: “How do you spell KFC?”
Me: ?
She: “What starts KFC?”
Me: “Um, K.”
She: “Oh, so K makes kuh?”
Me: “Yep, K makes kuh.”
She: “Oh, OK.”
She: “Daddy.”
Me: “Yes sweetie.”
She: “How do you spell DVD?”
Dude, I have been so busy coding that I have almost forgotten that I am coding. Have you ever been there?
I have been face deep in code for the last week at work. Since we hired a new associate web developer into the team I have been having to supply him with the framework code base that we are going to be rolling out so that his new projects can be built for the new environment we are rolling out next week.
We put up all kinds of development stage code last week. And today we continued with that, putting some finishing touches on some database abstracts and interfaces as well as request object stuff. I am stoked.
I get to work as though I am on a development team. That’s right, the full software development life cycle stuff. Code control, code reviews, collaboration, database design, code development, code testing…. oh man I am getting excited. Is it hot in here or is it just me?
Anyway, I was a little lost last week in all the code I had churned out, so I wanted to take a little time to get back to handling my business. Namely thinking how cool I am for pushing out that much code this week. Hells yeah baby, you know I am a code spider monkey. What?
So iMentioned yesterday that iWent to the AT&T store. iWas with my children after a day of juicing up on sugared water treats like Barry Bonds on a steroid binge when iStopped at the AT&T store to sneak a peak at the iPhone.
Now iWant to say that iHave been intrigued with this device since it came out. iWant to say that iWas a bandwagoner and rushed out to see what all the hubbub was about from day one. But iWasn’t. In fact, iHadn’t even seen an iPhone until last week when a coworker showed my his iPhone. And iGot hooked instantly.
It seems to me that Apple just knows how to do things that people will be able to use. Their interfaces have always seemed to just work and work right, right out of the box, the way you’d expect them to work. The iPhone is no different.
iHave used several different smart phones in the past but none can come close to the coolness that is achieved with the iPhone. The ease of use, the intuitive nature, the cool technology behind **shudders for a brief second** even my 11 year old daughter was able to quikly figure out that you can visit the American Girl website from the phone AND that you could enlarge the browser screen just by putting your fingers together and separating them.
iAm very pleased with the iPhone. And iCan honestly say that iWant one really bad. It isn’t so much because it is the coolest, newest technology. On the contrary, iThink it has a lot more to do with me wanting to play with said technology.
So today was a day without Mom. She was attending a woman’s conference at church and was out between 7:45 AM and about 5:00 PM.
I can live with that. Mostly. My kids however, not so much. Well, specifically my son. He has a thing for mom that makes her not being in the house the most aggravating thing in the world to him… and to those around him.
It was actually a good day for the most part. I woke up early, made a big breakfast for the kids, cleaned up a bit, then took off to get my hair cut. The thing that made this day a little weird was that our big breakfast wasn’t done until almost 10:00 this morning. We left the house at about 11:45 or so and made it to the barber shop at about 12:10. But it was packed full of hairy men that desparately needed hairs cut, so I decided I would drive around a little bit and come back later. An hour or so later.
Well, when we got backl the place was still packed. But I was in no mood to come back again after having already come back once today, so I decided we should stay. I had all the kids with me so we couldn’t actually stay in the barber shop, but sitting on the sidewalk in a not so affluent neighborhood where you kids are either sitting in a stroller or playing along the sidewalk does make a man feel a little beggarish. However, it was soon my son’s and my turn to have our haircuts, and so we handled our wait appropriately: with thunderous screaming and laughing.
After the haircuts were done, I took the kids to 7-11 and Starbucks. The two older girls wanted fraps while my younger two girls wanted slushies. My son really has no say in the matter since all he really does is scream anyway, and since fraps are so much more expensive that slushies, the boy got a slushie. Actually, half a slushie so as not to make him twice the energetic young man he is when he has too muh slushie.
We went to 7-11 first, picked up the slushies and a bag of Doritos, then went to Starbcks where we say down as a family and enjoyed our fine lunch of Cool Ranch Tortilla Chips and icied sugar waters. After we were done, we left for home after making a brief trip to the AT&T store.
Now I could go into all sorts of oogles and ahgles about what I saw and played with at the AT&T store. But that might ruin the surprise for tomorrow’s post. And iDon’t think iReally want to do that to you. Yes, iCare about you and iSincerely want you to come back so iCan post more delicious stories of dads and kids and all things i…
Every now and again I am reminded how happy I am to have found the woman of my dreams. And I am reminded moreover how glad I am that I was able to marry said woman.
Today is one of those days. I, like a lot of husbands, tend to take my wife for granted. I just think that since I at the office all day and she is at home with our five kids all day that everything that needs to be done will be done and she will just be overjoyed to have me as a husband. I mean, it makes perfect sense, right? I go to work and she gets to think about what a lucky woman she is to have landed such a great guy as me.
Well, I suppose that is how many a man sees it. I know I do for the most part. No, it isn’t right. And no, I am not saying that this is how it should be. I am merely stating the obvious… that men are self centered egotists that think the world revolves around us, makes us dinner and satisfies us at our discretion and according to our own schedule.
Well, today (actually beginning yesterday) that mindset changed for me. I am not sure how long this will last. I hope for a long time. But I am feeling a greatly focused gratitude and admiration for my wife at the moment. I wish I could pinpoint what has made me feel this way, but I can’t. So I won’t attempt to figure out why (really, what would knowing why answer anyway?) and instead will just think about how lucky and blessed I truly am to have married the woman of my dreams.
I love you babe.
I am testing out Google’s newest freebie to developers: Google maps in your site.
That is a map of the Oakland Zoo. Pretty neat huh?
EDIT: Well,this thing does not seem to be working as described. Thanks to Oren for pointing out that my post was showing a FORBIDDEN message. Sorry about that folks.
I have been meaning to put this out for a bit now. Without further ado, I welcome to you… the decorator pattern
<?php
abstract class Beverage {
public $description = 'Unknown Beverage';
public function getDescription() {
return $this->description;
}
abstract public function cost();
}
// Note: This abstract class is totally unnecessary, but
// I am leaving it in with the abstraction of the
// getDescription method commented out as in PHP it is not
// possible to abstract a method that is already defined
abstract class CondimentDecorator extends Beverage {
//abstract public function getDescription();
}
class Espresso extends Beverage {
public function __construct() {
$this->description = 'Espresso';
}
public function cost() {
return 1.99;
}
}
class HouseBlend extends Beverage {
public function __construct() {
$this->description = 'House Blend Coffee';
}
public function cost() {
return 0.89;
}
}
class DarkRoast extends Beverage {
public function __construct() {
$this->description = 'Dark Roast';
}
public function cost() {
return 0.99;
}
}
class Decaf extends Beverage {
public function __construct() {
$this->description = 'Decaf Coffee';
}
public function cost() {
return 1.05;
}
}
class Mocha extends CondimentDecorator {
public $beverage;
public function __construct(Beverage $beverage) {
$this->beverage = $beverage;
}
public function getDescription() {
return $this->beverage->getDescription() . ', Mocha';
}
public function cost() {
return $this->beverage->cost() + 0.20;
}
}
class SteamedMilk extends CondimentDecorator {
public $beverage;
public function __construct(Beverage $beverage) {
$this->beverage = $beverage;
}
public function getDescription() {
return $this->beverage->getDescription() . ', Steamed Milk';
}
public function cost() {
return $this->beverage->cost() + 0.10;
}
}
class Soy extends CondimentDecorator {
public $beverage;
public function __construct(Beverage $beverage) {
$this->beverage = $beverage;
}
public function getDescription() {
return $this->beverage->getDescription() . ', Soy';
}
public function cost() {
return $this->beverage->cost() + 0.15;
}
}
class Whip extends CondimentDecorator {
public $beverage;
public function __construct(Beverage $beverage) {
$this->beverage = $beverage;
}
public function getDescription() {
return $this->beverage->getDescription() . ', Whip';
}
public function cost() {
return $this->beverage->cost() + 0.10;
}
}
class StarBuzzCoffee {
public function __construct() {
$beverage = new Espresso();
echo $beverage->getDescription() . ' $' . $beverage->cost() . '<br />';
$beverage2 = new DarkRoast();
$beverage2 = new Mocha($beverage2);
$beverage2 = new Mocha($beverage2);
$beverage2 = new Whip($beverage2);
echo $beverage2->getDescription() . ' $' . $beverage2->cost() . '<br />';
$beverage3 = new HouseBlend();
$beverage3 = new Soy($beverage3);
$beverage3 = new Mocha($beverage3);
$beverage3 = new Whip($beverage3);
echo $beverage3->getDescription() . ' $' . $beverage3->cost() . '<br />';
}
}
$coffee = new StarBuzzCoffee();Output:
Espresso $1.99
Dark Roast, Mocha, Mocha, Whip $1.49
House Blend Coffee, Soy, Mocha, Whip $1.34