Timmerov's Blog
yay!
i got a raise with my last review. on one hand, i'm incredibly underpaid. on the other hand, i'm incredibly overpaid. i really can't decide which.
bug free code
we hired this new guy at work. the first thing he did was find a bug in my code. i explained something to him that i learned long ago from a very wise coder. when you develop code there are going to be bugs. in fact there are going to be a certain number of bugs per line of code. say 1 bug per 1000 lines of code. so what i do during the development phase is to insert a bug every 1000 lines. then when we move on to the debugging phase it's a pretty trivial task to remove the bugs. the result is bug free code.
ddo quote
i joined a pick up group the other night. i was amused by the following comment about my character. our paladin seems to have found a trap. and disabled it.
taxes
incentive stock options are taxed funny. they're worth nothing when they are issued to you. but maybe someday they'll be worth a lot. when that happens you could exercise them and sell them right away. if you do you pay taxes on them as normal income. or you could exercise them and hold them for a year before selling them. then you pay taxes on them twice. when you exercise them you pay taxes on the difference between fair market value and the option price. then when you sell them you pay taxes on the difference between the sell price and the fair market value when you exercised them. if you take the latter approach you could have to pay taxes on $100k real income and $100k iso income. the screwy part about the latter is that you haven't sold the stock yet. you haven't made any money from it yet. it's just wacky. you don't pay taxes on houses when you buy them at below market from a foreclosure. you pay taxes when you sell the asset. not when you buy it. sheehs. timmer for president.
servers
this company that alisa works for set up a couple of servers. they wanted them to be more than just reliable. they wanted them to be 100% guaranteed. so they named them death and taxes.
ben's answer
neither is right.
ben's riddle
bennett made up this riddle/joke: how is 2+2=5 like your left hand? answer tomorrow.
id
anyone who thinks the designer of human beings was intelligent has never experienced back pain. ;->
marching ants
if the ants go marching one by one. hurrah! then two by two. then three by three. etc. up to ten by ten. and at each verse the ants form up with the correct number of ants in each row. and as many rows as are needed. and there are no left over ants. how many ants are there?
i spy
bennett: i spy with my little eye, something annoying. garrett: me! bennett: correct!
mmm
yesterday was a great day.
ddo 4
ddo has built in voice chat. it's really necessary. your hands are busy driving your character. you can't afford to switch to chat mode. when i try i usually end up with my fingers on the wrong keys. and run the wrong direction. sometimes off cliffs. wee! though if it were my game i'd eavesdrop (warrantlessly) on the voice chat for the phrase 'i magic missle the darkness'. and nuke that character. ;->
ddo 3
all of my ddo characters look like alisa. i figured i'd rather stare at a female butt while playing instead of a male butt for so many hours. and if i'm gonna stare at a female butt it had probably better be a representation of alisa's. so far i haven't found any place to buy clothing. i guess they're not even trying to attract female gamers.
desk
i've had my desk for 20 years. lee got it for me. it cost $5, lunch, and $30 for borrowing a truck from the athletic department at caltech. my desk is by far the heaviest piece of furniture we own. i think only the new oven might outweigh it. i can move it by myself. i 've even pushed it through a window by myself. the mother fucker is /heavy/. i used to put it on rollerskates and push it around. but they were lost in some previous spring cleaning. it fits through a standard size door. but barely. we often have to unscrew the feet and remove the door from the hinges. it's been with me through four moves. i've drilled holes in it to accomodate computer cables. i like my desk. thanks lee!
clean office
the boys and i gave my office a good cleaning while mom was off at her book club. we pulled all the computers and accessories off the desk and into the next room where they were dusted thoroughly. i built a new rack stack for the electronic devices. we moved the desk away from the wall and ran the vaccuum cleaner behind it. all the random bits of paper that were strewn all over the desk are now in one big pile. i can't find anything. whew. glad that's done.
baseball
bennett had his first baseball practice yesterday. i tossed with him for warmups. he missed one that clocked him just under the eye. ow. poor kid.
snow
there's snow on the mountains for which mountain view is named. usually it gets cold /or/ wet but not cold /and/ wet. snow happens about once every ten years. we've been here for 16. we've seen it twice now. i thought the science in the movie
the day after tomorrow was crap. but i'm rethinking that position after being frozified yesterday.
ddo 2
been playing ddo too much. alisa hasn't /exactly/ complained yet. i've been playing rock. scissors is okay. but paper needs to be nerfed.
ddo
dungeons and dragons online is pretty fun. all of my characters look like the beautiful and talented alisa. they say you can't solo. there's absolutely no benefit whatsoever from soloing. that doesn't keep me from trying.
the tom sawyer
we were working in the garden. the boys were /helping/. we didn't have the perfect tool for the job. so we decided to invent. we taped a second handle onto the cultivator so you could drop it on the ground, prongs down, step on them to drive them into the ground, then use the second handle to lift up the first handle and turn the dirt. the second handle can be used to position the cultivator for the next turning. you never need to bend over. which is great for old farts like me. of course the boys fought over who got to work in the garden using the invention. we named it the tom sawyer. and the dirt got turned.
pc
our tabletop games have pretty much become online games. it's pretty cool to be able to play 'table top' dnd with a buddy on the other side of the country using
gametable. but nowhere near as much fun as being at the table. so i figured i'd try dungeons and dragons online. so i extracted specs from john for a pc that could actually run the game. i went to fry's and bought one. it's gray with pretty blue lights. it worked when i plugged it in. first task was to update the system software. i snuggled with alisa and watched the olympics for a few hours while it did its work. physically installing the video card was easy. there was only one slot it fit in. installing the drivers took several atempts. i finally managed it via the advanced troubleshooting buttons. whatever. the biggest problem was signing up for ddo. ebgames emailed me the preorder keys. on my mac. but apparently, you can't create a new account from a mac. but that's a secret. you get no error message of any kind. their online support was wonderful. but completely unhelpful. i figured it out on my own. i logged in and created sweetums. woot! so far the fun has cost about $400 per hour. a bargain!
new format
i have too many friends that blog. i had to customize the template to include all of their links. let me know if you want to be included. enjoy.
oh no!
i tipped the scale at 201 pounds today. that's the first i've crossed that milestone. egad. i am so switching to the metric system.
attic
joe's house is interesting. they use the attics as play areas. after we got home from visiting them, i crawled around in our attic measuring things. i think we can fit a small 'storage' area above the boys' rooms. hide a ladder in the wall. trap door in the ceiling. put power and lights up there. set up some trains. yeah. they've got it good.
bad blog
< rant > i am unable to edit the dates for my blogs using safari. that is the suck. it worked just fine last week. now it doesn't. go figure. i can edit the dates just fine in exploder and firefucks. just not safari. anymore. whine. whine. whine. < /rant > actually, apple support got back to me with a lame workaround. show the preview then hide the preview. stage four. pah.
bunnies
the williamses have a pet bunny (black with droopy ears) that lives outside. you'd think it would be vulnerable to predators. but the german shepherd keeps those away. it was a wild bunny (black with standy up ears) that mauled the pet bunny and took over its nice cozy home under the cottage house. tore up its ears pretty good too. the dog was trained to leave the bunnies alone. so she did. good dog. dumb dog.
cat toys
we left the cat home alone for 3 days while we went skiing. she was fine. we left her fresh kitty litter, a big bowl of food, and the toilet seat up. we also hid small plastic eggs in the bathrooms and kitchens for her to find and play with. she did. they were all over the house when we got back. nothing more fun than a plastic pumpkin in the bathtub.
swag
we stopped at joe's on the way home from tahoe for lunch, playtime, and dinner. we left with a bag of swag including pink eggs, green eggs, blue eggs, two dozen oatmeal peanut butter chip cookies, delicious! two flavors of soda syrups, and more. i drew the line at pets and children.
