NaBloPoMo Code
Just in case there’s a fellow Linux geek out there that wants the code that pulls five random words from the standard word list that exists on most Linux (and Unix) boxes, here’s the Perl that I whipped up…
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
$|++;
sub shuffle {
my $array = shift;
my $i;
for ($i = @$array; --$i; ) {
my $j = int rand ($i+1);
next if $i == $j;
@$array[$i,$j] = @$array[$j,$i];
}
}
print "Loading used words...";
my %usedwords = ();
open F, "used_words";
while () {
chomp;
$usedwords{$_} = 1;
}
close F;
print "DONE\n";
print "Loading dictionary...";
my @allwords = ();
open F, "/usr/share/dict/words";
while () {
chomp;
next if (defined($usedwords{$_}));
push @allwords, $_;
}
close F;
print "DONE\n";
print "Shuffling dictionary...";
shuffle(@allwords);
print "DONE\n";
print "Finding words...";
my @words = ();
foreach my $count (1..5)
{
push @words, $allwords[$count];
}
print "DONE\n";
my $print_words = join "\n", @words;
$print_words .= "\n";
print "Saving words to used words list...";
open F, ">> used_words";
print F $print_words;
close F;
print "DONE\n";
print "\nRandom Words:\n";
print $print_words;
Enjoy!
PS: Use at your own risk. I accept no responsibility for the use (or misuse) of this code. This code is guaranteed to do nothing more than take up space on your hard drive. If it eats other files, formats your hard drive, installs a rootkit, cures cancer, or destroys the world, then it’s not my fault.
NaBloPoMo
I’ve signed my doom for the next month. I just signed up for NaBloPoMo, which means that I should be posting every day for the month of November. I’ve been meaning to sign up for this for about two weeks, but I keep forgetting. Someone mentioned to me that it was nearing that time today, so I finally got off my tookus and signed up.
I’ve been really really slacking with the blog lately, and maybe this will kick me into high gear.
I thought about doing a “conspiracy theory of the day” set of blogs, but I decided to avoid doing that. I have several books (plus the Internet!) on the topic, but I just don’t have time to do the proper research on the conspiracy theories. Maybe I’ll throw in one or two here and there, though.
My plan is to do free associative writing. I’ve written a Perl script to pull out 5 words from the Linux dictionary word list (/usr/share/dict/words). I’ll pick one of those words, and then free associate single words or short phrases about the word that I pick. I’ll do that for about two minutes, and then I’ll pick a word/phrase from my list, and write about that for at least 5 minutes, or until I’ve exhausted my thoughts on the topic… whichever is longer.
There are 479,625 words in the file. That should result in some interesting things.
If this is your first time here, and you want to know more about me, then read through the archives. I think you’ll get a pretty good idea about who I am from my writings.
Here’s to hoping that I can post 30 days in a row!
PS: My son is due on the 21st, so my posts around that time and after that time may revolve around him… Just a fair warning.
Officiumocopiaphilia
I don’t know what it is about office supplies, but when I walk by them in the store I have the urge to buy some. It’s an addiction, I swear. I’m not entirely sure what’s wrong with me. I have plenty of paper, pens, paper clips, rubber bands, mechanical pencils, pencil lead, erasers, post-it notes, batteries, blank CDs, staples, and all of the other cruft that you find in the office.
Heck, when I start a new job, one of the things that I look forward to most is stocking up my desk with office supplies. It’s a great feeling. It’s like shopping for all new stuff without spending a dime. At a past job, I remember that they gave me a small plastic trash can that was brand new. Then they walked me to this fairly large room with TONS of office supplies in it. The lady told me that she needed to run talk to someone real quick, and she would be back in a few minutes. She told me to help myself to what I needed to do my job. Heheh.. Her mistake. I must have filled, compress, and refilled that trash can twice with stuff. I made sure to leave at least one of each thing in the supply room for other people, but I had at least a two year supply of office supplies in that trash can. Muahahaha… (and the job almost lasted that long too!)
Most kids would look forward to school for the new clothes. Many of the kids in my schools would only get new clothes at the start of school, maybe Christmas, and on the rare birthday. The clothes were a treat for them. Not me. I loved my clothes. I rarely went in on the latest fashions no matter how hard my grandmother would tell me, “But they are all wearing it!” I always asked her who “they” were. She never had an answer for me, so she dropped it. I suppose that if I had friends in school, she could have used them as an example, but that wasn’t the case.
I also looked forward to school for the new stuff: school supplies!!!
Yep. I made sure that every pen, pencil, scrap of notebook paper, spiral notebook, backpack, and other supplies would vanish about two weeks before school started. I never threw it out (unless it was truly ready to go) since I loathed to throw out any office supply. I would stash it away somewhere until we went shopping for school supplies. I would load up on all sorts of goodies. I’m pretty sure I peed a few drops each time my grandmother told me that it was time to go shopping for school supplies.
One of the main schwag items at OSCON was pens. I picked them up all over the place, but never more than one of each kind. I gave a few away, but I still have 10 of them left. Sounds like a small haul, but I’m happy to have each one even though I may never use any of them.
I wondered if there’s a named disorder out there that I have? I did a Google search for “office supply fetish” and found over 2 million links. Some good stuff in there, but no diagnosis yet. I did find Office Freaks that looks like a cool site.
After using this English to Latin translator for a short bit, I finally came up with: officiumocopiaphilia. Yep. I have officiumocopiaphilia. I’m a officiumocopiaphile. I am officiumocopiaphilic.
Try dropping that word on your doctor (or better yet, psychiatrist!) next time you see them.
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
It started snowing here a little Saturday night, and turned into a pretty good snow storm by the time Sunday morning rolled around. Kiara had gone into town early Sunday morning, and I stayed at home in dismay over the weather. I decided that it was time to put the snow blower together. I cracked open the box, drug it out from the box, and grabbed the manual. There were two fairly thick manuals in the bag, and I was worried that it would be Spring thaw before I would have it together. I was in luck. One book was how to take the engine apart, and most of the other one was maintenance and repair. The assembly instructions were about 2 1/2 pages long (with some diagrams), and the entire assembly time was about five minutes.
It took me another 10 to adjust the skid plates to a higher setting, so that I could do the gravel road without sucking up gravel, mud, and pebbles. It took me this long because I discovered that I didn’t have a set of standard sized sockets. I had metric, but not standard. I did have a full set of standard sized wrenches, though, so that got me through. My next tool purchase will be a set of Craftsman standard sockets from Sears. I just gotta get by there to make that purchase.
We had two gas cans at home (a 1 gallon and a 5 gallon) but both were empty. I called Kiara and asked her to buy a two gallon or five gallon tank and put at least two gallons of gas in it. She managed to get close to home shortly after noon. The turn-off on our road is a slight up hill ascent, and it was icy. The problem is that after the turn, you don’t have enough momentum to carry you over the icy hill. Kiara got stuck there, so I threw on my coat, and walked down the road to meet her. I met her about halfway, and carried the gas can the rest of the way.
I got the snow blower gassed up, and then showed Kiara how to operate it. The next step was to clear off our 2200 sq. ft. driveway of the 4-24 inches of snow that had gathered or drifted in the driveway. I wasn’t looking forward to the effort, but within a minute or two of doing it, I was having fun! Yep. Me. Having fun in snow. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
The snow blower has 6 forward gears, and 2 reverse gears. In anything higher than 3rd gear, the blower will actually pop a wheelie if you gas it hard. Sweet! I managed to clear the entire driveway (and a little extra around the Suburban) in 24 minutes. Not 23 minutes. Not 25 minutes. Yes. I timed it. I had to know for sure. That’s a vast improvement over the 6+ hours it took me last winter to dig out a single car width path in the snow.
The afternoon brought warmer weather, and sunlight. We waited until just before the sun went down to go get Kiara’s car from the bottom of the hill. We hopped in the Suburban, and I kicked in the four wheel drive. I drove down to her car, and waited to see if she could make it. She managed to get to the house, and I followed along. I kept a good distance between us, and on the way back to the house, I made sure to drive through the deepest parts of the snow that were on the road to see how the suburban would handle it. I manged to make it through some two foot deep drifts and the Suburban didn’t even flinch at it. Very nice!
I think that we’re finally prepared for the snow this year. So long as we don’t get another blizzard following another blizzard following another blizzard (x7), we should be in good shape. It’s nice to know that we’ll be able to make out of the snow in inclement conditions, but I’m still not going to beg for massive amounts of snow. I like a challenge, but not one that could potentially trap me in my house for days on end.
Not Allowed
There are some people out there that have some odd thoughts on what they can keep people from doing. There are several web sites out there that proclaim that it is illegal for me to link to their site. I’m not quite sure where they got their legal advice, but so long as my linking to their site is not libelous, then I’m doing nothing wrong or illegal. I didn’t spend a great deal of time looking for these sites, here are a few sites that proclaim that I’m not allowed to link to:
- Inventor-Link LLC
- Advantest Japan
- Denso
- UMR Research
- There are probably more, but I’ve spent enough time trying to find them.
In addition to this, there is a law firm by the name of Dozier Internet Law, P.C. that proclaim themselves to be “The Lawyers for Internet Business”. Their user agreement has the following statement in it:
We also own all of the code, including the HTML code, and all content. As you may know, you can view the HTML code with a standard browser. We do not permit you to view such code since we consider it to be our intellectual property protected by the copyright laws. You are therefore not authorized to do so.
Yes, when I went to their site, I did view the source code. It’s fair-to-middle in quality. The formatting of the code is sub-par, but the technical accuracy of the site is acceptable. I would be embarrassed if I had written the code. If they are “The Lawyers for Internet Business” then they need to realize that their source code is also a reflection on their abilities. Perhaps this is why they don’t want people looking at their code.
Also, this Dozier Internet Law, P.C. business proclaims that they will not allow anyone to link to their site. Guess what? I just did it in every word in this sentence.
Another also, I’m not allowed to make reference to the name “Dozier Internet Law, P.C.” if you believe the user agreement that I linked to above. With this sentence I’ve used the text “Dozier Internet Law, P.C.” four times now. I had an urge to use it a fifth time, but I’m holding back.
PS: Please click the links that I have provided. If they are monitoring their web logs (which they probably are) and they are logging the HTTP_REFERER header (which they should if they want to track this stuff), then they will know that I have linked to them. I’m interested to find out if any of these people, companies, or groups will come after me with a cease and desist letter. I’m not asking for trouble, but I’m curious as to the reaction that I’m going to get (if any) by poking this bee’s nest.
Profit
Every so often I hear someone bash on a company for making money. It can be any company in any industry. There are some people out there that think that it’s evil that a company’s motivation are to turn a buck.
This infuriates me to no end.
Companies have a moral and ethical obligation to make money. There are many different stakeholders in a company. These include the owners, share holders, consumers, employees, and the surrounding economy that relies on the people that make money from the company to turn around and spend most of that money in the area.
As much as I dislike Microsoft’s software for its lack of technical prowess and security, I do not dislike the business. They provide thousands of jobs and allow millions (billions?) of people to be more productive in their day-to-day lives. Microsoft has an obligation to the entire world to continue to stay in business. The only way they can do that is by making a profit. If they stopped making a profit, they would go under and vanish (barring a government step in.) If this were to happen, then the technology world as we know it would be severely damaged!
The same thing applies to pharmaceutical companies (which actually spawned this post.) They make medicine and do research into curing disease. Why? It’s big money. The individuals that work towards these goals are most likely driven to do something that will benefit humanity. The company, as a large faceless entity, is there to make money. Good. Let them. If they stopped making money, then all of the funding that they provide to the altruistic individuals that work for them will dry up. This means that tons of research that is put towards saving lives will come to an end, and that can’t be a good thing.
Money is a huge motivator, and it drives people to start companies that will make them money. This, in turn, drives those companies to excel if they can. I don’t see a problem with this at all. What’s the harm in making a buck?
Well, I have an answer for that. When the motivation of the company shifts from excelling in their field of business to making a profit at all costs, then things go wrong. Companies, like individuals, should be rewarded for their efforts. A reward to a company is profit. When the company starts to desire that reward to the point where they make decisions that harm people, customers, the environment, the government, or the world at large, then things should change.
I know that a pure capitalistic society is a bad thing. Heck, anything in its pure form is a bad thing. It leads to poor decisions and drastic inequity in the world. Note the use of the word drastic. I’m all in favor if inequity. If everything were equal, then no one would win races, all sports would end in a tie, and there would be nothing that made you more important than the next guy in your own unique way.
There are checks and balances in our laws that prevent most companies from going haywire and destroying themselves or damaging society. Yes, companies can cheat (Enron), or buy their way out of things (almost any lobbyist can tell you this.) If we were to remove campaign donations from the hands of corporations, then maybe there would be more laws and monitoring put in place to prevent abuses of power, but that’s not really the point of this blog.
What I’m saying is that turning a profit is not an evil thing. Heck, quite a few Americans (not all, unfortunately) have a savings account. Guess what? That’s money left over after expenses. If you were a business that would be called profit. It’s wise to having savings, and the same thing goes for companies. It’s wise for them to make a profit and build up a fund to help out during hard times.
If a company making a profit and saving for a rainy day is evil, then every American with a savings account is equally as evil.
Weekend
It was a long weekend for me, and not in the “I’m on a vacation” kind of email.
My Uncle Bub’s funeral was Saturday. I took Friday off work, and headed to Texas. It took me about 6 1/2 hours to get there, which was a little longer than normal, but not a bad drive. I got to my destination about 7 PM MST, and immediately fell into my family. We were sitting around talking, looking at photos, and reminiscing about everyone that wasn’t there or that was already Gone Home. I found a ton of photos that I wanted copies of, and I didn’t have a scanner with me. I did have my laptop though. I ran into the neighboring town (about 12 miles away) and hit Wal-Mart before they closed.
The Wal-Mart trip was interesting. I walked around for a bit, and couldn’t find the electronics department. I finally stopped someone with a name tag and asked them where I could find a keyboard or a mouse. I figured those were pretty common computer parts and everyone would know what I was talking about. The lady looked at me like I was speaking Klingon. I broke down and asked her if they had computer parts. She pointed me to the electronics department. I went that way, and wandered around a few minutes without finding what I was looking for. I finally came across a woman in that department and asked if they had any scanners. She pointed back into the corned and said, “The police scanners are over there.” Ahh… rural Texas. I clarified things a bit and told her that I wanted a photo scanner for my computer. She pointed me in the right direction this time. Their selection was small, and all of them were the combo units: scanner, printer, and fax. Only one was a flatbed scanner (as opposed to a form-feeder), so that was the one that I got. It didn’t include fax capabilities, but that’s ok. I didn’t want that, and it saved me a few bucks.
I got back to the house, and didn’t get a chance to get things setup. DeNise needed help getting a video put together for the reception after the funeral. We were up until about 1 AM getting the video together. It finally came together and turned out really nice. I liked what we put together. I stayed up for a while longer (until about 2 AM) setting up the scanner and scanning photos.
The next day started about 9 AM, and I spent part of the morning scanning some more photos and talking to family. DeNise called me about 11 AM in need of help getting some audio visual stuff setup for the reception. We got that setup and working, and then headed to the church for a lunch thing that the church was doing for family and friends. We sat around, ate and talking some more. The funeral service was at 2:30, and there needed to be some more work done at the church for more A/V hook ups (which I did) and then back to the senior center getting some more stuff setup. We finally got done about 2 PM, and I headed back to the house to change clothes.
Some more relatives had shown up at this time, and we talked some more. I never did a chance to change clothes, but that’s ok. I enjoyed talking with my family. A little before 2:30 we headed to the church, and I managed to throw on a nice shirt in the parking lot before the service. The funeral service was nice, but it really hurt. It really drove home the point that Bub was gone. Most everyone was crying at various parts of the service. The part that made the cry the most was watching the honor guard fold the flag that went to my Aunt Vernelle, and listing to Taps play.
During the funeral, I was sitting in the second row right being B.T. (Uncle Bub’s younger brother), Melba (B.T.’s wife), and Sandra (B.T. and Melba’s daughter). I could see Vernelle and Bub’s children, Reese and DeNise. I could feel their pain in their loss. That’s when I said a prayer to ask God to give me their pain. I told him that if he had more grief and pain to give out than what they could handle to give it to me. I could handle it where I thought they may not be able to do so. I know that they will feel loss and pain for a long while, but I don’t want them to feel overwhelmed with their grief to the point where they could not continue to live their lives.
After the funeral was the reception, and which was more hanging out, talking, hearing stories of the past, and making plans for the future. Everyone wanted to know how Kiara was doing with her pregnancy, and everyone was very happy for us. There are a few more people that we need to email/call after the baby arrives. Another thing that constant happened to me was that people kept asking where my dad was at, how often I talked to him, why he wasn’t there, what he was up to, and what the status of my grandfather’s estate was. I was forced to make up some lame excuses for why my dad wasn’t there. I made sure that they were lame enough that everyone knew that they were lame excuses and that my dad really didn’t want to be there at all. That was the worst part of the whole weekend. Everyone knows that me and my dad don’t really get along all that well, but I went out of my way to make sure that I didn’t bad mouth him too much. I could go on and on about my dad, but that’s a post for another time.
Saturday closed out, and we went back to the house. I spent the rest of my night talking with my cousin Jeremy. We talked about the good old days back on the ranch, our childhoods, how things were simpler back then, and how we all missed it. I think I finally managed to crawl into bed around 2 AM.
Sunday was an early day. I got up around 7:30, hopped in the shower, and got ready for the long drive home. I didn’t want to leave, but I had my son’s baby shower to get to by 2:00 PM MST. The time zone change bought me an extra hour, but that barely managed to help things out. I managed to say my goodbyes, and get out the door around 8:30 even though my target was to leave by 8:00. During the A/V setup and tear down on Saturday, I lost my iPod patch cable. I didn’t realize it until late Saturday, and the person that supplied the A/V equipment was already gone. I went back to the Wal-Mart to buy a new one, but they didn’t open until 10 AM (Yeah, rural Texas, remember?) That meant that I was stuck listening to my one burned CD of songs. It actually lasted me until I almost got home. I let the CD repeat and start over again, but about 30 minutes from home I needed a change. I flipped to the radio for the first time in a LONG time.
I managed to get home at 2:05 for the baby shower that started at 2 PM. I got there before most people, so I was able to greet them as they arrived. The house was decorated and all fancy looking. Jhianna, Spice, Jasmine, Kiara, Campbells, and Craing did a good job on the house. I was quite happy to be home and around my friends.
The women did stuff, but the guys weren’t involved. We stayed downstairs, drank some beer, and watched a football game. It was good to relax for a bit after such a long weekend. After it was over, Kiara and I cleaned the house a small bit, took down the decorations (they looked yummy to the cats, I bet.) and finally fell into bed. I was in bed about 9 PM, and asleep almost right away.
It was good to see all of the friends and family and such that I got to see over the weekend, but I’m still not recovered. It was an exhausting time. I’m looking forward to the trip to Breckenridge in a few days to recover from my trip this past weekend.
