Merry Christmas
Happy New Year!!!
Archive for December, 2003
Holidays
Wednesday, December 31st, 2003New Gym
Wednesday, December 24th, 2003LA Fitness opened a new club in Fort Washington which turns out to be 1.7 mi. from my house. Which seems to take about 3 minutes to travel to and from at 5 AM and 6:15 AM respectively.
This makes me happy.
I believe it opened yesterday, it is nice, it’s one that has the upper level for the aerobic stuff, which is cool to be able to look out over the club while you are running, however it is a bad design because of the fact that hot air ends up where the people are in the most need of cool air. Plus now-a-days the heater tends to be on, and that is where the ducts are blowing on you. But it’s only a mild discomfort, much better than running in the torrential rain that was going on this morning.
Anyway I was the only one working out there from about 5:01 AM – until about 5:25 when another guy showed up. That was great. I left about 6:15 and am now quite excited to be able to get back into my old 5AM routine.
Return of the King
Friday, December 19th, 2003One of the cardinal rules of filmmaking:
Any movie where one large group of people with swords runs at an opposing group of people with swords is awesome.
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King employs this trick about 172 times, therefore making it whatever awesome times 172 is.
-Tom (my brother in an away message)
I Cite
Thursday, December 18th, 2003Цитирую <- (The actual russian word will show up here if your browser and OS don’t suck.)
Apparently the preceding Russian means literally translated (by a computer): “I cite.” As in an attribution at the begining of an email quote.
I really need to learn some other languages.
isNull
Monday, December 15th, 2003using an object before checking if it is null makes baby jesus cry.
c’mon people check your return value
better yet:
- Before you start writing a method, decide whether it will ever return null. Document this decision in the @return section of the method’s Javadoc.
- Never have a method return null unless there’s a really good reason for it.
- If your method returns an array or a collection, there’s no reason to ever return null. Return an empty array or collection instead.
- If you have a situation where null is a valid value for a variable, you can make use of the Introduce Null Object refactoring, to make the behaviour explicit.
Read more here.
Unit testing premise
Wednesday, December 10th, 2003There are few creatures more feral and dangerous than a stressed, sleep-deprived, overly-caffinated programmer who has just been told that a bug they fixed two months ago has resurfaced… for the third time.
My Wife Rules
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003She stole my car!
Ordinarily that wouldn’t make much sense, but in this case it was the exact right thing to do. I asked her to find me somewhere to get my oil changed and my windsheild fixed or replaced. So she did, she tried to get a hold of me but I was busy in meetings this morning, and left my cell phone in my jacket. So she came and stole my car to get the oil changed and get the windshield inspected.
Luckily she thought to leave me the keys to her car so I can get home. Anyway, Michelle is the best!
Thanksgiving re-cap
Monday, December 1st, 2003Thanksgiving with Mom, Tom and my wife was great, I missed having my dad there, but I love spending time with my Mom. Breakfast with the in-law’s for three straight days was good, it made sure that I got my fill of eggs and bacon those days. And Michelle and her Mom spent Friday and Saturday baking about a million Christmas cookies at my house.
It gave me time to run the new phone lines to my office, and to get quite a bit of Madden franchise time in. I won the superbowl and then started trading all my old players for draft picks and young players. (Note: always keep the signing bonus money as low as possible, unless you are sure you will keep the player through the end of the contract, even if it means a higher overall salary)
Then the Eagles continued to be awesome with their 7th straight victory. Thank goodness that Fox forgot how to use timeouts and Kasay forgot how to kick field goals.
Then I helped Frank move some of his new (used) furniture from his cousin’s condo into his new condo. All in all a busy, yet oftentimes restful long weekend.
