How it Should have Ended

This site is awesome! I especially love the Lord of the Rings one. :-)

I think the quote currently on the front page of John McCain's website is stunningly appropriate.

I was looking at the Texas A&M RUF page today. It saddens me that they took away the site I'd built and put up an mSites piece of garbage.

I downloaded their former student "directory", which was a Microsoft Word document that someone uploaded without the *.doc extension, so I had to manually rename it in order to open it. The second line of the document reads: Updated November 18, 2005.

Why does this make me so sad? Only because my first venture into PHP was to write a directory application for this group that everyone--and I mean everyone in RUF at the time--used and loved, that stored all sorts of contact information (home and mobile phones, addresses, emails, IM screen names, etc.), allowed all the students to update their own data (meaning it kept current), and (among other things on that site) helped make the RUF website a near-daily hotspot for everyone in RUF at the time. Hell, three separate campus ministers from other universities mentioned that they envied it.

I bet nobody looks at that site anymore.

I wish I still had that codebase; I'm pretty sure it's gone now.

I find Tom Hanks' deadpan endorsement style to be completely amusing.

"Hello. I'm Tom Hanks, and I want Barack Obama to be the next president of our country. As an official celebrity, I know my endorsement has just made your mind up for you."

One interesting point of contention to Hanks' video is his comment about the significance of the 1797 handoff of power from Washington to Adams. He marked it as the first handoff of power to a non-relative that wasn't a result of violence, revolution, etc. That's not completely true on several counts (Fourth-century B.C. Athens and Fifth-century A.D. papal succession are two counter-examples that I can think of off the top of my head), although I agree with Hanks of the significance of that historical milestone.

However, a far more important historical milestone, and likely the one he should have cited, is the 1801 handoff from Adams to Jefferson. See, George Washington was getting old and did not run again in 1796 (beginning the two-term tradition that was added to the Constitution after FDR); he died in 1798. Adams had been Washington's vice-president and was also of the Federalist Party. The 1801 power change from Adams to Jefferson was more significant because it represented a power shift from the Federalist Party to the Republican Party--the first shift of power from one group to another without any sort of revolution or riots.

I still remember Ms. Price in my tenth-grade history class pointing out, "When Jefferson won the election and then took office, there were no riots in the streets."

1. In a lot of ways, Pick-a-Prof is two companies...in the sense that there are two aspects of it, which reside in literally opposite sides of the office. One half is the development team and their efforts on the website itself, and the other half is university relations, which works with schools and such to get us everything we need. While the two do talk, there's a distinction between the two. Also of some note, the development staff is 100% male, and the university relations staff is 100% female. (That said, everyone gets along very well.)

2. The development staff (and honestly, the entire company) has a really high level of camaraderie. I hear no fighting and no ego, which is really nice. Everyone has been really good about helping me figure everything out, and has been very fun to talk to. Sam makes me laugh more than almost anyone else I've ever known; he's very soft spoken but has this ability to say something dry that bounces off the wall and hits you off the rebound. Today at lunch, we were watching Idiocracy, and he said, "I'm reliving horrible memories of middle school." I thought I was going to choke on my drink.

3. The staff goes to lunch as a unit almost every day. We get lunch to-go and return to the office to eat it, so as to enjoy the time with the folks who decided to bring their lunches.

4. I am not a fan of Yahoo UI (our JavaScript framework standard) right now. I don't see how it's...well, any good. It lacks basic features I'm used to having, forcing me to go the long way around for what should be incredibly simple requests. I've been getting a lot of frustrating errata, and (I feel) spending a lot more time that I should be getting front-end aspects to work. (That said, I can live with it.)

5. We had a baby shower for Keith (my immediate boss, I think) today. His wife Lindsay is six months pregnant. I've never been to a baby shower before but I have always heard that they're just completely atrocious events. This one was co-ed, which likely helped, but I don't think any of the devs really knew what to do. Karen had written a great madlib, though...which was even better when the three words I added were "computer", "whiteboard", and "Antarctica". One of the girls from university relations was saying she'd found a girl that she wanted to hook Chris up with. It was very awkward, but very funny at the same time. When asked why they were a good match, her answer was, "Well, she's your age."

6. There's a very high level of laughter that goes on in that office. It's contagious.

"The two Democratic candidates aren't here either. Senator Clinton couldn't get in the building because of sniper fire, and Senator Obama's at church." (George W. Bush, 2008.04.26)

1. The Amanda McClendon ordered list format returns, at least for this one particular blog post. That reminds me, I haven't done Thursday 13s in a long time. It looks like they're still going; I may participate this coming Thursday.

2. RotD had a great run through the Karazhan dungeon tonight. We had 7 veterans and 3 freshly-dinged level 70s. Most of us who have been in that zone every week since April 2007 have everything they want from the zone, so the newer folks basically got to rake in the phats (and rake they did!). It was really nice to hear the excitement in their voices: "I can have that, really?"

3. The one bad thing about the raid tonight was that it ended at midnight, after the thunderstorm that hit Austin this evening had passed. Consequently, I cannot sleep tonight.

4. We finally, over a year later, have moved the piano to my house. I have discovered today that my skill in piano playing has...er...decreased somewhat. In this case, "somewhat" is defined as kind of a lot. In particular, I'm noticing that my thumbs really, really hurt. Also, I'm very consistently, especially on my right hand, hitting 1-5 chords when I mean to hit 1-6 chords. This seems to happen most often when I mean to play C and A and play C and G instead. It doesn't sound good. I may have to backtrack to something easier than O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.

5. I had lunch with my new co-workers yesterday. They seem to be a lot of fun; I'm looking forward to working with them. I got a basic briefing on what I will be doing, saw my new computer and where I'll be sitting, and all that stuff. I'm a little nervous, but overall I'm pretty excited.

6. My cats love the piano. Rain, in particular, seems to like the sound of G.