Shameless Plug

Posted by andrew, at 8:40:33 pm

I don't think I've ever mentioned this, so I'm going to give a plug for BrakesOff.com, a community site for pilots that's amazing. But maybe I'm a little biased, since I did write it (at least originally). If you're interested at all in aviation, check it out.

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The 411

Posted by andrew, at 8:29:59 pm

Well, it's finally cooled down some out here. For those of you who haven't been following Vegas weather, we've been having some near-record highs lately -- a few days ago we hit 90 degrees, the record (set in 1908) being 91.

So... the short version of what I've been up to.

• Designing a new site for LasVegasRollerHockey.com, where I play roller hockey
• Uploading a bunch of pictures of my kids to appease the grandparents
• Work... obviously... Hopefully, I'll be attending php|tek this May and getting my Zend certification while I'm there
• Watching lots of stuff on FlightLevel350.com -- probably the best collection of aviation videos online
• Playing Nintendo on my cellphone, and loving it

Oh, I'm also "helping" my wife slug her way through the first two seasons of Grey's Anatomy, where helping means trying to keep the kids out of the way as much as possible and not lusting after any new releases.

And grilling. It's that season again, what with all the warm weather. We've been grilling up a storm -- tri tip, chicken, pork chops, steak, the works. Lots of good stuff.

And on that note, I'm going to close.

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I'm Not Dead!

Posted by andrew, at 11:46:05 pm

Contrary to public opinion, I'm not dead. Just busy. Work has been rather hectic this past week, with lots to keep me busy. I've been moving servers (not physically, but moving the stuff on them), migrating CVS, and the list goes on.

I actually just got back from hockey, which was great (as usual). The rink just got a new floor put in, and the difference is amazing. Of course, now we all have to get used to the new play. We lost (unfortunately), but it's better than not playing at all.

Joshua and Jonathan are growing up extremely fast, and time is slipping by even faster. This past January marked the two year anniversary of both our marriage and our move to Vegas. I'll have worked at this job for two years in March. Wow.

I really need to get some info up about my latest projects -- I've been fooling around with a pre-forking HTTP server written completely in PHP that can actually outserve Apache. I've also been working on a PHP replacement for Memcached, and even whipped together a "malloc" extension, exposing PHP's emalloc and efree functions. That much power just feels wrong. (It's also the quickest way to a PHP segfault ever.)

Well, I need to get to bed so I'm ready for 5:30AM.

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Let God be True, and Every Man a Liar

Posted by andrew, at 12:28:53 pm

I was recently trying to research the Kent Hovind affair, when I ran across a somewhat interesting exchange on the topic (and creation/evolution in general) on a forum.

I'm not really going to delve into much of what was said, however, one argument in particular caught my attention. I don't think I'd ever heard it before.

Since the physical evidence demonstrates that the universe has existed for 13.7 billion years, your claim that "around 6,000 Years ago God Created everything" can only remain true if God created the universe to appear several orders of magnitude older than it is, making Him a liar.

Unforuntately, the argument overlooks one significant fact. God has the power to not only create a universe that appears older, He also has the power to create a universe that is older. For instance, there's no mention that Adam and Eve were created as babies; they were created as full-grown adults. Saying they were full-grown adults isn't a lie, it's the truth.

So the argument, while unique, doesn't hold much water.

In other news, I really need to brush up on this debate.

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eBay zero.

Posted by andrew, at 1:18:02 pm

Whatever it is, you can get it on eBay.

Don't believe the hype: you can't find everything on eBay.

This morning I began a little jaunt down memory lane by searching around for some accessories for a (very, very) old laptop that's currently residing in my old closet at my parent's house. I'd been thinking about bringing it out for -- well, something -- and then my mom mentioned that she'd seen some people converting old laptops into digital picture frames. It sounded like a perfect use of some aged technology.

I was hoping I might find a battery for it, since its battery died years ago. No luck. In fact, I couldn't even find a battery at any of the plentiful battery resellers. eBay zero.

That got me to thinking about how exactly I'd install Linux on the machine anyways, since it lacks a CDROM drive, which is generally thought of as a necessity. I could use the floppy drive -- or wait, I still have an old MiniZip disk reader.

You've probably never heard of MiniZip disks. That's because their lifetime was measured in months, if not weeks. They were launched with the equally short-lived HipZip MP3 player, which, incidentally, reads the disks. Forunately, I bought the HipZip with a full protection plan -- the battery died about 3 weeks later, and I was given a full-refund as the product was no longer being manufactured.

Wouldn't it be quaint, I said to myself, to buy a HipZip player on eBay just for the heck of it? Apparently not, since you can't find one. eBay zero.

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Intensive Traffic Control

Posted by andrew, at 4:05:15 pm

Here's an interesting article on a new model for managing Intensive Care Units. Knowing that ICUs across the country lack the proper staff, two doctors came up with an idea based on air traffic control:

At that time, fewer than 6,000 intensivists were practicing in the U.S., enough to care for only 13 percent of ICU patients. Breslow and Rosenfeld [...] modeled their approach on air traffic control, in which a few controllers monitor hundreds of planes from a centralized location.

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Steal

Posted by andrew, at 8:08:14 pm

OfficeDepot is currently advertising a 17" LCD for $99 after rebates. The rub is that it doesn't have DVI -- if that's important to you. I'm sure DVI is nice (I didn't actually notice a difference, however), but I'm not going to die without it.

I picked up one to replace Mindy's aging 15" LCD (which I inherited, since I took my 20.1" widescreen to work).

Note: When I went into the store, they had a ViewSonic for the same price after rebates. I didn't see the Acer. Either way, it's a pretty good deal.

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Take it Easy

Posted by andrew, at 9:18:04 pm

If you were wondering where I've been -- and I know everybody was -- suffice it to say that we've had a busy week (+/- a few days). Last Tuesday both Jonathan and Joshua had a high fever, so I took a sick day to bring them both into the doctor's office. Following protocol for babies under a month old, the doctor asked us to take Jonathan to the hospital and have him admitted. In the meantime, she took a spinal tap, some urine, and some blood. She submitted all of the above to the lab and we left for the hospital.

He ended up having a urinary tract infection and stayed in for nearly 5 days while Mindy went nearly crazy. Fortunately, the infection did not spread to his blood, despite the blood culture coming back positive. Apparently the culture was contaminated by something present in... human saliva. We've still got to take him into the office once more to get some antibiotics, but he's pretty much over it.

But that explains it.

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What are the odds?

Posted by andrew, at 9:19:02 am

So if you've ever been of a 5-mile bus trip, and wondered what the odds of being killed are, there's a site you should visit. Among other things, you can find just how likely it is that you'll...

• Date a supermodel
• Get away with murder
• Be possessed
• Get hemerrhoids
• Become a saint
• Have your house smashed by a meteor

The one statistic that they don't list is the chance that two strings will create the same MD5 hash... which is the question that prompted my discovery.

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Growin' Up

Posted by andrew, at 8:00:38 am

Well, I've been thinking lately that I need to pick up my camera and take more pictures. It's been just sitting there far too often.

So I took some.

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